Episode 3 – Detailed Blood Work (The 1000 piece Jigsaw Puzzle)

business athletes, what is going on? We have a great topic today all about using blood work and blood testing to truly reverse engineer the perfect protocols for you as it pertains to your diet, supplementation, peptides, hormone replacement therapy lifestyle that will yield maximum effect. You know, people often don't realize that with blood work, it's not just something that you run with your doctor for insurance purposes. I think a lot of people that maybe aren't into the performance space like I am think that getting blood work done is just some insurance practice where you just go get that done and just to check your heart markers and just to make sure everything's normal. One thing that I really want to drive home to you before we even start this conversation is that normal does not equal optimal. I've had many people come to me before and they would be kind of dismissive and I know everything seemed normal, my doctor said everything was normal and I said show me show me what it looks like then and they show me and there are not only so many things that are suboptimal because you got to remember normal ranges are quite wide they're quite large and there are a ton of biomarkers that people won't run, that insurance panels won't run, that typical doctors will not run and so I explain it a bit like imagine you have a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and you are tasked to put this jigsaw puzzle together and determine what the image is but you have 500 pieces missing. Can you imagine trying to put together a puzzle of 500 pieces missing? It would be impossible and even then you probably still wouldn't even be able to figure out what the image actually was and your health and blood work is exactly like that. If you've never had a really truly comprehensive blood work done which is usually going to be paid out of pocket almost always you will have such an inconclusive perspective on what's actually happening in your body. You won't know and what what you want to think about you want to think about blood work a bit like a road map so many people when they come into wanting to improve their health they just kind of throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Is this a good diet for me or is this a good supplement? Should I take this thing? Should I take that thing and people just guess because your friends said oh that diets that's the good one that one worked well for me not realizing that context is everything. What's your context? Where are you coming from? What does your data say? And so when people come to me and they say do you think I should do XY and Z? I always say well it depends on the state of your body depends on what your body's communicating to us. So one of the things that I'm knowing for is not having a bias approach to how I do things. I always want to try to stiff through the data and say look based on your numbers based on your metrics. These are the things that are almost certainly holding you back and these are the things that are going to optimize your health and get you a much better ROI and a much better result. And so not only do we want to get more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but it's a much more accurate road map and I wish I honestly wish that early on when I first started my health journey. I wish I knew this information. I didn't know this stuff and I would guess with my diet I would guess with the supplements just based on the popular things or the things that were trending or the things that some guy that was seemingly in shape tell me. One thing I will tell you now and I will warn you to this is that there are many health coaches and nutritionists and fitness people out there that look healthy. They have abs. They have muscle. They might be kind of lean but they're not healthy. Their blood work is not good. I've had many guys come to me because I'm like the guy that people come to when they can't figure out the problems. I'm the chief problem solver when it comes to human optimization and I've had coaches come to me. That had abs. That were in shape. That coached other people and they would give me their blood work and I would look at it and I'm like I can see exactly why you feel like crap. There's inflammation markers through the roof, all kinds of de-optimization of certain hormones and stuff and like I said I'll give you an example. So if you go to your primary care physician and you feel like your testosterone might be low and your testosterone is 350 total. Your primary care physician will go well it's in normal ranges. So the normal ranges are anywhere from about 200 and something up to about a thousand. That's a huge range. It's a very very wide range and so if you're at 350 that's considered normal. You can apply that concept to pretty much every biomarker there is. To estrogen, to hemoglobin A1C, to fasting insulin, to seriactive protein, to T3 and T4 for thyroid metabolism and what will happen is you will be told that you're normal and you still feel like garbage and this is so common and what you want to realize is that your blood work is going to give you it's like a leading indicator of what's going on in your body and the way you can determine that is all your biofeedback. So your body has a language and it actually speaks to you. But most people they just ignore the signals and they don't understand the the language. A good example is when it comes to different biomarkers in the body, you know, if you are feeling like you're getting ADHD or if you feel like you're not sleeping