Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Running for Oklahoma Governor w/ Dr Mark Sherwood
162 Plays10 months ago
Do you need help with your health? Would you like to increase your longevity while addressing existing health issues?
Request your FREE Metabolic Function Assessment session with me here: https://www.livelongerformula.com/
During this 45-minute consultation we’ll take a deep dive into critical areas of your metabolism and understand what is out of balance.
From gut health and hormone function to adrenal health and blood sugar regulation, even a small imbalance in any of these (or other) areas can lead to poor health in the future and diminished longevity…but the sad fact is that a large majority of people over 40 have multiple imbalances in multiple areas of their metabolism…
The key is to identify and address these swiftly, so that you can thrive for decades to come without worrying that “something’s brewing under the surface.”
Request your Metabolic Function Assessment session here and let's get you thriving for decades to come: https://www.livelongerformula.com/
---
Dr. Mark Sherwood has completed training and certifications in age management, nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, peptide therapy, hormone therapy, stress management, GI health, and immunology. He is a 24-year retired veteran of the Tulsa Police Department, where he logged a decade of courageous service on the department’s SWAT Team. He is also a former Oklahoma state and regional bodybuilding champion, and ex-professional baseball player. Additionally, Dr. Mark traveled the world for over 10 years with the world-famous Power Team. Mark is also a motivational speaker whose presentations are sought by audiences nationwide.
Links to Dr Mark’s resources and social media:
Functional Medical Institute: https://fmidr.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drs_mark_and_michele_/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksherwood
Website: https://sherwood.tv/
The Quest For Wellness: A Practical And Personal Wellness Plan For Optimum Health In Your Body, Mind, Emotions And Spirit: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Wellness-Practical-Personal-Emotions/dp/1943127050/
Fork Your Diet: Master the 4 Fundamentals of Good Health: https://www.amazon.com/Fork-Your-Diet-Master-Fundamentals/dp/193648742X/
Surviving the Garden of Eatin’: Surprising Biblical Insights to Enjoy Optimal Wellness: https://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Garden-Eatin-Surprising-Biblical-ebook/dp/B07RZV4D68/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=mark+sherwood&qid=1615147039&sr=8-4
Fork Your Diet: https://www.amazon.com/Fork-Your-Diet-Mark-Sherwood/dp/B07RQW5S94/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Connecting Minds podcast, Christian Jordonov here. Today we have a returning guest, Mark Sherwood. We had him on maybe, Jesus could have been three years ago at this point.
00:00:13
Speaker
So let me briefly go over his extensive bio. He's a former 24-year police veteran, 10 years on the SWAT team, 12 years with power team. He's a building champion, former professional baseball player, 2022 Oklahoma Goober Notorio.
00:00:32
Speaker
candidate and a functional medicine expert with his wife Michelle. They're podcasters, they have a TV show, they're media personalities, they're film producers, they're actors, founders of Hope Dealers International, founders of functional medical institute in Tulsa,
00:00:49
Speaker
their supplement formulators. I could go on and on. There are three bestselling books. Mark just told me they're working on their fourth book, another movie. Mark, welcome to the show, brother. Hey, Christian. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to connecting with you again, man. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, man, it's a great honor. And actually, the first thing I just saw earlier, I stuck your name in the duck duck go and I saw you, you were running for governor.
Experience Running for Governor
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. Tell me about that. I temporarily lost my mind, right? You know, a lot of people think so, but no, honestly, um, we felt like we're supposed to get out there and get in the race and do something. And, and it might sound crazy.
00:01:34
Speaker
but it wasn't about winning and losing. It was about just being willing to go out there and take a stand for what is right. And here in the United States of America, we've got big time issues and problems because of a lack of leadership. And that lack of leadership is, is destroying our land. It's destroying people. It's destroying the world. And we've got to get back. We have leaders that actually care more about people than it is about profits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important to really make a stand. And we just cannot submit the tyranny. I think that they would love if we just submit it. And they're throwing the kitchen sink at it. But people like you are doing their part.
The Great Reawakening Tour
00:02:23
Speaker
And I love that. So I also see you're going to be speaking at an event called The Great Reawakening versus The Great Reset. What's that going to be about?
00:02:33
Speaker
Well, we've been on a tour for the last, um, probably two and a half years around the country. And, uh, it's called the real wake in America tour. And I get to be one of the speakers and I'm very happy with that. So we've been all over the country. We've got one coming up. We just got finished in Miami. Um, we've got one coming up in, uh, Fresno, California very soon. And then I believe in 2024, there's one, uh, north somewhere in Michigan and the Carolinas and back to Florida again. So.
00:03:00
Speaker
We've been all over the country and it's been a pleasure to meet people, hear the hearts of people and, you know, get eyeball to eyeball with some of the, it's just great human beings, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
Critique of Healthcare and Governance
00:03:13
Speaker
Let me ask you, so were you, before the, the events of 2020, early 2020, were you aware of how deep the rabbit hole goes, if you know what I mean? Somewhat, because like, you know, the whole COVID mess for us was,
00:03:31
Speaker
I was shocked to see how many people went down that place of just blind submission. But prior to that, we had recognized that our system of, you know, treatment and care of people is not effective. It's not any good. And so we had, we're already doing things different. So it wasn't anything, a change for us. We didn't change the way we did anything. Didn't change our process and protocols. We continued to learn, of course, but, um,
00:04:01
Speaker
We didn't have to change anything. Our mindset was always that, you know, America and its quote unquote health care system is a massive failure. And America as its governmental system, the way they manage debt is a failure. And we knew big food was a failure. And so we were always kind of standing against those things even prior to that. Yeah. Well, just to go back to the governor's thing, what is, what was that
Campaign Focus on Education
00:04:28
Speaker
like? I mean, that sounds like a stressful,
00:04:31
Speaker
It was hard. We did things different. The idea with us was to go out and talk to as many people as we could because we came into it unknown in the political arena. We're known in what we do, but we're unknown in that. I think people were not taking this serious at first.
