Stories of Hope Stories of Healing: Jim Laird Part I

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode.

Hello everyone. Dr. Stillman here today. I'm very excited to be joined by my good friend, Jim Laird. We've worked together for many years, seen a lot of people together, working to help get them healthy and well in all kinds of different ways. Jim has some of the best stories of anyone I know in the health and wellness space, not only about himself, but just experiences he's had along the way. He has a, uh, multiple decades of experience as a strength and conditioning coach. He's worked with everyone from D1 college athletes to professional athletes to moms with homeschool kids and grandmas. He's got an incredible depth and breadth of experience, which is one of my favorite things about him. And today we wanted to sit down because he's got an incredible story of recovering from ulcerative colitis. And without giving away too much of the story, Jim, thank you for joining me.

Oh, I appreciate you being, uh, being here, Doc. Thank you.

It's good to see you again.

Good to see you as well.

So I like to start by asking everybody who they are and where they're from.

Well, my name's Jim Laird and I'm originally from Canada. Uh, lived in the US for a long time, trained people forever and ever. Uh, then moved to Florida, worked with you for several years, and I moved to Nicaragua to open a gym on the beach. Which didn't work out. And now I am in charge of the preparation for the national baseball team, working for Dusty Baker, a Hall of Fame manager, uh, getting the team ready for the tournament in Miami in March. And I'm also the, um, head of preparation for the Boer, which is the oldest professional baseball team in Nicaragua. So, which was totally unexpected.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's a very, it's, I'm actually one of a kind. I, I think I'm one of, I'm not a gringo. You know, you know where gringo came from? So gringo is when the Americans were occupying Nicaragua and they basically, they wore the green army uniform and everybody was like, green go, green go home. Huh. So when they call me a gringo, I'm like, I'm Canadian. I'm not a gringo. So that's basically. When they say gringo, it's like green, go home. So that's where it comes from. That's where it comes from. I didn't know that until now. So I'm like, they call me gringo. No gringo, Canada, Canada. And I'm darker than you are. So it's really funny. I'm darker than half of them. So that's where I am now. It's, it's, it's, uh, actually one of, gosh, I can't remember, like less than maybe 12 Western people with an actual official work permit in Nicaragua.

Wow.

So one of the reasons I wanted to sit down and chat with you about your experience with ulcerative colitis is that in my upcoming book, The End of Autoimmunity, one of the things that I write about that is essential for health and wellness is exercise, but it can also go wrong, as in people take it to an extreme, and this can actually be one of the triggers for autoimmunity. You and I saw this very consistently when we worked together very much closely. Tell people how you got started in health and wellness. And what led you to ultimately battling ulcerative colitis?

Well, I, I've always been interested in human performance and yeah, I played sports from a young age all the way through. My goal was to play professional football. I really should have stuck to wrestling, but just because of my body type. But I ended up playing college football. I ended up being a strength coach at Liberty University. Then I quickly figured out that at 5'9", Uh, you know, 240 pounds, you know, it was probably, and trying to play in the NFL is very difficult.

Your stories of NFL tryouts were really quite, quite fun.

Yes. There's, we got all sorts of fun stories there that we could probably do a whole podcast on. Um, I ended up at Liberty where I, I, I love teaching and originally was an elementary school teacher. And I realized about halfway through my education that it was just about brainwashing children, which I really didn't want to be part of. I actually wanted to teach children to learn and to be independent thinkers and all that stuff. And so I was like, well, what can I do? I love to teach. And so I, I was drawn to the weight room. Then I went to Arizona, the University of Arizona, worked there for a while, and then I basically decided to go into the private sector and I worked for myself in Kentucky. And I got in after I always used, as a kid, I was always very aggressive, acted out in school. I was the kind of the smartass and a lot of it was because what was going on at home. And You know, nobody asked like, what's going on at home? Why is this kid acting out? It was always like, well, you know, the pastor of my church was like, well, let's put him in boxing. Let's put him in wrestling. So that gave me an outlet for my rage. And so I got praised for, you know, beating people up and slamming people on the ground and in hockey, you know, cross-checking them into the boards, like, yay, good job. You know? So that anger, taking that anger out from the things I dealt with in my childhood that I should have dealt with and put behind me, I was given an outlet of sports and, and violent sports. And when that ended with football being over, uh, I switched to the weight room and I became, I started powerlifting. And so I basically trained like a, like a maniac. And I was smart, but I was very intense, you know, allowed heavy metal music. Uh, and I started taking performance enhancing drugs. I was about 25 years old, which allowed me to push even harder. Plus I was working from like 6 in the morning, 5, 6 in the morning till, you know, 8, 9 at night training people. And I did that for a long time. I did that from the time I was in my early 20s all the way, I think in my mid-30s or early 30s is when I got full-blown colitis. So I pushed my body. I drove my body like a stolen car for a long time. And I used, you know, anger and aggression. I worked extremely hard to try and get the validation that I didn't get as a child. You know, so that I was searching for that and eventually my body just was just like, enough, you know? And that's when, you know, I got full-blown colitis.

