BULLETPROOF From A Blood Test w/ WellnessFX - DR. Murdoc Khaleghi

Wellness Force Radio Feelings are essential, but they can't dictate our actions.

We literally instruct each other with our emotions. We came here for a special purpose.

Let the purpose unveil itself.

Knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing.

They're not just trackers.

I'm gonna wear this and it's gonna help me do the right thing.

Wellness Forces Radio Episode 80 with Medical Director of Wellness FX, Dr. Murdoch Kaleke.

Knowing your data can only help people. There's never been someone that doesn't benefit or is harmed by knowing more about your cholesterol or thyroid function or inflammation or vitamin D. There's no one that's ever purchased a package and feel like they didn't get a benefit from that because you can only benefit from it. But with that control, with that power comes a responsibility. Now that I have control, I have to be a good steward of my health. Cause I can't blame my life circumstances or the healthcare system or anything else. It's in my hands and therefore I'm responsible for making it better.

Welcome back to another episode, my friend. I am your host and wellness coach, Josh Trent. Thank you for spending your time with me here on the podcast. This is where every week I bring you access to global experts in wellness technology and behavior changes. On this podcast, you'll learn from exceptional people who are dedicating their lives to driving real transformations in physical and emotional wellness. My intention with the show is that together we'll discover the connections between your emotions and healthy habits to live your best life and enjoy the process. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Supplements, a company I'm honored to stand with who walks the talk with their values of non GMO pesticide free real food supplements that support us all on the wellness journey. Hop on over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce Enter code wellnessforce to save 10% off your entire order at checkout. Today on the podcast, you're going to learn how to make your body bulletproof from a blood test. We'll go through everything as far as blood testing and biomarkers A to Z. Dr. Collegi is a wealth of information. This show was built for you if you have one of the following passions or interests. You want to know what blood tests can actually move the needle for your personal health. You've been feeling tired or sluggish or your sleep has been suffering and you're and you're curious what biomarkers you need to raise in order to feel the way you wanna feel. And lastly how you can take your health back into your own hands by just simply doing two to three blood tests a year with specific lifestyle interventions that you can actually track. I'm gonna share in the middle of the show how I personally rose my testosterone over 150 points with Wellness FX. Why I chose Wellness FX in the first place. I mean there's tons of blood testing companies out there and also how you can become your own personal citizen scientist and what that means. I'll talk a little bit about Dr. Collegi in just one second, but right now I wanna One of the Coolest reviews A 5 star review got on itunes this weekend. This is from Yogi Dorsey. Yogi says Josh, I'm blown away each week by how in depth you and your guests go not into just physical wellness, but also emotional and spiritual wellness. In fact, one of your latest episodes on the Spartan Race for the Mind, the Vipassana Meditation Retreat, inspired me to sign up for my first insight Meditation retreat next month. Thanks for sharing your whole self with the Wellness Force community, not just the parts that look good on a poster. Namaste my friend. The light in me honors the light in you, Yogi Dorsey. I can't even tell you how much that means to me. I just felt like I got a massive digital hug from you and I'm giving it right back. Can you feel me? Let me know what you take away from the retreat. I'm so curious. Support Wellness Force and share your voice with the itunes world@wellnessforce.com review. Your voice is like a brick of gold in the itunes world. It helps us build that wall of truth that people can resonate with. Plus, I'd kind of like to just hear your voice. Now onto the show. Dr. Murdoch Kalahy is an active clinician and writer. He's published over a half dozen books, several of them being preventative health and wellness that have been featured on cnn, major networks. He's been on multiple radio shows. He's also performed cardiovascular and healthcare cost effective research via fellowships from the American Heart Association, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institute of Health. He's earned degrees in Engineering and Business from ucsd, UC Berkeley and Columbia and has been a leader and consultant in several health services and technology companies. He's the Medical Director of Wellness Effects, an incredible company based in San Francisco. Let's jump into this awesome conversation with Dr. Murdoch Kalehi. Dr. Kolecki, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

You know, I've been looking forward to this episode for months. I did some Posts for Wellness fx. And I have been doing so much work in quantified self. So many of the guests we have on the show are around behavior change. So today I am so excited to talk about blood testing and what it really means to get bulletproof from a blood test. So thanks for coming on again.

Thanks so much for having me. I've been really looking forward to it as well.

You know, the background that you have, I mean, you have gone from engineering to writing books, to being a physician, to working with multiple companies in technology. But what is something fun, Dr. Kolegi, that people might not know about you besides all the multitude of information that's online?

Oh, wow. Well, I mean, you summarized my background pretty well, I guess. I guess the thing that doesn't come through is I'm a pretty good juggler.

What do you juggle?

I don't just mean in life. I mean actual like juggling, like balls and objects. And I can do one handed and four balls and all sorts of behind my back under my leg. It's definitely a fun diversion at times.

You are multi talented. So how did you learn how to juggle? Where did that come from?

When I was a kid, for Christmas, I got a basic guide on how to juggle and some dice. And I found that the big challenge with juggling is learning to catch and throw at the same time. I would have the problem where when I was trying to catch something, my throw would be away from me rather than straight up so that I could catch it again. And I progressively changed that habit by playing or by juggling against a wall. So if I did throw it away from me, it would bounce right back until I could start to get into the habit of actually throwing straight up instead of out.

Wow. Talk about sensory motor adaptation. You had definite training at an early age, but, you know, now you are the medical director of Wellness fx. You have your hands in a lot of different projects across the technology and the wellness sector. But, you know, that might not know. Dr. Kolegi, what is WellnessFX? We're gonna talk a lot about WellnessFX today and biomarkers, what those can do for humans. But what is WellnessFX?

