Episode 25 - Your Bloodwork Is “Normal”… So Why Do You Feel Terrible?

Business athletes, what is going on? Bringing you another episode, this one, your blood work is normal, so why do you feel terrible? Why doctor say you're fine, but you know that you're not. I cannot tell you the amount of times I've had this conversation where you'll either get your body work back and the portal that you're using it in will say everything's in normal ranges. By all intents and purposes, you're in great health or you go to your doctor because you feel like something's not right. Maybe your energy is low or you just can't concentrate or maybe you're not sleeping well or you libido's disappeared or you're all of a sudden just gaining weight and it just doesn't feel normal. And your doctor says, well, we ran your labs and everything looks fine. Maybe you just need to go see a psychologist. I've had many people share this experience with me and I really wanted to do an episode on this because in many ways this is an amalgamation of a few different previous episodes I've done where I touch on this point at certain points in different episodes, but I never really drilled down on it as a one coherent discussion. And I will tell you that even if you get your labs done and your labs are normal, I guarantee you that there is a lot of room for improvement. And I'm going to help you figure out how to determine that. That's the biggest thing. I'm going to help you figure out how do you determine where the improvements lie? How do you determine what you need to focus on? Because if you have these blind spots, you'll never really know what you could have become. That's the biggest thing is that people don't realize how much ROI they leave on the table. And I've had people come to me before and they were clearly not in shape. I've had people anywhere from 20 to 80 pounds overweight. And I would ask some questions, probing questions. Typically when someone comes to me, I like to ask a few questions about how they're feeling and where they're at. And I would have people say to me, "My energy feels great. Like my blood works normal. And I'm looking at them. And I'm thinking to myself, there is no way that you're optimal." You might be quite a quote, "normal." But the thing to remember is that we live in a sick society. We live in a weak, sick society where the average person is pathological. The average person has issues physically and mentally. And those normal ranges are essentially just a bell curve average. Do you really want to be part of the average? I mean, you're listening to the Business Athletic podcast because that's already not in your nature. You're already someone who's probably more curious about what your potential even looks like. And so I say this because the first thing to realize is that most physicians is well intentioned as they are. They're not looking at the full picture. They're not. And I'm going to break down exactly where and how you figure this out because this is going to be the stuff that you need to go away and either order or ask for and get clarity around. And I promise you when you do this, you will reveal like a treasure trove of stuff you can work on, which is a good thing. Don't think of you working on stuff because there's a bunch of stuff that's wrong as a bad thing. It's a good thing because it's shining light on the areas you can't improve. But I had a guy in my Business Athlete Council and he was saying how he did his brave men tests score. It kind of gives you an approximation of your brain chemistry. And one of the things that I said with him was I said, look, you know, all the different neurochemicals are not very good. But this is actually a good thing because it explains a lot of why you're feeling the way you're feeling. But also what it does is it helps you realize that you have a ton of untapped potential. That would you be more concerned if you got all your tests back and everything was perfect and you're feeling like crap. That to me would be worse because at that point, you're just kind of residing to the fact that this is going to be your life experience. No way, no way. So the first thing to know is that right out of the gate, most physicians, I would say most, they don't run very complete blood work analysis. You have to pay out a pocket for this to happen, guys. So for example, I will have someone, this is the common mistake. Someone will come to me and they're like, oh, what should I get for my blood work to run? And I kind of give them the list and they say, well, I'm going to go to my doctor and I'll see how much of this they can do. And straight away, I'm just thinking, you're just asking for headaches. You're just asking for headaches because now you're putting the decision making process into someone else's hands and it's going to be someone that's not geared around high performance. It's going to be someone that isn't trained to understand root cause medicine and they're not going to have an understanding of what to do. And so what happens is you go to your doctor and they run it through insurance and out of the say 200 biomarkers that they should be running for a really comprehensive panel to get a very good detailed insight as to where you're at. They run like 40. It's like you trying to put a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle together, but you have 700 pieces missing. How are you ever going to get a clear picture of what that puzzle actually looks like when there's 700 pieces missing? What I'm saying is that not all blood panels are created equal. There's like a basic insurance panel. There are more advanced wellness panels to all the way to like very advanced wellness panels. And so a very, very advanced wellness panel might have 500 different biomarkers. A pretty good one might have 200. A good one might have 100 and an average insurance based one might have 30 or 40. That's a very, very big difference. And all those biomarkers that you are not running, that's information that you're not getting. So and I'm going to give you some actual examples of that. The most common ones, the common pitfalls because I tell you, I see it when it comes to sex hormones, like testosterone, I see it when it comes to insulin sensitivity, like hemoglobin A1C. I see it across the board male and female. So we're going to dive in each because I want to shine light on the biggest bottlenecks. So you're aware of them. And then I want to tell you what you need to be focusing on to actually like improve some of these things. By the end of this episode, you're going to have a very good idea of where your blind spots are, but I'm going to give you some things that you can do and implement today that will help you improve how you feel. That's always my goal. How can we improve your energetic state? And when I say energetic state, I mean just the way you function and feel. People have it backwards. When they're thinking about a physical transformation, like weight loss, or wanting the bikini body or getting abs, they just think about macros and calories and workouts. They don't really think about optimizing the internal chemistry. That's almost like an afterthought. Their main focus is the weight loss. What I would actually tell you is that when you make your main focus optimizing the internal chemistry first, not only do you massively improve how you feel mentally, physically, but the physical result is just a byproduct. It's a nice fun byproduct of your body being in what I would consider flow state. That's why at 41 years old at the time of this podcast recording, it's why people often tell me I look like I'm in my early 30s. It's why I can run between 6 and 8% body fat and not have a bunch of injuries and not have a bunch of negative by feedback