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 When you begin to have hormone dysfunction, one, without realizing it, your partner or your family might notice changes in your mood or changes in your behavior, which might be disconcerting to them.
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And then on top of that,
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 Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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 What do you think is the thing that holds most people back in their health?
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Is it hormone optimization or is it something else that they're missing?
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The most common thing that holds people back is that many people have metabolic syndrome.
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They don't diet, they don't exercise, they don't control their sleep or their stress or their spiritual health even.
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And they don't control their collective health or social health as well.
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So the health of their family, the health of people in their household,
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 It's almost like you're trying to get into a fraternity or a sorority.
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If one of those things is off, then you're not going to have optimal health.
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You talk about these main six things, which is exercise, diet, sleep, stress, sunlight, and spirit or spiritual.
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When did you realize that if one of these six things are out of alignment,
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 that you're probably not going to be feeling as good as you could.
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When did this come about?
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During medical school and residency, there's a process of learning about the importance of the body and the mind and the soul.
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Really?
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The mind and the soul?
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In medical school?
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Yep, and residency as well.
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 During the third year of medical school, you usually start your clinical rotations, and that includes working in the ICU and working with the end-of-life care team, the hospice team.
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And often you see families and individuals that have never been spiritual their whole life.
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And by spiritual, you could just define that as the self-actualization on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the pyramid.
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 and individuals that have never considered themselves spiritually religious are requesting to talk to chaplains, and they also want to talk to their doctor about spiritual health.
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At the end of their life, they're thinking about this.
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That's some of the requests they have with the doctors.
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Can I find a chaplain or a pastor or someone to talk about what are they asking to talk about?
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Is it like with them?
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Is it about the reason of life or forgiveness?
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What is the thing they're looking to learn?
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 Often they're just scared, and they have a terminal diagnosis, and they've been given days to weeks to live, and they want to figure out, well, everything I've done in my whole life, perhaps they have regrets, perhaps they're glad that they've done things, perhaps they want to talk to their family members earlier rather than just at the very, very end, but they want to find meaning,
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 that self-actualization on the pyramid of the hierarchy of needs.
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So when you were in residency and you were witnessing this, what was a big eye-opener for you?
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Were you a spiritual person before this, or did you say, oh, there's something to this health thing, to optimizing, living a longer, healthier life with this spiritual component?
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Yeah, I'm a Christian, and I am spiritual.
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I would not consider myself religious.
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 But I do think that every human has a soul and also that every human has a purpose.
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So often I would pray with my patients and I would talk to them and ask them what they think.
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Even among, like let's just take a group of people, say Christians, many people in the United States are Christians, there is a huge variation in what people believe about God or even Jesus.
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And there's also a wide variation of
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 what people feel like they benefit from being a Christian.
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Some people feel like they benefit.
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Some people feel like they certainly don't.
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Right, right.
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How much does the soul or the spirit play into optimal health?
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And how does a soul become unhealthy?
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 This is obviously a particularly difficult question that many theologians discuss back and forth via, I believe it's called apologetics.
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What I do know is that when the soul is not healthy, often the entire household suffers.
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Your family members.
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Wow.
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Especially if
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 And there's obviously exceptions to everything, and the answer to everything is it depends, too.
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But if, let's say there's a household and they're all Christians, and one individual, perhaps they're at the end of their life, perhaps they're not, they switch their worldview and their spirituality completely.
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And often you see physical and mental health sequelae, deleterious, so negative sequelae, just from that.
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 from switching your spirituality or your beliefs around spirituality?
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Correct.
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Interesting.
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But what if one spiritual belief hasn't been supporting you in an emotional or mental or physical way and you switch it to find something that gives you more meaning and purpose?
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 Would that also hurt it in the family dynamics because there's now a break and a belief into a different belief?
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In the long run, it might be a beneficial change, but in the short run, it's almost always quite difficult.
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Yeah, because you're shifting your beliefs around something you thought was
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 you know, the word of the universe or something, right?
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Yeah.
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You have this identity or this belief that you've had your whole life and now you're thinking it's a lie, right?
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It's like changing any other lifestyle intervention or even a medication.
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 if you don't exercise at all and then all of a sudden you start exercising and you're going hardcore for CrossFit, you're gonna have a lot of pain in those first few weeks.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Fascinating.
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So the spirit is something that you started, well obviously you grew up studying it, but then in residency you started realizing this is a massive part of what people think about when they're terminally ill at the end of their life.
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How did you start
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 implementing that or integrating that into your medical practice?
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It first started just with the request of patients.
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 Patients very often ask their doctor, well, what do you think?
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Or will you pray with me?
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Or will you do X?
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And you do your best to meet those requests.
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That's actually how I started getting into hormones as well.
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It's because hormone pathology is very rare and often patients would request help or even just labs with it.
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And if you run a lab,
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 on someone's hormones, they're very, very thankful.
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Likewise, if you just simply pray for a patient, I say, you know, I'm not an expert, but I'm happy to do that with you.
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They're also very thankful.
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So when you test for hormones, what is the type of tests that people do to get results back about their hormones and how many different hormones are there to test?
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 Yeah, so a general synopsis of hormones is there's several different types, but there's peptide hormones, which are hormones that are made up of chains of amino acids, for example, growth hormone.
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There's also sterol-based hormones, so estrogens, progestogens, and androgens like testosterone.
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And then there's also hormones just based on amino acids, for example, thyroid hormone is based on tyrosine.
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 And hormones are just signaling molecules.
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There's nothing magical about them.
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But they do talk between organ systems and even within organ systems.
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So talking amongst organ systems is called endocrine hormones.
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Talking within the same organ system is called autocrine or paracrine, nearby.
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And how does someone know without taking a test that they have pretty good healthy hormones?
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Like, how would we know?
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In general, and how you feel in general, I call that biofeedback.
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Okay.
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 So if you're feeling very well and you have good energy and vitality and libido and mood and you're not sleeping too much and not sleeping too little, then perhaps you have a pretty normal hormone profile.
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A lot of individuals feel like, you know, I'm just not focusing quite as well as I used to.
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I'm not as motivated as well as I used to.
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My libido has changed slightly, my athleticism or even my body composition.
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 And when that happens, it is extremely difficult to guess your hormone profile without getting a blood test.
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Really?
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So you got to do a blood test, do all the samples and see where the deficiencies are.
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If one sector of hormones are deficient, is it impacting the other hormones in the body as well?
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Do they come down or can you have really healthy hormones in one area and then unhealthy in another area?
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 It's possible to have healthy hormones in one area and unhealthy in another area, but the process of talking to each other is called feedback inhibition.
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So you can have negative feedback where they decrease whatever hormone is produced.
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For example, estrogen can have negative feedback for testosterone production, and it can also have positive feedback where it actually increases it in a cycle.
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Interesting, but it sounds like if you're not exercising,
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 If you're eating poor diet, if you're getting very little sleep, if you're overly stressed in a negative way, not with the positive stresses, if you're inside all day, you don't get any sunlight and your spiritual compass has no moral direction, then probably it'll affect all of your hormones at some point.
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If one of those things is off, it'll probably hurt the hormones, right?
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 Yeah, likely so.
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And again, the answer to everything is it depends.
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But it's very common to fix whichever one of those modalities is off, and that's why I write prescriptions for lifestyle.
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So, you know, a nutrition prescription or exercise prescription.
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I truly believe that food is medicine, and the original medicines were all food and herb-based anyway.
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And exercise is also medicine.
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Is sleep medicine?
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Is sunlight medicine?
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Yeah, I would say so.
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 Likely to a lesser degree, diet and exercise have a slightly more powerful effect because your diet is rebuilding every cell in your body continuously, and how you exercise is how the machine works.
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So if you sit a car in a garage, maybe I could think of a sports analogy as well.
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I guess racing is a sport too, right?
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Yeah, of course.
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But if you sit a car in a garage, then it's not gonna function well.
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Right, right.
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 What are the five foods that you would recommend to optimize your hormones?
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If you eat them consistently, moderately, these would support the growth of the health of your hormones.
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For individuals in developed countries, which I assume most of our listeners are, I would say fiber would be the number one.
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Only a small percentage of Americans get enough healthy fiber.
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Five percent.
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 Only 5% get that, wow.
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How much fiber would we need for it to be a good amount?
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I'm not sure how much fiber you would need for a healthy amount, but there's three main types of fiber.
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They have what's called an RDA, which is a recommended daily allowance, which is basically, that's what you need to prevent deficiency.
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Okay.
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 And on most nutrition labels, there is soluble and insoluble fiber, and it's total fiber and dietary fiber.