00:04:54
Speaker
They started to, and we ended up getting about 15% of the vote, which was incredible. That's incredible. For first-time candidates in anything. Nobody worked harder than we did, Christian. We worked very hard. We worked every day. We didn't go out there and just beg for money. And, you know, this is not something put it off on us, but this is the way I think politicians or people that run it for office should do. We probably funded 85, 90% of the campaign ourselves.
00:05:23
Speaker
Wow. Because I didn't want to be someone that's a perpetual taker. I wanted to be someone that modeled giving. And so we would go out there and just ask people what they need. And I became an educator of the Republican Party platform, which, by the way, most Republicans don't read and have no idea what it says. And then I became an educator of the Constitution, specifically the 10th Amendment and how the states have supremacy over the federal government.
00:05:51
Speaker
And people appreciated that. And I think the last point of that would be this. And again, I think it's because we stood up and said yes. There was probably 35, 40 other people in other races around the state that stepped up and said yes, because they saw us doing something that they thought they could do too.
Insights on Political Affiliations
00:06:12
Speaker
And so it inspired people.
00:06:16
Speaker
I think that, you know, I didn't lose one bit of sleep over this thing. Honestly, it sounds kind of crazy, but election night came and I went to work just like I always did. The staff did a nice little thing. They put some flags all over the office and took some pictures. I was grateful, but I went home, ate some dinner and went to bed. I didn't think twice about it. My wife stayed up and watched the election results, but I didn't because my job at that point was done. I did my job. I wasn't ashamed no matter what happened.
00:06:46
Speaker
And, um, my wife was like, looking at me like, aren't you concerned? I'm like, no, I'm not because I said, yes, I did my part. I poured my heart and soul into every single person I was dealing with. And it's like, you know, just like when we talk, Christian. Right now, you know, I treat this like you are the most important person in my life right now. And I think that type of conversation should be had with every conversation. You make people feel important.
00:07:15
Speaker
And when you make people feel important, that makes that conversation like really worthy of something and it means something. And I think people appreciate that. Oh, for sure. I mean, I'm not the voting kind of guy, but if it was you, I would hear, let's say, I would register to vote for you, bro. For sure. Yeah. And I had people that were switching. I was an independent for a long, long time because I got sick of the party system. But when I started looking at it, I actually read
00:07:44
Speaker
I did that. Who does that? And I found out that the Republican Party platform is really.
00:07:51
Speaker
It's good. And they, they believe in the right things and it lined up. So I actually, prior to the election, I switched and went from independent to Republican and people criticized me for that, but I didn't want to be a perpetual person that was just a pain in the butt. I wanted to actually make a difference. And so, you know, we did that and there were people that were independent that were changing parties. There were people that were Democrats were changing parties. And a lot of people, Christian don't know.
00:08:20
Speaker
why they're in the part of their end. They have no idea and we need to begin to sort of learn why we believe what we believe and why we vote for who we vote for and really how to select the persons in which to vote. Oh yes, that's so just lately because I started working on my second book recently and I've realized that even in the health space what we believe, what we teach our clients or patients
00:08:49
Speaker
We have, it's just been handed down to us and we have to really reevaluate a lot of things that, you know, a lot of prior assumptions that we make about the, whatever the world, the human body, physiology, whatever else.
Questioning Science Assumptions
00:09:05
Speaker
And it's a, it's healthy, the healthier, sorry, the older you are and, and to still be able to do that, the, I think it shows them the healthier a person is, you know what I mean?
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. You know, science. We heard the last couple of years, trust the science. Well, if you look at science, what is that? That's an exercise in questioning on why things don't work. That's what science is. You get a hypothesis, you put it up for an experiment or some sort of a study and then you try to figure out, well, why did that not work? You know, and you keep carving away at that and what you have left
00:09:48
Speaker
is the best you know, and that really is the definition of science, right? We were taught, I think, within an indoctrination attempt to really just believe things as concrete. You know, this is the way it is. You're not allowed to question me. But really, the questioning or the continuing to ask why that is and evaluate what we think we know, figuring out does it still hold true? Does it not hold true?
00:10:14
Speaker
was wrong about something, I didn't admit it. If I was right about something, I need to figure out why I'm right. This type of discussion with self actually keeps us fresh. And my wife and I have made our lives about that. I think the greatest question I ask things is, well, why is that? And sometimes that rubs people wrong because I don't really believe somebody just because they say something, especially if I have no foundation of information.
00:10:43
Speaker
you know, because that's a dangerous thing to believe, you know, even when I say on this particular podcast, you know, if I say something, I want people to verify it. I really do because it makes me better and it makes us all better because we need to continue to seek out what I consider to be truth. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I, I saw you, you're also, uh, doing,
00:11:11
Speaker
What was the name? DNA Life?
Genetics and Personalized Medicine
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah. Doing the genetics courses as well. How do you get all of these things accomplished? I mean, it's insane. I'm curious. This is probably, I don't know, eight or nine years ago. We started getting into the idea of genetics because we realized that the more we knew about the way we were wired, the more we could probably learn about how we're supposed to
00:11:39
Speaker
do protocols and personalized medicine or what do you want to call it? Personalized plans and so we actually were looking into this a long time ago and with DNA Live for example, we met them at a conference and they had a very unique approach. This has been going back seven, eight years ago probably. They had an approach that they weren't going to allow their test results to be given straight to consumers
00:12:06
Speaker
without the clinicians being trained on how to communicate it. And I was immediately impressed by that. They had this big old certification course that was organized by
00:12:18
Speaker
Dr. Yale Joffe, who's absolutely brilliant. She's now went on to find her own genetic company. I think it's called 3x4 Genetics, and so she's amazing. But she and another lady, Dr. Christine, I can't remember her last name off hand, but that course was the most intense course my wife and I had ever done.