responses. I'm not even special. I've just cracked the code. That's exactly what I'm teaching you. That's exactly what I'm teaching my people. They're all at different points in that journey. It does take time, but times all you have. We do not want to. We are not here to just be normal arranges. Please make cringe just thinking about how average that is. The first thing to realize is that normal arranges don't constitute optimal. Clinical arranges versus optimal arranges. A clinical range is a set of targets, a bottom end and a top end. By the way, some of these arranges are gigantic. They're huge. It's such a joke. A good example is test-ostro. The normal range is from about 300 through to 950. Just for frame of reference, that's a huge range. Vitamin D, for example, is 30 through to 100. Fasting glucose is a normal range is from 90 through to 120. That's not even what I would consider optimal. TSH, a thyroid stimulating hormone. A normal range is from one to about four. You might not have a frame of reference. Is that a lot? Trust me, it's a lot. That's a massive range for each of those things. What it means is that you might come to the doctor. You might be 350 on your test-ostro. You might be 32 on your vitamin D and you might be 109 on your fasting glucose. Your thyroid stimulating hormone might be down at 1.2. That's all normal ranges. That would suck. I would feel for you if you were in those zones. You would not be optimal at all. I would say that that's most people's experience. What's realised is that this is not something you're making up in your head. You're not crazy. Very often, you're dealing with people that are not geared around people's performance. They do not understand this stuff. Part of it is because when you use different platforms, like function health, for example, is one that I will suggest my students to use. But the reason why I encourage them to come to me for the additional help is because function health will put you green or red based on those normal ranges. It will give you all the green ones, based on those normal ranges. You might have a bunch of green markers. It thumbs up. Everything is great. The green check marks. You're doing really well. I would look at that as a high performer. I would go, "There are so many things here that we need to work on, but that's a good thing." And after these green labs are not even close to being optimal. But again, that's a good thing. Because right there, you have just revealed a multitude of variables that you can play with and refine with your diet supplementation and training that will absolutely create a massive ROI in how you perform. And remember this. Why is this stuff important? This is not just about, "Oh, you don't want to have a good insurance policy or you don't want to get cancer." It's way more than just like a general physical wellness check. This is the stuff that will dictate how well you perform on a day-to-day basis in life. I know this firsthand because I went from being riddled with bipolar depression, severe social anxiety, ADHD. I couldn't concentrate to save myself. I had to take naps every day. At one point, I was all swollen and waterlogged and puffy. I had acne, I had breakout and rashes, all the common things. My gut health felt terrible. I felt bloated a lot of the time. And you're expected to perform well in that state. You and I both know that if you're in that state, you're not going to be doing a great job with most things. You're not going to be having great sales conversations. If you're a team leader or you're a CEO, you're not going to be running the team like a professional. You're going to be just hanging on white knuckling through your day. If you're a parent or you have a family, you know that when that day is done, you are fricking toast. There's no way you have the mental bandwidth and the energy to connect with your kids like you want to. There's no way you have the gas and the tank to connect with your partner or be intimate with them like you'd want to. You'd basically just hang it on. And that sucks. I do not want anyone to have to live through that long term because I did for years and it was awful. So that's why I'm such an advocate about this. Because think about it. When you do this stuff, right? Think of a day where you woke up and you just felt really rested. Life was going really well. And in general, you felt healthy on that day. It's so easy to work out hard. It's so easy to stick to your diet because you're not feeling super low in energy. You're not getting a bunch of cravings. You just feel good. Those days, by the way, you can engineer those days. That's called flow state. And part of what I teach through the Business Athlete Council model that I have is how do you engineer more consistent flow states? And I'm telling you, when you get to that place, life is actually quite fun. It doesn't mean that you don't have your challenges. It doesn't mean that you're not going to feel pressure and stress. But it can be quite fun to get to that place where you see yourself getting amazing results and people are looking at you as an inspiration. They're looking at you and they're like, dude, or gal, like you're getting in such good shape. Like I tried to get in that shape and I just felt tired all the time. What are you doing? And not only are you getting in good shape, but you feel awesome. That's a thing we can have both. It's just that most people don't. And all of the stuff is why. So the first thing, like I said, as you've got to recognize that clinical normal ranges do not equal elite performance. And all the clinical normal ranges are designed for is essentially disease detection. They're just there to kind of tell you, okay, you're starting to become diabetic or you're starting to become hypergonnaid or so that's like low test, Ostrone. You're starting to present pathology. And then that way, the reason why the insurance companies only really care about that is because that's what they will diagnose you with some ailment and then they'll give you some type of pill for it. So if you are, if you're, for example, if you're insulin resistant and you're becoming more and more diabetic because your hemoglobin A1C is creeping up to like 5.5, 5.7, 5.9, 6, so on. And then you're fasting insulin is up at say 15 and then 20, then 30. At that point, they'll be like, ah, well, Mr. Smith, you need some metformin. Let's give you some metformin. And then if that continues to not solve the problem, we'll have, we might have to get you on some insulin. So every time you eat, you have to take a shot of insulin and pop some metformin just to metabolize the stuff. So you don't literally die. That's the type of stuff that they think about. That's playing massive defense. I am not here for defense. And so part of my role is to say, okay, out of all the different biomarkers, the first thing is illuminating all the different biomarkers that we actually need to run. So the basic insurance panels are not great. They're not going to tell you a lot. It's usually just a base of immune system markers and some general sort of electrolyte, mineral markers and maybe like a urine test. It's basically like lymphocytes, basophils. It's going to be some of your immune system stuff. And then sometimes it'll be a few organ markers. Like it might be some stuff relating to kidney function and liver function. But it's very, very basic. It's not going to tell you a lot about even those systems. And all that the basic immune system markers really tell you is it will just confirm if at the time of the blood work you had a cold or a flu or you have some serious ailment like cancer. That's really all it can tell you. Because outside of those two situations, you're not going to see abnormalities with immune