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So dietary fiber is the same thing as soluble fiber, and that is one of the types that very few Americans get enough of.
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So what does that include?
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What types of foods?
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One example of dietary fiber is psyllium husk or psyllium powder, L-methylcellulose is another type.
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 But there's a lot of, most foods have a combination of both soluble and insoluble fiber.
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You also have a special type of fiber known as prebiotic fiber, and think of that as the fish food for your gut microbiome.
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It's what the good bacteria in general, the good bacteria like to eat.
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And they basically, you can't just throw fish into your microbiota tank of your gut and your oral microbiome as well.
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You need to feed them.
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 Really?
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Okay.
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So these different types of fiber, what would be the top fiber foods that you like to eat or prescribe?
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I like root vegetables quite a bit.
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You have to be a little careful because a lot of root vegetables are high in what's called FODMAPs, but FODMAPs are not necessarily evil.
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An example would be garlic.
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Another one could be leeks, ginger, chicory root for some individuals, although chicory root oddly has some interaction with ragweed allergy.
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 So some people can kind of cross-react with that, have an allergic response.
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So those are some of your favorite fiber foods, right?
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Okay, so what's the second thing you would recommend of the five top foods?
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Fibers?
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I would say a protein source, and then three would be an omega-3 source.
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One of my favorite protein sources is red meat.
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There are plenty of good protein sources that are not meat.
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 but you certainly want a good protein source, especially if you're trying to optimize your health span or your physical function.
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It is certainly possible to get all of your necessary vitamins and nutrients without having meat in the diet, and it's also possible to get enough omega-3s without having fish in the diet, but it can be difficult.
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Really?
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So how much meat protein
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 do you eat and then how much do you recommend a person who's maybe not as, you know, fit and athletic looking as you?
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 Personally, I eat almost, probably not quite one gram, but almost one gram per pound of body weight per day.
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Per day.
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Which is extremely high, but I also like protein quite a bit, and I try to eat sources that are relatively lean, because most people, if you just tell the average person to go out and say, go eat one gram per pound of body weight, which is a ton, and most people do not need that much, and they will just consume too many calories.
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Gotcha, yeah.
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So how much do you weigh?
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 200 pounds 200 pounds.
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So 200 grams of red meat or protein.
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Oh protein.
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I was gonna say that's a lot of red meat Yeah, so 200 grams of protein about a pound per body weight.
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That makes sense and How much of that protein is red meat daily about two to three times per week?
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So not every day not every day two three times a week.
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Yep, and it will be how much of a percentage of the 200 grams will be
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 Will be from red meat.
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Yes.
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How much oh on a weekly basis probably only five to ten percent five to ten percent Of the 200 grams per day.
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Yeah of the three to three days a week.
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Gotcha and What are some of the other top proteins you recommend?
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Salmon is one of my favorite protein sources Salmon's almost more of an omega-3 source in the third category than a protein source, but it's also high in protein too, right?
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Correct.
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Yeah.
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I'm a fan of beans as well.
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So
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 There's a lot of different types of them.
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Some are relatively low in protein.
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There's also, you know, like garbanzo beans have a source of protein.
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Beans like brown beans or black beans also have protein.
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They are not near as high quality, but they can be complementary to help make up the other half.
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Dr. Gabby Lyon also talks about this, you know, why is the high protein so important for also hormone optimization in the diet?
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 A lot of the ancillary hormones, for example peptide hormones or amino acid hormones, are literally synthesized based on the protein that's in the diet.
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So a lot of proteins like meat proteins are high in sources of methionine or cysteine or carotene, which is just a peptide with two different
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 amino acids in it, but your thyroid hormone is tyrosine that's changed over and changed into the thyroid hormone with iodine.
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And your dopamine is also tyrosine.
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Tryptophan, another amino acid common in
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 Many meats but also just a lot of protein sources and of course some people do take tyrosine and tryptophan as a supplement Enforcing the idea that food is medicine, but tryptophan can form Both serotonin and melatonin and many other hormones as well What happens if you let's say did?
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 20% of the protein intake per day.
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So you only did 40 grams of protein a day, I guess, as opposed to the 200.
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What would happen to your hormones, your muscles, your body, and your overall health with 20% as opposed to
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 you know, a gram per pound of body weight.
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Yeah, and even compared to 0.4 or 0.5 grams per pound of body weight per day, 40 grams, you know, that's pretty low.
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 But if you have a decent amount of muscle mass stored up, and let's say you're intermittent fasting or you're on a fasting mimicking diet for fatty liver disease, in a short term, then it will have mild effects.
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But in the long term, it will have significant effects.
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Not just because that there's building blocks, but there is a, think of it as the cascade of aging.
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And whether or not aging is normal or a pathology doesn't really matter because this cascade still looks.
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 Dr. Pataki with the Mayo Clinic wrote an excellent article about two years ago and you can see a chart in there and at the top you have
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 you know, increased calorie consumption, decreased protein consumption, sarcopenia and osteopenia, which is loss of protein in the muscle and loss of bone mass.
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And then you have a decreased metabolism, then you have metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, diabetes and hypertension, and then you have all the diseases, the end diseases of aging like cancer.
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So what I'm hearing you say, high calorie diet, low protein diet,
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 is susceptible to having longer term health risks.
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Is that what I'm hearing you say?
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So if you're having just lots of sugars and calories consumption and you're having, you know, a lower percent of protein in the diet, it could cause potentially diabetes down the line.
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It could shorten your lifespan.
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Is that what I'm hearing correctly?
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 Yeah.
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Along with that, you have metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
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And I would consider that the most common cause of hormone dysfunction that affects your insulin and your IGF-1, which is kind of a marker of growth hormone.
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It affects your SHBG, which binds all of your sex hormones.
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Well, actually, it just binds estrogens and androgens, not progestogens.
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But still, you're going to have a lot of downstream effects.
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 On top of that, high-carb, low-protein diets are usually highly processed as well.
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We call these foods high-glycemic in-product foods like chips, crackers, and cookies.
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Stuffs in bags and boxes.
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It's really easy to eat.
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It's quick.
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Yeah, I don't really think it's anybody's fault, but it's just so darn convenient.
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 that people over consume.
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It's quick, it's fast, it's cheap, it's easy, tastes good, right?
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At least it tastes good in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily feel good long term, right?
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Because then you start to feel sluggish, stressed, anxious, low energy, right?
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You're gaining the pounds, you're not burning your metabolism as much.
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 So how does someone increase growth hormone in the body in terms of like the healthy growth hormone, not the cancer side of things, but like the side that's going to make your body composition or muscles bigger and stronger, you know, look younger, that type of hormone?
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 So there's several ways that you can help increase growth hormone.
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Growth hormone is interesting because it has a very fast half-life, just minutes, and it has what's called pulsatile secretion.
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So growth hormone releasing hormone and also ghrelin, which most people are familiar with because it kind of makes you anxious and hungry.
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 They help release growth hormone from the pituitary.
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And in just a couple minutes, it will act on various tissues, for example, the liver, to produce IGF-1, which when it's bound to its binding proteins, has a half-life of maybe a week.
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So IGF-1 does a lot of the action of growth hormone.
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 When you over consume calories, it can help produce growth hormone.
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There are some amino acids that can somewhat help with the growth hormone production since it is a peptide hormone like arginine.
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But at the end of the day, a lot of it will just come down to how good is your sleep since a lot of that pulsatile secretion of growth hormone happens during sleep.
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 which is why it's one of the pillars of your, the six pillars of hormone health, sleep.
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How much sleep are you trying to get a night on average?
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And how important is it for the quality of sleep to be there as well?
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 Around seven to eight hours a night.
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Both quality and quantity are particularly important.
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I'm not a sleep scientist.
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There's lots of good ones out there.
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But when you're looking at sleep, even if you're one of the individuals that has a genetic predisposition to sleep very, very little, that can also affect your health, including your hormone health, especially over a long time.
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And it is somewhat possible to stockpile sleep.
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I know some biometric wearables even have like, this is your stockpiled sleep, which is kind of cool.
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 But you can't really ever truly catch up on sleep.
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Right, right, yeah.
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Shawn Stevenson who talks about like, sleep debt is a real thing and you can never really pay off the debt.
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Correct.
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You can kind of get back to a standard of where you are now and try to optimize from there, but it's like if you do 20 years of sleeping very little, it's gonna be, you can't really recover that, right?
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It's gonna be hard.
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 What do you focus on for yourself the most in terms of like the hormone you're trying to optimize?
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Or do you just try to look at it from a holistic approach of like living in these six categories on a daily basis?