00:12:37
Speaker
We spent like multiple weekends sitting in a coffee shop, just cranking out information or reading studies and doing this massive test. And it took us a few months. It was hard. And my wife, who was a valedictorian in her medical class, told me that was the hardest course I've ever taken. So we dug into that and really wanted to learn and then eventually
00:13:03
Speaker
Danny Life contacted us and said, hey, you know, would you consider instructing other clinicians? And we thought, well, okay, why not? So that forced us to dig a little bit deeper. And so today we probably taught, you know, 25 of those courses around the world and hundreds and hundreds of clinicians we've trained in that. And we're still learning. Every time we do it, I think we can improve the delivery, improve the knowledge base of it all.
00:13:31
Speaker
But it's great. I think genetics are one of the things that, in my opinion, have been used probably incorrectly because we looked at them from the standpoint of we're looking to see the genes and which ones are bad so we can correlate those to diseases. But in reality, there's only about three or four percent of all of these processes specifically tied to genetic mutations.
00:13:51
Speaker
So with that said, that means that the other 97% are multifactorial, aren't they? And so I want to know what the genes tell us. In other words, I don't look at genes as wrong. I look at them as right. I look at it as the past communicating to us in the present on how we're supposed to live in the future, you know, because genes have only changed like 2% in 10,000 years. So that is not much change.
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did the DNA Life course myself. That's actually where I saw you guys were were going to be presenting. So quite fascinating.
00:14:27
Speaker
I've kind of I've been in and out of genetics maybe for the last four years. So it's one of those things where I think you're right. We've been we've been misusing it like a lot of tools that that we've had. We had very powerful tools that we're probably misusing them because we just can't it's like a massive sword and like you're taking it and you could cut yourself with this massive sword, you know, that kind of way. But I think
00:14:49
Speaker
like the microbiome, it's matured maybe the last 10-15 years and it's going to keep maturing. So just out of curiosity, if let's say you have a patient that is, let's say, homozygous for the COMTs and has like a heterozygous for the
00:15:14
Speaker
the the COMT has some serious MTHFR. What's your approach? What do you tell them? How do you kind of present that to them so they don't panic like, oh, I have a defect or something like that? Yeah. So with with SNPs, the single nucleotide polymorphisms that you're talking about in these in these enzymes, specifically the catecholamethotransferase COMT and then the methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase MTHFR respectively,
00:15:42
Speaker
I look at it like this, in all of our enzymes which are created by the proteins, which are created by the recipes in the nucleus, which is our DNA, you know, sometimes the enzymes run a little bit faster, sometimes they run a little bit slower. All of them have little gas tanks called cofactors.
00:16:04
Speaker
The cofactor for COMT is going to be the mineral magnesium. The cofactor for MTHFR is going to be vitamin B2 or riboflavin. And the interesting thing about that is when I tell people that, they're like, okay, I get it. But so you got to take that information and go backwards with it. Say, okay.
00:16:23
Speaker
do I have enough B vitamins and magnesium in my system? That's number one, because if you have an enzyme that's working slow or fast, in either case, it won't run without gasoline, right? So that doesn't make any sense, right? So we know that. So I try to communicate and
00:16:42
Speaker
rational, reasonable terms. So, I'm always thinking about nutritional benefit and good gut function to your previous point because you could take supplements all day long. In our example, you could take B2 or magnesium all day long but if you're eating poorly and they have poor gut dysfunction, it's not gonna get down to the cell level. It's gonna have no effect as a cofactor on those two enzymes, okay? At the same time, I also tell them on the other side of things.
00:17:11
Speaker
If you don't have COMT working well, on one hand, let's say you're going to have too much dopamine out there, and too much dopamine can create some anxiety.
00:17:24
Speaker
So that may be why somebody has a tendency to be anxious, right? And then, on the other hand, if they don't have good MTHFR function, I say you might not be producing sufficient dopamine and or serotonin, those two excitatory neurotransmitters. I also say you might not be producing one of your key
00:17:51
Speaker
antioxidant and detoxification compounds, glutathione. You might not be producing good creatine. You might not be producing good DNA repair. So this could be a cancer risk. So I try to address from both sides and I say like,
00:18:09
Speaker
It doesn't mean that you're going to be at risk now, in your case, I'd say Christian. It doesn't mean that at all. It means that you need to be aware of all sides of the coin regarding your own genetics and how to benefit the expression of those genes in a proper way to create a predictable expression that gives you disease resilience.
00:18:33
Speaker
I love that bro. And you know, for me, it's such a fascinating journey to understand my own genetics a little bit better and then compare it to my wife. So her, excuse me, her COMT is slow. Mine is fast or, you know, no, no, um, snips. So, um,
00:18:56
Speaker
I also understood that if your COMT is fast, you plow through your dopamine faster and that can actually predispose you to want to increase your dopamine by, you know,
00:19:12
Speaker
thrill-seeking behavior or people like me are more prone for addiction and I tend to be like that. And in her case, because she breaks down the dopamine more slowly, folks like that can tend to sort of hold on to feelings. Or if they get, let's say, stressed out, it can take a longer time for them to calm down. So it's kind of when you start understanding these mechanisms, you start to think,
00:19:40
Speaker
The personality of a person, it's not just the environment in which they grew up. It's got a lot to do with the genetics. And once we start, I think it's exciting because one day we could have a lot more mechanisms explaining behaviors or how we sleep, how many times you wake up to pee, all these things. We could have more insights in and then we could really then figure out ways to optimize at a much more minute level.