I seem to recall that you set a world record days before.

Well, not a world record, but like a, I set like a, a personal best, which was a pretty, I benched like a ridiculous amount of weight, like 2 days before I had a full-blown episode. So, you know, you could be at the top of physical performance and then be on the edge of, you know, disaster happens a lot to people. And I tell people all the time, if you want to live a long time, you flirt with performance, you don't marry it. So, I mean, there's all sorts of instances where people are, you know, setting records or performing at a high level, and then the bottom just falls out, right? There's performance and health, you know, they intersect. They're not, you know, they're not parallel. If you're, you're a high, super high, super physiological performer, health is not guaranteed. It's probably going to be compromised. That just recently got done. We have a, like a semi-pro season here, which basically we practice Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then we play on the weekends. We get Mondays off. Well, we have a full professional season where we bring people in from outside the country and we literally play every other day. And the travel schedule's insane. Like we play a home game and then we, we travel somewhere else, you know, like 3-hour bus ride. Some nights you don't get home till 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. I did that for like a month. It just about killed me. So, you know, a lot of these baseball teams, these football teams that are flying and traveling, and I mean, it's not good for you at all. Schedule is brutal.

We see that in the practice a lot. Traveling salespeople, people who travel professionally for work, pilots, flight attendants. And the way we look at this is through the lens of what I call repair deficit, where there's a, there's a difference between the amount of repair your body is able to do, whether we're talking about nutrition, sleep, rest, recharge, et cetera, there's a difference between the amount of damage and wear and tear that's happening and what your body's actually able to repair. And this starts out as your body is always trying to compensate because it doesn't want to have you running to the bathroom or have you having to take a nap when you need to be performing or any of the other things we need to do in order to operate at a high level. So it constantly tries to basically, sometimes it's robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to sort of COVID what you need in order to perform. And as that repair deficit grows, often people don't see any decrement in their performance. So they think everything is okay. Then it reaches a critical mass and that's when we'll see some kind of organ dysfunction. It'll be the gut in one person, it'll be the brain in the other, it'll be the adrenal glands or the endocrine system in another person. And that's when we get sign— sort of a system collapse. And that isn't the beginning of the problem. It's the beginning of the manifestation of the problem. And so we see that all the time.

Yeah. Your body's amazing at basically playing, you know, move the ball around. My friend Joel Jamison, who's an incredible coach, talks about if you go over and above on your training, you're basically just robbing from your abilities to recover, ability to recover. The old Jim Laird in that travel schedule would've popped a Federer pills and turned the music on and still trained like a maniac. The smarter, older Jim Laird did Tai Chi, did some PNF protocols, did some non-sleep deep rest. So I did some things that didn't dig the hole deeper. And so, you know, like, it's like if you're traveling, you know, if you're doing a bunch of traveling or if you got a crazy schedule, you back your training off, you do more restorative things. It's not a time to be doing HIIT classes or spinning classes or anything like that. Right? So now I just know that. I need to give my body what it needs, not necessarily what I want it to do.

