How Stark Health aligns labs, training, and personalized HRT to boost cognition, mood, and body comp.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Todd Vande Hei (CEO of Stark Health) and Dr. Alice Nguyen (Director of Naturopathic Medicine at Stark Health). They explain why sex hormones are central to brain function, how individualized HRT can improve focus and sleep—especially during perimenopause/menopause—and how movement, targeted nutrition, and lab-driven protocols elevate metabolism and longevity within a proactive, team-based care model.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest of the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I’m in Tustin, California, and let me tell you, I am excited. I’ve been hearing about this place, stark Health from Shirag Cigar, the other co-founder of Mission Matters.
Matt Cook, the director of agency, and they keep on telling me, Adam, you gotta go check it out. You gotta go see what ads, what, what what Todd is doing. And I’m like, all right, we gotta see. So I think they’re telling me I need to lose a little bit of weight. Number one. Number two rag is shredded, man.
I’m feeling the guns over there. I see you rag. I see you. Come on. So I’m excited to be here. Seriously, we did a, we did a behind the scenes that we’re gonna be releasing on the channel as well, so our YouTube channel Mission Matters business podcast. So you gotta behind the scenes tour where Todd took us through one by one.
Station in each benefit. So definitely check this out and you can check ’em on at Stark Health. And don’t forget to check out the podcast, which we’ll talk a little bit about that today too. Health is a skill, so check both of those out and welcome. All right, so let’s start with the intro. So, Todd Vande High is the founder of Stark Health, a southern California based healthcare company, redefining what it means to practice medicine.
At the heart of his mission is a shift away from reactive pharmaceutical dependent care, and toward a proactive model, grounded in root cause healing. Dr. Alice Ween is director of Naturopathic Medicine at Stark Health. She specializes in peak performance via targeted nutrition, key supplementation, pharmaceutical interventions, and advanced aging tactics.
All right, so first, Todd Alice, welcome. Welcome to the show, and thank you for letting us shoot in your beautiful. Thank you. Good to be here with you. Alright, so I gotta tell you as I mentioned in the intro, Todd, Matt Sharah, they’re fired up. They’re fired up about what you’re doing here. I’ve heard about you as well, Alice.
They’ve been telling me about what’s going on over here on the naturopathic side. So we’re gonna get into both of those and today we’re gonna be getting into. Sex, hormones, brain mental health, and metabolism. So before we get into all these though, Todd, for the audience at home and maybe some of the new friends here and the new guests that we have here, I’ve heard you say and, and correct me on the quote here, but I’ve overheard you talk about you being patient zero or patient one.
What does that mean? Well, it means that we take all of the ideas that are, that we believe may offer potential and we. We try ’em on me first. He’s Guinea pig. I was just gonna say, can we say Guinea pig? Guinea pig crash dummy. You know, lots of variations of it, but, but because many of the most effective tools that we use are natural like dietary changes, for example, it takes long periods of time of being very rigid and being willing to stick to something and then test over and over and over again to really understand.
What the theoretical outcome would be for people and, and when we think something is going to work or will work or has worked based on lab results and DEXA scans and orthopedic assessments, then we apply them to the greater stark population and continue down the testing. How, how did you know, and just this is for the entrepreneurs at home and in the audience how did you know that this was gonna be the idea that you were gonna build a lot of things you could have did with your time?
Like how did this become your mission? Well, I I, I was exposed to a very, very basic diet. You guys have probably heard of an elimination diet, right? Does that ring a bell? You just take out like dairy and eggs and, and gluten and. I did that as the, as per the recommendation of my, my partner at the time.
And I just did whatever he told me to do. Frankly, I didn’t really think much about it and, and I didn’t know what the outcome would be. And, and I didn’t even realize that I, I felt like such shit. I just didn’t, I had no contrast and I had no basis for comparison. And just to give you kind of an overview of what it was like to be inside of my body, back then, it was daily headaches periodic migraines like once a month.
My neck constantly, constantly hurt my shoulders ached, and I had a back injury from when I was in my early twenties that would, you know, rear its ugly head when I would bend over and pick up a sock periodically. Wow. A sock. And I wonder, yeah, what, how did that, that, you know, 0.5 ounces of sock, how did that damage my back?
How, how could that possibly be? I didn’t even think of the question. Never entered my mind. I was just like, well, I’ve got a back problem. And, and all of the problems just sort of accumulated. And, and I, it was just became a part of who I was and I didn’t recognize that they were outcomes of things I did to myself.
And so when he had me change the way I was eating, a couple of weeks went by and then I realized, damn, I haven’t had a headache in like two weeks. And I, and I, his name’s Brad. I met with Brad. I’m like, what? What’s going on? He goes, well, your inflammation is lower, your systemic inflammation. And I asked him what that was.
I didn’t get a, a great answer. And it sounded kind of hokey to be honest. And in terms like functional medicine or holistic medicine back then was hokey, right? It, it was supplements. What is this year wise? Rough, roughly that time. This is 2010. Okay. So yeah, like mid 2010. And, but I just did whatever he asked me to do and.