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SPEAKER_03
 I suppose it depends on if you consider some amino acid-based molecules, hormones.
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For example, is dopamine a hormone?
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It's technically like a tyrosine-based hormone.
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So that would be one that I would put near the top of the list.
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But in general, again, hormone health, you want to figure out what's holding you back the most.
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Is it your androgen?
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Is it your estrogen?
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Some individuals, and I'm actually in this category as well, struggle with keeping estrogen high enough.
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 Estrogen in both men and women, the average woman has about four times as much testosterone than estrogen.
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In both men and women, the lower your estrogen, the higher your risk of plaque buildup, the higher your risk of osteoporosis, and in general, the higher your risk that your coronaries are going to be occluded, which is a very common cause of morbidity and mortality in both males and females, but especially males.
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Okay, interesting.
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 I want to complete the five foods.
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I'm going off the topic here.
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So you said fibers, proteins, omega-3s.
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What are the other two that you would recommend?
0
SPEAKER_03
 Since we've covered our essential amino acids and our essential fatty acids and our fiber, which is almost always depleted, I would say these two are not as important.
0
SPEAKER_03
But for me, I would put timing of carbohydrates or perhaps lack of carbohydrates.
0
SPEAKER_03
In the morning, I like to not eat too many carbohydrates because I feel that insulin spike and glucose spike and drop down.
0
SPEAKER_03
Some people can be very insulin sensitive and be more prone to this.
0
SPEAKER_03
 Also, it can cause what's called alkaline tide, where your stomach acid produces extra pH, but a lot of foods can cause this as well.
0
SPEAKER_03
So timing of nutrients, and then if you are more insulin sensitive or your insulin runs very low, insulin is a particularly anabolic hormone.
0
SPEAKER_03
 So timing that for a meal before a workout or even after a workout can be helpful.
0
SPEAKER_03
So I'd say that would be number four.
0
SPEAKER_03
And then number five, I would say avoidance of alcohol.
0
SPEAKER_03
So if you drink alcohol, a very small amount is not going to, there's not an alcohol debt like there is sleep debt that I know of.
0
SPEAKER_03
 But even in moderate amounts, it can be harmful for your health in the long run and somewhat in the short run as well.
0
SPEAKER_03
So trying to limit that to, I'd say, for the average person, two to three times per month.
0
SPEAKER_02
Gotcha.
0
SPEAKER_02
So timing of carbs, can you break that down first for me?
0
SPEAKER_02
 When would you prescribe the optimal time to eat and consume carbs for the average person versus maybe someone who trains every day really hard five, six days a week in an intense workout?
0
SPEAKER_02
What's the difference?
0
SPEAKER_03
 The average person, you can parse them out throughout the day as desired.
0
SPEAKER_03
For the elite athlete, and there's been many studies done on this, of course, as there are studies done on everything, but there's been pretty good studies looking at the correlation between the amount of carbs consumed and cyclists with their, I believe, their total finishing time.
0
SPEAKER_03
And this was a very long cycling event.
0
SPEAKER_03
 hours throughout the day.
0
SPEAKER_03
And there is a statistically significant correlation where if you are a cyclist that is a faster cyclist, better I suppose, but a faster cyclist, you do consume a higher amount of carbs throughout
0
SPEAKER_03
 before, during, and after the event.
0
SPEAKER_02
Interesting.
0
SPEAKER_02
What if you're just training for yourself?
0
SPEAKER_02
What is your timed restriction of carbs?
0
SPEAKER_02
When do you eat them?
0
SPEAKER_02
Do you eat them before workout, after workout?
0
SPEAKER_02
Do you fast in the morning and work out?
0
SPEAKER_02
How does that work?
0
SPEAKER_03
 Just for convenience, I exercise before I eat in the morning.
0
SPEAKER_03
The kids are asleep and it's really just due to convenience.
0
SPEAKER_03
It's the only time that I can consistently do it without putting it off.
0
SPEAKER_02
You get up, you go work out, and then you eat something afterwards.
0
SPEAKER_02
Do you wait a period of time after the body is...
0
SPEAKER_02
 you know, moving, or do you kind of have protein quickly after you work out?
0
SPEAKER_03
Immediately.
0
SPEAKER_03
I'm starving.
0
SPEAKER_03
There's obviously no anabolic window, but if you're hungry and your GI can tolerate it, then I don't see any reason why you couldn't eat right away.
0
SPEAKER_02
Gotcha.
0
SPEAKER_02
So eat right away.
0
SPEAKER_02
What happens if you delay eating protein an hour, two hours after a pretty intense workout, whether it be a cardio intensity or a muscle building intensity?
0
SPEAKER_03
 It could be marginally, statistically, significantly worse for you.
0
SPEAKER_03
But clinically, significantly, likely, no difference.
0
SPEAKER_03
Got you.
0
SPEAKER_02
So it is better to consume protein within 30 to 60 minutes, let's say, after a workout.
0
SPEAKER_02
Only if you're fasted.
0
SPEAKER_02
If you fasted for 12 to 16 hours.
0
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
0
SPEAKER_02
If you haven't fasted for, let's say you do your workout in the afternoon, you've had a meal or two beforehand, you do it at five o'clock.
0
SPEAKER_03
 I would say there's no statistically significant benefit or clinically significant benefit.
0
SPEAKER_03
Of eating quickly or waiting longer to eat afterwards.
0
SPEAKER_03
Correct.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
It's a good example of something that could be statistically significant in a lab where you can see adaptations or changes.
0
SPEAKER_03
Perhaps you're studying mice usually, but it's not really applicable clinically because there's so many confounding variables.
0
SPEAKER_03
So much going on.
0
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I'm glad you talked about alcohol because
0
SPEAKER_02
 I've never, I mean, I talk about this on here, I maybe have like a Bailey's on ice like twice a year.
0
SPEAKER_02
I've never been drunk.
0
SPEAKER_02
I've never had a full beer in my life.
0
SPEAKER_02
It just never was a desire of mine.
0
SPEAKER_02
I never felt pulled to it.
0
SPEAKER_02
I never felt called to it.
0
SPEAKER_02
No judgment for people that do it, but I just, for me as an athlete, I knew it would hold me back to accomplish my athletic results.
0
SPEAKER_02
 So I was just focused on my mission.
0
SPEAKER_02
And then after playing football in college and professionally, I was like, man, why start now?
0
SPEAKER_02
It didn't make sense.
0
SPEAKER_02
I didn't have any money.
0
SPEAKER_02
I wasn't even trying to.
1
SPEAKER_01
 spend money on alcohol and then just didn't become a desire of mine.
1
SPEAKER_01
But there are countless research showing the negative effects on the body and on the hormones of alcohol and on the brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
Dr. Daniel Ehman talks about his studies too of seeing brain scans of people
1
SPEAKER_01
 You know, who drink a lot of alcohol and those who don't and you see, obviously there's other factors that come into environment and stuff as well, but you see the effects on the brain with an amount of consumption of alcohol, you know, a certain amount, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
There's not many neuroscientists that consume a high amount of alcohol or even a small amount of alcohol.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not even wine, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Not even like a couple glasses of wine a week.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there any benefit at all to the body, to the brain or to the hormones in a healthy way
1
SPEAKER_00
 with alcohol?
1
SPEAKER_00
Physiologically, no, but socially certainly yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
But doesn't that go back into like, okay, if you're just an anxious human being and you need that crutch to have a conversation, that means you've got to address a fear, a concern that's holding you back, an insecurity, and work on that insecurity
1
SPEAKER_01
 Whether it be fear of embarrassment or anxiety, work on that thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Don't use a crutch, which is easier said than done.
1
SPEAKER_01
But if you could lean into that, it would make you a more confident person.
1
SPEAKER_01
It would increase your health.
1
SPEAKER_00
Certainly.
1
SPEAKER_01
All that stuff, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, another downside of alcohol, including red wine, that some people think about is alcohol is 7 calories per gram.
1
SPEAKER_00
So carbs and proteins are 4 and fat is 9.
1
SPEAKER_00
So alcohol is closer in caloric density to fats than to carbs and proteins.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So if you thought about that same amount of alcohol, if let's say it's 100 proof or 50%, then fill that up instead, and this is assuming no sugar, fill it up instead with half oil, and pick canola oil or something.
1
SPEAKER_00
That way someone's like, oh, olive oil is okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then half water, and that's very calorically dense.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's what it is.
1
SPEAKER_01
 half a cup of water, half a cup of oil, essentially, or whatever, that's what you're... Essentially.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, it is seven and nine, so it's not directly analogous, but it's pretty close.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so it's a lot of calories.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not good for your brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's not good for your gut.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And it costs money.