00:20:10
Speaker
It has grown exponentially over the last five years even and it's fascinating and you bring up very good points and our lives are shaped not just by the environment.
00:20:26
Speaker
with what we do to our bodies, what we put in our bodies, how we think and how we speak and, you know, where we live and who we're around and all that. But it's also shaped internally by how we're wired. And so this epi environmental genetic conversation is happening all the time. And from a personalization standpoint, even in your example, we also look at the dopamine receptors or some
00:20:54
Speaker
There's several platforms we can look at regarding, okay, you do produce enough dopamine, but what about it connecting on the receptor to create the action we want? Well, again, you mentioned thrill seeking. There's several people that I've dealt with that have poor dopamine receptors. They have a high functioning COMT and they're pushing it down.
00:21:20
Speaker
And they tend to gravitate towards, on the food end, they can gravitate towards sugars and breads and grains, the food addiction. They can even gravitate towards alcohol or drug addiction. They can gravitate towards like the deal. I call it the business addiction component. The thrill of achieving new levels of listeners on your podcast. That's a drive that we have. And it's always looking for the next conquest.
00:21:49
Speaker
And that's something that is, you know, good to know. And then they also tend to have a little bit of lack of attention on various things. So you could say that's almost that quasi ADD, ADHD phenomenon, right? And so in that case, the key is to
00:22:09
Speaker
continue to get the nutrients in them, the B vitamins, the magnesium, uh, to make sure your methylation pathway is working well so that you are producing sufficient dopamine. And if your COMT is working too fast, don't do the things that cause it to work faster. This is key such as, uh, green tea that you take a lot of green tea that can push it down faster. A quercetin, a lot of quercetin that people take that pushes it down faster as well. So taking quercetin actually. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yep, yep. So quercetin would be something in that case, I would back off because it's causing the COMT to, you know, to work faster, right? So it's one of the, or I'm sorry, it causes it to inhibit it. So that would be something that you could actually do in a positive way to cause that to allow more dopaminergic action.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So in my case, you kind of, I also did the DNA mind test on myself. So I do have some DRD dopamine receptor.
00:23:14
Speaker
gene SNPs. And I also have, interestingly, my MTHFR is pretty, I'm a 677-C2T homozygous. So pretty bad when you look at it on paper. But what I do is, and my COMT is fast, so what I, this can kind of, you can give me your, I don't do it all the time, but when I feel like I need support, I will take tyrosine in the morning.
00:23:43
Speaker
I always take B vitamins, whether that's in the form of egg yolks or organic chicken liver, or on those days that I don't, I just take a B complex. And I also take, usually I take enough liver, but before when I didn't use much liver, I would take supplemental copper because I used to take quite a lot of zinc or eat a lot of meat. So I know we need copper, I think, to create dopamine, if I recall correctly.
00:24:10
Speaker
And then also because I have the empty HFR, homozygous, I take TMG, trimethoglycine to supply methyl groups and creatine to reduce the need for the methylation need to synthesize creatine, which from what I understand is like about 50% of creatine
00:24:31
Speaker
create or 50% of the methylation roughly in the bodies used to make creatine. So to take that burden off, I take the creatine and then of course, you know, plenty of glycine from food just to kind of help to buffer those methyl groups. What would you
Genetic Variants and Health
00:24:46
Speaker
say? No, I think that's an excellent approach because like when you think about trimethylglycine, that in itself is in the folate independent pathway.
00:24:59
Speaker
to create the methylation from homocysteine to methionine. And you're right, the majority of those methyl groups are used to create creatine. So if you can take creatine, typically, I like something between four and five grams, something like that.
00:25:15
Speaker
that will salvage some of the need of those methyl groups and they can be turned around. And in your case, they can be utilized to be placed on different compounds to methylate them, making them more inert. And that's going to help you specifically with even detoxification or even cancer prevention.
00:25:37
Speaker
And I love the idea that you're eating liver, a heavy, heavy container of multiple vitamins, including B vitamins and things, which is very strong. A lot of people don't do that. I think it's brilliant to do that. And then you mentioned the amino acid tyrosine. A lot of people don't understand this, you know, and I think it's important that we do. Tyrosine is also the hormone that is, or the amino acid that's used to form thyroid, isn't it? A lot of people forget that.
00:26:07
Speaker
Many times people will get, well, they don't repair DNA. They're not methylating very well. They get a little bit of sluggishness with their metabolism. That in turn affects their thyroid. And a lot of that tyrosine can be sort of stolen, if you will, to go try to deal with the metabolism issue, your thyroid, and then it gets it sort of shunted away, if you will, from the utilization of tyrosine to go down and make dopamine.
00:26:35
Speaker
So there's a lot of things going on. I think the biggest takeaway with all of that for our listeners would be that every thing is connected and anything can cause everything and everything can contribute to anything. And we, I mean, even with the MTHFR, I deal with people a lot that are in a, frankly, a panic and they'll say things like I have MTHFR and I'm like,
00:27:02
Speaker
Great. We all do too. And they're like taking it back because they almost treat it as disease process. Now, having said that, statistics do show that roughly 60% of our population has at least one of those steps of 6, 7, 7, or 1298 that are not working as well as they could. In other words, they're not
00:27:26
Speaker
wild type, they're more heterozygous or homozygous. So which for people that are like, what the hell is that? So the wild type is the most common pairs from mom and dad, most common. It doesn't mean it's good or bad, most common. And then when you have one uncommon and one most common, that would be hetero, meaning different pair heterozygous. And if you have two of the most common, it would be homo, homozygous, right? So
00:27:53
Speaker
or the most, yeah, the most uncommon, I should say. So it's really a discussion that when people come to those classes that we do, I encourage people to keep coming back. We have several that will kind of follow us around the US and we did one in Florida a while back. We've got one coming up. I'm sorry, we did one in Los Angeles a while back. We got one coming up in Florida. And there are people that will go to those
00:28:22
Speaker
two, three, four times because you're learning so much all the time and the more you do it, it's like a language that you get better at.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, I remember when I was doing the course earlier in the year, all the studies that they share, it's really nice that they share all the studies with you because you could get lost on PubMed, you type in MTHFR, and then six days later, you've grown a beard and your eyeballs are coming out of your eyes. Studies that are, a lot of them are very irrelevant clinically, so I like that.