Just because I wanted to know like what was gonna happen. I expected nothing and I certainly didn’t, didn’t expect that my energy levels would shoot through the roof and I didn’t expect that my headaches would go away. And I also didn’t expect that my, my low back pain and my neck pain and my shoulder pain would all sort of diminish.
There wasn’t gone. And so I just kept doing the things he told me to do, and much of it was around exercise and nutrition and then slowly. I, I saw a, the top of my abs for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t that I was like grossly overweight. I was just like a regular dad in his early forties, you know, just like a squishy, regular dad.
We didn’t have a DEXA scan back then, but I was probably like in the mid 20% body fat, like my cheeks were rounder and everything. Again, not like extreme, but not great. And I, I, I felt sick and suddenly I felt in hindsight, the way I think I should have felt. The way that my body was in was designed or the way it was intended to be.
And, and so that was a shocking experience to go through at that age, at 43 ish. And so then I went to see my doctor and, and he ran my labs, which were beautiful. I didn’t know though, ’cause he’s just my doctor. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand lipids and such things. I just. You know, view him as the expert, like he’s up on a pedestal.
And so he came into the office kind of looking down at the chart and he asked me how I was eating and he looked at me and I was a bit on the muscular, not like I am now to be honest, but like I looked soft compared to I’m now. But I was nothing like what I was like a year earlier I started like, I had a, like a almost a two pack and my arms were like starting to look kind of muscular.
No butt yet. We didn’t get to that yet. And, and I, you know, I, I felt amazing. And he came in and he told me that I wasn’t amazing, that I wasn’t healthy, that he was gonna put me on a statin because my total cholesterol was like two 10 without getting into the LDL particles. And, and, and the, the more comprehensive look at LDLs, he was just doing a superficial overview, which is what it wa was back then.
And threatening to put me on a statin unless I started eating fiber One cereal at night, which I think is made by Kellogg’s or something, I don’t know. He actually handed me a coupon. I’m like, do I look like I need a coupon? He handed me a coupon and he said, studies show that if you eat this cereal, it’s gonna lower your cholesterol.
And I looked at him, I’m like. Who paid for the study, do you think? And he’s like, oh, probably Kellogg’s. And I’m like, oh. And he is like retracted the, tried to take the words back, like, you, have you ever done that? Where you say something, you’re like, oh, let me get that back in my mouth. But he, he couldn’t get the words back and he said, oh, probably some medical doctors were involved in that research too.
And I was just like, this is actually happening. Yeah, I don’t think this guy knows what he’s talking about. It was the first time I thought that doctors didn’t know everything, or I realized that doctors didn’t know everything. That they weren’t perfect, that they were just people, which was an astounding shift in the way I saw the medical system.
And not, not that they’re bad, they just aren’t perfect and they can’t know everything. And then I asked him, well, would you speak with Brad? And we had a chiropractor named Jason who had some firm ideas on, on nutrition as well, and he had different opinions. Would you speak to Jason and Brad? Jason and Brad, and you and me, I want us to all meet, we can come here.
And, and he said, I can, I can’t, can’t do that. There’s no way to bill for it. It’s just not what we do. And he started kind of like doing the, the moonwalk thing, kind of like metaphorically speaking. Like he didn’t want to answer the question he felt, and he had to go to the next patient. And I’m like, damn, all I want is with this project, my body, it’s like a product launch.
And in manufacturing in my past, it seems like a like another lifetime. When we launched a product, a new product, I would have the heads of every department in one room and we would fight about it, debate, you know, like the CFO was in there and he would argue about the quality of the costing. Like that you guys are off there.
You know, let me find it. And he would argue, and then the marketing person would get all flustered, but it’s so pretty. It’s beautiful. And then the, the manufacturing guy’s like, well, we can’t make it over and over again. We’ll have, you know, claims up to our eyeballs and our brand is gonna be destroyed.
And it was this tug of war, like, you know, and so I imagined that I wanted that for my body. Like, why can’t I have that for my body? You guys don’t even know everything about my body or anybody’s body. So how can you not have a debate? So all this stuff was flashing by my eye while I’m driving back angry at, at the doctor.
And I had my lab results. And, and then I hand ’em to Brad and Brad’s like, they look great. What? This is my freaking point. Like, I don’t, I don’t know if I believe you or you or that Jason Guy downstairs. How do I navigate this? And that was the problem that I decided I would solve for. And in my naivete, I just decided, well, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna.
Create my own damn team and fuck all those guys. You know, they’re not invited to our team party. And that’s, that was the genesis of Stark. It’s pretty basic. It’s the same thing that occurs in every other business. Oh man. But not in health, for some bizarre reason. The only product that we don’t know everything about and maybe never will.
How can you not have a team specialist? I don’t know. So speaking of teams of specialists, Alice, how, when and how did you join the Stark movement? Like what attracted you to this emphasis attraction? By the way we’re married just in case you guys are, there’s a weird banter here is because we’re married.
So I joined Stark in 2016. Mm. And I actually just graduated from medical school about six months before down in San Diego. So Basier University, it’s a naturopathic medical school. Before that, I was actually a trainer. Mm. So I was a trainer at Equinox and also privately in Santa Monica for four years.