1
SPEAKER_01
There's a lot of negative effects to it than there are positive.
1
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people want to figure out how to optimize for burning fat or removing fat, specifically from the belly and the back areas.
1
SPEAKER_01
What is the main cause in your mind to why it's so hard for people to get rid of that extra 20 or 30 pounds of belly back fat?
1
SPEAKER_00
 So when you think about fat burning, there's two different phenomenon at play.
1
SPEAKER_00
One is thermodynamics, so there's more calories in than calories out, and then the other is lipolysis.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you're going to restructure or recomp a building or your body, you have to remove blocks in some places and then put blocks in other places.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So a lot of fat burners help with lipolysis.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they break fat molecules down and they increase, for example, mitochondrial beta-oxidation, which is basically just you're metabolizing fats and then using them in the electron transport chain of the mitochondria.
1
SPEAKER_00
The details don't really matter, but that's essentially the powerhouse of your cell.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And you can do that all you want, but if you're still at caloric maintenance or even excess surplus, then you're just going to take all those blocks and then put them right back into fat cells.
1
SPEAKER_01
Gotcha.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you need a caloric deficit, it sounds like, somewhere, at some point, in order to remove
1
SPEAKER_01
 You need to be exercising more than you're consuming, and burning more calories than you're consuming, or consuming less than you normally would.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's many tools and ways to achieve this, of course.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
What ways?
1
SPEAKER_00
The OG way is just counting calories.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And even if you look at doctors and dieticians, we usually underestimate the amount of calories that we consume, I believe by at least 10%.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we overestimate the amount of calories that we burn by about 10%.
1
SPEAKER_01
We think we're burning more.
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_00
We're not.
1
SPEAKER_00
Even doctors and dieticians.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we think we're eating less, but there's always hidden calories in something, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or you maybe didn't weigh it perfectly or it was a bigger size or something, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
 Okay, so that's the original ways to count calories.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you recommend that strategy?
1
SPEAKER_00
For some individuals, it's particularly helpful.
1
SPEAKER_00
Most of the time that I see a patient in my clinic, and a lot of what I do is obesity medicine, I am board certified in obesity medicine.
1
SPEAKER_00
 they have already done that and they need a time they say it doesn't work and I eat like a bird and There is nothing There's nothing quite as powerful to destroy a physician-patient relationship Then to just tell the patient that they're lying or that they don't know what they're talking about, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So it's not helpful
1
SPEAKER_00
 to push that angle of vector.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's just a tool, and there's many tools in the toolbox.
1
SPEAKER_00
For some people, whether it's genetic or epigenetic or just their situation that they're in in life or their mental health or their hormone health,
1
SPEAKER_00
 it makes it very difficult for them to lose weight, almost like it's more difficult for someone in quicksand to get out.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you can teach a person how to dig, that's your lifestyle interventions, but you should also give them a shovel to help out.
1
SPEAKER_00
It doesn't necessarily mean that you throw a shovel at them, but that's where medications and supplements come in to address, whether it's insulin resistance or whether it's their mental health or their hormone health, to help give them the tool to do it themselves.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Mmm, okay, so the counting the calories works for some doesn't work for everyone
1
SPEAKER_01
 What else would you suggest they do then?
1
SPEAKER_01
What have you seen has been really effective consistently for people you've worked with?
1
SPEAKER_00
When I write a prescription for this, I have several different areas or boxes that I can circle.
1
SPEAKER_00
And one of them is number of meals per day.
1
SPEAKER_00
One of them is macronutrients, for example, carbohydrates.
1
SPEAKER_00
One of them is timing of meals.
1
SPEAKER_00
 One of them is eating speed.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there's a lot of strategies to develop good eating speed habits.
1
SPEAKER_00
For example, split your meal into three different portions, consume one, wait 10 minutes, consume the next one if you would like, wait 10 minutes, and then consume the last one if you would like.
1
SPEAKER_01
So don't just put it all in your mouth in 10 seconds, is what I'm hearing you say, which is kind of my whole childhood.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just like eat it as fast as you can,
1
SPEAKER_01
 Not know that you're full and just keep eating more, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
These are extremely powerful for pediatric patients for childhood obesity.
1
SPEAKER_00
I believe in the New England Journal of Medicine did a study and it was called the turtle bite study where every five or ten bites at some interval, the kids took one bite that was extremely slow and it was helpful for recomposition of those kids.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
You mean, recomposition of their bodies?
1
SPEAKER_00
When you're in the field of pediatric obesity medicine, you're not really going, your end target's not weight loss.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's usually weight gain, but a body recomposition.
1
SPEAKER_01
Huh.
1
SPEAKER_01
So less fat.
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_01
Weight gain, but more like you're growing as a child either way, but it's diversifying the weight gain, I guess, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_01
Directing it in another place.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so we have meals per day, timing of meals, eating speed.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think you said one or two others.
1
SPEAKER_00
Timing of meals, that would kind of incorporate intermittent fasting, which is not, it's more of a health tool rather than a weight loss tool.
1
SPEAKER_00
Meals per day, eating speed, timing.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm sure there are other tools.
1
SPEAKER_00
Those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you were just saying, hey, listen, I don't want to count calories, you know, I'm probably not going to do the intermittent fasting thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
 I'm not going to eat slower or like split it up in three things.
1
SPEAKER_01
That seems like too much work for me.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I will eat one less meal a day, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or I'll only eat a certain amount of meals and then I'll essentially be intermittent fasting in that process.
1
SPEAKER_01
But if I looked at it as, okay, what would my meals per day look like?
1
SPEAKER_01
If I wanted to consume a little less calories, obviously I'm going to feel hungry, but when can I do it where I'm not going to want to munch on extra calories?
1
SPEAKER_01
What would that be?
1
SPEAKER_01
Skip dinner?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that, you know, what does that look like?
1
SPEAKER_00
 I would say skip eating after dinner and don't even worry about taking away a meal.
1
SPEAKER_00
No eating after 7pm.
1
SPEAKER_00
That being said, if you do remove one meal, whether it's breakfast or lunch or dinner, it is not helpful at all for weight loss or body composition.
1
SPEAKER_01
 To remove one meal, it's not helpful.
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in isolation, removing one meal is not helpful at all for weight loss.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
It's truly an intervention for health reasons if you would benefit from that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Less mTOR signaling, less growth signaling in cells in general, or more of a reprieve where your body's immune system has a chance to go throughout the rest of your cells and see if there is abnormal ones.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
 For most individuals, unless they like doing that for mental clarity or whatever benefit, some people really like skipping breakfast.
1
SPEAKER_00
But many people, especially those that struggle with metabolic syndrome, have other pathologies.
1
SPEAKER_00
There are several new ones.
1
SPEAKER_00
There is sleep eating syndrome, where you eat
1
SPEAKER_00
 You're sleeping, you wake up, and then you eat and you don't even realize it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You see that there's a bag of chips and you literally don't even remember it, almost like sleepwalking.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there's also night eating where you consume almost all of your calories between dinner and bedtime.
1
SPEAKER_00
Often these individuals also stay up late at night.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Those are chips, snacks, and other like kind of emptier calories, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_00
But they don't eat breakfast.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
Ice cream, cookies, or whatever it might be, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that's the time where you could really, if you just stop eating after dinner, you'll eat less calories.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that sounds like you're still at kind of like the even maintenance.
1
SPEAKER_01
You're not a caloric deficit, correct?
1
SPEAKER_01
 unless you eat less in each meal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_00
And obviously it's possible to be in a deficit and do that as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that's your biggest bang for the buck, is not eating anything after dinner.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because society values family dinners and also social dinners with colleagues and whatnot, it would be very difficult to tell everybody to stop eating dinner.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you wanted to design the perfect, like in a lab, Truman Show style, whatever you want to call it,
1
SPEAKER_00
 Not eating after about 3 p.m.
1
SPEAKER_00
Would be even more beneficial so you for weight loss For health reasons well not weight loss.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't think it would have any effect with weight loss Maybe it would but that I know of it has not been studied
1
SPEAKER_00
 Gotcha.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it's truly because you could still consume all your calories in the morning and in the afternoon before three o'clock for the day.
1
SPEAKER_01
You could still consume a lot of calories is what you're saying.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you'd still have to cut the amount of calories in that timing window.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then you'd just be intermittent fasting longer, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Which would help for health benefits and maybe it would, I guess, help cleanse some of the dead cells and kind of like regenerate new cells, that type of thing, but not necessarily for weight loss, is what I'm hearing you say.