Right. We try to quantify this with lab testing. One of the things that will come up is we'll frequently see somebody who is, they have an intense physical training schedule, or there's some kind of other intense physical demand on them. Maybe they do manual labor, whatever the reason is, we actually screen for this. We'll say, how many hours a week do you exercise? And what does that mean? And I learned this from working with you. You have to be very specific. It can't be, I go to the gym for an hour, you know, we'll have patients go to the gym for an hour and they check their phone for 45 minutes and maybe do 15 minutes of light exercise. And that's not the same as somebody who goes to the gym and does a beat-down workout that even I wouldn't try to do. And I might have 50 or 100 pounds on them and 2 or 3 inches of height. Very remarkable how you have to be very specific with people. And I learned from you that often will radically alter their physiology, change what illnesses they get, how they're able to compensate or cope with them. Sometimes it makes or breaks their results in the clinical practice, which is why as soon as I get an idea that somebody is, you know, over-exercising— would be the polite way of putting it— or maybe over-exercising, or wants to reach a higher level of performance— they want to go to the CrossFit Games, they want to, you know, do a Tough Mudder Spartan Race, they've got collegiate aspirations, they've got little professional aspirations. I'm very quick to tell them, we, I think you should talk to Jim, particularly if they're coming to me because they have a chronic disease that they want to do everything they can in order to mitigate, reduce symptoms of, heal from, et cetera. And the reason for that is that if they don't do the hard work of dialing in how much their body can actually physically take, I've seen it derail our efforts to get them well, no matter how much we threw at them in terms of supplements, peptides, hormones. Biohacking, you name it. Talk a little bit about how you came to that perspective through your journey with ulcerative colitis.

Well, when the bathtub's full, like you gotta empty it. When I got colitis, I radically bled and it was a huge wake-up call for me. 'Cause you know, I'm one of those people, you hit me in the head with the hammer, I just keep going, you know?

Yeah.

Hit me with a car, run me over with a train. What? It doesn't matter. I just, I just keep going.

Well, I remember you telling me that you almost, you know, you almost bled to death. Your bleeding was so severe.

Oh, it was bad. It was really bad. When I went to the hospital, they were just like, wow. So, and the dehydration and all the rest of that. When I started looking into the, I started, I got on PubMed and just started reading. And it was the trifecta. It was like car accident or divorce or stress was a huge part of it. And I just started going down through all the things and I just, I checked all the boxes off. I had been in a car accident the month before. Just gotten out of a relationship with a crazy redheaded Scorpio that didn't end well from Ohio too. That makes it even worse. And you know, so that was insane. And I just had like a major career change and then the training was just, you know, off the chart. And of course the performance enhancing drugs probably saved my life and probably allowed me to overreach even more. Fedra, the stimulants, the energy drinks. Loud music. And so my bathtub was spilling over, flooding the basement, and it was just like, gotta empty this thing. That's when I met Joel Jamieson. My HRV, I think, was like 6 or something like that, or 5. And you know, I didn't really feel like I was that stressed, but when I saw the number, and that's something I like the Oura Ring for, is that, you know, I know now when I'm not in a good place, but back then I needed to see it because I can't I didn't feel it. Like you could sleep deprive me for 2 days, throw me in front of a team of 40 people and I'll coach 'em like I'm brand new. Like it doesn't matter. Like I can work through, you know, being tired. That doesn't really bother me, but eventually it catches up with you. And I was very, had very little self-awareness. And when you're caught in that stress state, like that overrev state, the overbreathing state, the powerlifting and my lifestyle basically put me in. That energy drink feeling, you lose self-awareness because you're in this like survival state. And I just kept going and going and I would collapse at night to sleep. And in the afternoon I would go lay in the aerobics room and then take a nap at LAC and people could hear me snoring out in the, you know, out in the lobby. And I was just so exhausted. And then I'd get back up, drink an energy drink and go back to work. Through that experience, I started learning, you know, I started to use the float tank. I started doing neurofeedback to kind of teach myself how to relax. I didn't know how to relax. I I literally would sit there and my foot would be hammering up and down while I was sitting there. I couldn't sit still. So I had to learn how to sit still. I used binaural beats. I just kind of, you know, Paul Chek talks about sickness as an amazing teacher, and it just taught me that I couldn't drive my body like a stolen car anymore. So it took me about 6 months to a year changing my diet. I used a little bit of low-dose nicotine. Not low-dose, not at first. At first I just put, I saw nicotine was effective in calming a Crohn's flare-up. I just put patches all over me. And so I used that and it got me aloe juice, things like that. It got me in a better place. And I started using the float tank and I got my colitis under control. It was interesting. Later on, I had another health challenge where I learned about circadian rhythm and all that stuff. That's the fascinating part about this. I was still missing a major component of the story, which was light, but I was still able to heal from my colitis. So, you know, people can have these big holes in their mirror. And not get everything perfect and your body can still heal because it's so resilient. So that's the fascinating thing about what we do. For a lot of people, I think today in our modern world is because they just don't know how to relax because we're always being bombarded with the phone and driving in traffic. We're under this constant chronic low-level stress. Some people just need a little dietary change. Some people need this or that. For me, social connection's a big part of it. It's so great because there's, there's not one set thing that works. A lot of it is you have to learn and explore and try different things. I just basically learned that I needed to learn how to relax and chill. And later on, once I forgave some people, did some EMDR therapy, did some neurofeedback, that, that literally lifted the weight off me. And I, I didn't have to be this like ultra, you know, warrior, go to the gym every day and destroy myself. I actually could train because I, I loved myself and I wanted to be athletic and I enjoyed being strong. It wasn't to manage the hate that I had inside of me. So forgiveness was a big part of my healing journey.