Sure. So WellnessFX is an invaluable tool to help you understand your health. And it's one of the first companies that has allowed you to go online and from the comfort of your own home, order tests around your health, specifically blood tests. And there's various packages they offer. You can simply go to a lab, get your blood drawn and get all this Very valuable, valuable health information. And you can do this on your own volition. It really empowers you. And not only do you get the data around your health and the blood test results, but then you get information about those results. What does it mean? What can you do about those? I came to Wellness FX years ago. You briefly mentioned my background, but I think it helps really fill out what Wellness FX does to understand how I came there. I. I'm a physician. I still see patients. And back when I was going through my training, I did a lot of research in wellness and prevention with few organizations like the American Heart Association, NIH and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. And then I went on into my residency training and became very frustrated that I felt like I was seeing people very late stage, after they were having their heart attacks, after they were having their strokes. And I thought, man, we have all this fantastic information about how to prevent disease and we know it's cost effective and we know people lead healthier and happier lives. If we can prevent such serious events, why aren't we doing it? And I felt that it was because a lot of the great health research and information out there wasn't in the hands of the consumer. So I decided to try and help get that information out there first through writing like you mentioned. And I've written a few books in prevention and wellness, written for pop culture or laymen. But ultimately I recognized even that takes a certain amount of pre existing motivation. And I thought that reaching the larger population would just be making things as easy as possible. And I had a background in technology, as you mentioned. I have a degree in engineering. And I felt that technology could change the way we prevent disease like it's changed so many other industries. And that's why I got into working with Wellness fx. That was able to make it so you could access tests on your own and from the comfort of your home, order the tests and review the results and actually see the data. And then use that data as feedback on your interventions to continue to optimize in a way you just can't do with the current system. The current system requires you to. Or the standard system, I should say, requires you to first take half a day off to go see a doctor and then you get the prescription for certain blood tests. And maybe they're, maybe they're robust tests, maybe they're not. Maybe they're just some basic screening tests like cholesterol.

You gotta go to the lab.

Yeah.

You gotta do all this extra work.

Exactly. And then you have to go back to your physician. Where you have a few minutes to review some black and white results that you're lucky if you somewhat understand. And I think physicians serve a very valuable role. But I actually felt as a physician that was even low yield time for me. If I'm just giving the basic five minutes on cholesterol every time, I want my time with a patient to be as valuable as possible. So if they have the opportunity to get the data and get educated about the data before they see me, it just makes our time higher yield.

What do you think is holding doctors back from using these technology services like Wellness fx? Why are doctors so hands on when it comes to getting the test, reading it on paper, meeting with the patient? How do we shorten this learning curve for everyone?

You know, there's been a progressive culture change over the last few years around health empowerment. We've seen it in terms of activity and sleep tracking. We've seen it in genetic data. And really there's just a gap that we're starting to fill with the blood data. And that culture is expanding to physicians as well. As a physician, I often now have people bringing me their health data and I have no issue with that. In fact, I appreciate that they come in motivated and informed and again, we can use our time together as valuably as possible. I think the big challenges right now are overall cultural and people aren't used to paying for blood tests. People aren't used to choosing the blood tests that they feel might be helpful to them. And then there's the financial part, though. Insurers often don't reimburse or only partially reimburse blood tests, we're still used to getting some reimbursement for testing instead of directly paying ourselves.

You know, it's interesting, in medical school you said you did a lot of research that focused on prevention. This paradigm that we see currently with the insurance model is that you get sick, something bad happens, then it's paid for. How do we as consumers, as these burgeoning citizens and scientists that we've talked about before on the show, how do we take more control with the blood test? Let's kind of pivot into what the blood test is and how this is actionable for people.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think a part of it is going to be a sea change in the landscape where insurers are now starting to change because incentives are being changed by the federal government and Obamacare, et cetera, where the incentives are to keep people as healthy as possible. That wasn't the incentive. Even as recently as a few years ago it was a fee for service system where like you mentioned, really there's more reimbursement around being sick.

There's no money in keeping people well.

Yeah, exactly. As we start to see this change, insurers or payers and hospitals and health systems are starting to think differently about how they treat patients and how they can keep people well. So I am starting to see a greater emphasis on it and more attention to innovation. Like people being able to go in and get their tests without having to go through seeing the doctor, then seeing the doctor again. Because that's actually costly for them. It's costly for the doctor, it's costly for the insurer and hospital.

They're missing work.

Exactly. So there's starting to be that change. But I think really it comes down to the individual and fortunately individuals are starting to monitor their own activity and sleep data, individuals are starting to get their own genetic data, individuals are getting used to telehealth and they're starting to be more and more telemedicine companies where if they have basic issues they are comfortable speaking to a physician over the phone or over the Internet. I'm starting to now see that penetrate into blood tests. Despite these barriers that existed before the culture and cultural and financial and that's partly evidenced by Wellness FX has tested many tens of thousands of people and that's been at an accelerating rate. These aren't just early adopting, solely quantified self or solely highly motivated. It's really, it's just an expanding part of the population that wants to pay attention to their health, wants data around their health so they can start to make a change.

There was an article online from one of your employees, I believe somebody up in the top of the chain and it was talking about the focus of who are the users of wellness effects? What are their goals?

Goals?

It's really three people. It's athletes that are training and want to improve performance. It's people that are having pain with existing health conditions. And it also includes these quantified selfers, you know, not necessarily the athletes, but people trying to stay ahead of the curve and be more personal and prevention wise. Would you say besides those three categories there's anyone else that Wellness FX is for?

I think those are the three overarching, those are the big early markets, the so called pain, gain and train that we called it. I am more and more now as the culture starts to change, seeing more and more just regular people wanting to check their health because maybe they are the parent of two young kids and want to make sure they're around for a while, or maybe they just don't feel great and don't understand why and haven't been able to get any answers. So they want some basic insights. And what's amazing is that knowing your data can only help people. There's never been someone that doesn't benefit or is harmed by knowing more about your collection cholesterol or thyroid function or inflammation or vitamin D. There's no one that's ever purchased a package and feel like they didn't get a benefit from that because you can only benefit from it.