1
SPEAKER_01
But at the end of the day, it sounds like it's a caloric deficit.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, and it's just a matter of helping provide individuals with the tools that will work best for them.
1
SPEAKER_00
So for some, they might need a shovel, and for some, they might want to want and or need a backhoe.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
 It doesn't seem like you've ever been out of shape.
1
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever been overweight?
1
SPEAKER_00
When I had my first child, I was about 40 pounds overweight.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I could hardly tell because I'm so... You're tall.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's hard to see.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it's kind of like the fat just a little bit everywhere, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So how did you burn that 40 pounds?
1
SPEAKER_00
 What did you do?
1
SPEAKER_00
I eliminated all liquid calories.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ate foods of low caloric density, but high nutrient density.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like what?
1
SPEAKER_00
These five types of food groups?
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of salmon.
1
SPEAKER_00
I love spinach.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had a lot of spinach that would kind of go under the fiber category.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I love carrots, although carrots don't have a lot of dietary fiber.
1
SPEAKER_00
They're just kind of empty, insoluble fiber, if you will.
1
SPEAKER_01
Not totally, of course.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's not many calories.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And a few months later, I was kind of back at my baseline.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
40 pounds just like that in a few months?
1
SPEAKER_01
Just by changing the way you ate?
1
SPEAKER_00
My biggest intervention was I eliminated all liquid calories and I did not have
1
SPEAKER_00
 Any more than two Caloric beverages whether it was a you know, like a coffee with a bunch of cream in it I did learn to like black coffee during that time and I still do but no more than two Beverages with calories in them per month interesting because like something like a bulletproof coffee Which is you know, a lot of people talk about intermittent fasting with a bulletproof that still has a lot of calories, doesn't it?
1
SPEAKER_01
I
1
SPEAKER_00
 I don't know the macronutrient profile on Bulletproof offhand, but I believe it's mostly protein.
1
SPEAKER_00
The one exception to that for some individuals could be a protein shake, and you would probably want to consume this in the morning rather than the evening.
1
SPEAKER_00
That way you can have the benefit of some degree of appetite suppression.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Some protein shakes like casein, which is an interesting one to talk about because it can also affect prolactin.
1
SPEAKER_00
And some people negatively, if their prolactin is too high, casein can increase it.
1
SPEAKER_00
But casein is also digested very slowly and it has a lot of amino acids in it that will activate mTOR.
1
SPEAKER_00
So during your eating window through the day, if you consume your casein at the beginning of the eating window, then it could be helpful to provide satiety and also help with anabolism.
1
SPEAKER_00
 But if you consume it at the end of your day, then it's gonna essentially cut short your fasting period.
1
SPEAKER_01
So if you have a protein shake after 8 o'clock, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Say someone's working out consistently and they're doing a workout in the morning or in the afternoon.
1
SPEAKER_01
They eat their dinner, but then they're still hungry and they say, well, let me just do a protein shake, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It's 150, 200 calories, but it's 20 to 40 grams of protein.
1
SPEAKER_01
Are you saying having that because it got the calories, it's extending the eating window
1
SPEAKER_01
 So it's not allowing you to burn off those calories more?
1
SPEAKER_01
What are you saying there?
1
SPEAKER_00
That would be more for health reasons.
1
SPEAKER_00
For example, let's take an intermittent faster that right before bed every night, they have a shake of 50 grams of casein.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that's essentially making their intermittent fasting for health reasons worthless because their mTOR is still very active for many hours at night.
1
SPEAKER_00
 However, if you are looking at the satiety benefit of specifically protein, if your shake has just protein in it, then that's going to help provide some degree of satiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, you're not hungry.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there's obviously a lot of factors to this.
1
SPEAKER_00
One that has received a lot of press recently is called GLP-1.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's all these different drugs like semaglutide that are GLP-1 agonists.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And if you look at carbs, carbs spike up GLP-1 very quickly.
1
SPEAKER_00
GLP-1 is produced in a lot of areas, but a lot of it is the gut and also the pancreas.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then fat will increase very, very slowly.
1
SPEAKER_00
 but it will increase GLP-1 for a long time and protein is somewhere in between.
1
SPEAKER_01
Of these six areas, which one will affect hormones the most if you neglect?
1
SPEAKER_01
If you have the other five that you're doing a great job at, but you neglect your nutrition and it's all processed food and high calorie, sugary drinks, or you don't exercise at all, but you eat perfect and you do everything else perfect.
1
SPEAKER_01
 or you don't get that much sleep, or your stress is through the roof, whatever it might be, or you have no spiritual compass, which one do you feel like will hurt you the most?
1
SPEAKER_01
 If the other five are great and one is out of sync.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would say diet and exercise hurt you equally the most.
1
SPEAKER_00
However, exercise is slightly more acute.
1
SPEAKER_00
You'll see a billion different studies and a lot of them are talking about the release of things like testosterone or growth hormone during or right after exercise.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So they can give a bit of an effect, but a lot of that's autocrine or paracrine, for example.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's different types of IGF-1, which is the growth hormone sequela.
1
SPEAKER_00
So when you're looking at those studies, they can affect you to some degree acutely, and a lot of that is just how you feel in the long run.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you just all of a sudden stopped exercise versus stopped eating a healthy diet, they will affect you relatively equally.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Like the hormone effects of exercise are more easy to see in the acute time phase and maybe this stuff is mostly just scientifically significant but not clinically significant.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
But there is very clear statistically significant data on it.
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you think is the biggest risk for men and the biggest risk for women over the next five to ten years?
1
SPEAKER_01
 of what's happening in the world, the environment, the way people are eating, the way people are not moving their bodies, what is the biggest risk?
1
SPEAKER_00
I'd say it's probably relatively similar.
1
SPEAKER_00
The biggest risk for some time has been metabolic syndrome, and part of that is not getting outside.
1
SPEAKER_00
One of the S's is sunlight, and that does encompass heat exposure and cold exposure and walking and just being outdoors.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Humans are meant to be outdoors and we have been for a long time now We have these wonderful artificial environments, but it's not necessarily good for health and in the last few years We have been indoors and not socializing and not outside more than ever So that is going to be fuel on the fire of metabolic syndrome.
1
SPEAKER_00
What is metabolic syndrome mean?
1
SPEAKER_00
 Metabolic syndrome is a kind of a constellation of disease that includes insulin resistance, high body fat, specifically abdominal body fat, a high BMI, a large abdominal circumference around the umbilicus, which is the belly button, and high cholesterol, high glucose, high A1C, which is the average glucose over the last few months.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And that together is metabolic syndrome, also known as prediabetes, which about 40 to 50% of Americans have, and many of them don't know it.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Almost 50% of Americans have pre-diabetes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when do you reach the point of pre-diabetes?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it BMI, is it something else?
1
SPEAKER_00
There's a couple of ways to check it.
1
SPEAKER_00
One is two different fasting blood glucoses, truly fasting, over 100.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's actually not a great way to check it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Better ways to check it is an A1C, which is the hemoglobin molecule that is glycosylated, so it has a glucose attached.
1
SPEAKER_00
 You can also check it with a glucose tolerance test, which is quite good, or things like fructosamine or glycosylated albumin.
1
SPEAKER_00
Those are just proteins that, again, have a glucose attached.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you're looking at how your body partitions glucose in the vascular system versus inside the cells.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Okay, so how do we prevent metabolic syndrome?
1
SPEAKER_01
Does that mean we got to be outside more frequently?
1
SPEAKER_01
Does it mean we be outside longer?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it taking, you know, 10, 20 minute breaks outside?
1
SPEAKER_01
What does that look like?
1
SPEAKER_00
 It encompasses all six of the lifestyle pillars.
1
SPEAKER_00
Again, mostly diet, lifestyle, and being outside.
1
SPEAKER_00
But some of it just has to do with, and these are less strong effects, but some of it is the endocrine disruptors in the environment, like bisphenol A.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And some of it is the processed foods, the trans fat.
1
SPEAKER_00
Those things will have a significant but small effect, but it could be additive and cumulative as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
So all those other small things that add up.
1
SPEAKER_00
 will have an effect, and they're just, again, they're maybe not a log, but they're a stick on the fire of metabolic syndrome in our society.
1
SPEAKER_00
Screening is one of the best ways, if you screen for it, and there's actually a goal, one of the national health organizations has a goal called Healthy People 2030.
1
SPEAKER_00
And one of the goals is to decrease the pre-diabetes prevalence, I believe,
1
SPEAKER_00
 from 40 to 34%.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's a pretty small decrease, but it's good to have a goal in the right direction.
1
SPEAKER_00
How are they planning to do that in the next eight years?