well or if you're getting digestive issues or if you're breaking out with a lot of psoriasis and eczema or if you're breaking out with pimples or if your libido is really low or you're getting very anxious or your mood is very low or you're getting sleepy all the time. All of these things, if you're getting a lot of cravings, can imagine how hard it is to get an amazing shape when all of those signals are screaming at you. And I would say that that is the average person. The average person gets sleepy after they eat, midafternoon slumps, they need more caffeine, they're kind of wired and tired so they go to bed at night but they still don't sleep well. They just don't feel good. Digestive issues probably have some type of skin disorder, a little bit of psoriasis or eczema and cravings and they start getting cravings and they can't control it and then they just cave and they overeat and they gain body fat and they feel lethargic and then they start getting brain fog and they think they've got ADHD and they go to the doctor and they ask "Doc, I can't concentrate." Then the doctor being naive as they are. Okay, let's get you on a prescription of Adderall and then you get on that and you even get more wired and tired. So now you're sleeping even worse and so now you start to stack more caffeine into the Adderall and you have so many stimulants in your system, your blood pressure goes up, your resting high rate increases, you feel manic, you feel anxious. This is so common and it's not your fault because you just get told like what you should be doing from specialist but I'm telling you that's why you need to pay attention to this conversation because I went from being diagnosed with bipolar depression, severe social anxiety, ADHD. I was heavily medicated for 10 years. Lithium carbonate for bipolar disorder before that I was on prozac, I was on clonopin which is a benzodiazepine for anxiety. Benzo is a highly addictive and very difficult to get off. I was on a mega dose of Ritalin for ADHD and I needed to go get blood work done every two weeks to make sure the levels in my system weren't reaching toxicity. Imagine that. And back then I didn't know that that was abnormal. I didn't know. Now I do and that's why I'm sharing this with you. And I promise you you are not broken. So part of why I want you to continue to listen to this episode and listen to all of these episodes that I do in this podcast is because you're not broken and there are things that you just don't know that you can do that will absolutely make it easier for you to get in phenomenal shape and for you to feel amazing and perform at a higher level. See most people, they say something like I know what I need to do, I just need to do it. I'm sorry but that is bull crap. That's bull crap because if you actually knew what you needed to do you would have the result and you'd be able to sustain it. So what I'm saying is what you think you need to do and what you actually need to do are two different things. And so people think that they need to die in a certain way. They think that they need to work out a certain way. They think they need to do a certain amount of cardio. But what you actually want is you want to get your blood work done to determine what your body's telling you and then you address those things and that's how you unlock the result. So I just want you to think about blood work a bit like imagine you wouldn't run a business without a balanced sheet. So why are you running your body without blood work, right? So it's one of those things where you can be very skillful in business and then a hot mess when it comes to your health and you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And just remember your symptoms aren't random, their signals. It's a communication channel and I think it's like a blueprint in a lot of ways. So the first thing I want to say is that it's a way to expedite to your target. So be excited about the idea of getting comprehensive blood work run because when you not only take things and get them in a normal zone but in what I call the Goldilocks zone. So the Goldilocks zone is where I take all my high performers that I work one on one with. So we work, we narrow down into that top five to 10% sweet spot, the Goldilocks zone. And when you can get all of your markers to that five to 10% sweet spot zone, imagine the result. Fat loss is easier, you build more muscle, you age slower, you sleep better, your libido's better, your mood is way better, you don't have ADHD, you have good energy all day long. Imagine the ROI of you performing like that with sales, with business, with parenting, with life. And that's why I love doing this. The abs, the look, it's a byproduct. It's a byproduct of doing and understanding these principles. So first thing that I want to address, and I'm looking at some notes here to just kind of remind me of everything we need to touch on, because there's a lot of stuff, but it's good stuff, is that blood work is objective data. And this way it removes the guessing and the confusion and the overwhelm. So think of it a balance sheet, a profit and loss sheet, a cash flow sheet. So you can look at the balances and you can figure out what type of supplements do you need to add into your rotation? What type of foods are going to help you optimize certain biomarkers? And that's how you essentially reverse engineer your diet and your supplements and in all of this stuff. So there are some core fundamental blood work markers we're going to touch on. I'm going to give you a rundown on my top ones. So the ones that I think are the most