Yes. And what you don't know can hurt you. I mean, that's an old adage, but it's very true. When we look at the test itself, there's many different tests. There's three kind of major packages that people have done. I myself did the performance package and the performance package had an incredible amount of of biomarkers. I want to talk about these different packages and then my experience with WellnessFX. By the way, I just want to let the listeners know WellnessFX is not sponsoring this episode. There's no financial exchange. I am doing this episode from a place of me getting results. And that's what I wanted to share with the audience today. But Dr. Kolegi, let's talk about the packages and kind of how those fit into the different consumers.

There's a few most commonly ordered packages and then there's some specialty packages. You mentioned one, the performance package. That's one of my favorite packages as well. And at some point, I'll tell you my personal story with the performance package. But what it is is really designed around high performers, athletes, people looking to make progressive gains, and it's built off smaller packages. So the smallest package we sell, and I'll build up from there, is what we call the E checkup, which looks at some basic markers that everyone should know about themselves, specifically their cholesterol and their thyroid hormone. You know, not a lot of people realize that about 10% of society has thyroid abnormalities and that affects everything. That affects your metabolism, that affects your cholesterol, that affects your blood sugar. Low thyroid function is a risk factor for diabetes, depression, heart attack, stroke. And about 10% have thyroid abnormalities with about half of those undiagnosed.

That's incredible. I had no idea. That's about 30 million some odd people that have thyroid condition.

Exactly, exactly. And it's an easily identifiable and easily treatable condition. And so for people to not know, it's just unfortunate. As I mentioned cholesterol. And by cholesterol, I don't just mean your total cholesterol, I mean the different components of cholesterol. And that involves there's actually healthier and less healthy cholesterol. The less healthy is your LDL or low density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease like heart attacks and strokes. But then there's a healthier type or hdl, high density lipoprotein, which is actually considered a negative risk factor, meaning higher levels is actually good for you and lowers your risk of heart attacks and strokes. And a lipid panel also includes triglycerides, the amount of fats that are in the blood. So in addition to thyroid and cholesterol, that E checkup checks your cbc, which primarily looks for anemia, which is really common, especially in women from the 20s to 40s, and then your blood sugar, which of course is a risk factor for diabetes. So that's the most basic package, but then they build from there. So on top of that, another popular package we have is what we call baseline. And we call it baseline because while we recognize the E checkup has these core measures that everyone should know, baseline really gives you a more complete picture of all the basic aspects of your health. So it has all those markers I mentioned before, but also looks at not just your blood sugar in that moment, but your average blood sugar over the preceding few months, which is measured by hemoglobin A1c, which measures the amount of sugar that's stuck on your red blood cells over the preceding few months and can give you an idea of how your average blood sugar has been. We also check inflammation, which is best checked through a marker called the high sensitivity C reactive protein. Not a lot of people understand inflammation. They know about cholesterol. But inflammation is also considered a risk factor for many chronic diseases, from cardiovascular disease to also dementia, cancer, and many more. And most people don't know their inflammation levels or what might be causing inflammation. And this is a way to help get some information about that. We also check markers of your basic organs, like your liver and kidneys, as well as things that those organ affects, like your electrolytes, your calcium level. Another marker that's one of my favorites that's on the baseline panel is vitamin D. Our primary source of vitamin D is the sun. And we get so much less sun exposure than our ancestors that it's estimated that more than half of society is vitamin D deficient. And vitamin D deficiency has been associated with so many diseases, it's been associated with increased inflammation and all the diseases that are associated with increased inflammation, but also depression, decreased immune function and a lot more. And so vitamin D deficiency, incredibly prevalent, incredibly easy to diagnose, and incredibly easy to treat. I think everyone should get a vitamin D test. Baseline then has a couple other cardiovascular markers that go beyond cholesterol. One's called apob, one's called LP, that just give you more insight into your lipids and possible cardiovascular risks. And the reason that's helpful is we know that that about half the people that have heart attacks have normal basic lipid panel, the basic ldl, HDL and triglycerides. But a lot of those risks are revealed when you look at LP and apob. So building on top of that baseline package, then we get into the performance package, which is just a fantastic package because it has all the markers we already talked about, but then has many more markers, as I mentioned, geared towards the athletes or high performance population. Some of those additional markers are hormones like testosterone, but not just testosterone in isolation, because testosterone is affected by so many factors. Specifically, testosterone is formed from another hormone called DHEA that has its own anabolic or muscle building effects. So we test those levels and then what most people don't know is most of the testosterone in our bodies is actually biologically inactive. It's bound to something called SHBG or sex hormone binding globulin that inactivates testosterone. And so we measure those SHBG levels, but we also measure the levels of free or unbound testosterone, which is the levels of active testosterone. And then a lot of testosterone gets metabolized into estradiol, as does dhea. And so we measure those estradiol levels because by understanding that whole system, if you have abnormal levels of testosterone, you can identify where the issue might be, whether it's with DHEA or estradiol or shbg, and then optimize that specific issue. So those are some of the hormones. We also do some, what we call metabolic hormones, which are hormones that are responsible for either the building of muscle or storage of fat. Specifically, we look at IGF1, which is a surrogate for growth hormone. Growth hormone is the main hormone that drives that testosterone building process that I mentioned. But it's counterbalanced by a hormone called cortisol, which is our primary stress hormone. And it's incredibly amazing how prevalent high levels of cortisol are throughout society due to either mental stresses, not sleeping enough, too much coffee, or even sometimes the physical stresses of over training. Sometimes you can have too much of A good thing. Then another metabolic hormone is insulin. As before, blood sugar levels start to rise and be a risk factor for diabetes. What you'll initially see is insulin resistance and insulin levels will increase, which promotes the storage of fat and also is an early clue that our body may be going through excessive amounts of insulin, which can ultimately lead to higher blood sugar levels.