1
SPEAKER_00
To screen people, because if you screen them, then you can treat them.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every year, there's many new medications and supplements, which again, are just tools to help for metabolic syndrome.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you treat people that have metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes, then it is considered completely reversible.
1
SPEAKER_00
 However, if they develop diabetes and it is very difficult.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's very challenging.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you're in the Midwest, you're in Kansas.
1
SPEAKER_01
I lived in, you know, I grew up in Ohio.
1
SPEAKER_01
I lived in Minnesota.
1
SPEAKER_01
I lived in Missouri and St.
1
SPEAKER_01
Louis.
1
SPEAKER_01
I lived in Alabama for a little bit of time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now I live in Los Angeles.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it seems to be when you go to the Midwest, you see a lot of obesity, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
You see a lot of people who are probably fit in this category of pre-diabetes or they have diabetes, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
 they're struggling, let's say, with their weight and with their weight loss.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that an accurate statement when you're out and about with the family at a different events or at the store and you see this, correct?
1
SPEAKER_01
Why do you feel like it might be more in the middle of America than what it seems to be on the edges of America?
1
SPEAKER_00
It's almost all lifestyle.
1
SPEAKER_00
People are taking very similar medications and supplements.
1
SPEAKER_00
 People are not moving as much.
1
SPEAKER_00
They drive more.
1
SPEAKER_00
Some cities are almost exclusively driving back and forth.
1
SPEAKER_00
You never see bikes on the road or joggers or hikers.
1
SPEAKER_00
And this tends to correlate very closely.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can look at an epidemiological map and you can see that the Midwest and the South are usually the worst.
1
SPEAKER_01
 The Midwest and the South.
1
SPEAKER_00
Higher incidences of obesity, pre-diabetes, many different health criteria.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of that is lifestyle.
1
SPEAKER_01
They're just not moving their body.
1
SPEAKER_01
They're not walking, biking, hiking, running.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they have different diets too.
1
SPEAKER_01
And very processed diets, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
High calorie, sugary drinks, alcohol, all that stuff, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that an educational thing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that a cultural thing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it a society?
1
SPEAKER_01
 Like norm, what is that?
1
SPEAKER_01
You think it's a combination?
1
SPEAKER_00
It's a combination.
1
SPEAKER_00
One of the terms that's been thrown out there is called food intelligence.
1
SPEAKER_00
So on one side of this, it's not necessarily a dichotomy, but on one side of a spectrum or continuum,
1
SPEAKER_00
 You have individuals that might not have very good at food intelligence.
1
SPEAKER_01
Or access, you mean, or education around it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Food deserts is part of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Access is part of it, too.
1
SPEAKER_00
And of course, there's people who are uninsured or underinsured.
1
SPEAKER_00
But even if you account for confounding variables of socioeconomic status and being a certain percentage above or below the federal poverty level, you see that people make different choices with food.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there's no such thing as good or evil foods.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I'm sure you and I have different preferences too.
1
SPEAKER_00
For example, maybe I love spinach and you hate it.
1
SPEAKER_00
 But when you're learning how to eat healthier and healthier foods, some people will swing all the way to the other side of the continuum, where they develop conditions like, and this is an official term, but orthorexia, or I call it intellectualized eating, where they're terrified of eating something that might be an unhealthy, bad food.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like any process, they're terrified of it, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Which causes more stress and anxiety,
1
SPEAKER_01
 As opposed to just, okay, I'm going to have some of this, you know, 10, 20% of the time and allow myself to have some as opposed to being so strict, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Which could cause hormonal side effects too, correct?
1
SPEAKER_01
If you're stressed about it all day long and worried about it,
1
SPEAKER_01
 it's not gonna allow you to just kind of relax when you eat.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it sounds like pre-diabetes, because I remember hearing years ago it was like a third of American is obese or pre-diabetic or something, and now it's 40 to 50% range?
1
SPEAKER_00
There's an interesting study done, and they looked at what's called metabolically healthy.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they looked at A1c, and they looked at glucose, they looked at BMI, and I believe abdominal circumference around the belly button, and also lipids, so cholesterol.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So the cholesterol was, you know, that'll add a percentage of people, that added about 30% of individuals that didn't meet the other criteria, but only, it was 6.7, I think it was 6.8%.
1
SPEAKER_00
So only about 7% of Americans were considered metabolically healthy by those parameters.
1
SPEAKER_01
 7% of America.
1
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you removed cholesterol, that would increase to about 35 or 40%.
1
SPEAKER_00
Gotcha.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that's still not a very high number.
1
SPEAKER_01
Holy cow.
1
SPEAKER_01
How does hormone health affect relationship health and the quality of your relationships with your partners or in business, in your career, intimately, and family?
1
SPEAKER_00
 There's a lot of interplay with the amino acid hormones or neurotransmitter hormones.
1
SPEAKER_00
So testosterone and dopamine are sort of close cousins.
1
SPEAKER_00
And estrogen is somewhat of a cousin with serotonin as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when you begin to have hormone dysfunction, one,
1
SPEAKER_00
 without realizing it, your partner or your family might notice changes in your mood or changes in your behavior, which might be disconcerting to them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then on top of that, some people will take on what we call the sick role.
1
SPEAKER_00
And this is extremely interesting when it comes to men's health.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because when you look at mental health, things like anxiety, stress as a general overarching term, or even depression,
1
SPEAKER_00
 Men do not like going to the doctor.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would say more often than not, I ask the male what brings them in and they say, the wife made me come in.
1
SPEAKER_00
But part of that is that the male doesn't want to take on the sick role.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's almost this, this is too strong of a term, but kind of like a passive, they're passively self-harming by not wanting to go to the doctor.
1
SPEAKER_00
They know something is wrong,
1
SPEAKER_00
 But they don't want to go because they don't want to be seen as weak taking on that sick role.
1
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it could hurt the relationship for sure if you're not willing to, you know, take care of the hormones, if you're not willing to check on it, if you feel like something's off and take care of it, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
 I'm seeing that with men, speaking of men, sperm count is down in the country, I guess probably in the world too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Testosterone is down, is that right, sperm count?
1
SPEAKER_01
And there are other things happening with men.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that all related to these six elements too and to their hormones?
1
SPEAKER_01
And how can men start to reclaim their sperm count and testosterone in healthy ways?
1
SPEAKER_00
 I think a lot of it is related.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's not necessarily a direct correlation.
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of it is the
2
SPEAKER_02
 culture as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
With testosterone and sperm count?
2
SPEAKER_02
Not necessarily directly, but indirectly yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
 So you have a culture or, in general, you're doing less physical labor, you're doing less manual labor jobs, and for thousands of years, in general, males work outside.
2
SPEAKER_01
Work outside, lifting heavy stuff, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Correct, a physical job, and something that
2
SPEAKER_02
 you know, provides, it's lower on that chart of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's your physical needs.
2
SPEAKER_02
For many thousands of years, humans have had a difficulty achieving those physical needs.
2
SPEAKER_02
And now that we don't have that, it almost makes it harder to, because without thinking, if you're going for your physical needs and you're moving and you're probably not consuming a ton of calories, you're just trying to make ends meet and trying to make enough food for the family.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Then you're not worried about self-actualization, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it's almost like a blessing in disguise It's a blessing but a harm that we just worry about that now So men need to be outside more moving more lifting heavier things Is that what you recommend and and women as well as well?
2
SPEAKER_01
 What happens if women aren't outside lifting heavy things?
2
SPEAKER_01
Should women be lifting heavy things for their body weight and size?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
In fact, I would say in general, the average male who is trying to optimize health probably needs to live more like the average female who's trying to optimize her health and vice versa.
2
SPEAKER_02
 So the female probably needs to do more resistance training and eat more protein, and the male probably needs to do more cardiovascular training and think about things like fiber and hydration and things like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
 and relationships and connection and all those things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think women need to eat more protein and lift more weights or do more resistance training?
2
SPEAKER_02
There's always exceptions to this, but many women will come to the doctor or even just start a new fitness phase and they will find some sort of cardio to do and they will go on a
2
SPEAKER_02
 I'd call it a crash diet.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's not a perfect term, but a very low calorie diet even without the supervision of a doctor.
2
SPEAKER_02
And by the way, if it's beneath around 1,200 calories per day, it should always be under the supervision of a physician.
2
SPEAKER_01
For men and women?
2
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_02
But in general, you see many more female patients that do that.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And along with that very low calorie diet, they're also consuming a very low amount of protein and they're not doing resistance training.
2
SPEAKER_02
The average individuals who is losing weight of every pound that you lose, about 35% of that is lean body mass.