system markers. And so it seems to me like there's obviously a lot missing, right? So the first thing we want to do is we want to make sure that we're getting all the right stuff run. Right out of the gate, I would tell you this. I would say that there's obviously different places you can go. I would encourage you if you want my breakdown, reach out to me and drop me a message on one of the platforms. Because I do have a good list that you can take and you can try and take it to your primary care physician and ask them. You can do that. But I typically tell people, if in this space, you're just going to have to be proactive about your health and not play offense. I'm sorry, not play defense, which typically means you might have to pay out a pocket for some of this stuff. But I would tell you, it is a massive investment into yourself. It's a great ROI because I've seen people just transform their life when they start to know what their data actually says. So generally speaking, beyond the immune system market, it's going to be things like a full sex hormone panel. So total and free test, OSTRON, sex hormone binding, globulin, estrogen, progesterone, even things like DHA and pregnant alone. I would be running IGF1, which is a proxy for growth hormone. It's going to be things like your thyroid metabolism, so thyroid antibodies, TSH, T3, T4. Those are some good ones because that's kind of like the thermostat of your body. It's going to be your other organ system market is like your liver function, ALT and AST. This is so many little nuggets pepared throughout, but it's worth getting all of them. There's many of them as you can. I'd be looking at getting insulin sensitivity markers, so not just blood glucose. Often a lot of the labs will just run fasting glucose levels. That's ridiculous to me. You're not going to know much of anything by getting just fasting glucose. If you look at your blood panel right now, and they ran fasting glucose, but they didn't run hemoglobin A1C or fasting insulin, silly panel that they ran for you. If they run cholesterol profiles like HDL and LDL, but they don't run APOB and AP little A, that's again ridiculous. If they run total testosterone, but they don't run free testosterone, that's ridiculous. If they run total and free testosterone, but they don't run sex hormone binding globulin, that's ridiculous. When you see here how there's like a flow on effect, if they didn't run vitamin D, if you went to them because you said that you have low testosterone and they didn't run vitamin D, that's ridiculous. If you go to them and say that you feel like you're starting to have some menopausal changes or like some type of hormonal changes as a woman with your menstrual cycle and they don't run DHEA and pregnant alone, as well as estrogen progesterone and testosterone. That's not good. So I say all this because you can see here how just running one or two things often doesn't really tell you much. You need to run the extras. So what I would say in general is most more complete labs are going to be anywhere between 100 and 200 mBiomarkers. So I would say ideally you want to get above 100. That's usually going to have a lot of the good ones, but anywhere between 100 and 200 is going to be ideal. And there are different places like function health. Again, like I said, these places are well intentioned, but they're just going to give you normal ranges. They're not going to tell you where you're going to be as an elite performer. And so that's basically where I come in. My insight and my awareness can help you determine what that looks like. So I would say the first thing, just if I was looking at testosterone, for example, and you were 350, I would want you up around 900. If your vitamin D was at 35, I would want you up around 80. If your hemoglobin A1C was at 5.5, I would want you at 4.8 or 4.9. If your fasting insulin was up at 20, which isn't a normal range, by the way, I'd want you down at like 3 to 4. And you see here how right away all those different markers are then involved in different types of foods and supplementation that you can do in your diet to improve those metrics. So right out of the gate, for example, if we wanted to improve that testosterone value, there's a couple of different pathways. We want to know what your vitamin D status was because vitamin D does have an effect on immune system, mental health and testosterone values. So we want to troubleshoot testosterone. So we want to troubleshoot vitamin D. We want to know what your DHEA level is because DHEA is a sex buffering neuro steroids. So basically, it helps mitigate stress, but it's also an upstream precursor to testosterone. So if we can pinpoint, hey, your vitamin D is at 35 and your DHEA is at 120 instead of like 300. Right away, we know that those two biomarkers are the ones we want to add in specific foods and certain supplements to improve those numbers. And that will raise your total testosterone value up to say 7, 8, 900. And then what's the byproduct of that? So the byproduct of being in that Goldilocks zone that optimal range for long enough, that's when you start to feel better. That's when you build more muscle easily. If you lose body fat more efficiently, your energy levels is better, your digestion improves, your mental acuity sharpens, your memory improves, your sleeping improves, everything. So I say this because those numbers aren't just a number on a checklist. They actually transfer over to how you feel in reality. And so I would say the first thing is think of the sex hormones. And like I said for the ladies, you want to make sure that you're getting estrogen testosterone and progesterone. But the thing beyond that is you want to make sure that you know what time of the month you did the blood work with your cycle. Because you got to remember and realize that those hormone levels underlate through the month depending on what phase of your cycle you are in. Obviously, if you're still having a cycle. If you're at the point now where you've had menopause, that's a different discussion and we'll cover some of that. But the reason why I say this is because if you don't recall where you were in your monthly cycle and especially if the doctor doesn't even ask you that question, they could get everything wrong. They could be looking at your estrogen and your estrogen might be really, really low. But for where you were in the cycle, that was normal. It might be something might be really high and they might think it's normal but it's because you were in the wrong place in your cycle. And so even though at times you're getting into a normal zone, it's the timing's all off. And that timing will have a legitimate effect on the types of hormonal effects you feel. And it comes back to rates of digestion. For example, as estrogen changes through the month, estrogen has an effect on digestion. Most women don't realize it can slow down and speed up digestion, rates of motility. So it's why sometimes you'll feel more bloated at certain points in the month. So there's different biofeedback responses you will experience. So the timing, you need to know those things. But outside of that, I would even go as far to say that you want to know what all your insulin sensitivity markers are in conjunction because very often, if you are getting almost like a polycystic ovarian syndrome type situation, PCOS, which is very common by the way, part of that can be insulin resistance. So if you're fasting insulin is really high and your hemoglobin A1C is high, but they don't run those things. They just run fasting glucose. You're not going to get the information you need to determine, oh wow, like I'm actually very insulin resistant. And so this hormonal issue I'm experiencing, this PCOS I'm experiencing is