And during that process, I discovered that it wasn’t enough to just exercise. You can’t out exercise, bad diet. And if there’s. Other things happening internally, like if there were hormone imbalances or deficiencies, or if your thyroid wasn’t working Yeah. That the patient or the client would not make much progress.
So that propelled me to actually go back to school. And so when I found Stark, I thought, oh, this is perfect. This is what I was doing before. Anyway, so team trainers. Yeah. They trained in a, like, they had the same training philosophy that I had when I was a trainer. At the time we used something called functional movement screening or as, as a movement screening.
And I saw that on the website and I thought, oh, okay. They’re not like a bodybuilder gym so we can get along. So that’s how I started. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s a great story. And then she fell in love with me. I wasn’t gonna ask that part on the Zoom call when I interviewed her, I could see it in her eyes.
I was like, I don’t know. Should I bring her on? She’s kind of into me. I sha I, he also looked like he was six foot four. Got her bless Short zoom.
All right. Well let, let’s get further into today’s topic. So, sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. Let’s talk about how they influence brain function, mental health, and stages of life. Who wants to start and where, where do you wanna start this? Let me, let me tee it off and then you can kind of step in and clean it up for me.
So as this is, this is something that most are confused about, that sex hormones are primarily the brain hormones, like the, the receptors. Where the sex hormones dock to penetrate the nucleus of the cell to do their thing. They’re really clustered in your brain and your gonads, you know, the fun part, but, but this is where you actually feel the presence of optimal sex hormones.
The earliest, and this is also where you experienced the decline in the beginning. I remember in my late forties forgetting where I beginning to forget where I put my keys. And having to write everything down. I had copious notes that were everywhere because I really couldn’t keep track of everything.
And it, it happens very slowly for men, the decline of sex hormones. So it’s almost imperceptible. It’s very civilized for women. It’s not, we’re just lucky that way. It’s happens so slowly that we don’t actually feel the difference, and we think we’re just fine. Like everything’s, everything’s wonderful, but it’s, but it’s really not.
Like you’re just not. Really operating at your potential at, at, right around for men, it’s called andropause, the slow steady decline of sex hormones or testosterone. It starts in like your early thirties and it’s just very, very slow. Like, so when I was in my early thirties and I remember picking up my, my baby boy when he was six months old, and in the middle of the night he was straddling my belly.
I remember thinking, well, I, I’m, I’m just getting older, you know? I’m in the full throes of a dad bot. I guess this is just the way it is. It’s gonna be, this is my flaps are down and I’m looking for a place to, to land at 31. Right. And so for women, it’s, it’s very different. And I’ll, I’ll have Alice step in and, and kind of expand on all this stuff and, and maybe we can talk a little bit about the common mis misconceptions.
I don’t know if there are a lot, are there a lot of misconceptions among men today on the critical nature of. Testosterone. It sort of seems like it’s a common topic today. It wasn’t a decade ago when I started. No. Is that right? Is that about accurate? Okay. But with women, we’re right at the beginning stages of it becoming something that women are not so fearful of and recognize that it is a part of a healthy journey.
A healthy journey in in life. That’s the be that’s, we’re at the beginning stages of those, of that for women. So I think that would be, it’d be really ideal. If you can talk about the stages of menopause and how the experience of going through that and what the, what the process of hormone replacement therapy looks like and what the outcomes are when they end up on the other side in an optimal level or at an optimal level.
Okay. Sorry, lemme just reorganize that a little bit. So just to reemphasize what he was saying earlier. A lot of people think that these sex hormones are only involved in your breasts or your penis, or your vagina, ovaries, or anything like that, or your uterus. It is not. These hormones actually act in every cell of the body, and it’s not just the brain.
That’s what he was saying. It’s in your immune cells, it’s in your joints, it’s in your cardiovascular system. But definitely when it comes to your perception of the world, the hormones are powerful in the brain. So there is an explosion of Alzheimer’s that’s happening right now, and the reason why is that our population is aging.
But a huge portion of that population, they were deprived of a crucial therapy and, and their females, by the way. In the early two thousands. Now that came with the WHI study, the Wind’s health initiative study where there was a conclusion from the study that was not very well thought out and also in fact misinterpreted that estrogen was causing heart attacks and strokes and also causing breast.
So there has been subsequent re analyses of that study in the past two decades where they said, and they found, they’re like, oh wait, that’s actually not the case and I don’t want to go into the details of that. There are plenty of podcasters out there who will go into the nitty-gritty of how that was done poorly.
There are doctors, like for example, very famous one, Dr. Peter Atia, who said that that was probably the greatest. Travesty and the greatest mistake in medicine in recent decades, that’s how bad it’s, so we’re think about it, 20 years of women who basically enter this phase of life where they don’t have these crucial brain hormones, and now they’re 60, 70, 80 years old.
And that’s one of the reasons why that there is such an explosion of Alzheimer’s because without these hormones, the brain cells. They don’t operate very well, they end up dying. So so when it comes to perimenopause, so this is the period where your hormones are really kind of wacky. You’re still making some hormones, but then you’re not, then you’re making a lot and you’re making none whatsoever.