00:28:54
Speaker
They've really got them. So I have them all printed out in a big file. And then sometimes with my morning coffee, I read a study and then, you know, I'll leave it, come back in a few weeks, read again. It's just, it's one of those things that there's no finish line when learning in any field nowadays. There's not. And that's the beauty of it all, I think.
00:29:15
Speaker
The greatest thing about the World Wide Web, the Internet, is the ability to access information, to access opinions, to access thoughts, to access, as you mentioned, studies.
00:29:28
Speaker
It's beautiful. I mean, that's a great benefit. So information is not proprietary to physicians. It's not proprietary to government leaders. It's available to anybody. And if you go look, apply yourself, sift through it, like, you know, some part is garbage, some part is not, know the difference between the two, have some wisdom. You'll, you'll get a lot more intelligent about how to really process all this massive amounts of information and how to most importantly apply it.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah. Switching gears, Mark, I'm actually
Diet and Fitness Philosophy
00:30:01
Speaker
quite curious. What did you eat, let's say, for breakfast today, for dinner last night? I'm curious. Yeah. So today I didn't have any meal the first time because I skipped it today. I worked out. Today was my day of doing some intensive cardio. So I went to the gym. I did have a cup of mold-free organic coffee.
00:30:24
Speaker
key point for people. Coffee is mostly moldy, by the way. So we decided to source our own because I got tired of dealing with it. So I went and I rode a bike for about 25 minutes, you know, up and down with intensity. And then I went on the treadmill today and actually ran a couple of miles, burying paces, right? And then I came to work and I didn't have anything
00:30:50
Speaker
at all. I drank some water and I had about another half a cup of coffee and I've been drinking water and I like water with hydrogen infusion in it. So I'm drinking hydrogen in here right now and there's a whole science behind that that people need to learn about. So I did that and then about probably an hour ago, I had a little salad
00:31:16
Speaker
And my salad had some, uh, some chicken. It had some, um, Brussels sprouts. It had some avocado. It had some, um, a little bit of lentils in it. And I put some, um, olive oil on there and that's what I had. And then dinner last night, uh, I had, I ate a lot of salads. I ate a lot of like vegetables and things like that. So I had a salad again, and it had some, a little bit of Turkey on it. And I had.
00:31:45
Speaker
That one had a little bit of some zucchini in it. It had, let's see, what else is happening? Avocados, again, I'm an avocado guy. I think those are, and so on that one, I put some avocado oil and I put a bunch of turmeric in that one, so there's a little bit of different flavor. So how do you maintain your, you look like you're a fairly muscular dude. How do you maintain your muscle mass that it sounds like you need to be eating more to maintain it?
00:32:15
Speaker
Well, you know, I'm coming up on the big six zero in chronological age, which freaks me out to even say, but I work out with weights five days a week and I still train just as heavy as I possibly can. I'll do one week of, um, what I would consider for me, higher, uh, weights with lower repetitions. So I keep that between about the eight and 10, 12 rep range. Then the following week, I may go a little bit higher.
00:32:46
Speaker
the 12 to 15 rep range. And then maybe another week after that, I might go even higher 20 repetition range. And so I'm trying to sort of mix it up and work those fast and so twitch muscles, you know, keep those nice and dense. And I still get stronger. So when I'm actually supplementing like prior to workout, during workout, I have a little drink that I drink. And so
00:33:13
Speaker
My drink has electrolytes, B vitamins, creatine, and then I'll have about five to six, seven grams of creatine straight up, which helps the muscle tissue. Of course, I'll mix that with glutamine and some amino acids. And so I pretty much have that and I train like that and I document my workout and I have documented my workouts for like 20 some odd years.
00:33:37
Speaker
When I finish up a little notebook, I'll pitch it and go back. And I'm always trying to better myself. So it's a process of just progressive resistance training. And so I try to keep my body fat somewhere between about 12 and 13, 14%. And I don't even know what I weighed. I think I weighed maybe a few weeks ago. I don't get hung up on that. Maybe 227 or 8 or something like that.
00:34:05
Speaker
What height are you? I'm six foot. Jesus, that's your big dude. Well, I mean, I've been doing this a long time, you know, like now I think I've been training with weights probably more than 40 years, most days.
00:34:21
Speaker
And how many calories would you estimate you eat in a day? I used to count the calories and I don't anymore. And I'll tell you why I don't. It's, they might go a little counterculture with what we're told, but I don't because I've learned to listen to the voice of appetite. If I'm hungry, I eat. If I'm not, I don't. So I'll do sporadic intermittent fast like that, just because it feels right. And I found that.
00:34:51
Speaker
That works really well because our appetites really are geared towards the voice telling us that we need certain things, you know, like there's people out there listening that would say, that would relate to this. I feel like having a big old spinach salad and a piece of wild caught salmon. Okay, your voice inside of you is telling you you need probably some iron, some B vitamins,
00:35:20
Speaker
some fatty acids and some protein. And so you just act on that. And so I found that acting on that works well. I don't overeat like that. I don't under eat like that because I listened to the key of that voice. Now, if I was like 40 years ago or something like that, in a different stage of my life, trying to physically get bigger and stronger, I would probably, and I did,
00:35:50
Speaker
focus more on a level to ensure that the caloric potential was there to go ahead and structure and build.