actually being driven by poor blood glucose management. It's not just a testosterone issue. Now I know this might sound overwhelming to some of you, but the take home point is that first of all, you need the more comprehensive panels because that's going to give you all a little bit of data around where are the broken links in the chain? Where are the areas of biggest concern that need to be addressed? One of the common things that a lot of doctors will do with guys that come with low test ostra as they won't run vitamin D, they won't run DHEA, they won't run luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, which are like two precursors from the pituitary that help stimulate testosterone production. And so they just run testosterone for example. They might just run total and free testosterone in estrogen, but that's not going to give you a very good picture of where the broken link in the chain is. And so if you know where the broken link in the chain is, you can properly remedy that set up. Whereas if you don't, they're just going to throw you on some testosterone replacement therapy. And maybe for you, that wasn't even the ideal outcome. It's about solving problems in the right order. And so I say this of like getting the more complete ones run. If you unshort reach out to me and my teen, because I've had a lot of people just bootstrap it. And they're like, "Oh, I'm good. I'll go to my doctor. He'll know what to do. No, they won't. Trust me. Nine out of ten of them won't. The amount of times I've had to come back to someone and say, "Look, look, man, like what you ran was very inconclusive. You're going to have to go back and do it again." And I actually told them, I said, "Look, I highly advise you to be proactive and get XYZ lab panel run because if you go through insurance, you're probably going to have a bunch of stuff missing. They go do it anyway." And it's like, "That's the lesson that you have to learn. If you don't want to listen to specialist right out of the gate and you want to try and accordingly say if money, you're going to end up paying somewhere else. It's cost now or cost later, right? So you've got to be proactive in this space. Otherwise you'll always be getting the bad information." Now every now and then you have a doctor that's an outlier, but it's not common. So that's the first thing is getting all the biomarkers run. The second thing is making sure that when we're looking at those biomarkers that you're actually thinking about the Goldilocks Zones, the Elite Performance Zones, this reminds me of a gentleman that I was talking to a while back and he was probably about 60 to 80 pounds overweight. There's no way you feel good being 80 pounds overweight. You will have such an energy drain to your system because imagine putting on an 80 pound vest and rocking with that all day. You'd be absolutely smoked. So there's no way that your energy and your state and your performance is good. You've just been in that place for so long, you don't realize how much you're underperforming. That's the thing I need you to understand. If you think that being 20 pounds plus overweight is tolerable and that you're doing pretty good, it's because one, you're allowing yourself to settle and two, you've probably been in that state for so long that you don't realize how impaired it's made you. And what I would tell you is be excited about the idea that when I tell you this, it's actually a good thing that it means that you have a ton of untapped potential but you've got to get the right help. You've got to stop bootstrap and stuff, trying to get things through insurance to save a bit of a cost because it's always going to end up costing you somewhere. But the thing that I want to mention was that those Elite Performance Zones, that's what matters the most. So, for example, that's where if you come into my business athlete council, that's where I would help you determine what those look like. I can instantly look at a setup, a blood work setup and tell you where you need to be and the types of tools and tactics you would want to add into your diet or change with your supplementation to help facilitate that outcome. You've got to remember, foods are like software and your body and mind are the hardware. And so, if someone comes and their testosterone is really low, well, we want to make sure that we're getting in foods that are rich in boron, magnesium, zinc, vitamin D and selenium. If your thyroid metabolism is off, we want to focus on naturally occurring iodine and selenium and zinc. So there's certain things that will help create that response in the body. So, for example, we might add in a little bit of Brazil nuts or get some nuts so nut butter because it's high in selenium. I might get someone to do a little bit of prune juice or whole prunes around their workout. So it doubles as two things. It's high in boron, which helps with testosterone values. But also, a little bit of that fruit sugar helps with the glycogen replacement and the muscles actually help you train more effectively. So I'm often thinking about the ROI of food. I'm not just doing it for one thing. The one thing model is like an iPhone 1 compared to an iPhone 15. And I would say most people operate this way. They have their meal prep laid out and it's basically like chicken breast, broccoli, sweet potato and avocado, rinsing repeat. And then you've got another protein, but you're just cycling through like one green. Everything's very one dimensional. It's obviously better than eating a bunch of processed stuff, but that's also, in my opinion, where, what that whole sort of normal range in life exists. Just like those normal ranges, you're normal. That's a very normal diet. You'll get very normal results. And the business athlete podcast, you're here because you want way more than that. So the second part of this in terms of those biomarkers and wanting to be in an optimal zone, the Goldilocks zone, I would say one of the first areas that is worth paying attention to is your insulin resistance. Most people in my experience, I would say probably eight out of 10 have some degree of insulin resistance. And when you go to the doctor, they might just run fasting glucose and sometimes they'll run hemoglobin A1C. But what I would tell you is that to get a very good picture of what that looks like, I would be running fasting insulin. I would definitely be running hemoglobin A1C. I would be running Homo IR, which is like an insulin resistance score. So HOMA-IR, I would be running triglyceride and HTL ratio because people don't realize that very often, if your triglycerides are abnormal, that's creating this metabolic syndrome type state that proliferates insulin resistance. The body doesn't just work in isolation. Everything kind of feeds off each other, but the good thing about that is there's usually five or six primary levers you can pull that start to fix like 50 different things. You know, it's like ten birds with one stone. So in a way, it's a good thing to know that you can pull a couple of foundational levers that will solve five problems. But it's also you've got to realize that you can't compartmentalize health. And that's one of the biggest challenges with Western medicine in general is that you have an eye doctor and you have a hearing doctor and you have a cardiologist and you have a. So you have a doctor for all these separate systems. Now some of them are good and they understand the importance of having all these systems interconnected. Some of them are good, but a lot of them don't have any understanding of diet. I will tell you a lot of specialists don't have any understanding of diet or supplementation or root cause medicine and using these tools to actually reduce down and improve your