This can actually start up to 10 years before you’re actually on your actual onset of menopause. So what he was saying earlier with men having like this slow kind of decline, this is actually happening with women too. Depends on the individual though. It could be incredibly sudden, but it really kind of depends on that individual patient.
I can tell you that, you know, you can extend or delay menopause. And that usually includes being incredibly healthy. Like what is your nutrition like, what are your micronutrients like, what’s your stress management like? And the oldest patient we have currently who has a regular cycle still is 55 years old.
That’s actually pretty old. Okay. So I’ve been up old, but I have seen patients where they have gone into menopause, and this is more of a genetic thing, late thirties. Like 38 years old, full on, just like she has to be on hormone replacement therapy. And this is not because of surgery either. So everyone is very individual.
And I will say that when it comes to managing this group of individuals, it’s incredibly challenging. It is an n equals one medicine, very personalized. And the, the kind of constellations of symptoms are very, very different. So it can be itchy ears. That’s a really interesting one right there, right?
Yeah. Vertigo. I’ve seen that one too. Joint pain. That one’s really obvious. On top of obviously the hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, and also vaginal dryness, low libido. I know this is really exciting and doom and gloom right now, but I will say that we’ve treated a ton of females with hormone replacement therapy.
And what’s amazing, I’ll, I’ll tell you a story. I had this one of my, my first patients that I put on hor hormone replacement therapy, estrogen replacement therapy, as well as progesterone. She came to me and she is a, an incr, like a very high level C sweet, you know, just, just very kind of really intimidating woman.
Still intimidates me to this day, by the way. It’s been like eight years. She. She came to me and she said, my brain isn’t working. I am like, I am walking into a room and I do not remember why I’ve walked into this room. Wow. I used to remember everyone’s name. I like, she was in software by the way, so like, so she’s like an incredibly high powered, and she said, my brain, I, I feel like I have dementia.
And we’re like, okay. Like, let’s take a look. Obviously you’re not having your cycle anymore. Let’s give you some hormones, and this again my first HRT patient hormone replacement therapy patient. I’m sitting there crossing my fingers. I’ve learned these things in school. I have these mentors who’ve guided me and I’m crossing my fingers like, oh my God, I hope this works.
I hope this works. I hope this works. And then she comes, you know in the gym, about a month or two later, she comes to like, just kind of like Beelines made in the middle of the gym. She’s the type person who does not blink when she talks to you and doesn’t break eye contact either. Like I said, very intimidating.
She came up to me and she said, thank you for giving me my brain back. Wow. And she turned around and I just stood there. I was like, oh God, thank God.
You know, so it’s, that’s amazing. You know, it gives them, like, when you start to lose your brain, like, and, and again, people just don’t understand until they actually go through it. You know, they’re like, oh my God, I think I’m going crazy. But when you give them that portion of their life back, it is, it’s, it is powerful.
And I will also bring up one other case where I have, this patient has been postmenopausal for a definitely a few years. She decided that she was gonna go to law school. And I was like, oh, that’s, that’s vicious. Okay. Law school in her fifties, postmenopausal is okay. She’s a very healthy, works out great body composition, but hormones aren’t there and it has been there for quite some time.
So we initiated hormone therapy with her before she started law school. And she proceeded to go through law school. And again, this is stressful, law school, med school, any of that. So it’s been two core semesters. And I’ve checked in with her and she’s started estrogen. She started testosterone and I asked her, how are you doing?
And she said to me, honestly, law school is really, really tough, but I’m doing incredibly well. And in fact, I’m at the top of my class. Wow. So even at like, she has not been in school for decades now, but the fact that she has these hormones in place and these great foundations of training and eating well and then having, of course, like I said, the hormones to really kinda help with brain function.
Her ability to really kind of manage stress and be resilient towards it, and also have a brain work optimally. Like, I look at that and I’m like, wow. Like I think, you know, it’s, it’s a testament to how powerful these therapeutics are for a patient, and they can, again, keep having not like at the end of life, just like this decline.
They can keep going for other things in other kind of pursuits. Yeah. If you think about the, the global impact of optimal hormones, it’s really a profound change. And I’m not just talking about for older women or older men. Because young men and young women have problems with hormones too, and it’s not that they’re good candidates for replacement therapy, it’s just that their lifestyles, their diet, lack of sleep, social media, mental health issues, all just crush your body’s ability to create sex hormones.
And so the impact is it’s, it’s global. So it, it, obviously it has. An impact on mental wellbeing like Alice just suggested. But it definitely has an impact on body composition. And part of that impact is that you believe that by eating better and exercising, you’re going to get the results because of the mental wellbeing impact.
Does that make sense? And so your behavior changes, and then you also have the ability to physiologically add a little bit of muscle, lose a bit of body fat because your physiology is changing. So it’s bidirectional. It’s you’re better mentally, so you’re making better decisions and you’re benefiting in a bigger way from those better decisions because you have the hormones on board, what I just described, rag this young man right here in front of me can do this just naturally.