Personalized Health Approach
00:36:00
Speaker
Now, having said that, I'm in a different place in my life now. I'm really trying to preserve capital, not get injured, maintain and even grow muscle. But there's two pathways that people should be aware of. There's one called autophagy. There's one called mTOR. And I know you're well familiar with those, but the body cannot
00:36:19
Speaker
rebuild, regenerate, repair when it's in a fed state. And I've learned that over time. So I want my body to repair specifically and intentionally. So I wanted to build a fight back some of those cells that need to be dealt with, the autophagy, the mitophagy, the recycling of those cells, the recycling of those mitochondria.
00:36:42
Speaker
And so that's part of the thought process as well. I don't need to be in a building phase all the time because you can get inappropriate growth. So there's a time to grow, there's a time to repair. That's the moral of the story. Yeah, I like that. I think one thing I've realized, however, at least in my sort of clinical experiences,
00:37:06
Speaker
A lot of people nowadays, at least the people coming to me mostly, are in a state of stress. Some type of health issue is going on and those folks, unfortunately,
00:37:22
Speaker
believe that in order to get healthy, you need to do it all. You need to fast and intermittent fast and go low-carb and maybe go keto and then do cold plunges and all this stuff. Especially with some of the folks that are kind of on the sicker end of the spectrum, I tell them,
00:37:44
Speaker
If you start intermittent fasting right now it will actually do more harm than good you know if you start doing low carb now or you continue doing low carb now chronically it will do more harm than good so someone like yourself mark.
00:37:58
Speaker
For someone that's coming up to 60 years of age, you're the epitome of health. Like you're literally, if we put in a book as an example, how to be healthy at 60, this guy. So in your case, I'm sure you can do all these things, but I find nowadays people almost half your age are doing these things, but they shouldn't be doing this. What's your kind of take on that?
Challenges in Personalizing Health Care
00:38:24
Speaker
Well, I agree with you. Most people are metabolically in a very poor position today. I think the last studies I looked at as far as metabolic efficiency, only about 12% of the population is there. You correlate that with statistics right now, Christian, which don't lie.
00:38:41
Speaker
70% of America is either overweight or obese. That is not okay. Obesity is the fastest growing non-communicable disease in the world. As the Westernization has projected itself outside of the US and other countries, you're seeing obesity begin to take its toll on other countries, along with this diabetes phenomenon that we have. Heart disease also is the number one killer in the world right now, and even in the US.
00:39:10
Speaker
Having said that, people need to make changes, but they're under so much pressure and stress and inflammation right now that if they tried to do exactly all the things I just talked about in my own life, I absolutely concur. That can be a disaster failure. It can cause more stress. It can cause them not just stress physically, which sometimes intermittent fast is supposed to. Working out is supposed to.
00:39:39
Speaker
But if you have a person that's so stressed out right now and you add high intensity training on them, that's a bad move. And I tell people all the time to go for a walk and I don't want them going very fast. I tell people all the time, I don't want you fasting. I don't because it can create too much chaos in their life. And if they're not successful at it, guess what? They just accepted another level of failure and their whole life is spent
00:40:08
Speaker
living in shame about their failures. And so you're spot on with that. You have to know the individual person, know what they're capable of, know what their goals are, know what their ages are, know what their surroundings are. You gotta know their family situation, their kid situation, their marriage situation, their job. You gotta know all of that stuff. And so when we talk to somebody, and I'm actually in one of our offices right now here in Tulsa, but it's not a cookie cutter approach. It's a personalized,
00:40:38
Speaker
intimate conversation about every part of their life and you have to come along with them and get in the ditch with them in their life with them and walk with them every step of the way and that's why I believe that there's not many people that do what my wife and I do because it's freaking hard and it's draining and it's intense and I tell people a lot can you know have people that
00:41:05
Speaker
um, do various jobs and they, they sort of maybe admire what we do. And I, I say, okay, now listen, if you admire what we do, I want you to picture this. How would you like to be in an office all day long dealing with people's biggest problems in their life all day long in every aspect of their life, all day long, every single day. And your job is to listen to them, validate them and work out a plan to get them out of that ditch they're in.
00:41:34
Speaker
and then help them along the way as they fall, pick them back up again. And they're like, I wouldn't want that. That's what we do. And that's why, you know, I can say to people that my wife and I have been gifted to do this. I don't know why. I didn't pick it, but I was picked. And because of that, when people do connect with us, they actually get better.
00:42:01
Speaker
And that's what we want to exhibit, people getting better so that we can teach them what we know so that they in turn can teach other people. Yeah, man. That's it. That's so beautifully said, man. It's the kind of thing where.
00:42:18
Speaker
I know you said it's draining and it is kind of draining, but I feel like if you take really good care of yourself, yes, at the end of the day, you're tired, but you sleep well because you'll be taking good care of yourself, your sleep hygiene is good, you're nourished, then you wake up tomorrow with the same enthusiasm and you're like, yay, I get to help people today. What a gift. That's right.
00:42:47
Speaker
you know, kind of intimate conversation my wife and I have. Sometimes we get tired. We really do. And sometimes we're like, man, can we keep going? But then you hear those stories and you get those thank yous and you hear those
Fulfillment in Helping Others
00:43:00
Speaker
testimonials and you run into somebody that you had the opportunity to walk with them through something, a crisis or whether it be health, emotional, physical, spiritual, whatever it is. And, um,
00:43:13
Speaker
You can sleep well at night knowing you did your very best, knowing, like I said earlier, that in every single encounter, you gave complete 100% attention into that encounter so that you poured your life and soul into that. And to me, that's communication the way it should be. And at the end of the day, you're tired, you're spent.