response. Part of this is almost just like sickness care basically and that's unfortunate way that they're trained. So you have to be proactive. Now if you are noticing that you're getting brain fog, especially if you feel like it's sort of an ADHD type thing, so brain fog, ADHD, you're noticing that you're holding a lot of belly fat and fat in your midsection. You feel like your energy crashes a lot. It's up and down and especially after you eat, say at lunchtime, you need to take a nap. That's stuff that afternoon fatigue, those things I just mentioned. Some people will go to the doctor and they'll think that they have ADHD and I will tell you that most of you probably don't. And this is coming from a guy who was formally diagnosed from a psychiatrist with ADHD. Most of you will just either self-diagnose or your primary care physician will tell you do. It's super inconclusive. There's no way there's no any good testing for it for most people. And what is more often is insulin resistance. So you're running a higher hemoglobin A1C, I would say generally speaking like, and this again is where normal ranges trick you. So a normal hemoglobin A1C might be 5.4, that to me sucks. I would not be happy with you being in that place. Now you might be at 5.5 or 5.6. So the doctor might say, "Oh, you're a little bit high, but you're not too bad. No, that's bad. That's almost pre-diabetic." So at that level, you would be getting brain fog. You notice energy crashes after you eat and you would feel like it's probably ADHD. And what would happen is you would then start potentially using some type of like stimulant like riddle in or aderol. And it's not actually going to improve that insulin resistance. If anything, the insulin resistance will magnify because now you're adding a stimulant into the system. And when your stress response and your stress hormones increase in that system, that in and of itself can make blood sugar levels more unstable. So you're taking something that you think's going to help you, but it actually proliferates the problem. And I see this all the time. And so the first thing to realize is you need to know what your fasting insulin is. And fasting insulin, again, great example of a big wide range. You could land a jumbo jet in that range. It's like 5 through to 20. First of all, 20 is terrible. I want people to be down at, say, 3 or 4. And that's even below, that's even below the bottom end of the range. So from elite performance perspectives, you would actually be setting off a flag. Figure that out. So sometimes you will actually set off warning labels because it's like you're too healthy, you're too optimal. And what I tell people is that's why the average person struggles. That's why the average person is kind of chronically sick and just not feeling good. Because you're not even told the truth. You're not even given an accurate roadmap to start with. So the first thing we want is fasting insulin. That's a big one for insulin resistance. We ideally seeing the homo IR school. That's just like an insulin resistance score. That's always useful to see. I want to know what your triglyceride to HDL ratio is. Because if that triglyceride number is high, we then know that part of what's probably causing your insulin resistance is some of the fats that you're adding into your diet. This is where people get really confused. I think carbohydrates make you insulin resistant. It's not just that. I promise you it's more than that. And I'm going to kind of touch on a little bit of that shortly. But all this to say, hemoglobin A1C, I would want to see you around 4.8 to 4.9. And so walking. I'm literally walking right now on my walking pad. Walking, regular resistance weight training. Sail on cinnamon with protein shakes. Supplements like burberry or dihydro burberry. Chromium. Spring dragon longevity tea. So you've got different things in your diet. Even lower glycemic index carbohydrates. Things like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Red grapefruits. By the way, the grapefruit blood pressure regulation. Again, an example of two birds with one stone. If someone had a lot of insulin resistance and say they were getting a bit of a gut, they have a bit of a pot belly, so they got their visceral fat. And they typically have high triglycerides and poor cholesterol markers. That's that metabolic syndrome I was talking about. We then know that for that person, that kind of diet or that saturated fat keto diet they're doing is terrible for them. It's not bad for everyone. But if someone's doing a bunch of sausage and bacon and eggs, thinking it's keto, and that's going to improve their blood glucose levels, but their triglycerides are through the roof, and their cholesterol markers are through the roof, it's because they have hypolipidemia and those saturated animal-based fats are driving it through the roof. You can have someone else that doesn't have that hypolipidemia and they can do the eggs every day and they don't get that negative effect. This is why people get so confused about diet because context is very important. I've seen people do a carnival-based diet or even add in whole eggs and their APOB small particle LDL cholesterol was normal. They didn't have all that metabolic syndrome stuff going on. They just fortunate genetically their body could handle it. I've also seen people do that because maybe someone who could handle it told them, "Hey, that's a great way to eat." And they do it and all their markers go through the roof. And so I say this because if you didn't run APOB or triglycerides, you may not know that that's you. So you might continue to pound coconut oil and sausage and bacon and stuff thinking, "This is what I meant to do." And it's making you worse when in actuality you need to rotate those saturated fats out for monoinsaturated omega-3s. So avocado, extra virgin olive oil, whole olives, fatty cuts of fish, hymseed, chia seed, flax seed. These things are going to give you those omega-3 based monoinsaturated fats that will give you the good healthy fats without the inflammation that you would get by being without having the hyperlipidemia like a lot of people have. So I say all this because you can see how it all ties together. And so if you are feeling tired, if you're getting brain fog, but you're not running, fasting insulin, hemoglobin A1 singing, you're not getting into those gold-ylox zones that I mentioned, that's very likely part of why. It's very likely part of why. So right out of the gate, I would say walking between meals is a great idea. If you want a bonus point doing 20 body weight squats before and after you eat, that really helps. But just getting 12 to 15,000 steps a day, dispersing that through your day is ideal. Making sure that you use my macro bowl model. I've got a whole episode on my macro bowl breakdown. Lower glycemic index carbohydrates. Low insaturated based fats. Whole foods foods with one ingredient. Brown rice is just brown rice. Blueberries are just blueberries. Zucchini is just zucchini. So if you can stick to that principle a lot, you will already be improving your insulin resistance markers and numbers. That's going to help with the brain fog. It's going to help with you feeling tired. So that transfers over to real world changes. And obviously if you feel better and you don't get as tired, you're going to get better, you're going to stick to your diet more. You're going to train harder. You need better results. The next part of that outside the insulin resistance model is your sex hormones. This is a common one, by the way. So they might just run total testosterone and estrogen. But I want to see total testosterone, free testosterone, sex hormone binding, globuline, stradial estrogen, DHEA, pregnant alone. So DHEA and