important and then why they're important and how do you know if it's an issue for you? So buy a feedback type stuff. Now the first thing that I would say is that if you get a comprehend, usually a lot of clinics, a lot of anti-aging clinics, there's a lot of clinics online function health is one online mark health. I will often collaborate with different clinics and get my students to run labs. And you want at least 100 plus biomarkers. That's a more comprehensive, complete one. The more the better to be honest. And you want to make sure that you are getting everything in the realm of full sex hormone profiles, all the inflammation markers, all the metabolic markers, thyroid metabolism, insulin sensitivity, all of these key markers, immune system markers. Most insurance panels would just have immune system stuff. And they might have a little bit of like iron related blood, red blood cell count type stuff. But they don't dive into all the other pieces of the puzzle, which is I'm going to touch on today for you. So, in no particular order, these are the ones that I want to know about you. And this will determine what we would do with your programming and your approach to really get you a much more potent result quickly. So the first one's, and you know I'm going to say testosterone, and that's ironically enough, like that's not in my mind the most important one. But I'm just going to start with that one because I know a lot of guys are interested in that, and I will actually tell you that that's not the primary one that I think affects muscle building. So if you hang around and listen to the rest, I'll tell you which one I think it is. But total and free testosterone, see most people, they brag about their total testosterone, but they don't look at their free testosterone. And very often you will find that if someone has decent total testosterone, but their free testosterone is low, it's often because they're sex hormone binding globular, or SHBG. The SHBG is high. Now that's a marker that a lot of people won't run. I've seen doctors just run total testosterone. That is so ridiculous to me. You can't determine anything by just running that because I want to know what your free is. And then obviously if your free is low, how do I determine if it is caused by from your DHA or your vitamin D status or your sex hormone binding globular, there are so many mechanisms and pathways. It could be that we need to triangulate what it is. And so sex hormone binding globular is often high. If someone's got unmanaged stress, like if you're a highly strung out stress person, often SHB or G will be high. There are tools and tactics and things you can do to help mitigate that. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of giving you a bunch of sort of lifestyle adaptations in this because there's going to be many other topics we'll talk on on these things like breathing and breath work and stuff. But one thing I will say is that boron, boron supplementation or making sure you have enough boron in your diet is one of the key drivers with optimizing SHBG, which in turn can help improve testosterone. So I wanted to mention free testosterone is key and key and in male and females. See, women don't realize that as you age, a lot of your hormones will decrease especially when you start going through menopause and this is a big issue for women. And what happens is they lose a lot of muscle mass and that has a really negative effect on their metabolism and their bone health. And so it's important for women from it from an energy and a libido perspective as well. Very important. And I would say that testosterone, free testosterone is a driver of energy levels, grit, like sort of mental grunt. Think about the guys typically that have high testosterone, they have more drive. It's a drive hormone. So if you feel like a wet mopey blanket a lot of the time, part of it is you're probably low in the drive hormone. And so optimizing that is really important and useful. Now I always say to people and I'm not going to go into how we optimize all of these things in this one at least because I want to do separate podcasts on different hormones. Otherwise this one will be so long if I start talking about the different herbal supplements and different medications and peptides and things we can use to optimize. So that's why you either want to reach out to me, get some help here, get the comprehensive blood work done, or wait for future episodes where I'm going to be covering more sort of deep mechanistic concepts around these things. But at the very least, you need to know what to focus on first and what to even ask for first. So I would say that testosterone, total and free is important. In conjunction with that, you want to know what SHBG is, as well as vitamin D, vitamin D is very important and as well as DHEA. And ideally DHEA and pregnant alone, those two work like a seesaw and they help you buffer stress. The more stress you are, the more you sort of break down these hormones, if DHEA and pregnant alone decrease, that will typically start tanking your testosterone. And by the way, vitamin D, people don't realize that is a precursor hormone that helps with improving testosterone. Not only that, but it has an effect on mood and immune system. So if your vitamin D is lower, it's going to have a negative effect on your mood and it's going to have a negative effect on your immune system. You'll get sick more and you'll feel like crap. And again, a great example that the normal range of vitamin D is like 30 through to 100. If you're 35 or 40, you're normal. That to me is