00:43:36
Speaker
But you can rest knowing you did that. And true rest is something that a lot of people don't have because they're living in a world of deep, deep stress and deep, deep compromise. And they don't know where they stand. They don't know principles. And so, you know, we know who we are and, um, yeah, we get tired as I stated, but we keep on going and you wake up the next day and you know, you get the opportunity to do it again. And I get to talk to Christian again. So see, there's benefits there to that, right?
00:44:05
Speaker
Yeah, brother. Yeah, for sure. Sure. I literally just thought of something, something to ask it and I completely forgot, bro. Oh, yeah. What? Sorry, it's been a very long day. Oh, it's all good. There's Yeah, there's a lot of things that came into my head when you were talking, bro. It's so you're coming up to 60, huh?
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah, birthday's in September, so I just recently turned 59 and I think about that and I think, my God, what is this mess? But I always look at aging as different
Understanding Biological vs. Chronological Age
00:44:46
Speaker
too. I look at it as a biological aging process versus
00:44:50
Speaker
a chronological aging process. And my wife and I, we do test those things. We test our biological aging processes. We do various modalities, including looking at some of our methylation island statistics. And, you know, you try to keep that thing, that pace, less than your chronological pace. So aging is not just calendar at all.
00:45:13
Speaker
Have you looked into the research on methionine restriction using that for increasing lifespan?
00:45:25
Speaker
that mechanism like you're, you're talking about using metformin and those things that inhibit that process. No, no, I think I'm only getting into it now, but apparently when they restrict methionine and I believe also cystine and tryptophan, the animals live a lot longer. So I was wondering if you looked into that yourself. I could see that from a plausible standpoint. And I think the reasonable mechanism behind that would be
00:45:55
Speaker
because when you restrict methionine and restrict the, you're actually restricting the ability to grow and create and grow. And so you're going into more of a salvage pathway, perhaps. And I think that that has got some potential to it. It'd be interesting. Of course, it's hard to put that into a
00:46:20
Speaker
study group because it's challenging with people. But I find that fascinating. That makes a lot of sense to me and I think that's worthy of a lot of investigation.
00:46:31
Speaker
earlier, because I want to talk about some of the stuff in my book that's upcoming. So I was looking into some research on longevity in animals or rather caloric restriction and fasting as it is in animals.
Critique of Animal Study Diets
00:46:45
Speaker
And you know what kind of struck me, bro, is if you look at there, there was a study that's often cited in recess monkeys, right? I think they extended lifespan and health
00:46:59
Speaker
biomarkers over study generally improved but when you look at the actual diet of these animals in these like the rats the mice even the monkeys the diets are dude dextrin soybean fishmeal corn oil you know just synthetic vitamins like vitamin e
00:47:22
Speaker
Just a fairly disgusting overall diet. So I'm thinking to myself, if you put an animal on such a diet, and a lot of this research is tainted in that way, if you put these animals on a caloric restriction diet, on a fasting, on an intermittent fasting diet, anything to take in less of that poisonous slop,
00:47:42
Speaker
surely they will live longer, feel better, and their health biomarkers are going to be better. I just want to see your view on this. It seems like when you look under the hood of the longevity research, I feel like a lot of that scientific community is really barking up the wrong tree or rather their entire premise of caloric restriction and fasting is somewhat shaky ground. What's your take on that?
00:48:10
Speaker
I think some of that is because to your point, there's a lot of people out there that purport, you know, the fasting, they don't really talk about, you know, what you should be eating, you know, that just kind of say fast and you can eat what you want during that little compressed window time. And I do have some issues with that because that doesn't make any sense. It's still inflammatory junk.
00:48:30
Speaker
It's still mess. And even with the idea of the scenario you just played out, you know, the, all those burned nasty oils and things like that, synthetics, uh, vitamins that aren't any good, basically inert and don't work, you know? So I don't think that's the best way to do it. I think life longevity has more to it than just simply that. I think it's probably movement. You know, the more you move, there's been a lot of studies come out that talk about, you know, exercise habits will extend.
00:48:59
Speaker
both life and quality of life because it's mobility. So movement is life. I think that's a no brainer. I think honestly what we eat probably has a profound effect on us, the less inflammatory food we put in there and the better supplementation. I think that probably trumps, you know, the fasting part of it. I think you put better food and you're gonna get better results. I think probably getting sleep
00:49:27
Speaker
is probably underestimated as far as its value and importance. And I think probably the way we manage stress and life from an emotional-spiritual component is a big deal. I think we probably forget that. I think that probably hormone presence is probably a big deal because we've seen menopause,
00:49:50
Speaker
affect ladies in the last hundred years like never before. We've seen andropause beginning to affect men like never before. So the diminishment of the presence of these chemical messengers called hormones affect our immune system's ability to respond effectively to invaders and things they're trying to hurt us and even our healing processes. So I think it's all those things. And I do agree with you that when we try to sort of put this
00:50:21
Speaker
anti-aging concept into one thing, I think that's probably a mistake. I think it's really all things. And every human being is different. And notice I didn't even touch on genetics. And that's the category out there that we still don't understand. There's so much there that we don't understand. Even take that one level further, what about the microbiome? I mean, we don't understand that right now. We know that we have
00:50:49
Speaker
best count 100 times more bacterial DNA than human DNA. So that means we're probably mostly bugs. No, I mean, it's a crazy thing to think about. But I think we need to look at all of those things, all of them, and somehow try to continue to investigate, postulate, discuss our way through them until we find, you know, more and more best practices.
00:51:15
Speaker
Absolutely, man. You're so right. It's the food. It's not the fasting. It's not the caloric, mimetic sort of supplements or metformin or drugs. It's the food you put in if you eat real food.