There's an interesting point with the cortisol too, because cortisol is something where it can actually decrease fat breakdown. We all know that we want to have less stress in life and everybody's doing the best they can. But from a medical perspective, I mean, from a actual quantified perspective, the serum cortisol in the blood versus the salivary measurement, what are your thoughts on that?

That's a great question. So as you mentioned, cortisol, incredibly important, has so many effects on the body. Cortisol, being a stress hormone, does things that our body's meant to do in acute stresses, which is divert blood flow to our muscles and away from our gut and brain. And that can be a good thing in brief moments of actual stress. But when it's chronically elevated, that diversion of blood flow can lead to high blood pressure, can lead to ulcers. It's actually neurotoxic for our brain and the cortisol increases blood sugar, so we have more energy, so it's a risk factor for diabetes. So an incredibly valuable hormone to know. In terms of the best measure, the ideal measure is actually probably tracking your cortisol throughout the day, because cortisol follows a pattern where it's highest in the morning and lowest at night. Getting tested four times is difficult for most people. And so typically, if you're going to do a singular cortisol level, the best time to check it is in the morning when levels are highest. Because then, you know, if levels are too high, that's a function of overall having high cortisol levels versus if they're high later in the day. Is that due to stress of the day? What have you in terms of saliva versus blood? It depends a lot on the assay that's, that's performed in general. In general, I'm actually a big fan of saliva based cortisol. But again, it adds another layer of complexity. For people who are already getting their blood tests checked, it's just often easier to get their blood cortisol checked. And that's not by any means inaccurate. We're talking differences of like 1 or 2%. And so for people that, that primarily want to get tested, they primarily want to know generally is my cortisol high, are my patterns off? And so that small percentage of difference doesn't make a meaningful difference for most people. But in terms of the most accurate, I would lean towards saliva cortisol.

And your last package is everything's in there, from liver and kidney health all the way down the gamut. But I want to hear about your experience. Dr. Kalega. You had said that you actually came upon some knowledge for yourself. I mean, was there an intervention for you? And then I'm definitely excited to tell you mine as well. But unpack kind of what you learned from doing your own testing.

You know, it's pretty amazing that I here I thought being a medical doctor, a person who's done tons of research in wellness and prevention, and a guy who's written books on the topic, I thought I really understood it pretty well. And then as medical director of Wellness fx, I started getting tested regularly, as you might expect. And I was really surprised by some things. Now, at first, early in my time with Wellness Effects, I was busy with a lot with Wellness Effects and my clinical practice. And maybe I wasn't taking care of myself as well as I usually had. And so I started to get some of those red flags in my data. My cholesterol was creeping up, my inflammation levels were creeping up, my vitamin D was low, my testosterone was low, probably because I wasn't sleeping that well. Sometimes I'd even have to work overnights and that wasn't good for my sleep pattern. So I noticed these issues. So I decided, oh, I'm going to really take control of this. I am going to be perfect. I started doing 8 mile runs every day and eating a really low fat diet. All the things that I had classically been taught and was very pervasive through the mainstream and still pervades a lot. But I started doing all these things I thought would really help me and then I would get retested. And to my surprise, not only was a lot of my interventions not having a positive effect, but things were actually starting to get worse in terms of the inflammation levels and my cholesterol and my testosterone. And so I said, okay, maybe what I thought was the right thing to do, really low fat diets, long, moderate pace workouts was not the ideal. And so I made some changes. And I'm not saying these changes are necessarily perfect for everyone, but they really made a difference in me. And instead of eating an extremely low fat diet, I really focused on the nutrient content of what I was eating and having more healthy fats more unsaturated fats in my diet so that I wasn't substituting out those fats for just more carbohydrates. Like, like many people tend to. Instead of doing long durations of low intensity workouts, I adjusted to more shorter, high intensity workouts, more muscle building and weightlifting. And to my surprise, not only did this make improvements in a lot of my markers, but one of my favorite markers is the triglycerides to HDL ratio, which is a great marker because it looks at it not only triglycerides, which deposits in your blood vessels, but HDL cholesterol, which helps clear your blood vessels. So looking at that ratio helps give you a better understanding of the balance between the two and is considered one of the best markers of risk for cardiovascular disease. My triglycerides to HDL ratio dropped by 2/3. So not by a third to 2/3 of what it was, but by 2/3 to 1 third of what it was. And you don't hear many people say they dropped their cholesterol to basically a third of what it was. But that's what happened when I made these adjustments.

That's incredible. What do you think, looking back, was the biggest thing that made the impact in the biomarkers going back to really great levels?

I think adjusting my low fat, higher carbohydrate diet to having more unsaturated fats was a big thing because I've learned from a lot of people, higher carbohydrate diets can actually increase triglycerides, while unsaturated fats can increase HDL cholesterol and help lower LDL and triglycerides.

What are your favorite pieces of unsaturated fats?

Oh, I'm now a big fan of avocados, nuts, seeds, probably in that order. I mean, I have avocado and nuts every day. I usually get some seeds daily. Some days I have some oils too. But focusing on the amount of nutrients they have, I'm a huge fan of avocados and nuts. And then the exercise adjustment, I think was really big too, because doing those long runs, it certainly hurt my muscle mass. While switching to higher intensity interval training and weightlifting, I was able to increase muscle mass, which I think helped my testosterone. Having more muscle mass helps increase your HDL and lower your triglycerides. So I think that had a big impact too. The last thing I started doing was I started taking a vitamin D supplement daily because like most people, I was vitamin D deficient. And as I was able to increase my vitamin D levels. I noticed my, my levels of inflammation went down, my levels of testosterone went up. So I think that made a big difference as well. And I felt a difference too in my energy pretty quickly.