pregnant alone are like master hormones above testosterone. They help pre-curse. I also want to see LHNFSH. For example, if you have very low LHNFSH levels, it means that your system is shutting down somewhere. That's a problem that we need to solve in and of itself. So removes the guesswork. It removes the guesswork. And so if you're experiencing low libido, you're not recovering well. Your joints are really achy. You're getting a lot of sort of arthritic type pain. Your mood's not good. Maybe your mood's flat. You feel anxious. You just feel like you're chronically stressed. You feel like you're burned out. It's that burnt out feeling. That's often a combination of DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, stuff like that. So straight away you know that you need to pay attention to those areas. Like I mentioned, those normal ranges are not going to get you close to being optimal. And for the ladies, you need to know what time of the, your monthly cycle you got the test done. Because those levels underlate through the month and they will have an effect on the suggestions that you need to focus on. But I would definitely say DHEA is a common one. I mean straight out of the gate, a good example is something like sweet potato. So sweet potato butternut squash can help with DHEA production. Now I will tell you that if you have levels that are really not optimal, it's probably better you use a little bit of supplementation. Because as you add in foods, you really need to make sure your gut health is good. If your gut health is not great, you won't absorb all the stuff you're eating. So you just want to make sure that you're getting that gut health right. So you can use that base of whole foods. I always tell people, always, always try to get everything from whole foods first. And then plug the whole and just complement the whole food diet with supplementation, peptides, hormone replacement therapy, that type of stuff. But I would say right out of the gate, you know, with sex hormones, it's going to be things like boron, selenium, zinc, vitamin D, magnesium. So foods richer in those things. It's going to be making sure you get about one gram of protein per pound of target bodyweight. That's something that the ladies often struggle with. If you're undershooting your protein all the time, you will not optimize the sex hormones like you could. It's going to be making sure you get in those good, omega-3 based monoinsaturated fats. If you have fat, phobic, and you're stripping it all out, you need to make sure that you're getting a good omega-3 supplementation base in there and those fats at some point every day. So whether it be a good dose of supplementation or like blueprint, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, whole olives, hemp seed, flaxseed chia seed, fatty cuts of fish, that's the type of stuff that's going to give you those upstream precursors that help with the sex hormone production in the first place. So you can see here how you might get your numbers back. They might be completely suboptimal. You're feeling like garbage. You're getting like menopausal swings or as a guy you're feeling just like a low level beta male because you're essentially chemically castrated. That's the thing I want you to realize. People don't understand that. People just drive the way you think. It's not just about, people think if testosterone is this thing that bodybuilders take to get jacked. It's way more than that. I often find that the people that have the really optimal testosterone levels, they can handle more mental stress. They're more mentally resilient. They're more tenacious. They build those their way through challenges more effectively. They have a better mental state in general. They're more upbeat. They're more energetic. They're more vital. I mean, think about it. Sex hormone testosterone is like the sex hormone of sort of vitality. And so if you feel like all those things are low, part of it is probably that. For the ladies, if you're dealing with a lot of menopausal, what seems like menopausal changes, that's going to have a massive effect on your psychology. But just by going to a marriage counselor or seeing a therapist, that's not always going to completely solve the problem. If it is a hormonal problem, you need to address the chemical nature of it. So you need to make sure that you're addressing the hormone systems in the body with diet and supplementation and peptides. And every other tool you have, because you may find that once you optimize yourself chemically with your diet, with your supplementation, you might find that you feel amazing. And that a lot of the problems that you felt like you were having were caused from the suboptimal chemistry. I find that's very common, by the way. It's very common. So it's a good thing to know. Now thyroid. So thyroid's like the metabolism, the thermostat of your body. You know, often they won't even run thyroid at all. So they just run TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. And they see, if TSH is normal, then everything else must be normal. Not realizing that there's a gap between that and T3 and T4 that is a conversion. So you may not be converting things well. And so if you're not, and we have no way to determine that, unless you're measuring T3 and T4. So even things like ferritin play into how thyroid metabolism works. So people often think of ferritin as associated with iron production. And they just think about iron for the ladies at certain times of the year, or menstrual cycle. You might lose iron through your menstrual cycle. And so you need to be aware of like your iron levels for that reason. But they're not connecting all the dots. So you might actually have some issues with other biomarkers that are inadvertently downstream affecting your thyroid. And so even if you don't get thyroid checked, you might start seeing a bit of hair loss. You might notice that you feel bloated and quite like your digestion feels quite sluggish all the time. You might notice that your skin feels really dry, flaky. You might notice that you just feel like you're cold all the time. Your energy's just low. Imagine if your sex hormones were low and your thyroid was also low. But it was in quite a quote, normal ranges. And then you go to the doctor and you've got both of those things suboptimal. But the doctor's like, no, you're normal. Or they don't actually test them all. And those two things, you address those two things and it could completely flip the switch on your life. And you could have a level of fricking vitality that is just amazing. And so from thyroid perspective, you know, the thing to understand is that it's going to be like I said, cold hands and feet, fatigue, hair thinning, brain fog. And that's where foods that are rich in naturally occurring iodine or selenium are important. And especially for the lady, so I get my wife and daughter to do some nori sheets every day. So whether you do some seaweed crackers or let you do some sushi rolls or however you want to do it, seaweed has gotten good naturally occurring iodine in it. Now you can supplement if you want, if you don't like the taste of sea, which I realize is common. But I always tell people try to get it from as many whole food sources first as you can. Use whole foods as the base and then use supplements supplementary to the base. Now beyond that, I would say things that really haven't effect on your aging, like your perceived skin, your skin health, how much water retention you have, how puffy your faces, how much body aches, how well you sleep, how long it takes you to recover from workouts is all this low grade inflammation stuff. So one of the main markers that I think everyone needs to know is C-reactive protein, HSCRP. I would