Yeah.

And I think we've covered some of this in more or less detail, but the way I think about your healing from ulcerative colitis is you had this basically catastrophic bleeding. You realized you had to change things and you wanted to tackle things, maybe not all at once, but aggressively. So you introduced diet, lifestyle changes, supplements, functional foods. I don't know where this fit in, but I know you're a big fan of the Vertical Diet. We use very many of those principles still in the practice. So I don't know how much you changed your diet, but you, you were, maybe you were using the vertical diet.

Well, I went gluten. The vertical diet wasn't really around then. Really? I just went like, I went paleo. I can't remember when, when Stan Efferding, like, you know, formed it, but basically I just switched to a paleo diet. Robb Wolf. No, Robb Wolf was a big part of my, my healing process because he, him and I are friends and that was right around the Paleo Solution.

You guys have known each other since your football days at Redding Community College, right?

I've known, yeah, it was Shasta Junior College, Chico College. I've known him since I was like 19 years old. So Rob was a big part of my, my, cuz he had ulcerative colitis as well. Same sort of story, just doing dumb things and yeah. Yeah. Read his book. He, ulcerative colitis, he's a vegan. He got colitis and, and so going gluten-free was a big part of that for me. But as a caveat, once I got my light environment right, I, I didn't really have a sensitivity to gluten anymore. Thank God.

Cause it's just not possible.

Just simply It's about impossible to be gluten-free here. I mean, there's just, they put, you go to a Chinese restaurant and they put a piece of toast on top of your, on top of your rice and, and steak. It's just like crazy.

Yeah. But let's unpack that a little bit more. 'Cause you, you went diet lifestyle and then you didn't fix your light environment until later, but you added things along the way like EMDR neurofeedback, which you mentioned, you forgave some people. I think that's really important.

Yeah.

A lot of people need to hear that.

Yeah, that part of their healing journey.

Yeah.

Once I let go, I remember when I finally realized that I needed to make some phone calls and I made a phone call and I said, hey, you know, I know you did the best you could. I just wanted to know that you really, really did me a disservice, but I forgive you. And the person like on the other line was just like, how's the weather's been great here. How's the weather with you? You know, just total denial. And I was just like, I'm giving it to you. I understand you can't handle this. And it was like a huge weight just, just fell off me at that point. And I just felt like free. And it actually, for about 2 months, I had a hard time training because I didn't know how to train without the stimulants and the music. I didn't know how to turn that on. I didn't know how to train without being aggressive and loud. It took me about 2 months to learn how to work out again and work out because I actually enjoyed it as opposed to managing hatred. Because I was— my training before that was— my sports was all managed by hate and anger, kind of like the dark side of the Force.

Yeah, it's funny because I, I think of some of the people who we've run into over the years who really needed to hear that part of the equation for their healing was to slow down, rest, have it create a different relationship with themselves, go back, forgive people, make amends. You know, in your case it was forgiveness, but I think it's just as important for people to go back and you know, people they've wronged seek forgiveness, seek to have more positive relationships.

Yes.

I think one of the toughest things I've seen is getting people who need to hear that message to understand that it's for them and not somebody else.