In this modern world, we can all use some more energy to give our bodies what they deserve and need. I've hand selected three of my top superfoods from Perfect Supplements in a Wellness Bundle specifically designed for the Wellness Force Radio audience. Inside the bundle, you'll receive Rhodiola Rosea to elevate mood and calm stress Prescript assist prebiotic and probiotic to keep our guts healthy and squeaky clean and 100% grass fed hydrolyzed collagen for satiety, skin and joint health. You know, we've talked a lot about if you're on a Paleo or a Weston A. Price diet, you're probably familiar with bone broth. Bone broth is that nutrient dense food because of the gelatin it's produced when you cook the bones. Well, gelatin is just cooked collagen. It's an abundant source of protein. It's included in the Wellness Bundle. Hop on over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce. Click on the Wellness Bundle and save 10% off your already heavily discounted package. Get some good health and save some money in the process. So let's get back to more Energy with Dr. Murdoch Kaleke. So here you are, the medical director for WellnessFX and you're teaching yourself the lesson that you most need to learn. You know, using the product that you stand behind with such confidence. I think it's so awesome because you make me and everyone else who's listening feel like we're not alone. You know, I had a massive shift in my life from Wellness fx. It's been over a year. I've done three different tests and I published a post and it was called Burned out and Gaining One Entrepreneur's Quest to Take Back His Health. And I was seeing a lot of mirrors, Dr. Collegi, with you and where I worked a lot for a long time, probably three, four years to build wellness Force. You know, podcast editing at 3 in the morning and taking calls at 6am and all these different things. So I just gained some weight and I felt stressed and I had low energy and I'm like, okay, I get to take control of this process. And I had done some actual research on wellness effects. I had the pleasure of going to the Quantified Self conference in San Francisco in 2015. That was where I really learned about the power of quantifying biomarkers. I got my blood draw. I had amazing areas for improvement. And I amazing. Like my vitamin B was low. My testosterone was terrible. My free Testosterone was at 128. My fat metabolism was down, my triglycerides were high. And I went through this period of. And I don't know if you can relate, just taking an emotional inventory of my life, you know, the things that are working, the things that are of service to me, the people in the places I either need to do more of or get rid of. And that was what I took from this testing. You know, on one hand we see quantified self as data and as numbers, but the details that these numbers show us, it's mirrors of mindfulness. So what I took from my couple of tests is that I get to really take care of my sleep. And not just because it's good for my body, but because the numbers actually show me that when I'm not guarding my sleep at knifepoint, bad things happen in my data. And so I saw this incredible change in my testosterone. So as I had mentioned, kind of the total testosterone was on the very low side. I think it was like 300 and something. 400. I raised it up to, to 600. So 600. I raised over 150 points on my testosterone just from focusing on the recommendations I got from my physician. My physician, Jeffrey Edmond, amazing physician. He works on staff for Wellness Effects. He took me through the right protocols of what I should be doing from a supplementation and a lifestyle perspective. And I totally gel with you, Dr. Kalegi. I did a lot less cardio, I did a lot more interval training, a lot more sprints up the stairs here in Encinitas. I raised my intake of avocado seeds and nuts. I started taking my Omega 3, you know, religiously to the point where I not only wanted to see my numbers change, I just wanted to feel better in my body. And it was cool to have this kind of partner in crime. This data, it was, it was the data and me and I could figure it out with help from this physician. So I want to thank you for what Wellness Effects does. Not only did my testosterone raise, but my vitamin D was able to be tracked as going higher. I did have a better total HDL ratio. So that the HDL ratio you were talking about, that improved for me. One of the questions though, and this is something that comes up a lot for people, is individuality, the metabolic individuality that we all experience. How would you say that WellnessFX addresses metabolic individuality because your plan that worked for you, Dr. Kolegi, might not work for Jim Smith down the street. So how does it address that?

I think that's one of the best features of WellnessFX or a service like that is the opportunity to really get your individualized feedback and adjust accordingly. Most people don't realize that a lot of the medical recommendations that are out there are based on fairly homogenous studies. Maybe they were done on a uniform group of Caucasian males. And based on that data, general recommendations are made in the aggregate. They say, well, we recommend that people take, to use an example, if they have high cholesterol, a statin, a cholesterol medicine. Well, we know, we know that there's a significant portion of the population that are resistant to statins. And the way that we've traditionally dealt with that is, okay, well we'll give statins to everybody. And so everyone will bear that cost. Everyone will bear the side effects that comes with statins. And we're going to hope that some people will benefit. And because of those benefit to those some people, it makes it worthwhile to give it to everybody. I don't think that's ideal. I think the ideal is for people to benefit from an intervention that benefits them. For people to not just do an intervention because they might improve, but because to do an intervention because they are improving. And what wellness effects allows you to do is look at your data and see if you're actually having the intended effects. Once I had that call to action, when I wasn't taking great care of myself, I started doing interventions that I thought would help me. Now, traditionally I would have just done that the rest of my life, be running eight miles a day, be eating the low fat diet and be worse off for it. But because I was able to get that feedback, I was able to make adjustments that were right for me. And those adjustments that were right for me might not be right for everyone else. We all vary genetically, but at least you can start to understand what works for you. A great individual variation that I see is with vitamin D. We come from different parts of the globe, ethnicity wise. So we've evolved to have varying amounts of sun exposure. So we've evolved to have different vitamin D levels just based on our ethnicity. And so what I've seen a lot of people do, including myself, is rather than say you have this target vitamin D level of 30 or 40 or 50, recognize that that's going to vary for the individual. And what you can do is I mentioned vitamin D deficiency is associated with Increase increased inflammation. What you can do is find at what level of vitamin D are your inflammation levels the lowest. And that's probably your ideal level. For some, I've seen that to be in the 40 to 50 range. For some, I've seen that to be higher. For some, I've seen that to be lower. But you can actually tailor your dose of vitamin D and your levels to what's right for you based on your own genetics.