say general C-reactive protein, homocysteine, uric acid and APOB. APOB is a small particle LDL. I think especially knowing what your C-reactive protein scores. It's kind of like the canary in the coal mine marker for how likely someone is to have a hard attack or stroke. Because it's a systemic inflammation marker. And what people, again, classic example, anything between one and three is constituted as normal. But if you came to me and you were 2.5, I'd be like, this is not good at all. We absolutely need to work on this. But the doctor would say, you're normal, therefore everything is fine and you just keep doing what you're doing. Again, I just keep reinforcing that point to you. Because this, I would say, is the biggest rate limiting factor to why you might be told or think that your stuff is good. But your frame of reference is not high level. It's not an elite performing frame of reference. It's a, let's just be a normal average Joe frame of reference. So if you're feeling like joint stiffness, brain fog, your recovery is really slow, your energy is low, you're getting puffiness and water retention in your hands and face, that's more than likely that chronic inflammation. Now I would say right out of the gate, things that can help with that are antioxidant rich foods, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, good quality amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. Like I mentioned, two to three grams of EPA and DHA at least, I would even do a double serving of that. Beginning and all those foods that I mentioned previously, like extra virgin olive oil, avocado, hemp seed, flax seed, chia seeds, fatty cuts of fish, all of these things are going to help you with those. And I've found the double dose of omega-3s has been particularly good for brain health and mood stabilization as well. So I say all this because those fatty acids help with raising HDL cholesterol, that HDL is your good cholesterol and that helps offset and reduce a lot of the other stuff. And especially if you're stacking in blueberries and blackberries and things like that, you're getting all those antioxidants in. And then you're stacking some polyphenols from the blueprint extra virgin olive oil. Man, you are hitting it from every angle. That's going to massively pull down your inflammatory markers. And like I said, I want to see your C-reactive protein as close to zero as possible. Minus 0.25. I want to see you way, way, way down as far as possible. One plus between one and three is their normal range. I don't want to see you at 2.5. I want you to get lower than that. Same thing for APOB. Same thing typically they say above 100 for APOB is not good, but you want to be around 100. If you were like 95 to 100, I would not be impressed with that. I'd be like, look, you're going to be laying down arterial plaque in your cardiovascular system. You're not going to necessarily see the effect of that today. But if you keep doing that through your 40s and 50s, you're going to have a heart attack or stroke. And they won't even know this. And so I want to see your APOB down to like 75, which again is intimately connected with the types of foods you're consuming. I would say that things like APOB, triglycerides, the lipid markers, and some of those insulin sensitivity markers, are where the most confusion lies with diet. Because people are either in this kind of oceodocamp or like a plant-based camp and they think that it's one or the other. And I would actually tell you that it depends on what's happening in your blood work. I can almost tell if someone is hyperlipidemic based on the markers they have, and that tells me how sensitive they are to certain things. Me, for example, I've been plant-based for 13 plus years because my labs go nuts if I add in a lot of the animal-based saturated fats that are apparently so good for you as a ketogenic diet model. That's good for some people. So can you see here that there's a dogma? And by looking at your unique physiology, that's how you're going to come to those right conclusions. That's what you actually want to be doing. Okay, so I say this because now it removes your need to try and fit everything in a perfect little label, and let's find what works best for you. Now, beyond the inflammation markers, there's even things that maybe sometimes won't be always picked up in the labs if they don't run like I said, if they don't run all the blood work stuff, things like magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, B12, ferritin, your omega-3 index, which is like your ratio of omega-3 is to 6 to 9. I don't see a lot of people running that. So if you don't run that and you don't run APOB, you won't have a good idea of what's going on with some of the micronutrient deficiencies in your body. And if you're dealing with some micronutrient deficiencies, like deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, you'll feel more anxious. Your sleep will not be good. You'll feel probably like you've got a lot of muscle tension. It can affect your nervous system. Your mood will be low. So just imagine trying to perform and be a superhuman mother of father and spouse if your mood's low, if you're feeling anxious, if you're not sleeping well, in your body's full of mechanical tension from your nervous system being red light. It's pretty hard to do anything well, isn't it? So it's where these things are almost beyond the scope of blood work at times. One of the areas that's often but beyond the scope is things like brain chemistry and mitochondrial health. That's why you've got to think of health as a whole system, not just as these compartmentalized genres. It's why I talk about foods as being a food matrix. You don't just eat something full of protein for the protein. It's a food matrix. It comes with other vitamins and minerals and precursors that matrix, the quality of that matrix is what matters almost more than the one thing that you think you're going for. Now with brain chemistry, for example, often you're not going to get, you might have really bad brain chemistry, but your blood work might look okay. Your blood work might look decent, but if we run a braverment test, you can do the braverment test online. You might find that you have really low dopamine serotonin and your GABA is really low and you're a settle calling this high or maybe everything is low. You're just depleted across the board. You're getting ADHD-like symptoms and you're feeling like you're not sleeping well and you're just burning out that that burned out feeling and it might not be from some of the biomarkers in your blood work. It might be from the chemistry in your brain. Now obviously if you run the biomarkers in your blood work and you do the braverment test, now you get really accurate. Now you can really triangulate and pinpoint exactly where to focus. You're like, "Ah, I can see that my GABA is low. I settle calling is high. I settle calling is like the accelerator on the engine in my brain. GABA is like the braking system. So I need to be adding in certain foods and supplements that will help with GABA production. So let me add in a little bit of thinin serine, a little bit of GABA and thinin and rallora and tolcy tea at nighttime to help with that GABA production." So when you start doing that, that triangulation allows you to be way more surgical with what you're doing. So you're not just taking a matter of supplements and just eating a whole bunch of random superfoods and praying to Jesus and hope that it works. You can get way more surgical and tactical and that's where the best results come from. And even beyond that, you may find that your mitochondrial health and your nervous system dysregulation isn't great. You just feel like you're burned out, you feel