Yeah. Resentment. There's a reason why it says in the Bible, do not resent. Resentment's like a burning coal. It only really hurts you. It just kind of burns and it, and you've gotta forgive and you gotta put things behind you. I think the emotional side of things is something that's very overlooked. There's a lot of people walking around with trauma today that are using the phone or, you know, porn or the internet or whatever to manage them, you know, to, to medicate themselves, right? Instead of dealing with what's actually going on under the hood. I did that for years, you know, training, all that stuff was I medicated myself, you know, shoved it into the closet and eventually that closet comes flying open. It was a big relief to me. I remember when I read the book, The Body Keeps the Score, and all these things that I struggled with my whole life of like people that have had been exposed to extreme emotional, physical trauma, they tend to do this, check, you know, they tend to do this, check. And it's just like, I mean, it wasn't like an excuse, but it was like, oh, why have I been struggling with this? This is a way you cope with that kind of stuff. It was just a really freeing, liberating thing knowing that, oh, okay. The reason that I've struggled with this for so long is because of what I went through. And it's not an excuse, but it was just, it made sense to me. It's like, aha. And you know, once I dealt with all that stuff, a lot of those things fell away, you know? So I was able to manage that stuff much better. Once the hatred, the anger, and I forgave people and that was just much, much easier to deal with. Absolutely. And the effect on the nervous system is insane. Like, you know, if you're constantly in a state of anger constantly in a state of just being revved up. You're over-breathing, all that stuff that just, like the, I use the analogy of like getting in your car in your driveway and just revving the hell out of it all the time. And you wonder why the engine's making funny noises, you know?

Right.

Even though you didn't drive anywhere. And that's what most people today are doing. You know, they're revving the hell out of their engine. I found working virtually, once I started coaching in person again, my HRV went way up. Sitting in front of a computer all day, as I'm sure you know, Yes. Is very hard on you emotionally, like just psychologically. And then the body not moving is very hard on you. You don't pump blood, you don't pump fluid. I think part of the problem is removing the manual labor, removing just everyday movement out of people's lives just really affects their physiology in a, in a, in a very negative way. Yeah. Because that's part of the healing process, you know, is moving fluid throughout your body, changing pressure. So if you're in a wired state all the time and you never, you don't move much, body's ability to heal is dramatically reduced.

Yeah, I'm, I'm with you. And I think it's, it's such an interesting puzzle to try and solve on a case-by-case basis because my experience has been that we really have to get to know people to serve them best. And, you know, we, we incorporated a ton of stuff that you taught me into what we do. A lot of that is what's your timing, your intensity, your duration of exercise. Frequently we're telling people do less, take 3 10-minute walks. You, you taught me that we teach that to this day. That's one of the most important things for us to start people doing. And they often get the idea that they need to go do a bunch of high-intensity exercise, or they need to be spending hours in the gym a week when often they'll get better results with lower intensity. Sometimes even shorter durations, but more restorative exercise. Talk me through how, like what your process is when somebody comes to see you virtually, in person, depending upon how you're coaching them. How do you look at and determine what's the first thing I'm going to do with this person?

Well, I ask one, what's your goal? Who are you? You know, why are you here? How can I help you? Because, you know, if I've got someone who's getting paid millions of dollars to like do an activity, I'm not going to tell them, stop that. So it's, it's one of those things where it's like, I need to know who the person is. I can usually tell within 5 minutes if I'm dealing with somebody who's like a hard charger, just the way they talk, their tone, you know, usually they'll be talking like this, you know, like, I have to get them to say, I'll say to them, slow down, you know, especially women that they'll just, 10 minutes later. You know, they still haven't taken a breath, you know? And so getting them to slow down. So I can read generally, once I talk with people and I, I ask a few questions, then I can start to see, start asking questions like, are your neck, is your neck and traps tight all the time?

Mm-hmm.

You know, things like that. Like, you know, what kind, how's your sleep? What kind of symptoms do you have? Once I start figuring out where they're at, you know, I can figure out if we need to do breathing drills or if I need to do like non-sleep deep rest, or if they need to get in a float tank. I just start asking questions and just basically have a conversation with them. And then basically it's like, how many times a week are you exercising? What does that mean? Show me your program. You know, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, it's not really that hard of a workout. And like, they send it to you and it's like, my track athletes don't even do this much stuff, you know? And they're like, oh, it's just my normal thing. You know? It's just conversation. You just, you're just like a detective. And then, and then basically you, you go through all the big rocks and then it's like, you're a scientist. Like, okay, we know these things have a probability of working and then it's just a matter of trying different things. And over time you learn that certain things, you know, work better than others. If I know somebody who's really jammed up doing some things that's gonna get things locked out, unlocked and get things flowing again is gonna make them feel much better. So it's just, it's just a matter of trial and error.