This is so powerful, man. Because a lot of people are confused about vitamin D. Some of the upper toxicity limits I think are a little bit false. There's so much information online. Could you give us a little more clarity? Obviously you're not giving people medical advice right now, but could you give us some clarity on what truly is the toxicity amount? I personally take 10,000 IUs a day. I don't get a lot of sun, especially as we move into fall and winter. So that's what works for me. That might not work for someone else. The testing is where you're going to find the detail. But what would you recommend as far as a healthy range in that vitamin D?

I. I've looked at a lot of the studies in that, you know, some studies suggest that at excessively, what are considered excessively high vitamin D D levels, there might be some increased inflammation as evidenced by markers like the high sensitivity C reactive protein that I mentioned. I think in general, in general you want to be above 30. I don't think I've seen anyone's levels be ideal at 30. Pretty much everyone benefits being over 30 and most people are under 30 and don't realize it. My levels I remember initially were in the low 20s. I've seen levels in the single digits. You want to be over 30. I think when you then we. The literature starts to suggest that there may be excessively high levels that gets to be over 100. So really, really high levels. You mentioned you take 10,000 a day. I take a fairly high dose too. I take 5,000 a day and by testing I was able to see that 5,000 a day gets me into the 40 to 50 range. And that seems to be where my lowest levels of inflammation are. That seems to be what works well for me. For people that get even less sun because I get sun some days for that get even less sun or have a genetics where they come from cultures that maybe had more sun exposure so have higher needs for vitamin D, higher doses might be worthwhile. For others, lower doses like 1,000 or 2,500 might be right. I think the best Way to understand that is to test your vitamin D levels and ideally compare it to your inflammation levels, your hscrp.

The beauty of this, too is that there is so much information out there. I feel like people are drowning in an ocean of information. And the only thing is that people can trust now is personal experience. You know, unique personal experience. So I take the 10,000. I think I'm at 47, Dr. Kolecki. So it's interesting that you take a different amount than me, but yet our results are completely different based on our biology and that kind of internal thumbprint that we have. How often, though, should people be checking? How long does it take for the blood cells to turn over in the body? And how often should people be doing these panels?

That's a great question. So blood cells turn over roughly every 120 days, roughly every four months. So we say that's the minimum interval in which you should be checking. If you check more often than that, you're just not going to see the full impact of whatever intervention that you've implemented. In terms of a max interval, if you're actively changing things, I think doing the shorter intervals is better. 4 to 6 months. 6 months is a pretty good threshold. If you've gotten to a point where what you seem to be doing seems to be working well and then your goal is to maintain those optimal markers, then a longer interval might make sense. And by longer interval typically mean about a year. So if you're actively making changes, probably every four to six months, if you're not actively making any changes, just to make sure that your health hasn't changed in some way, I think a year is worthwhile.

How do you think emotions? You know, what's coming up for me right now is we're so focused on how everyone's unique and how this data is so unique to you and me and anyone else. But how do emotions play a part in this? I mean, have you personally or with any patients that you've worked with, has there been any emotional health changes or emotional intelligence changes based off of the data that they're seeing?

You know, I think the emotions really start at the moment that they're looking at their data in a different way, the different visuals. So historically, the way you got your data, you got a black and white printout and maybe there was an H or L next to your marker telling you you were high or low, not impactful. I found not only with myself, but with many people I've done consults for. There's something about the visual aesthetics where if you're actually looking at your markers and you see a marker in big red, that's a wake up call that's alarming for people. There's something inside my body that's big and red, red as opposed to healthy green, like an optimal marker is in the Wellness FX application. And it's interesting that that simple visual change can have such an impact emotionally. The other emotional reaction I often see is when people like myself do an intervention that they think is going to have a certain intended effect and then it doesn't have that effect or has exactly the opposite effect. That's frustrating because they're expending effort, effort to try and optimize their health, optimize their markers, and that effort's not being initially met with rewards. I think ultimately once that reaction subsides, then there's an appreciation for, hey, I was doing all this work, I could have continued to do all this work for the rest of my life. Now I know I should be doing different work and this information has helped me get there. So it's, it's hard to accept at first, but in the end, I think people end up stronger for it.

And I believe that when we start seeing what's really going on in our bodies, what gets measured gets managed, right? And we know this from a scientific perspective, but also we're all born with this natural pool of health. We're all born with enough energy and enough wellness to live life and to do the things we want to do. But I believe what gets in the way is too much stress and extra responsibility, but also that emotional inventory piece. And I'm curious, with these numbers being a mirror of mindfulness, have you seen specifically from any patients where their emotional health was really the thing that was changed from them doing the quantification of the biomarkers in the first place?

It's very interesting that it seems emotional health can both be an effect and a cause of our health markers. And what I mean is we were talking about cortisol earlier and how mental stress can influence cortisol levels and all the health effects. I see so many people, through practicing mindfulness or meditation or decreasing stress in other ways, make improvements in their overall health. I see testosterone levels increase, I see blood sugar levels go down, I see lipid profiles improve. But then the other side I see is when people start to make improvements in their health, whether it be eating more optimally, exercise, taking vitamin D, which, as I mentioned addressing vitamin D deficiency, has been shown to help depression, when they do all these things, their Mental health also improves, which then comes back to the rest of their health. So it's almost a circular or a positive feedback loop where by making yourself healthier, you improve your mental health and by improving your mental health, you make yourself healthier.

Oh, such a great point. Thank you for saying that. Because in my experience, sometimes the right question pairs with the right blood test can truly change your life. And I mean, that was my experience with Dr. Edmond. I was on the call, I'll never forget this, and he said, you know, we're going over your numbers, but Josh, I want you to take a breath and I want to ask you this question. And I said, what is it? And he said, are you laughing out loud every day and enjoying your life? And there was this long pause afterwards.