2
SPEAKER_01
 You don't want to lose your lean muscle.
2
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_02
And statistically, or on average, a female is not going to have as much lean body mass that they can lose.
2
SPEAKER_02
If they lose 20 pounds, and 7 pounds of that is lean body mass, they lose all of that metabolic potential.
2
SPEAKER_02
To burn, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
To burn.
2
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you want more muscle you have,
2
SPEAKER_01
 The thing that women will say is, well, I don't want to look bulky, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's what a lot of women say.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don't want to look like a man or I don't want to be bulky and have these huge muscles.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you want to have a certain amount of lean muscle mass, which will help your metabolism, will help you burn the fat more or process the fat right into the muscle.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And so without that lean muscle, you're losing all the extra health benefits.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
Unless a female is injecting anabolic steroids, lifting weights or resistance training is not going to make them look more bulky.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's not.
2
SPEAKER_02
They might look more bulky than the average female at baseline, but... Who doesn't work out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_02
But that being said, them compared to their other self in an alternate universe, if they do resistance training and lift weights, they will look less bulky.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
 What does your workouts look like then?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it one a day?
2
SPEAKER_01
And if you're in the, I'm trying to lose 20 to 40 pounds, having a child phase that you're in, is it two a days a few times a week to help burn extra calories?
2
SPEAKER_01
What does it look like for you?
2
SPEAKER_02
I very seldom do two a days.
2
SPEAKER_02
And as an athlete, perhaps you do more exercise than me, but I try to exercise at least two times a week.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And I feel best when I exercise five to six times a week or even seven times a week.
2
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes it is particularly difficult if there's sick kids or there's a lot of duties to be done.
2
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes you can kind of exercise by doing farm chores or taking care of the chickens or the garden, but it's just not the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
I'm going to carry the bags around the block a couple of times for 10 minutes until I have to throw it in the garbage or something, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
 Yeah, just not the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do some curls while you're like walking to the backyard or the front, you know, the front street to drop off bags.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Even heavy manual labor jobs like cutting firewood, it does not replace the need to exercise.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
How long do you work out for if it's ideal?
2
SPEAKER_01
You have all the time in the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
How much time would that be?
2
SPEAKER_02
If I had all the time in the world, I probably would do two days.
2
SPEAKER_02
Really?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, seven days a week.
2
SPEAKER_02
But a lot of it would just be easy, perhaps some easy zone two cardio.
2
SPEAKER_01
Got you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some light jogging or walking up hills or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And is there a benefit then to twice a day, you know, 30 to 60 minutes twice a day over just one intense 60-minute session.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don't think there would be any benefit.
2
SPEAKER_02
I'm also not an exercise physiologist.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I doubt that there would be a significant benefit and if you did two days that were vigorous, it would be more correct.
2
SPEAKER_02
Including hormonally, it could be very detrimental.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
 But if you did an intense, not intense, but you just did a solid resistance training, you lift, and then the second workout was a 30-minute jog or run, would that affect the hormones in a negative way if you did a lift and then a run at night?
2
SPEAKER_02
 20 to 40 minutes it shouldn't assuming adequate caloric intake So, you know if you exercise twice a day, you're gonna need to consume more calories to be close to your maintenance What if you wanted to burn lose weight or burn more fat?
2
SPEAKER_02
Exercise and this is what's really interesting your even if you exercise twice a day and you burn a huge amount of calories and
2
SPEAKER_02
 Your body will increase the hunger to make up for that.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you'll probably feel like you're starving, especially if you're trying to be in a deficit, if you're doing two a day.
2
SPEAKER_02
It will not help you lose weight faster, but it will help you maintain more lean body mass and it will help keep it off.
2
SPEAKER_02
You can study two groups and tell one of them to exercise and one of them not.
2
SPEAKER_02
 and they will lose very equitable amounts of weight.
2
SPEAKER_02
Based on nutrition and calories?
2
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
2
SPEAKER_02
But if you just look at the average individual, and some people will follow, there is a show called The Biggest Loser, and some people follow graduates of that, and they're no different than the normal population when it comes to their chance of rebound.
2
SPEAKER_02
So about 90% of people, if not more, will gain back the weight that they lost,
2
SPEAKER_02
 So it's very common to see someone who has lost weight and then gained it back, but relatively rare to see someone who's kept it off.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the studies look at the common denominator of what that five or 10% of people have in common.
2
SPEAKER_02
And as they've picked up an exercise habit, a movement pastime to last a lifetime.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's a lifestyle habit, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's not a, we're gonna do this for six months and then be done.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's, this is who I am, a new identity for the rest of my life.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And that could be, you know, I'm going to work out in the mornings and then I'm going to do a walk for 20, 30 minutes after my dinner.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that's just my routine now where your body is just kind of like burning that extra calories or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that your routine?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's not my routine necessarily, but I feel like I want that to be my routine.
2
SPEAKER_01
I feel like that would be a great, healthy, and I also think it would,
2
SPEAKER_01
 help you probably with digestive things, and I also think it would help you, you know, connect with the person you're walking with, that's your partner.
2
SPEAKER_01
I also think it would probably help you sleep better, as opposed to just, I'm gonna eat and sit on the couch for the next couple hours.
2
SPEAKER_01
 That's my interpretation, I might be wrong, but that's what I would assume would happen.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think that would be a great intervention.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's interesting to look across cultures at what people do.
2
SPEAKER_02
For example, in Spain, they have the siesta, and after lunch, people often walk somewhere and then walk back, even among their colleagues.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I think that would be a great trend to start.
2
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is walks after lunch.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I love this, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
This has been inspiring stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is there anything else you feel like we need to talk about to address
2
SPEAKER_01
 optimizing hormone health, losing body fat, and just being a healthier human.
2
SPEAKER_02
Many individuals ask me about optimizing hormone health for sports performance.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that kind of goes into the discussion of performance enhancing drugs.
2
SPEAKER_02
But at the end of the day, it is possible to optimize your hormones specifically to help with athletic performance.
2
SPEAKER_02
 If your starting profile is decent, then it's not gonna be a very powerful intervention.
2
SPEAKER_02
But if you're borderline hypogonadal, or even if you're female and you have a borderline low testosterone or low androgens to start, then it can be quite powerful.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what would be the main supplements to optimize hormones people should be taking on a consistent basis?
2
SPEAKER_02
 My favorite supplements for the general population, of course, because again, it always depends, would be creatine, which is very hard for your body to synthesize as much creatine.
2
SPEAKER_02
I get asked very often about creatine's effect on an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase.
2
SPEAKER_02
It will slightly increase your testosterone and your DHT.
2
SPEAKER_02
 5-alpha reductase converts testosterone to DHT.
2
SPEAKER_01
5-what is it called?
2
SPEAKER_02
5-what?
2
SPEAKER_02
5-alpha reductase.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's the enzyme that finasteride works on.
2
SPEAKER_02
Many supplements also work on this enzyme.
2
SPEAKER_02
Creatine will slightly increase this, but not to a degree in most people where it will hasten hair loss.
2
SPEAKER_02
Many people are concerned with high DHT because of hair loss and also prostate enlargement.
2
SPEAKER_02
 So creatine is not a huge concern for those two reasons.
2
SPEAKER_01
So those two, the creatine, the 5-alpha?
2
SPEAKER_02
Creatine works on 5-alpha reductase.
2
SPEAKER_02
That's just an enzyme.
2
SPEAKER_02
Got it.
2
SPEAKER_02
So depending on your level, then some people might want to increase the activity of this enzyme and some people might want to decrease it, but not without talking to their doctor.
2
SPEAKER_02
Sure, sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
The next supplement I would say is L-carnitine.
2
SPEAKER_02
 L-carnitine is the smallest peptide.
2
SPEAKER_02
So it's a peptide therapy, I guess.
2
SPEAKER_02
You can also take it, but it's not very orally bioavailable.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's just two amino acids that are together.
2
SPEAKER_02
And you can also inject L-carnitine.
2
SPEAKER_02
 L-carnitine is found in red meat.
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SPEAKER_02
That's why it's called carnitine, the same base word of carne.
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SPEAKER_02
But it will increase the density of your androgen receptor in the cytoplasm.
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SPEAKER_02
So even with the same testosterone level, you can kind of do more with it.
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SPEAKER_02
And then it will also increase the amount of energy that is pushed inside your powerhouse of the cell, which is called the mitochondria.
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SPEAKER_02
Okay, anything else?
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SPEAKER_02
 I'd say another one Anral mentioned is ensuring that your cysteine and glutathione are optimized.
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SPEAKER_02
Some people just take glutathione by itself.