absolutely suboptimal. I want to typically see people up around 80 to 85 total. That's the sweet spot. That's where you'll get sick less. That's where your mood will be more stable and that's where your sex hormones will be more optimal. So you can see here how there's a cascade of effects and there's an interconnectedness of all these different systems in the body. Now, other hormones that I think are really useful is estrogen and for women progesterone. So that sort of trifecta of testosterone estrogen progesterone, especially as it pertains to menopause postpartum. So women will go through these monthly cycles and especially after children. And then obviously through menopause, you really want to know what these numbers are because it will have a very pronounced effect on your mood. That's one of the reasons why women will often feel changes in mood with the changes of their menstrual cycle is because it's literally those hormones literally exert on brain chemistry. And so the more stable and consistent you can make those, the better you'll feel. And so estrogen, even in men, for example, one of the common ones in men is that if someone's on a for man's on testosterone replacement therapy, either they won't use any type of estrogen control. And so the estrogen will go through the roof. And that's when they might start getting gyneocamastia, which is literally like bitch tits is the sort of street term for it, but gyneocamastia is breast tissue basically. And you'll notice a lot more water retention. And you'll notice you just have a puffy face water retention. It's not ideal at all. Or alternatively, people get so paranoid about estrogen, they use an aromatase inhibitor, like an astrozole, letharzole, and they absolutely obliterate their estrogen into zero. And then they completely lose their libido. Their mood turns terrible. Estrogen is actually cardiovascular protective. So you start to run until cardiovascular issues. That's definitely not good. That's one of the main reasons why women, after menopause, can start to run into heart issues. That's a very common thing if you didn't know that. And it's because estrogen drops so much that they lose that cardiovascular protective nature. So it's really important that you know these numbers and you trouble shoot with diet, herbal supplements, peptides, medications. And I'm always using medications as a last option. The first thing is diet and lifestyle. Then it's herbal supplements and you know over the count of supplements. And then it's peptides. And then it is medications where needed. So I just wanted to caveat that because I want people to realize that you can't just shortcut all these things. Now all of this stuff, it's going to affect, like I said, energy, libido, motivation. It will affect where you store body fat and it will affect how you hold muscle mass, which is obviously really important in terms of longevity. And it does affect your mood and just your mental wellbeing, which I find from a business athlete standpoint is really important to optimize. Because if you're putting out fires all day and you're leading teams and you're dealing with people and you're having sales conversations and you want to be a great parent or grandparent and a good spouse, if you're in a bad mood all the time, it's pretty damn hard. So this is why this stuff is matters so much and it's so much more than just a frickin set of abs. Next one is thyroid function. So thyroid as a whole. So TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, free T3 and free T4. And then thyroid antibodies or TPO. Now I find that a lot of people get autoimmune diseases via thyroid. I'm going to do a whole episode on autoimmunity and thyroid. So things like Hashimoto's thyroid dietis or Graves disease. But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole in this one. But all I'm saying is that your thyroid is like the thermostat of your body. Think about a thermostat in your house. When it's cold, it's going to kick on the furnace and kind of bring it up to baseline, keep it nice and warm. And then when it's too hot inside, it's going to kick on the AC and bring the temperature down and keep it nice and cool. But either way, it's going to keep you in that sweet, that range. You know, most people love about 70 to 72 degrees. That sweet spot. It kind of helps govern your metabolism that way. And so when we diet really hard or when we're really stressed or as we age or if we're getting an autoimmune disease, it starts to have an effect on your thermostat. And think about if you're just running hot all the time or running cold all the time. So thyroid will actually affect things like your resting heart rate. It affects your digestion. So if you get a lot of constipation in your digestion, if you feel very backed up, that's often connected to thyroid. It can make your skin really dry. It can make your nails very brittle and your hair very brittle as well. And it's often something that women will deal with after having children. That's quite common. And so I want you to realize that thyroid management, the first area that I like to focus is diet, clean up the diet, but also we look at a lot of the chemicals in your environment because a lot of chemical exposure, pesticides, herbicides, fragrances, chemicals that you put on your skin, chemicals that are absorbing, like chlorine and fluoride, that stuff will have a massive effect. And so part of this journey is like cleaning up everything that in and around you because remember you aren't just what you eat, you're what you absorb. And that's including things through your