Yeah.

I mean, we will do basic stuff with people in terms of figuring out how much exercise and intensity and duration, but we really don't have enough time to be a full physical exercise training program inside of a medical practice. And I, I mean, I still send a huge proportion of the people I work with to you because I've been shocked at some of the results you've been able to get for people because of your understanding of structure function, and also helping people get this idea of because I don't think they have any kind of concept. It's certainly not common in popular discourse of my body has a lot of— and we use car analogies, you and I, often, but they don't have a concept of your, your body has certain similarities to a car. You know, are you going at, you know, 8,000 RPMs? Are you revving the car in the driveway? It might seem like you're not going anywhere, but you are actually burning gasoline. You are putting miles on the engine, so to speak. Not exactly miles, but you're, you're putting wear and tear on the engine. And I still send people to you very regularly because they need someone to help them dial that piece of their programming in, or they need someone to help them gain that insight of I am working too hard or I'm putting too much stress. And also how do they, because we'll do it with labs, right? I'll look at their labs and say, you're under too much stress. You need more rest and relaxation. You're burning through minerals. You're burning through vitamins. You, you know, but often I won't have the, and it's not that I won't have, but it's like they need someone like you who's a coach. And helping them dial in their physical exercise in different ways than we do in the practice to really get that perspective on what can I actually handle, you know, in my day-to-day life. And that comes back to what you mentioned, which is goals. What you're going to handle is going to depend on what you're trying to accomplish.

Well, a lot of it depends on your base level of fitness and your, your general physical preparedness. A lot of people can't handle the workouts they're doing because they don't have a good base level preparedness. And then they're not resting enough. They're not sleeping enough. You can, you can handle a ton of stress if you're not, if you're, you know, sleeping. And the problem is most people that are trying to train hard, they're using exercise to try and fix a lifestyle problem. You know, they're working 12 hours a day. They're running around like a chicken with their head cut off. Then they go to a trainer and the trainer wears them out and they're just, they're just overwhelmed. They need to like cut something out or, you know, you hire a chef or they need to hire a cleaner or whatever. And then it's just a matter of figuring out, and that's where the Oura Ring is really handy, 'cause we can see, you know, what your HRV is. You got a low HRV, your body's ability to repair itself is horrible. Absolutely. Right? So that people that are stubborn like that, we can actually see what's going on. And then, you know, if I've got people that are really struggling, then we start asking questions like, you know, how was your childhood and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, it was terrible. It was like, then we start You start, and usually when that comes up, usually people just start, they just start opening up and start talking about some of the stuff that happened to them. And I'm like, have you ever dealt with that? Like, have you ever gone and like actually seen somebody for that? And they're like, no. And I'm like, you probably should, you know, or I was in a, you know, I was in a car wreck like 5 years ago. My ribs were crushed and, you know, I've had incontinence ever since. And their pelvic floor's all messed up. There, there's always something in the past that's happened. That's usually looming in the background with people that, you know, they just kind of written off. It's just, it wasn't a big deal. And so there's a lot of stuff like that that comes out when you just talk to people and you just basically, that's part of it is building a relationship with them and getting to know them.