But he has to live in such a way where his, his body was designed to live right? He was designed to move. I’ve seen him walking on little treadmills inside of Stark. On his phone, but his body’s like, I’m hunting and I’m gathering right now. You know, he’s, it’s, it’s thinking that it’s being used the way it was designed and I’m, I think he sleeps really well.
I think his mental wellbeing is exceptional. He’s put a lot of work into that and so he is got all of these foundational things in line and likely I don’t pour through your chart ’cause that’s kind of creepy, but, but likely he has really good looking. Sexy hormones. Is that a term? I’m just looking into his eyes right now thinking sexy dude.
But, but because he’s, he’s got the physiological capabilities and there are a lot of young people here looking at some of ’em right now that have the capability to produce optimal hormones that in your future, maybe you’ll have to replace to get back there, but you can do it now. You don’t have to inject, test testosterone into your glute.
Like, like I do. Because you make it yourself. Like, I would never inject testosterone into my glute if I were your age because our levels are the same, theoretically. Like it would be literally pointless. Does it make sense? You have tremendous capabilities as young people, as older people. The takeaway is you have the potential to get back in that part of your health to a younger state.
And it is also cardiovascular health. It is strength, it’s sleep recovery and STR and and and stress. It’s gut health, it’s detoxification pathways, certainly mental wellbeing and also orthopedic health. It’s all of your health as it relates to that skinny little part of your health, which is your sex hormones.
Does that make sense? As a global impact? All right. So I have one more question for them, and then we’re going to open it up so we can get everybody else involved as well. So so be ready with that question. Okay. Or those questions. All right. So when we think about the four domains and we look at ’em together, so hormones, brain, mental health, and metabolism, what do you see as the most critical lever for extending both lifespan and quality of life?
It is gonna be your brain. I, I’m biased. My undergrad was in psychology with an emphasis in bio-psychology, and I actually conducted, this is kind of interesting. My undergrad, I conducted a ton of research on rats and hormones. I know I, this is a kinda bad, slightly bad story, but we. Used to take a bunch of rats and either take their ovaries or their test testicles, you know, they would, we would do a go ectomy.
So we remove them and we would actually see how they behave when it comes to a battery of tests. And when you take away the gonads of these rats, you’ll see that they will behave like aged rats. It was, we ran a, like a whole line of studies on it and when I think back of like what I did as an 18, a 22-year-old, I was like, oh my God.
I never thought back then that I would still be this like involved in hormones. But if your brain isn’t working, nothing else works. So I have a colleague who runs and owns a dementia facility in Encinitas. And all she sees are end stage really kind of sick patients with Alzheimer’s of dementia, and she has done presentations, and she’s also published on this.
But one of the things that she’ll do to improve the quality of life of those patients is to give more. Right. So a man would get testosterone placement therapy. The female would actually get, you know, estrogen, testosterone, and, you know progesterone as well. And while that won’t solve or cure them of their dementia, it will improve their quality of life in their end, the end of their years.
So that’s in, in itself, is a pretty powerful testament of how important hormones are. When it comes to brain and cognition. Now, if your brain’s working, just like what he was saying right now, if your brain is working better, you will make better decisions. So we see about 60% men here at Stark. And we have around 105 men on testosterone replacement therapy that we completely track and follow and test very frequently up to, you know, four times a year when it comes to their blood work.
And what we’ll see is that, you know, when we put them on test and we follow them, first of all, they feel better. Like their mood is better. They’re more ambitious. They feel more motivated. They feel like they can handle more things. They are, they’re not anxious, they’re not depressed. Now, the other thing is that they start making better decisions about their health.
I cannot tell you how often where we see in the DEXA machine, like a person who’s been with us for a few years and they are not making any progress whatsoever. And they, for whatever reason, many reasons are not starting testosterone placement therapy. And the moment that they do start, we’ll see some of the most powerful transformations in their body composition and their metabolism.
So today, in fact, we just saw, I have a patient in his seventies. He has been like in the 40% body fat range forever. And today we saw 11 pounds of fat mass that’s dropped. Wow. And he is in like the 33%. Now this is a like a man in his seventies. Never thought that this was going to happen in his life. So it’s powerful and in fact, in my opinion, and from my clinical experience as well.
Testosterone replacement therapy is way more effective than ozempic or manjaro when it comes to really changing someone’s body composition. So as, as a patient, I like to echo that, that the, the most exciting thing about having your hormones optimized is how your mind works. It’s so, I don’t know, like.
Juicy. You’re just like, you recall everything. You can focus. I’m pretty sure I’m funnier. Maybe not. Maybe I’m not funnier. Ha ha. Got you guys left twice. It’s just, it’s just more fun to be on the inside of my body. You know, the, the, the thoughts I can process, the creativity, the energy ah, this is my, one of my most favorites.
This comes along I think, with some wisdom. The ability to recognize your, the evolution of your emotional wellbeing to, to connect with people, like comparing my, maybe you disagree with this. I don’t think so. I can connect with people on an emotional level within seconds because I’m so present that I never could have done when I was in manufacturing.