00:51:31
Speaker
Real organically grown food, it's incredibly hard to overeat that on a chronic basis. You can overeat, you can push yourself to overeat, or you can do something silly like eating a stick of butter at the end of every day or whatever. You're going to gain fat, but if you eat a normal
00:51:50
Speaker
real food diet, it's kind of, and if you're overweight and you start eating just real food, just real food, you will start getting healthier and a byproduct of that is you're gonna start losing weight. There is no way around it. Yeah, and normal weight is normal thing. I think people look at my
Concerns for Public Health Future
00:52:12
Speaker
life, my wife's life, your life, and they might call us freaks and weirdos,
00:52:19
Speaker
because we are who we are. We're not overweight. We exercise, but we're not freaks and weirdos. It's actually very normal. And so if you do the things you just talked about, the ability to gain excess fat, it pretty much abolished because it just doesn't happen. So you can see how far we've gotten off metabolically as a population in both our physicality and our culture. It's so far off base right now.
00:52:47
Speaker
I don't know that we can come back from it. I think there's subcultures of people out there, and you lead the way in a great group I know, and that group of people is doing what needs to be done, and it's growing, but I don't think it's ever going to be the majority ever again. Really? I don't. I think that there's so much pressure. People are getting brainwashed right now to become dependent upon those big systems, big food, big pharma, big government.
00:53:16
Speaker
they're forgetting how to make the decisions to critically think through processes like you do, you know, and make better decisions. And so when that goes through generations, you know, how the, the, the in utero effect to the methylation pathway can affect generations to come. That's going to affect those kids down there at three, four generations deep that, that know nothing about what we're talking about right now. And even though our voice will be strong and it'll continue on as long as the world stands, you know,
00:53:46
Speaker
You're going to have people out there that are out there in a different culture that the gap is going to widen, I see. And that's heartbreaking. That's why I'm hoping that people listen intently to the things that we're talking about and really make the decision personally for your life, your family to dig in and get your health in the best place it is because the more resilient you become in a stress-filled, chaotic, uncertain, anxiety-filled world,
00:54:15
Speaker
the better you'll be and the better decisions you'll make. And on a positive note,
00:54:23
Speaker
I think the way things are going, a lot of people might not even be fertile to cause that kind of damage to three, four generations down the line. So I know it's kind of like a dark humor, but the way it's headed, the great reset is bound to happen. And that great reset is we're going to run our freaking people by the end of the century.
00:54:52
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. The ability to be fertile is being compromised heavily right now from multiple different things, but mainly our chemical-filled environment. It's just, it's horrible right now. And the obesity rates, the inflammatory rate, the disease rates, all the medicines we take, we're not producing children at all. And then you've got
00:55:16
Speaker
you know, today's world and I hope this is not too controversial for us, the feminization of men, you know, that's happening and that of course makes the seed or the sperm count go down and testosterone can't go down. And so that's happening all around us and that's not just a emotional or spiritual confusing issue. No, it's physical. It absolutely is physical and we're seeing that happening.
00:55:44
Speaker
To your point, you're right. I know there's people out there that will say, well, the population of the earth is too big now, and that's good. We need to see a reduction in the population. But the way we're going, they're going to get their wish, if that's the case, because of the very things you just noted. Yeah, bro.
00:56:09
Speaker
Damn, we went a little bit dark here. All right, we have three minutes. Mark, tell us about your upcoming book,
Upcoming Book: The Narrow Road
00:56:18
Speaker
bro. We gotta leave on a positive note. Yeah, a positive note. So there is, yeah, no doubt. You know, there's a wide road we can follow in life, Christian, that is big and wide, got put in room for everybody. But it's not the road that leads to life, it's the road that leads to destruction. And we called our new book, The Narrow Road.
00:56:39
Speaker
It's a road that's kind of hard sometimes, but it's the right road.
00:56:44
Speaker
It's not very wide and only if you go down that road, it's kind of that road less traveled, if you will. And so we've written a book that kind of is a devotional based book, little individual daily writings that both my wife and I did. We let people into our very intimate lives, you know, like what we struggle with and how we overcome it and the thought processes that we go through each day and how we struggle and how we overcome. And the idea behind it is just to inspire people to say that, you know,
00:57:13
Speaker
Nobody's got it figured out. We need each other and to walk that narrow road, sometimes all you need and all it's wide enough for is one person to put their arm around you and say, come on. Because it's not a road that you can just blend in. It's a road you really stick your neck out there on your own. It's a road of leadership.
00:57:33
Speaker
And Christian, in today's world, we need leadership in a bad way. So we're excited about that. It's going to be coming out here in just a matter of weeks. So we're pumped about it. Awesome, bro. That's really awesome. And you said you also have another movie coming out
Upcoming Movie: Holy Flix
00:57:47
Speaker
soon? We do. That movie will be coming out here just after the first of the year. It is called Holy Flix. And it is hilarious. It's got some comedy scenes.
00:58:02
Speaker
It's got some scenes that will cause you to tear up and it's got a massive amount of inspiration into it. So I won't spoil all the punch lines, but this is one that I think people will get a lot out of because it's got dreams and visions and crushed goals and visions and reattainment of those goals and visions. And I think that's that conflict and overcoming that people are really drawn to. That's amazing, bro. I have no idea how you get all of the stuff done.
00:58:32
Speaker
I don't need this one day at a time. Do you have kids? Yeah, they're grown up now. They're 29, 27, 26. Crazy, huh? Oh, you have three kids as well. Jesus, dude. I have one two-year-old here. I don't know how I get anything done at all in a day, you know what I mean? And you got three. That's insane. Yeah. That's awesome. I was not laughing that we just take it one day at a time. That's it, man. And we just try to do our best and encourage people.
00:59:00
Speaker
And hopefully today, you know, we've given some people a little bit of inspiration out there that they can do it too. Yeah, absolutely, brother. Well, listen, thank you so much for your time, Mark. Just keep on crushing it, brother, and God bless. All right, man. Let's do it again. I appreciate you. Sure.