Wow.

And this question hit me because I knew the answer was no. I'd spent the last six months putting out fires, dealing with stress, and I realized, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful to have this data because this data is showing me how I'm being in my life. So for my Testosterone, I believe, Dr. Collegi, the reason my testosterone came up wasn't really something that was through a supplementation pill. It was from me reducing my stress, increasing my gratitude, increasing my mindfulness, increasing my self care and my restoration, really taking full ownership that it's my life, it's my control, it's up to me to adapt and it's up to me to take personal responsibility in this. How would you say that Wellness FX is truly helping everyone, everyone take more personal responsibility?

Absolutely. I see Wellness FX put health into the hands of the individual and the individual starts to recognize one. I have control. A control that I didn't feel that I had before because I didn't have this health information. But with that control, with that power comes a responsibility. Now that I have control, I have to be a good steward of my health because I can't blame my life circumstances or the healthcare system or anything else. It's in my hands and therefore I'm responsible for making it better, which is.

The ultimate challenge, because you and I both know that that's not a very popular thing to do. It involves a lot of work. It involves taking control, but it's possible and these tools are here to help. I wanna transition to the last part of the show. You've been such a great guest. I've really enjoyed this conversation. This is seven for seven, Dr. Kalegi. It's seven fast questions for seven top of mind answers. Are you ready to go?

I am Ready to go.

The first question that I would love to hear from a physician is what is the absolute favorite thing you like to eat when you're what's your favorite post workout meal?

Oh, well, it depends if it's a post workout meal for just sudden nutrient recovery. Like I've just done a hard workout and I immediately want to rejuvenate. I'm a Vitamix guy. I get my spinach and kale in there, my avocado in there, chia seeds, some fruit, and I down it like anything. And then there's the other type of post workout meal and that's I had a great workout today. I'm gonna enjoy myself a little bit today and deviate. Which I'll admit I do know I have my cheat moments andand I'm a buffalo tenders guy when I'm rewarding myself for a really successful workout.

And this is kind of a tertiary question, but your thoughts on high glycemic carbs post workout? You know, if somebody's really depleted their glycogen stores, I mean, the liver is empty, the muscles are feeling low. What is your favorite thing to eat after a big workout? To session.

Yeah. So that's when I usually have to replace my glycemic stores. That's when I usually have one of those Vitamix shakes with some fruit in it, which will give me a fair amount of sugar. Though I'll admit I've become a bigger fan over the last couple years of fat adaptation for fuel and starting to more and more lower my carbohydrates. Even sometimes after workouts, I'll do some of those healthier unsaturated fats like we talked about. So that my body progressively adapts or trains to using fat as fuel. Because I have found that not being as dependent on carbohydrates for energy has helped actually sustain me more through a lot of my workouts.

That is incredible. And that took a little bit of time. There's a process in being fat adapted.

Absolutely.

There was actually an interview you did with Ben Greenfield I saw on YouTube. We'll link that in the show notes today@wellnessforce.com WellnessFX Next question. Dr. Kolegi, do you have a piece of fitness or wellness technology that you might use? Do you use any trackers or devices on your phone or your wrist?

I do, and I use a device that some people know about, but not a lot of people. And I actually use a Muse EEG headset. And like you with Wellness fx, Muse has no idea I'm mentioning them. They do not compensate me. I have no relationship with them. And what they are is it's a headset designed to do EEG monitoring. Specifically, they design their application around, around meditation and helping you stay focused or at least alerting you when you're losing focus in a meditative state. And I have definitely found that to be beneficial for me for increasing awareness of when I'm not maintaining my focused awareness.

You know, we interviewed their CEO Ariel Garden on the show. I think it was episode 12. And I love the muse, Dr. Klege. I've been using it for a year and a half.

Oh, that's great.

So thank you so much for mentioning that. We'll link that in the notes as well. Well, we're almost to the end of the questions here, but I'm curious, this is a big one. If you could sit across from yourself at 18 years old, what would you tell him? And well, I mean, do you even think he would listen at 18?

No, I would tell him what I've. I think who would listen? Because just When I was 18, I was an unusually motivated guy in terms of my health, even back then. I think what I would tell him is what I've learned since, that so many paradigms that were true 20 years ago are not necessarily true today. Whether that be it's not necessarily about how long you work out, but more the quality of workout or it's not necessarily about a low fat diet, but the quality of food you eat. And then I think the last thing I would tell them in reference to what you were saying a few minutes ago about mental health is I would say, look, enjoy the ride. Health, it's called the practice of medicine. And so similarly, I think it's the, the practice of health. You can never be perfect. And by striving to be perfect, you can actually in some ways do more harm. If your mental health is suffering because of you're striving for an impossible goal of perfection. So think of it as practice, a ride, a pathway to being the best, healthiest self you can be. And accept that you can never be perfect. You can always just move towards that direction.

Love that man. Progress, not perfection. What's one of the biggest roadblocks that you see as a physician in the wellness and fitness industry when it comes to any kind of coach using a blood test in their practice, What's a roadblock for that?

I think one of the biggest roadblocks is people are intimidated by needles and going to a lab. So it just adds some Logistical friction. So because people are nervous about this, that in combination with, I think there's often a almost subconscious fear of really having insights into your health. Like, what if I discover that I have some health risk that I don't know about? Right now, I'd rather be blissfully ignorant. So you combine those fears and what people perceive as an inconvenience. And so there might be some resistance to doing it, but kind of like we were talking about, it's not about perfection, it's progress. I think Wellness Effects is definitely progress from a more inconvenient system. Yes. While you might discover certain things you were afraid of, you now have the opportunity to make progress and address those fears and really optimize everything. Your health, your longevity. And just overcoming that fear can have long term dividends for your life.