And, and so if you guys are leaders in your businesses or your service providers and your clients are important, or your, your employees are important, your customers are important, imagine through your health, whether it’s because you’re a young buck still and you have the ability to enhance your own hormones through the way you live and eat and sleep, or you have them replaced.
Imagine you can, you can level up like 40% just by. Accomplishing that. Plus you get a way better physique along with it, you know? But that’s, that really is the side benefit. Alright, let, let’s give it up for the panel. Questions. Questions. Who’s first? Oh, don’t be scared. What are some of the side effects of hormone replacement truck for men and women?
And I’ll repeat the question just to, what are some of the side effects for men and women for hormone replacement? Can I start with the testosterone medicine? I can just roll through my own. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So it’s possible that your testes get really tiny. It kind of sucks, but they weren’t really doing anything for me.
You know what I mean? And I got the other things that came along with it that was a physiological outcome. They’re back. I mean, is that TMI We’re talking about body parts. I don’t know why they’re back. I, the approach that we use to delivering testosterone is a little bit different. Than it was back then.
Like he’s got this microdosing system that doesn’t have the same negative side effects negative side effects. One time, this is really TMI, like two weeks in, I woke up with a morning erection. That was like when I was 18, and that started happening again for the first time in my adult life after like a gap of it just so slowly declining.
And like, Hey bro, you look the same, but you’re not quite like you used to be. You know what I mean? And, and I, I had to, I had to pee in the shower ’cause I couldn’t get it to go away. I was worried I had to just pee straight up. That happened. I believe my prostate is smaller because I’m able to pee with an erect.
In, into the shower. And, and some people are afraid of, you know, having prostate issues. If you go on TRT, I don’t, from my own personal experience and the arguments I’ve had with my urologist, I don’t think that’s a, an issue. And there’s something called T Flu that I experienced, which is a, it feels like you have the flu for like a week and there’s no, like, your fever’s not, you don’t have a fever or anything, you’re just like all achy and stuff.
And then it, then it went away. I mean, I talked to Alice about it. I’m like, ah, I got this thing. I think I’m sick. Oh, it’s just tea food. It’s no big deal. Sure enough, on the other end of that week, it was gone and in my rear view mirror. And those are the negative side effects Yeah. That I experienced. Do you have any others to add?
So when you ever, when of you optimize man’s testosterone his libido will actually be quite high. Now think about what your libido was when you were 18 or 16. Now the problem with that, and this is there’s a lot of couples counseling that I actually have to end up doing. There’s a lot of like, hey, if there is a differing sex drives between the man and the woman, and the man goes on testosterone placement therapy, then that libido of his will go even higher.
Then that’s actually gonna cause a lot of friction in the relationship. So the wife, the spouse, the girlfriend, the partner, they must know, they must be aware. Otherwise that will be a problem. The other thing is that if a man is not eating his protein and not hitting protein targets, undereating, and he is on testosterone.
Testosterone is a highly anabolic hormone. So meaning that if you are not eating and your blood sugar then plummets. And you are having a bunch of kids running around annoying the crap outta you, and you will explode on the kids and they’ll blame it on the testosterone. It’s actually more hypoglycemia.
So the third thing is many men are very concerned that testosterone will actually cause baldness. Now, for some men on their, in their follicles, they’re going to be more sensitive to a more powerful form of testosterone called DHT Dihydro Test testosterone. If they have that sort of predisposition, then yes, you can have some hair loss there.
But I’ve had many men who are like, man, I feel so great. I don’t care about my hair. I’m already married. I have kids. I don’t intend on going on dates or anything like that. Whatever. You know, my hair can go. So, and also if there’s obviously genetics there, that’s gonna be a problem. Like you’re gonna lose your hair regardless of testosterone or not.
Well, here’s an interesting consideration though, too. A lot of men go on Finasteride. Which suppresses your DHD. Clean this up. If I’m screwing it up and enables your hair to grow back at me, enables it. I know that was about, it was rough. That’s right. He can handle it. He can handle it. So when you, when you go on, when, so your fide is suppressing it and then your experience of being a man is also suppressed.
Like you’re depressed and you’re anxious and you’re from the neck down, you’re falling apart, but you’ve got this glorious head of hair, right? And then you go on TRT and your doctor doesn’t know enough to tell you that they’re gonna cancel each other out. Like your DHT is suppressed because of Finasteride.
And I’m gonna try to raise your DHT with testosterone. It’s not gonna. And so you continue with your glorious hair, you’re injecting testosterone into your glute, your little tiny glutes, and it’s, this is not doing anything. You’re like, this is terrible. This is, this whole thing sucks. I’m still depressed, but I’ve got this such beautiful hair, you know?
So there’s that. Who’s next? Poor woman. Ah, so this is a little bit more complex. When it comes to personalized medicine, there is nothing more personalized than. Hormone replacement therapy for women. So women are, there are some women who are incredibly sensitive to some of these hormones. So this is why you have to work with a practitioner who can actually have the doses adjusted, you know, via going through a compounding pharmacy.