skin. So TSH, T3, T4 and thyroid antibodies is really important and useful to get because that's going to give you and also it affects your basal metabolic rate. So it affects how much, how many calories your body burns at rest. So if your metabolism is very slow and it and phallus seems very difficult, it's because your basal metabolic rate is crushed because you've been you've metabolic you've had metabolic adaptation downward. So essentially down regulation of metabolism to be more economical. And that's what's keeping you from burning as much body fat as you could. So it's definitely an area that I think is kind of confusing for people, but there are differently things you can do. And for example, like iodine. So iodine rich foods help with thyroid metabolism. That's why seaweed, nori sheets, seaweed crackers, different types of seafood, things that are high in iodine will help with thyroid optimization. One little tip for you across the board is that anytime you see a blood marker that's not optimal, you could literally go to chat GPT and say, give me all the healthy foods that help with thyroid stimulation. Give me all the healthy foods that help with testosterone. Now granted, it's more complicated than just doing that because there's like cofactors and synergists and you need to know like if you have food sensitivities and different things, but that's also where I come in and it's why I do what I do. I can remove all that confusion and make things so simple, but just know that the first point of action is your food because like food is like software and your body and mind are the hardware. And so you people are inadvertently putting malware into their system and they're wondering why their computer keeps crashing and running like crap. And it's because they're putting malware in the food sensitivities and flammatory foods process junk food, that type of stuff. So thyroid is definitely a key area that's like the internal thermostat of the body. Another really important component system is insulin sensitivity and basically like the way that the body partitions fuel sugar. So most people I would say have some degree of type two diabetes or insulin resistance. Basically first you have insulin resistance and then as it gets worse, it turns into type two diabetes. And I would say in all my experience looking at many, many blood panels, most people are insulin resistant if not type two diabetic. And this has a really pronounced effect on someone's health. Now the mark is that I think are important to look at with this is fasting insulin and hemoglobin A1C. Now a lot of labs will run fasting glucose and that's okay. But fasting glucose is just like a snapshot in time. You can have a stressful morning on the way to your blood draw and you might spike your glucose level if you're stressing your quarters or spiked up. You know, so like you can have an acute spike but it does not represent it of what's happening long term. Whereas hemoglobin A1C is like a three month average of what your blood glucose is over a three month period. And then fasting insulin is basically how much your body has to work to release insulin to control the sugar in your bloodstream. And so people don't realize that when you're in type two diabetic, statistically you take 10 years off your life. So it has a 10 year life reduction statistically when you are type two diabetic. Because it's massive because there's so much inflammation. And I would say that in terms of knowing the biofeedback signal that most people would experience the common one is brain fog. Brain fog and feeling tired after you eat. When people experience that and they think it's ADHD, I would say many cases of ADHD are actually insulin resistance, making their way into type two diabetes. And it's something that then you start medicating with riddled and withdrawal and it's the completely wrong thing, completely wrong thing. And so think about insulin resistance a bit like when you eat food, your body breaks that food down into sugar. That sugar then enters your bloodstream and circulates. Your pancreas is tasked to release insulin and that insulin then takes the sugar out of your blood stream and partitions it into different areas of your body. That's why having muscle mass is so important because the insulin will drive sugar out of your bloodstream and and pocket in your muscle cells, which is exactly why having a good structured training plan and I focus heavily on insulin sensitivity when it comes to training. Big muscle groups, bigger fuel tanks, bigger fuel tanks, more storage capacity, more storage capacity, better blood glucose response. So your leg muscles, your quads, your back muscles, your lats, you want to prioritize those things to have bigger fuel tanks. The reason why I'm able to easily state 8% body fat without struggling is because I have such big fuel tanks that parks all the sugar in my muscle cells and not on my hips button thighs in the form of body fat like most people. Otherwise what happens is insulin then pushes your sugar into your fat cells and you just get fat. People that are fat are basically insulin resistant if not type 2 diabetic and that is going to affect your energy and your mood and your focus a ton, a ton. And the point that I really want to drive home to you is that you'll have some doctors that will say things like God's genetic. Most of this isn't genetic guys, most of it. But that's a good thing because it means you have a ton of power to change it. You know things like literally you can probably hear me in the background. I'm on my walking pad right now. Walking