Kind of a sidebar, but I'm thinking of that scene in the Matrix. I don't know if you've seen the film and the guy eats the piece of steak and he says ignorance is bliss. And I feel like for Wellness I and Effects, what we want to do is we want to not be ignorant in this life. You know, ignorance causes so much unnecessary suffering. And if we can just know what's going on with our body, then who cares at the end of the day? Because what's there was there whether we knew it or not. And I think that's the beauty of testing here. Last two questions. If you have a mantra that's your favorite or that you go through stress and it's something that you can tell yourself, what is that? You know, what do you tell yourself when things get rough in life? Do you have something you might repeat to yourself, your brain?

I do. And I specifically have come up with that because of I've recognized where my mind goes. And maybe I've started to have those insights using devices like the muse and meditation. And I recognize that my innate fears whenever I'm struggling is one, that I'm doing something wrong and I should feel guilty for whatever struggle I'm dealing with. Two is that I'm not capable of overcoming this struggle. And three, that I'm unfortunate in some way to be dealing with this rather than recognizing all the fortunes I have. So the mantra that I repeat to myself, the three things I remind myself is, look, I'm a good person, I'm capable, and I'm blessed. And by reminding me myself of those three things, it really overcomes those three detractors for me.

What is wellness to you? If you had to define wellness for your Personal life experience. What do you define as wellness?

I see wellness as an optimal state of being in terms of, since that's a more general statement in terms of more specifically, your physical, mental and emotional health, how you deal with stress, how you are active in your life, both in your daily living, in your jobs. Do you stand versus sit, do you walk versus lay down? And then of course, your actual biomarkers and have you optimize your vitamin D levels, your hormones, your nutrients. So I see wellness as an overarching concept for so many aspects of your life and just trying to optimize all those aspects.

Love that answer so much. Again for everyone. We're gonna link everything today@wellnessforce.com WellnessFX Dr. Kolegi, we talk so much, much about scientific markers and personal experience. Is there anything you think we missed when we look at what it means to use blood testing to be bulletproof, to make that body more bulletproof?

I think the great thing about services like WellnessFX is we're always discovering new information, new markers, new genes, new blood tests for inflammation or lipids or nutrients. And those tests take a really long time to penetrate traditional healthcare reimbursement and financing systems. Insurers have to approve it, hospitals have to buy all of these things. With services like WellnessFX, if there's good evidence for that marker out there, they can add on that marker and so you can really get that additional cutting edge information. So I guess to answer your question, question, I'm sure there are things we haven't touched on, but we just don't know them yet. Hopefully we soon will and people will be able to access that information.

Tim Ferriss, in the early days of WellnessFX was a key player. You've had support from a lot of health advocates actually, you know, Ben Greenfield and Dave Asprey. You work with clients like Oakland Raiders, UPS, Google, Wall Street Journal and Dr. Oz and TechCrunch. What is next for Wellness FX? I mean, you've worked with some incredible companies. What do you see on the horizon for the growth of Wellness fx?

So there are some really, really exciting things on the horizon and I don't know what I'm permitted to talk about, so I'll just speak generally. I'll say in the next year or so you're going to see major advances in both the diagnostic offerings and the partners Wellness FX is working with. Wellness FX is now partnering with some major elite organizations that are pretty unprecedented in terms doing partnerships with smaller technology companies. And so we're really excited about that we're really excited by both the partnerships we're developing as well as the markers we'll soon be able to offer in addition to the great array that we have now.

What are you most excited about personally, from an energetic level for what you're doing with Wellness FX in the future?

Oh, I'm just excited at the size and scope of people we're progressively impacting. As I mentioned, it hasn't just been that early adopters or quantified and you get that kind of short peak in your users and then it flattens off. It's actually been going the other way. We've had to keep a lot of our current partnerships confidential, but eventually, once we're able to publicly disclose some of the organizations that we work with, I think it's only going to continue to accelerate wellness FX's progress in terms of the number of people it can reach and the number of people who can then get healthier.

Wow. I just want to acknowledge what you do for people, giving people that introspection and knowledge so they can be more empowered. Man. Thank you for your work and thank you for making Wellness FX available to the entire country.

Thanks again for having me. And thank you for doing what you do of trying to spread the word about wellness and making people healthier.

That wraps episode 80 with Dr. Murdoch Kalihi. I really liked his vibe. Did you guys enjoy his vibe? Write to me josh wellnessvoice.com if this show made an impact for you. Share it with somebody you care about. You never know when the right message, message of the right time can impact someone's life. I know it did for me when I learned about these biomarkers and these blood tests. A couple takeaways from today's show. Number one, check your vitamin D. Make sure that you have a clear understanding of how vitamin D can impact not only your energy, but also how you burn fat, how you regulate muscle growth and just your general sense of wellness. Secondly, for men and women, having your thyroid checked, it's not something your medical doctor typically tests, but with just a simple blood test will link at the show Notes Today you can get all that and more. Hop to wellnessforce.com wellnessfx we'll have some different videos and links you can download and learn more information about taking back your own health through just a couple blood tests a year. Next week on the show, we're diving deeper into some biomarkers for performance and weight loss resistance. Weight loss resistance is a topic that's come up a lot in 2016, not only in functional medicine, but in general health and wellness circles, we'll talk about what weight loss resistance is, how you can identify what are the pieces in your life you can remove and what you can add in realistically, no matter who you are, if you're a parent or if you're a working professional. So tune in next week as we stack more knowledge and inspiration from the interview with Dr. Kalegi with Dr. Matt Accurso. Now all that's left is for you to go have an awesome day with all the inspiration, knowledge and tools you got from Dr. Collegi and every guest that's been on the show. So until I see you again next week, I'm wishing you love and wellness.