And there are actually multiple kind. Again, with men, it’s testosterone. That’s all you have to, basically it’s just one. You know that, that, that picture, the meme of the, the man is one dial on a plane or something like that. Something like control panel. And then for a woman, it’s like five different, like multiple, like 10, 20 Bs.
Or, or dials. That’s literally what it is like for men and women when it comes to hormones. So I’ve had women who I would give them testosterone in a cream form, low dose, and then their hair would start falling out, and I’m like, Nope, that’s not working. I’ve given progesterone to women and it’s supposed to help them sleep for 90% of the women.
I’ll help ’em sleep 10%. It will drive them batshit crazy. Sorry. That’s right. But so with the, with these, the female patients, we actually have to do a lot more handholding. But if we get it right, they feel awesome. And if they don’t get their refills for their medications, they will be very angry with our front desk and call screaming and just bloody murder.
So that one, is, is this. And for women, sometimes you know, they will actually start to have some breakthrough bleeding even though they haven’t had a period for decades or something like that. So usually we’ll work with an O-B-G-Y-N and have that worked up, like we’ll send them to them, get imaging done, and make sure there’s nothing that is more serious.
But but yes, these are all the things you have to consider. So my question is really simple. What is the best activity to produce more validation in the brain? ’cause you know, a lot of gray matter exists as you age and you wanna produce more white matter, right? So how, like, what do you recommend as the pattern for anti-pattern for produce validation?
We basically, you know, know what violation is. It’s like we’re triggering all of our synopsis, right? Our great activity going off. Get a eureka moment. Brain healthy. I’m interested in understanding. We have come find out. So are you looking for myelination or are you looking for myelination specifically?
That more myelination. More myelin. So to maintain more myelin or the health of the myelin sheath, you actually have to make sure that your omegas are optimal. So that’s from a nutrition standpoint. So omega threes are, in fact DHA Omega-3 is crucial for brain function. Now, when it comes to the myelination, remyelination, that’s tricky.
Like that’s something where my mentors were actually functional neurologists. They were the ones who can identify neurodegenerative disease 10 years before it shows up on imaging. Just by looking at physical exams, like very, very, very in depth physical exams, they’re going to say that you can’t do it, that you can actually grow new neurons.
However, what they’ll say is that you can actually grow new branches of those neurons. So the brain is, is perhaps one of the most complex organs in this universe, like especially the human brain. Probably, you know, the only other brain in the animal kingdom that can can really can compete is probably the dolphin brain.
But I will say that can I, can I talk about your personal history or No? Sure. Okay. He actually had a stroke about a year ago now. This is actually from a heart condition that he has called atrial fibrillation, where his heart pumps irregularly. And when it goes on for a too long of a period, it actually cause creates a, a blood clot.
And if that blood clot gets thrown outta the heart, it can cause a stroke. Okay. So for him and it was pretty serious. He actually, you know, he was in the hospital for three days. He actually had issues with his, I could have gotten out in one day, but they would have tackled me. I found out that they can actually restrain you in hospitals.
Yeah, yeah, they can actually, that’s some bullshit right there. So, so in the past year, what’s been really kind of fascinating, in his case it was actually. Almost a year ago that that’s happened. And what’s amazing when you look at him and you hear him talk, you’re like, holy crap, I have no idea that you had a stroke.
Now I think the only thing that really kind of is remnant or, or, or, or residual in his issues that he does have, do you still have the blind spot? Yeah. It’s like, it’s like right up here, but I don’t ever use that. So big deal. Yeah. No pickleball for the sky, by the way. So anyway, to the, the, the, the past year, the focus has actually been healing his brain.
Now luck there, there are a few factors that went into him being able to, to function the way that he is now and, and is in the health that he is. Number one, his health going into the stroke, he was optimally healthy going into the stroke. Number two, how fast we got him to the hospital. And number three, what we did afterwards, like all the therapeutics we did afterwards to really help his brain heal.
And one thing I’ll tell you, high dose fish oil, but high dose krill oil in particular to really kinda help repair that brain of his krill oil. Fen fact actually is an Omega-3 that is bound with phospholipids and phospholipids really, really, really repair the brain. And, and protects it from damage.
Now, the other things we did like phosphatidylcholine, which is also another thing that is really, really, really important for brain function. ID therapy, you know, antioxidants, interestingly enough, I did a search a deep search of whether or not testosterone was actually helpful or harmful in his case.
And all the studies actually show that it was in fact helpful. So if he actually went into that stroke and had low testosterone, his outcomes afterwards wouldn’t been as good. Now finally, so let me give you the timeline of stroke. He had stroke on Sunday. He was in the hospital until Wednesday. He came back into Stark on Thursday, did some light cardio.
On Friday, he started to lift. So when it comes to the brain, I had a speech the following Monday. Yeah, he actually did a speech as well the following Monday as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was and found out there that yeah, he had an issue that he had the event. Now when it comes to the brain and the body, your muscles and your brain, from a longevity standpoint, bidirectional, just like what he was saying earlier, the brain feeds into the muscles, but the muscles, if you work, it will feed into the brain.
And that’s why when it comes to a longevity standpoint, it’s a non-negotiable. When you talk about, or they, or they talk about all the blue zones out there and they talk about diet and they’re, they’re really cherry picking, by the way, what the common denominator of, or these blue zones and why they live so long.