before and after meals is very, very good for insulin sensitivity. Adding salons cinnamon to protein shakes and fruit very good for insulin sensitivity. Are you spring dragon longevity tea? The guy knows stemily from that. Very good for insulin sensitivity. Things like burbering or dihydro burbering. It's a Chinese herb being compared to metformin but it's found in nature very good for insulin sensitivity and then obviously weight training and even the types of foods you put into your diet. This is a big one. Most people's insulin resistant comes from their diet. They don't even realize it. They don't realize they're doing the wrong things. I'll even tell you I'll get fancy for a second. The timing of your carbohydrates even has an effect on your insulin sensitivity. So I will actually time the type of time of day that I consume different fruits, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, goji berries. I'll usually push them in post workout. Why? Because at that point your muscle cells are being drained of glycogen and they're looking to soak up that sugar in your bloodstream. So you can stream those fruits at a high antioxidant and they have a lot of health benefits and it driers all that straight back into glycogen. Very, very nutrient efficient. And so I say this because there are so many things that you can do to help with insulin sensitivity but when you have a big gut and not a lot of visceral fat, it's very common to see like skinny arms and legs and then a big barrel gut. That's very common of metabolic syndrome. So metabolic syndrome is sort of one of the manifestations that happens with insulin resistance. But increasing your step count, all the things that I just mentioned, I'm going to do a whole episode on insulin sensitivity because it's in area that I find very, very important and useful. But all this to say, if you feel like you're getting brain fog and you feel like your energy's up and down and you get cravings and insulin resistance and it's something that you can't absolutely change. Now, one of the chemokas or couple actually, like a canary in the coal mine, C-reactive protein or HSCRP, high sensitivity, C-reactive protein. This one is like a canary in the coal mine marker for how likely you are to have a hot attack or stroke. And I would say that most insurance, all insurance panels should run this and they don't. So if you're a guy in their 40s, 50s onward and you haven't run C-reactive protein, that's a huge, that shows how ignorant your primary care physician is, no offense. They just don't know these things. And so it's essentially like a systemic inflammation marker. So if you're very, very inflamed in your cardiovascular system and across the board, your C-reactive protein will be higher. And again, it's a classic example of the range, doesn't constitute optimal. So typically they'll say anything between one and three is normal. Anything about three is not good. I would tell you that one, two and three is not good. I want to see you below one. Ideally as close to zero as possible. I want you to be below 0.5. I'm like 0.15. I've seen people up at like 4.5.10. And I've literally had to have conversations with them about, if you don't change things right now, you are on the knife surge of having a stroke or a heart attack based on the inflammation in your body. And again, good thing is that it's something that you can change. Another marker that I think's really important, people often worry about cholesterol, but what they don't realize is that HDL and LDL, that doesn't give you a good picture unless you have APOB. So small particle LDL is APOB, APOB. That's the one that you actually want to know. That's the one that causes all the vascular damage. That's the one that causes all the endothelial lining inflammation in your heart and cardiovascular system. And again, most people might be between 100 and 150 on APOB. I want to see you down around 70. So again, normal does not constitute optimal. And this is where I would say, this does come back to diet again. You know, there's a lot of kind of wonkydo components that don't realize that for certain individuals, a ton of saturated fat is driving up your APOB. It's driving up the inflammation in your vascular system. Now, this is where everyone is different. So I've seen people consume more saturated fat and not get that same effect, but it's where if someone wants to do, for example, if someone wants to do a keto approach, like it works well on their digestion for them, I'll load their diet up with a lot of monoinsaturated fats, avocado, olives, olive oil, hemp seed, wild caught fish, that type of stuff, high omega-3 content, and a reduction in saturated fats because that will have a negative effect on APOB. And so I say this because you need to realize that everyone's different when it comes to food choices. And so if you have someone that says, oh, you should do this type of diet and they don't ask you these types of questions, they're guessing. I'm personally plant-based. I've been vegan for 13 years, plant-based for 13 years. I love it. My blood work is impeccable because of it. I see people who absolutely thrive on this. I see people who struggle too. And everyone's different. And that's why I really try to take a non-dogmatic approach because everyone is different. Some people's digestion gets hammered and it's really difficult for them. Right? So I say this because then you can see that I'm taking a non-biased approach when I'm talking about these things. So C-reactive protein is that systemic inflammation market, typically related to heart attack