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SPEAKER_02
It's your body's main antioxidant, and your body usually converts it to its active form when it's inside the cell, but you can take precursors that can potentially help.
2
SPEAKER_01
 It's inspiring, Kyle.
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SPEAKER_01
I'm so grateful that you're here and you're sharing your wisdom.
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SPEAKER_01
I want people to follow you before I ask the final couple questions.
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SPEAKER_01
They can go to GilletteHealth.com or also follow you on Instagram, KyleGilletteMD.
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SPEAKER_01
You've got a lot of wisdom, teachings, and micro content there that can help people as well.
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SPEAKER_01
 You answer a lot of questions.
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SPEAKER_01
It's really powerful stuff You have a clinic as well in Kansas City near Kansas City Where you're helping with a lot of these things as well.
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SPEAKER_01
So you guys bring in patients and it sounds like
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SPEAKER_01
 You will prescribe a lot of things before medicine is what I'm hearing you say in this clinic.
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SPEAKER_01
You'll do an assessment, you'll prescribe one of these six things and things that they can do to optimize through food and exercise first.
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SPEAKER_01
Then if medicine is needed, you'll prescribe that.
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SPEAKER_01
Is that kind of what I'm hearing?
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SPEAKER_02
I would describe it as holistic care.
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SPEAKER_02
So you're caring for the individual and we do our best to provide whatever they may need.
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SPEAKER_02
 When they join our clinic, whether it's via telemedicine or in person in Kansas City, or hopefully both, they essentially become really good friends, almost like family to us, and we care very deeply about all of them, and we want them to have the highest quality and quantity of life.
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SPEAKER_01
So you do telemedicine as well, so if someone's not in Kansas City, they can be a patient through calling in?
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SPEAKER_01
How does that work?
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SPEAKER_02
 Often so.
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SPEAKER_02
We do like to see people in our Kansas City clinic, but I actually just published an article about telemedicine in the MSL Journal.
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SPEAKER_02
The patient population that is not able to see their doctor in person every time is very underserved, and often they're also uninsured or underinsured.
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SPEAKER_02
Often they live in rural areas, but perhaps they live in a big city as well, and they just
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SPEAKER_02
 Whether it's traffic or time, you drive 30 minutes, you wait an hour, and then you finally see the doctor and you've wasted an entire day.
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SPEAKER_02
Whereas if it's telemedicine, maybe it's just a follow-up or a lab follow-up, and you very quickly touch base, and it saves you a lot of time.
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SPEAKER_02
It's never going to be as good as an in-person visit where you can do a physical exam if you need to.
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SPEAKER_02
 But the two together, you're getting a visit where that person would likely not have healthcare at all.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so it's better than nothing.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And how do people get access to that?
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SPEAKER_01
Just go to your website and they can sign up and call in?
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SPEAKER_02
If they go to GilletteHealth.com, they can schedule a free intake if they're seriously interested in the clinic.
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SPEAKER_02
 And we will chat with you.
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SPEAKER_01
Very cool.
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SPEAKER_01
And what are the type of people that you work with specifically?
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SPEAKER_01
What types of cases?
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SPEAKER_02
We do quite a bit.
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SPEAKER_02
We do a lot of hormone pathology.
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SPEAKER_02
We do a lot of obesity medicine.
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SPEAKER_02
We do a lot of fertility as well.
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SPEAKER_02
So I'd say we really do quite a bit of everything.
2
SPEAKER_02
Sure.
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SPEAKER_01
Those are more your specialties.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
I'd say we have probably 55 to 60% female.
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SPEAKER_02
 and to the rest male.
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SPEAKER_02
And in general, we concentrate on adult patients.
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SPEAKER_01
Gotcha.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, cool.
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SPEAKER_01
So I want people to follow you, check it out.
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SPEAKER_01
What else can we do to support you today?
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SPEAKER_01
Where can we send people to besides your website and social media and the clinic?
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SPEAKER_01
Anything else we can do?
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SPEAKER_02
 We have a brand new YouTube channel, that's Gillette Health.
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SPEAKER_02
So we dive very deep in the rabbit hole of a lot of health niches.
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SPEAKER_02
Usually every other video we have one that is kind of like off the deep end technical, and then one more aimed at the layman.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, cool.
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SPEAKER_01
Check you out on Instagram, on YouTube, and the website.
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SPEAKER_01
We'll have it all linked up.
2
SPEAKER_01
This has been really inspiring.
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SPEAKER_01
I want to acknowledge you, Kyle, for
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SPEAKER_01
 your commitment to this.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, you're a young guy, but you've been obsessing about this since your teens, it sounds like, of really figuring out how to optimize total human health and hormones and all these different things.
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SPEAKER_01
So to be diving into the research the way you do, I know you study it so much.
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SPEAKER_01
 to be practicing with people on a consistent basis to see what results are working and how to improve that.
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SPEAKER_01
And now to be sharing this publicly online with people is really inspiring.
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SPEAKER_01
So I acknowledge you for that gift and for trying to help heal a lot of people's physical health.
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SPEAKER_01
This is a question I ask everyone at the end.
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SPEAKER_01
It's called three truths.
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SPEAKER_01
So imagine it's your last day on earth many years away.
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SPEAKER_01
You live the perfect life you want to live.
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SPEAKER_01
 And for whatever reason though, you've got to take all of your work with you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So all of your writing, your teaching, your content, YouTube videos, all this stuff, it's got to go to the next place at the end of your life.
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SPEAKER_01
Go somewhere else.
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SPEAKER_01
 But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world.
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SPEAKER_01
And this is all we would have to remember you by, three truths that you would share.
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SPEAKER_01
What would be those three truths for you?
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SPEAKER_02
These three will probably be more practical rather than metaphysical.
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SPEAKER_02
But I would say each human body is a machine.
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SPEAKER_02
And just like you test a car coming off the assembly line and you hook it up to the computer and evaluate all the different markers,
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SPEAKER_02
 When you're ideally young, but if you haven't right now, get a baseline lab panel with everything.
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SPEAKER_02
Not just hormones, but all of your lipid and cardiovascular and inflammatory markers as well.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And then the second one is know your tribe or know who your main group is.
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SPEAKER_02
So whether it's your family or your close friends, perhaps your doctor's even involved, perhaps they're not, it doesn't really matter.
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SPEAKER_02
But find what your in-group is and come up with a purpose or a reason to live on that Maslow's hierarchy of needs that we lived, that we talked about earlier.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And then three is just don't be afraid to talk about things.
2
SPEAKER_02
So, you know, one of the things that's been popularized recently is sexual health.
2
SPEAKER_02
And now men are not near as ashamed to talk about even optimizing their sexual health or sexual health pathology.
2
SPEAKER_02
Mental health has been popularized as well.
2
SPEAKER_02
So now it's perfectly fine to talk about mental health issues.
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SPEAKER_02
 And that's wonderful.
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SPEAKER_02
And hopefully hormone health is soon to follow.
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SPEAKER_01
Sure.
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SPEAKER_02
So don't be afraid to talk about that.
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SPEAKER_02
And also don't be afraid to talk about your spirituality or other taboo topics.
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SPEAKER_02
A conversation will just bring synergy and benefit for both parties.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I love that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those are great Kyle.
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SPEAKER_01
 Final question for you.
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SPEAKER_01
What's your definition of greatness?
2
SPEAKER_02
Definition of greatness is achieving something that you're very proud of so perhaps It's different but achieving something that you would look back and not regret.
2
SPEAKER_01
What's something that would you'd be proud of achieving?
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SPEAKER_02
 I think I'm proud of being able to share my thoughts.
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SPEAKER_02
This is me, I'm not playing a character.
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SPEAKER_02
I'm proud that I can sit and podcast like this one and say, well, you know, one, I'm a physician and I'm willing to test your hormones and people should do it more.
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SPEAKER_02
Two, that I'm a Christian.
2
SPEAKER_02
Three, that, you know, I have a family, I'm kind of a stereotypical Kansan and I fly to places like
2
SPEAKER_02
 like here and do these podcasts.
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SPEAKER_02
And it's just me.
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SPEAKER_02
And it's just because I'm willing to say what I've learned.
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SPEAKER_02
I really enjoy this.
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SPEAKER_02
And the only reason why I'm doing it is to help people.
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SPEAKER_02
So I'm proud of that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Love that, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, Kyle.
2
SPEAKER_01
Appreciate you being here, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, brother.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Thank you so much for listening.
2
SPEAKER_00
I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
2
SPEAKER_00
Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links.
2
SPEAKER_00
And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcasts as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
 I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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SPEAKER_00
And now it's time to go out there and do something great.