Number one is community, and number two is actually movement. They’re constantly moving. They’re not sedentary. So, I mean, he never stopped like, like we, we forget sometimes. And I had to kind of remind him like, Hey, listen, just chill out a little bit. You did have an event. And he is like, oh yeah, that’s right.
But I mean, he’s, it’s life will throw some crazy curve balls at you and it’s what you do af before and after is really important whether or not you survive and thrive. Yeah, it was, it was in, it was inconvenient, but, but the exciting thing is, as she’s describing, there’s a lot you can do for your cognition, physiologically, and, and it’s, it’s food, it’s supplements, it’s exercise, it’s meditation, you know, getting a grip on who you are as a person and recognizing how you’re seeing the world.
That’s where meditation steps in. What she didn’t talk about, I don’t know if it’s okay to share with with you guys, is that I did like, I don’t know, 20. Hero dose psilocybin nights from the stroke to like, I don’t know, last May or something, which is not fun. You know, it’s like, like am I dying to ya?
Haha. You know, like total lunatic trying to, you know, create neuro new neural connections. The neuroplasticity benefits of it, and prior to having the event also related to cognition and mental wellbeing. I did over the course of a few years, roughly. This is in a clinical setting 32 Ketamine assisted therapy sessions for the purpose of enhancing brain function.
This all led up to the stroke. But, and, and I, I had this me, I had this medical condition, this first diagnosed when I was 32, and I’m 57 now, so it’s been a long time. It’s not like a, I wondered when it wasn’t like an if and it’s. Turned out to be a very helpful problem because when you recognize your mortality at such a young age, you start looking for things to do to help minimize the impact or protect you, and you also, I think the experience of being alive is enhanced because you, through the recognition of your mortality, the minutes, the days, the weeks, the months become more precious and many of, I would’ve otherwise taken it for granted.
So all of that led up to that, that stroke. Does that help? Is that helpful? Yeah, that was, it’s really helpful because I have a, a permanent scar on that side. Mm. Okay. Prior accident, I’ve been on seizure lock for 10 years. Oh, wow. Because of the, I had a hundred micros. Oh, wow. But the TBI like sometimes, you know, I’ve had tinnitus for three years straight after prior accident, all these things.
But I’m asking that question because I deal with that now, or you know, sometimes I have to do certain things. Interested in learning. Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot you can do for brain health. Awesome. We got time for one more and then we can all network and, you know, hang out, but wanna make sure we get some time for some questions afterwards.
Yeah, yeah. Rich. So I my name is Nimi by the way. Thank you so much. Yeah. So I’ve been really interested in peptides, so I’m curious about your thoughts on peptides.
Okay, so she she had a question around peptides. The approach with peptides is that it’s just like hor, not just like hormones, but you should approach it like it’s the icing on the cake. I have seen patients attempt to optimize their hormones with peptide therapy, and it gets to a point where. For, for us women, we’re not gonna be making these hormones unless it’s replaced.
Our ovaries are going to be done at a particular point. So now in order for the peptides to work optimally, you have to have the hormones in place as a foundation. So I’ve, I’ve seen some people attempt to use the peptides. To really kind of replace the hormones. And it doesn’t work that way. It just doesn’t.
Now there are thousands of peptides and they have different purposes, different combinations as well. So it really depends on what your or your, what your, your outcomes, your desires, your goals are when it comes to the peptides. But the ones that I like the most are, of course, you know, there’s one and here’s the problem.
The, the legal status of the peptides, unfortunately right now is. Problematic FDA’s trying to go after it. There’s actually a huge podcast that was just released by Joe Rogan. He interviewed a guy named Brigham Buhler and he talks about the, the complex legal status of peptides and why. You gotta be really cautious about where you’re getting it from because a lot of people are actually getting it from the internet and you just can’t guarantee if there’s number one, the peptides are in there.
Number two, it’s. Sterile. Like it doesn’t have any sort of like contaminants, heavy metals or bacteria in there. You can actually get hurt from it. But yeah, it, it’s a big, big, big, big discussion. But. The ones I used to use a lot when we had access to it with reputable compounding pharmacies was cjc Imar.
That one is a growth hormone releasing peptide, which is awesome. It really kind of gets your own body to release your own growth hormone, which is a great recovery, anti-aging hormone in itself. The other one is DSIP, which he used to use. It helps with deep sleep. There is one that actually will help lengthen telomeres, which is called epitol.
That was also difficult to get from a reputable compounding pharmacy right now too. So I’m hoping that this current administration will really allow for more freedom for these peptides to be compounded by reputable companies going forward. But we’ll, we’ll see in the coming years. But I’m hopeful. I, I think that they are in fact a feature when it comes to really kind of encouraging healthcare instead of sick care.
But by the way, the GLP ones, they’re peptides, Ozempic, Manjaro, those are all originally peptides, but pharma actually patented and that’s why they’re so damn expensive right now. So, alright, you wanna close this out? Cool. Thank you. Let’s do it. Thank you.