Yeah, absolutely. We see it making a huge difference. Sometimes it makes or breaks the, the case, you know, in terms of their success. I think one of the other things that you, you know, have alluded to, but I think is really, powerful is this idea of defining the goal. I think a lot of people haven't been intentional about their goal. And one of the things that we end up talking to them about, whether they're just working with one of us or both of us is, you know, what is, what do you actually care about? What actually matters to you? Because frequently what happens is people develop an illness or autoimmunity in particular, because they're trying to do too many things. Often that's because they're not being authentic to themselves. They're trying to please other people. They're trying to manage emotions around other people, like you've alluded to. And I'll often talk to women about this. Because our society has, I think, a very unusual expectation that's not historically been the norm for societies, which is it's normal for women to be super mom, super wife, and super employee or business owner or entrepreneur. And it's not that that isn't something a woman can sustain for a season, but sustaining it for decades is very difficult, if not impossible, and usually requires some element of delegation, delegating the housework, that are— and, you know, not delegating everything, but delegating particularly the things that are traditionally, you know, women want to do as part of being a homemaker. And if there's not any kind of delegation, there's not any kind of, you know, we're going to bring somebody in to help you with this, oftentimes we're just trying to spread, you know, too little butter over too much bread, and they end up frustrated, burned out, exhausted. That conversation is very important. We do the same thing with men who often are too wedded to their call it worldly success, their job, their career. They're not building in enough restorative time. They're not building enough time with family, spouse for rest, relaxation, et cetera. And, you know, then it becomes a conversation as well about, well, how are we going to support your health long-term with things like bioidentical hormones, sometimes prescription drugs, peptides, more advanced stuff. Even then you only have so much bandwidth. You have to pick and choose what you're going to do because what I see happening overwhelmingly is the people who try to do it all. Their autoimmunity doesn't go into remission, they don't get their symptoms under control. It's an escalation game of not only supplements but medications and peptides and hormones, and it often turns into kind of a house of cards that becomes unsustainable if they're not willing to do this fundamental work of what am I gonna prioritize, what am I going to prioritize in this season of my life, am I gonna— going to do the fundamental things that are required for me to restore my health, or am I gonna try and keep doing it all and, and possibly end up frustrated, disillusioned, and disappointed.

But you just described my number one client for my, my whole existence, which is the hard-charging female. And they usually get drawn into HIIT classes, marathons, you know, things like that, trying to burn it off. And, you know, once you get 'em to realize, like, you gotta rest, treat your body well, their body composition improves, everything gets better. And so getting people to understand, like, you know, the harder you gotta work in so you can work out. That, I got that from Paul Chek. And people don't understand, like, if you want to push your body hard, you've got to rest just as hard. You can't always push and push and push and push. And some people can handle a lot of abuse and other people can't, you know, so, you know, and then in the social media part hasn't helped either. You know, you've got all these people that basically do nothing but work out and post on Instagram. And then you've got all these people that have regular 9 to 5 jobs that are trying to do the same thing. And with hormones, peptides, all this stuff.

Not to mention Photoshop. Don't forget Photoshop.

Photoshop. Yes. You know, peptides, hormones, all these things. What happens is you just take them to prop up a horrible lifestyle and you end up digging the hole deeper like I did. When you're struggling with some sort of health issue, you got to ask yourself, like, what is the body trying to teach me? My body's trying to teach me a lesson. You know, the reason that, you know, you don't have any energy, your body's like, slow down, dude. Like you need to take better care of yourself. I'm dialing back to my hormone production. Your digestion isn't doing as well because I don't have the resources to— I'm not worried about digestion right now. I'm worried about just surviving. So I'm putting all my resources into survival. Mm-hmm. We haven't changed that much in our biology, but our environment has changed radically.

Radically.

So we're under this, you know, chronic low-level stress all the time. You need to take the time to chill. You need to take the time. That's why walking is so great. 'Cause it does both. Helps you relax and it builds fitness at the same time. There's so many magic solutions out there that work for some people. There's always going to be, no matter what it is, there's going to be some people that are going to thrive on it and there's going to be people that are going to fail on it. It's just how many people in the middle, you know, is it going to help push this way? And so people with marketing today, people will market things that don't work for the vast majority of people, but of course you get 1 or 2 success stories and And of course everybody wants to try it, right? So that's basically, you know, how people make their money today with supplements or whatever it is, right?

Yeah. We see it a lot.

Yes. There's people that are spending thousands of dollars and overlooking very simple things.

See it all the time. Yeah. It's one of the things we really focus on in the practice is how do we create a lean daily routine and call it a stack of supplements for people that's not going to be overwhelming. It's going to be sustainable. But it's still gonna get them really great progress. It's often things people overlook. It's not shiny objects. Common question I get is, you know, should I add this, that, and the other thing? Peptides, hormones, drugs. I'll often just say, hey, listen, maybe we do that later, but let's start with this over here that I think is more fundamental and foundational and that I think will get you better results longer term, more sustainably.

Yeah. Don't build your, your house on tools, you know? Mm-hmm. You don't want to build your house on tools. But I think with most people that deal with like autoimmune type issues or they're struggling with, you know, major chronic health issues, a lot of them are just afraid to do the deep work because it's painful. It sucks. You know, learning how to slow down was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. It was so uncomfortable to me to sit quietly in silence. I mean, I've done some really hard things in my life. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I remember the first time I tried to sit down and sit still for 10 minutes, it was horrible. Like I felt like I was going to die. I mean, being alone with yourself in calm and quiet with no phone and stuff, it's uncomfortable and a lot of people just don't want to do it.