like you've got a lot of brain fog. You're feeling anxious, wired and tired, almost like OCD, like overthinking. And very often that can be from mitochondrial and nervous system dysregulation. These are whole other topics. By the way, I talk about these topics. I think episode 15 was all on burnout and nervous system regulation. I often talk about these different systems in the body. Now right out of the gate, you might find that one of the things that you need to be doing more often is getting more sunlight, more sunlight and walking. That's how you charge up your mitochondrial health. And you may find that your low energy and your low vitality is more of a mitochondrial issue. And that might be true. So you might get your blood work and you might get your testosterone into the Goldilocks zone and you might get some of these other butt markers into that elite performance zone. And you still might not feel great. And part of it is these other missing pieces. So what I do with my students and especially whatever level that they come in at, I'm often talking about these different systems. So I'll address the blood work stuff. But I'll talk about the brain chemistry stuff via the bravement test. We'll have these conversations about optimizing gut health for absorption. We'll talk about mitochondrial health and the levers you want to pull to improve that. So like outside three to six times a day, five to ten minutes walking in the light. On those summer days, if you're on a private property and you can take your shirt off where tank top, you know what I mean? So like get stuck on your skin, stuck in your eyes. It helps with melatonin timing, circadian biology. So sleep. But I say this and then even like low VO2 max can have effect on mitochondrial health. So if you're just doing some weight training, but that's it, like you want to add in a little bit of zone two work, maybe a little bit of high intensity interval training. But again, it depends on where you are in your journey. Like if you're a woman that's dealing with menopausal and hormonal issues and the inflammation is quite high, doing high intensity intervals is going to be worse for you. It's not an ideal thing. So you've got to know where your context is and that my friends is why it's worth getting in the tribe. Because once you get your context factored in, you can get a very clear picture of exactly where to focus and it's you're no longer guessing. And you're not going to doctors and they're sort of making you feel like you're mentally deranged because you're feeling anxious and moody and they just make you think you need just a psychologist. And in actuality you have all these systems in your body that are just struggling. Some of the other last points that I think is just worth noting is things like chemical exposure in your environment. So things like microplastics, sprays, cosmetics, a lot of blue light artificial light exposure, the quality of your air, the quality of your water. Now I will say it can feel overwhelming but you never cross the finish line with this race. You just got to take each day as it comes and keep stacking habits on top of each other. Keep finding ways to improve things. You know like if you chew a lot of gum, the brand of gum that I use is called refresh. It's a set, a tree set based gum. So it doesn't, it's not loaded with microplastics like extra and a lot of the conventional gums are. I'll use essential oils for fragrances instead of typical sprays. Definitely not doing any anti-persperant diodorant type stuff or cologne, absolutely not. We'll use a lot of Himalayan salt lamps and candlelit diffusers and put blue light blocking filters on our phones and laptops. They have a setting for those things to help with blue light and artificial light exposure because that stuff has an effect on your nervous system. And that will in turn affect your mitochondrial health. And very often what you'll find is that they all kind of affect each other. So that's why it's so important to know not just what blood markers you're missing but you've got to understand that those Goldilocks Elite performance zones are what you want to be striving towards. And the cool thing about this is that you're not broken. For a diet, your supplementation, peptides and bioregulator peptides, different types of hormone replacements, and lifestyle levers like the walking, like the sunlight, like rebounding, like breath work. All of these things help you improve those numbers. When you get into those Elite performance ranges, that's where the magic happens. That's when you'll notice that your body starts to lean out easier. You build a whole more muscle, your digestion improves, your mood improves, your anxiety goes down. That's been my biggest driving force in all of this because I came from a place where I had so many health issues, so many mental health issues. And life was terrible to be honest. It was very, very tough. And I know for a lot of people, and maybe some of you listening to this, that you're still in that place. So I would, first of all, tell you get in my tribe, get in the ecosystem. Just being in proximity to people who think this way is a superpower. That's the first thing. And the second thing is be proactive. Pay out of pocket for the blood work if you have to. Most doctors will not run much through insurance. They're kind of bound by it. They can't. Insurance will only run certain things if they think you have some potential disease diagnosis. So you're already limited right out of the gate. And then realize, even if you go to function health and you've got a bunch of green markets, but you still don't feel great, you're not broken. It's just because your frame of reference, your yardstick of measurement, is based on a normal bell curve full of normies, normal people with normal results. And you are not here to be normal. That's why when someone says to me, well, why do you take all these supplements? Shouldn't you be able to get everything you can from food? And I'm like, yeah, if you want to be normal, do you want to be normal? Or do you want to be phenomenal? Like to me, I will do everything in my power to pull out every stop and implement every tactic that's healthy that's going to give me an unfair advantage and become a category of one. I don't just want you to be good. You know, when you come to me, I'm like, I hope Sally can go from being normal to good. I didn't even want you to just be great. I want you to be a fricking category of one. You are your best ROI. I need you to realize this. People look around right now, they're like, oh, where should I invest my money? The economy is uncertain. I'm worried about what's going to go on. Should I put it into real estate or metals or stocks? Where should I go? I would tell you that you, what about you? You are your best ROI because your ability to level up and generate more income and be more effective at what you're doing. Become more of a linchpin. And not only that, but pouring your family in a way that makes you fricking proud, man. Like wherever you are at, I know some people that you didn't have the best upbrings. Your parents did the best they could with the knowledge and the skills that they had. But it still wasn't great. We get a chance to break that damn cycle. And now that you know this stuff, like it's on us to make it happen. It's on you to make that happen. Realize that you are the high tide that rises or ships. People are always out there looking for someone to save them. You save you. It starts with you, my friend. So go out there today. Lead from this place. Play that proactive game with your blood with everything that you do. Get in the right environments. Get into proximity with people who think this way and create that business athlete.