strokes and your heart, things like the ratio of omega-3 to 6 to 9, you want to be omega-3 dominant. It will have an effect on the types of fats you consume in your diet. And there are many things outside of that in terms of fibrous vegetables. A lot of fibrous vegetables, I say the rainbow that has an effect on binding up this LDL cholesterol, which is a good thing. Other inflammation markers. The only other one, there's obviously a couple of two more that I think are important is uric acid and homocysteine. So those are two other inflammation markers. We're going to have separate topics on all that. But just to say that these inflammation markers are ones that most people don't run. And they affect your heart health, they affect your energy, they affect your aging. And just think about when all that stuff's crappy, it's you just don't feel good. You know, again, blood work can dictate and drive. You know, where is your low energy coming from? Where's your brain fall coming from? Poor sleep, mood swings, digestive issues, low motivation, low libido. Where is all that coming from? And then you can triangulate exactly what you need to do to change your data. You know, you change the inputs and you change the outputs. And that's the beautiful thing is that I would tell you guys, you know, you guys think it's just a willpower thing. And I would actually tell you that very often your chemistry is just really suboptimal. And it's making it way harder for you than it needs to be. Like if your cravings are through the roof and your energy is low because you're insulin resistant and you're you're completely de-optimized, it's pretty hard to be disciplined and stick with something. You're just going to white knuckle it for a week and then quit. And that's the problem people face. And then they say, I know what I need to do. I just need to do it. No, because it's not a discipline problem like you think it is. It's a it's a blood chemistry problem. It's a blueprint problem. It's a puzzle problem. And when you realize that and you're like, Oh, wow, like I can go get my labs run and get a complete idea of what's happening in my system. And then I can literally take that data and reverse engineer the exact foods and supplements and approaches that I should be doing to improve those numbers. And when I improve those numbers and not just to a normal zone but a goalie locks zone, that's when you truly start to transform. That's the main reason how I'm able to hold as much muscle mass as I do at 41 years old. Most guys struggle to stay below 10% body fat. They yo-yo diet a bunch. I keep I sustain it all year without counting calories. And I literally get up between two and three a.m. every day without struggle. And I go all day till dinner time. And I genuinely mean that and it's not to even brag because I did not used to be this way. I used to have to take naps every day. I felt like a hot mess most of the time. And I genuinely think when you take a very proactive approach to this, it can change the game for you. And the thing I would tell you is, yeah, it can feel overwhelming. But that's why I think getting some help is a useful thing. Now I'll even tell you in the show notes of this episode, I will link my blood work blueprint. So it's a free download that you can get that will have a breakdown of all the biomarkers that you can request and go and get them run. One of the best things you can do for your health, you are your best ROI. I hope you understand that. And do it for you and your partner. So both of you are dialed in. And obviously you can go away and you can learn the stuff and troubleshoot it yourself if you want. Knock yourself out. I mean, I encourage all of that stuff if that's what you want to do. Or if you're like, man, he's overwhelming with information. I just need his help. Jump on and get into my anomaly project course or get into my business athlete council or get some one-on-one pkx consulting from me. I'm not here to tell you that you should do that. I'm just here to give you the places to look. And I found that for me and my journey, the blood work was just this uncharted territory that I had no idea was even a thing. And like I said, most primary care physicians will struggle to run all the stuff through insurance because insurance doesn't want to be that proactive. And even when you do get stuff run, they tell you're normal. Even if you feel like crap. And then they tell you might need therapy and psychiatric counseling. When in actuality, your hormones are tanking and you're about to normal. And then you start to feel like something's wrong with it. You're broken. And no, it's just because everyone around you's giving you feeding you the wrong information. So these are the top markers. They're obviously more. But this is where I would begin. We want data not drama. So go out there, get those labs run, use it as a road map, reach out and ask for help if you want. But focus on those pillars first. And always, always come back to this idea that you need to see it as your duty to create that 2.0 version of yourself, for your community, for your family, for your kids, for your spouse. But most of all, for you. Because at the end of the day, when you look back on your life, you want to feel like you lived a beautiful life. You don't want to feel like you just dog pedal through life and struggle the whole time. I know, I don't want that. And I don't want that for you. And that's exactly why I do this podcast. So I hope this helps get out there, be proactive, be that lighthouse, create that business athlete that you know you need to become.