You know? Yes.

And having to deal with yourself and any kind of, you know, guilt or, you know, trauma that you've carried around. Well, it's much easier to just Netflix and microwave popcorn and, you know, have a couple, have a couple tonjas, go to, you know, pass out, go to sleep, wake up the next day, do it all over again. Especially when it's only a dollar, a dollar a beer here.

So yeah. Right. The days of dollar beer here in the United States, I think are over.

Dude, I got a thing.

I still got it somewhere.

I got a thing of ceviche last night. It was about this big. Yeah. $7.

It was massive.

Yeah. So I live in Managua now, so, so it's, uh, I have a lot more, uh, a lot more restaurant selection.

Yeah. So closing thoughts for people, Jim?

Well, That's a good question. I think understanding work in, you have to work in before you work out and understanding the human body prioritizes survival for a long, you know, first, and you can abuse yourself for a long, long time, but I think the real magic happens in silence and be still and know real thing. There's a reason why every major religious leader, there's a reason why Christ went off into the wilderness by himself because there's something magical about that calm silence. It resets your hard drive and our society, our culture has taken that from us. So use the silence. Don't be afraid to go sit still. Don't be afraid to slow down and be in your thoughts. And you'd be amazed what would bubble up. And when it bubbles up, deal with it. Don't push it in the closet with busyness. Learn how to relax, learn how to slow down, and it'll go a long way instead of just trying to do more and more things. I'm not saying don't work hard. I love of hard work, as you know. Mm-hmm. It's just that you need both. You can't just, you can't just push all the time. You gotta take your car to the shop, get the oil changed, the tires rotated and balanced. If you want to drive hard, you're gonna be doing more maintenance. So you're gonna drive a performance car. The tires are more expensive, the maintenance is more expensive. You gotta do it more often.

That's right.

The reward is you get to drive really fast. You know, you get to drive a cool car. And, and I think that's one thing that people don't understand. Different bodies are good at different things. Like your body type is totally different than mine. You're good at rotating, you're good at certain activities. I'm not. I'm more of a power guy. I'm more of a gorilla. People don't understand that their body has things, their physiology and their, their structural makeup. There's things that you're really good at and there's things that you're not. And so choosing activities that are more in line with your structure is also very important as well. There's a lot of people out there that are forcing their body to try and do things. They're taking their Corolla off-roading. Or they're taking their, you know, 4Runner to the drag races, you know? So you want to pick activities that are more in line with your body.

Absolutely. We've seen that a lot. How can people get in touch with you to work with you one-on-one or in group coaching sessions?

Well, I have, you know, I have an Instagram, which is Gym Laird, G-Y-M-L-A-I-R-D, which is kind of a play on words from my old gym in Kentucky. I have a group called the Vitality Brotherhood, the Vitality Sisterhood. You can go to vitalitybrotherhood.com. I've got two school groups where I post regularly. Have a bunch of workout stuff there. You can get in touch with me if you're one of those places. The VitalityBrotherhood.com has a contact me now, and you can get in touch with me if you'd like to do some coaching. I do some group coaching, so happy to chat and see what's going on.

Good to see you. Thanks for joining me.

Good to see you too, man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. In part 2, we're going to talk about your, I would call it your second health crisis, although there may have been more along the way, but I think of it in your story as the second big one that has a ton of value for people with autoimmunity because it's, it's such a dramatic illustration of something that I come up against in clinical practice all the time. And so I'm really excited to share that with people in part 2.

Well, I think one of the closing things is I'm one of those people, I have to get hit in the face with the hammer for me to change. Like I'm one of those, there has to be radical.

You self-describe as stubborn.

Yeah. So like, don't be me, like be the person that's like, oh, I'm kind of going on the wrong path. Like, you know, don't run into the wall at 60 miles an hour to make radical changes in your life. But most people, most people need that. Most people need to hit rock bottom before they actually make changes. But don't be like me. Be smarter. See the warning signs and like make changes before, you know, you hit the wall at 60.

Part 2 is going to be great. Tune in then. Take care, everyone.

Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening.