In this episode Lisa talks to Functional Neurologist, Functional Health Practitioner Dr Sam Shay of Colorado about his "Ten Pillars Of Health" model - an integrative approach to personalised health using the latest in research.
Dr Shay talks in-depth on topics like adrenal fatigue, hormone balance, and the effects of different types of exercise, inflammation in the body and brain and more
You can find out more about Dr Shay at these links:
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Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff.
Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise?
These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with!
No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research.
The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home
Find out more about our Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics
You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tama T brought to you by Lisatamati.com
Speaker 2: (00:14)
Well, hi everybody. Lisa Tamati here at "pushing the limits". It's fantastic to have you back again. I'm really excited for today's guest. This is somebody that I've actually stumbled across in my search to help my mum and I'm going to be working hopefully with Dr Sam Shay in the future in that regard. But this man is a very special doctor. He is a functional medicine practitioner. He's a chiropracter, he's an acupuncturist and he's going to, she has some mind blowing stuff with you guys today that I really want you to pay attention to. So welcome to the show. Dr Sam is fantastic.
Speaker 3: (00:49)
Thank you so much for having me. I really, really enjoy sharing this information through podcasts. I love, Iteaching more than almost anything and this is such a great medium
Speaker 2: (01:00)
To help just to help people and such a scalable way. It's, it's fantastic. And, and everything that you've been talking to me about, I'm just like absolutely mind blowing. And, and the stuff that you have on your website and dr Shay is actually in Colorado in America, has previously been in New Zealand and been practicing in New Zealand is over in the States again where you come from looking after a sick relative unfortunately. But he's taken a bit of time out today. He's going to share some of his insights around the 10 pillars of health which is going to go now, dr Sam has such a wide array of knowledge that we're only going to be able to touch the surface on a couple of areas today. But I do hope to get the same back to dive deeper into some of the areas once we've covered them.
Speaker 2: (01:51)
So dr Sam, as you want to share it, you've got a PowerPoint there. Now I know that people are listening on podcasts as well as on YouTube, but for those of you who do want to see this presentation that not the same is going to share with us right now. You can hop over to dr Sam's website, which is docked the same shade. It is H a y.com forward slash bio hacker and you can actually see the slide. So if you are with us on the podcast and not on YouTube, you can put over there and we'll put that in the show notes. Of course, right over to you, dr Sam, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you've got there.
Speaker 3: (02:29)
Thank you. So the, the, the context behind all of this is
Speaker 2: (02:35)
I'm, my background
Speaker 3: (02:39)
Is that I had a really, really rough go as a kid in terms of of being very chronically unwell core health, lots of high stress from extremely
Speaker 2: (02:50)
A F
Speaker 3: (02:51)
Contentious divorce. I had severe insomnia, severe got issues of fatigue. I had developed a sugar addiction. I was dealing, I didn't know it was gluten and dairy at the time, but I was on a high gluten high dairy diet, which was not working with my system as part of my severe gut issues. But no one, no one really understood why I was unwell. It's kind of this mystery mystery stuff going on. And both of my parents and being medical doctors, they, their particular training was not in looking at lifestyle in a holistic manner. It was more a, it's in your head or you're missing some sort of drug or there's something or you're just making it up. And the, the, the reality is, is that it was, it was far more complex than a psychological diagnosis. There was real physiological problems that were not taken seriously.
Speaker 3: (03:48)
So I, I was dealing with so much stuff, I was like a war zone at school with a physical and psychological bullying. I mean, just as something for people listening here I'm going to issue a kind of an uncomfortable question, but it's an important question. It's like what is the difference between a physical assault and physical bullying in school? And the answer is there's two things. One is what the two things are. You're, if you're over 18 and you're out of school, it's called assault. But if you're under 18 and still in school, it's called bullying. And you should just get over it, quit whining. You know? And the verbal billing as well. Like if people, if people, if they're over 18 and outside of school, and we're told the things with the level of vitriol and venom that I was told in grade school, the people who would say such things would have a restraining order put against them.
Speaker 3: (04:40)
Yeah. But in school it's just like, Oh, he's just, it's just tough enough. You know, it's fine, you know, whatever. But it's not, these things were extremely damaging was physically and emotionally. And what compounded from that was an onslaught of severe physiological reactions, a sugar addiction, video game addiction over eating constant postural torsion of being in a defensive mode that affected my spine as a chronic back pain, which I thought was normal for over a decade. I thought having pain was normal, a severe, debilitating insomnia and all sorts of other things. And my, my, my journey, basically, I snap to it when I was in high school and realized that natural medicine was my only way out. So I had, I had to work through all sorts of stuff from like a coffee habit starting at age six. Wow. All sorts of stuff was happening and I, I recovered from addiction and burnout by figuring out multiple, multiple modalities, not because I went out and said, Oh, I have to figure out multiple things.
Speaker 3: (05:46)
It was, I went through the typical journey I've seen most of my clients go through was I'm unwell with this thing, whether it's got issues or fatigue or I had a head injury or some sort of neurological degeneration or a really bad accident or a brain fog or foreman dysregulation or gut issues or all these things. And I, someone told me about a product, a personality or a protocol and I'm going to try it. Yup. And so I went and just did whatever people I trusted at the moment said to do, go see this person and go try this product. Go try this protocol, go learn this, go do that. And I call it magic bullet therapy. Yeah. I was chased F yeah. Looking for that magic, that little thing that will fix you. And there is no thing there. Well there's a can where actually figured out how magic bullet therapy can work for certain people.
Speaker 3: (06:41)
The model also explains magic bullet therapy that the, the, what happened was a, for people like me who had multiple things, a crumbling in there using the pillar, the motif of a pillar of health and in my model is 10 pillars of health. If you have multiple pillars crumbling, and if like what I observed in my clinical practice was that people with chronic issues, like I said, like fatigue or chronic pain or hormone dysregulation or chronic gut issues or brain fog or what anything else that's going on, they had a minimum seven out of 10 pillars crumbling. Wow. Okay. Now what that means practically is that if a protocol, personality or product at most helps up to three pillars. Yup. So if you're good, most clinicians, if they're honest or really, really good at one to three pillars, maybe five or so like, but if you've got seven plus that are crumbling, you're gonna like get unpredictable or temporary results or the plateau or whatever it's going to be.
Speaker 3: (07:47)
Now, I had all 10 out of 10 pillars when I actually reflected back on my own life with the model. And that's why it was took so long to figure out what was going on. And more importantly, what I had to do because there was no unified model at the time when I was struggling, but I was going through some, what I found is that if we assess these 10 pillars, if we assess these 10 pillars correctly and most importantly just understand them, then we can start to really, really chart a path forward. Instead of doing the magic bullet therapy where we hope it's this one thing that's going to work and then it doesn't, and then we feel bad and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get well. Or this person you know, was hyping me up and like it's on like they were just blowing smoke or whatever. And the reality is is that if someone has nine pillars that are like 70% okay, and there's one that's at 30% and they just happened to find the goji Berry juice to squirt up their nose or whatever, you know, and their
Speaker 3: (08:56)
Bionutrient pillar happened to be the one that was deficient in whatever goji Berry juice has.
Speaker 2: (09:02)
Okay.
Speaker 3: (09:02)
Then they feel a hundred times better than they're going to be the ones walking around telling everyone to buy their goji Berry juice.
Speaker 2: (09:08)
Exactly. Yup.
Speaker 3: (09:10)
Whereas if you're at, you flip it and you've got one pillar that's a 70% and nine that are 30% goji berries, you's ain't going to do
Speaker 2: (09:17)
Jack. Yeah. And then,
Speaker 3: (09:19)
But the goji person who sold you the goji juice will say, Oh, you're not feeling better. Just take more.
Speaker 2: (09:26)
Okay.
Speaker 3: (09:26)
Like that's the answer. It's always more of the magic bullet as opposed to stepping back and looking at
Speaker 2: (09:33)
At the pillars as a whole. So, and this is really the case. Does that kind of architecture makes sense? Yeah. Because like we not simplistic beings, we have very complicated structures. We have, we have so many different areas. And this is what I find too. Like my, my list is Noah story with my mum is the you. And it was very much a multipronged approach. I mean, I didn't know about the team pillars at the time and we started working with mum yet in regards to the team pillows. But we, but I took a very multipronged approach to the way I treated her. And when somebody asked me what was the one thing, there was no one, there was no, there were things that were definitely helpful in that I would, you know get people to, to look into. But we aren't simplistic beings that can take a little white pill and everything's going to go away. And we all want that because it's easy. But taking holistic look at your whole health as totally agreed as I'm a very, very important thing. So you had adrenal exhaustion basically in fatigue and all of these things happening as a young person and you've used this experience that you went through to actually go and work out how to get yourself right and now help, you know, hundreds of other people with us knowledge. So let's go through some of the pillars and, and how that works.
Speaker 3: (11:03)
Sure. So just, just a quick caveat in terms of the reference to the little white pill. Just for context. Look, both my parents are medical doctors and so as my grandfather, in fact, my father and grandfather are quite famous in the medical world. And just, I'm not anti Western medicine. What I see is that it's about application. So Western medicine was developed from military medicine, which is emergency care where you don't have missing eye syndrome or bleeding arm or like bleeding ice syndrome or missing arm disease. Those are actual emergencies that need to be stabilized. So Western medicine is genius and should be celebrated for stabilization of emergency situations. And that's really the gift of Western medicine. That's really what the primary use of the, the, it's, it's Western medicine is predicated on stable is stabilizing. The problem was when that philosophy is as applied to non-emergency issues, chronic States, chronic pain, like in, that's where natural medicine is really thrives in looking at the chronic underlying things that are not emergencies but are crippling.
Speaker 3: (12:18)
As well as the thing with natural medicine is looking at bringing people up to not just mere normal or mere absence of symptoms, but actually to optimal. So when emergency medicine, if misapplied is at best masks, the debilitating symptoms to set of symptoms to give you a less debilitating set of symptoms. Little white pills are a radical sledgehammer to your physiology and you rebuild the pieces in a slightly different orientation. It's shifting the symptomatology. You can't add a poisonous substance to a system and expect it to get healthier. What you can do in the best case scenario is shift what you're experiencing. And I'm not being inflammatory. When I say adding a poisonous substance, when I talk about a medication, there's a term called an LD 50 illegal lethal dose, 50%. A medication cannot be classified as a medication unless it kills her 30% of a rat population controlled study.
Speaker 3: (13:17)
So I'm not being inflammatory, I'm being technical. When I say medications are poisons, but they can be extremely useful to help stabilize a critical situation or by time if your symptoms are so debilitating that you need to shift your symptoms to something more tolerable so that you can then do what? Look at the 10 pillars of health to figure out what's wrong underneath it. So we need to really contextualize the little white pill in a collaborative manner where there is a place for it. I'm not trained in the little white pill. Yup. I'm trained in the natural side of things. I feel like what's what's really happening, what can happen is that there can be a rejoinder of this collaboration at of of natural medicine in Western medicine and in fact functional medicine is that meaning point functional medicine, which is what I practice that is using the best of Western medical diagnostics. Yes. With the best of natural medicine lifestyle intervention and the best of functional nutrition as one of the tools to help bring people back to balance.
Speaker 2: (14:29)
This is just so, so important. I am, you know, I,
Speaker 3: (14:33)
Okay
Speaker 2: (14:34)
As a light person who's not got a medical background at all, I've come to the Zech same conclusion that there are benefits on both things and there's, there's no such thing as a free biological lunch. If you, if you are taking pills, it's, it's going to help maybe with one or two symptoms, but it's going to be having other consequences generally speaking. And this is where we're just taking one pill to cover up that symptom, which causes another problem. So you take another pill and product cover up that system. And that's the sort of thing that's happening with chronic disease and in our society. And this different approach. And I, you know, there's differently a massive movement at the moment. Thank goodness of people like yourselves. And other areas where this new science coming online and this new approach has been taken. And this combined approach I think is very exciting time for, for us. Unfortunately when you usually go to your local doctor, they're 20 years behind this stuff that we're talking about often. Yeah.
Speaker 3: (15:39)
And it's changing. I mean, the younger generation of, of Western trained doctors, they're, they're witnessing what's happening to their parents and grandparents, perhaps themselves or their siblings or even their children. And there's a whole new perspective that's happening where they are starting to look more holistically. And it's really people, you know, [inaudible] people such as myself who really wants to create the bridge that we create these frameworks. And what the 10 pillars of health does is that it will prevent fanaticism. Even amongst the natural health world, there's some people think it's all about dealing with the infection or it's all about dealing with toxin of choice, whether it's mercury or you know, sprays or whatever it may be, or no, it's all about getting the right nutrients or whatever. And the reality is is that the 10 pillars, we'll balance it out. And it also explains the entire cycle of chronic disease.
Speaker 3: (16:34)
So when we look here, we've got bad lifestyle choices or bad circumstances. So, so bad circumstances, like I'm a six year old boy and I'm being fed high gluten, high dairy, we know sleep being bullied and assaulted at school, dealing with the stress of divorce at home. How did it picked up an infection from swimming in a Lake at summer camp, chronic pain, poor posture, you know all these, you know, all of these things mixed into one. Lots of toxic exposure. That's not a choice. That's a circumstance we didn't have. So absolutely. So you got choices and circumstances which are interpreted through one's individual genetics. You get one or more of the four adaptive responses so people can respond to bad choices and bad circumstances. The body responds with the combination of inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation, free radical damage or tissue breakdown. So for example, if it's the gut, you can get in Flint, inflammation in the gut, your blood sugar can get dysregulated.
Speaker 3: (17:30)
So your, your appetite and your, your, your craving cycles get all messed up. Tissue breakdowns where the gut lining breaks down and free radical damage from all just just creating destruction all around chronic adaptation interpreted through one's genetics, leads to damage of one of the three, one or more of the three main body systems. That's the liver detox system, the gut GI system, or the neuroendocrine hormone system. So if you have chronic damage to your liver, your gut and or your foreman system, you then get an expression of symptoms, whether it's fatigue or lower mood or digestion, weight gain cravings and Somnia pain, burnout, hot flushes, whatever it may be. And if you have lots of symptoms than people cope with bad lifestyle choices, which then leads to more adaptation, more damage, more symptoms, more coping, more adaptation and round and round a ghost. I mean this is basically explaining 20 years of my clinical, you know, education in one slide in one a couple of sentences.
Speaker 3: (18:30)
And it's, it's really important to understand this cycle because then what the symptoms people are experiencing with are the expressions of their body trying to adapt. They make sense. It's not like a some sort of unique conspiracy of the universe due to bad germs, bad genes, bad luck or bad timing. And what we do is that we assess the 10 pillars of health and detail, then use functional testing, like taking the adrenals, checking the liver, checking genetics, checking gut, checking for parasites, checking or checking the mitochondria, checking thyroid. We use these functional tests to clarify how the body is adapting and what systems have been damaged and then customize a nutrition diet, lifestyle plan while correcting the 10 pillars lifestyles in parallel. Then you can reverse the whole process in a truly meaningful, sustainable way. So this slide, I mean as I'm describing it for just our listeners, and again, you can get it, you know, you can get this entire ebook from my website.
Speaker 3: (19:38)
It's if you understand this cycle, then you have the knowledge to know that you can't reverse the cycle and a meaningful longterm way. And that's what functional medicine does. So with the 10 pillars, I mean we, we'll go through each of the 10 pillars. The first one is called brain, it's called brain. Each of the pillars begins with a B. Cause I'm a teacher, I like mnemonics and elevation and all that stuff. Brain is brain and hormones. So we're looking at the adrenal system, the thyroid system, the sex hormone system. And in regards to the sex hormone system, we look primarily to estrogen dominance, toxic exposure to outside estrogens or from microwave plastics or soy products or a question, you know, questionable cosmetics and body lotions and or all the chemicals, vegetables that have been sprayed or meats that are pumped with hormones depending on the country of origin and things like that. Like with the adrenal system, like I had severe what's called colloquially quote unquote adrenal fatigue. But in reality it's renamed hypo cortisol ism hypo meaning low cortisol, meaning low cortisol. Cortisol is the one of the hormones, the adrenals release that regulates blood sugar, helps drop inflammation and helps you handle stress. So if you are unable to, and I have, I have all my my, I have four labs that I showed on on my stress system, like the before and afters over the years going from flat, literally flat line to Tet near textbook normal.
Speaker 2: (21:12)
I'm the opposite. I had a Dutch tastes done, you know, dried urine test done. And because you know, I've had a listeners know, I've had a very, very stressful last four years. My, my, so adrenal, what did you call it hyper cortisol? Cortisol ism? Yes. Hypercortisolism I've got no cortisol basically. Right. Flatline from, from the beginning to the end. And all the hormones are out of whack. So low testosterone, low progesterone, low estrogen and of course coming into menopause as well. And why case? So mine was even below that. That bottom line.
Speaker 3: (21:52)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm showing, I'm showing right now. I skipped ahead to the labs on the, on the ebook. So that show too,
Speaker 2: (21:58)
This is fascinating for me because I mean obviously I'm, I'm dealing with this myself. And I know a lot of our athletes are as well that we train literal burnout. Yeah. Yeah. Then we hopefully we'll get into a bit of a discussion about marathon training and what
Speaker 3: (22:14)
Actually if there's a good connection right here because I wrote an article which I a quote unquote diplomatically entitled why marathon runners look like cancer patients. So I know a lot of people listening here are long distance runners and I make zero apologies for that title. Yeah. And I'll tell you why, because I grew up literally on T-bone street next to heartbreak Hill. Now if you do long distance running, heartbreak Hill for the Boston marathon is like Mecca. Like it's, it is, it is the, it is a thing all runners know about. And I was literally up my street growing up and I remember six years old and, and I knew I was going to be a doctor at age six I didn't realize it'd be a natural doctor. I just knew I was gonna be a doctor. And I'll give you an example. I'm standing there with my mother who's also a medical doctor, and I look at her looking at the Boston marathon and people going by, I said, mommy, why do they look sick? And she said, no, no, they're healthy. They're doing marathon. I'm like, mommy, they look sick. Like, no, no, it's good for their heart. They're doing cardio. I was like, mommy, they look sick. All right,
Speaker 2: (23:21)
Have a marathon when they are fatigued. Well,
Speaker 3: (23:24)
No, it's actually, it's not. We weren't like really at the end end of, of the of it was looking at their bodies. It wasn't looking at the fatigue, it was looking at the ratios, their muscle mass ratios relative to their height and they looked like cancer. I didn't know that term at the time, but they look too skinny. Something was wrong. And the relationship is to cortisol. Now I, I learned this from Dr. Mark J. Smith PhD who, who wrote these brilliant primer explaining the physiology in detail. But I'll give you just a super brief summary and if you want more elaborate summary, you can go to my website and read the article and there's a link there. You can also look up the primer from Dr. Smith. But here's what happens is that cortisol as a hormone is designed to keep you alive under under extreme eye threatening situations.
Speaker 3: (24:13)
So cortisol is to basically tell your body to release as much quick to burn fuel as possible sugar in order to burn in your muscles as quickly as possible or to get away from the tiger or the Wolf pack or the bear or whatever your predator choices. So it will, including cortisol will that you wrote muscle tissue to convert muscle protein into sugar in order to keep you alive from the proverbial life threatening predator. Yep. So the problem with long distance marathoning is that what, what's happening is that you don't actually shut off the cortisol response. Jogging actually perpetuates this constant high secretion of cortisol for ending. Even when you stop jogging continues. Whereas with high intensity interval training, you get a spike of cortisol, which you get a concomitant spike of growth hormone and testosterone, which then heals the body, rebuilds the muscles and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: (25:14)
Assuming you don't overdo high intensity interval training. So that's why I don't teach H I T I teach S H I T safe high intensity interval training or I call shine deploy your podcast off the put a flag on there but say five intensity and we'll train cause people can over do high intensity interval training and the, yeah, because that's something that I went from doing ultra marathons and extreme string on business for 25 years. They know and doing a high intensity short staff, which for a while as well. But both have actually smashed the adrenal, correct? Yes, correct. And that is, that is so typical. And the reason, and here's why. Here's the S safe, high intensity interval training is not an exercise. It's a principle in which you fit exercise into it. The principle has to apply to like my first practice in New Zealand was in the Bay of plenty.
Speaker 3: (26:09)
I had, you know, you know [inaudible] was like [inaudible]. It's basically the Florida of new Zealand's the retirement community for New Zealand and then North on it I have to give instructions to an 80 year old osteoporotic grandmother of how did you save high intensity interval training? If I tell him to do wind sprints, she's going to snap in half. Right? So the principal has to be translated across all ages. Otherwise it's not a principle. So okay, so the principle, again, the details are on on the the blog, on the blog and website, but in short form it's you do a exercise that brings you to a deep muscle burn within a minute or less followed by full recovery. The full recovery bit is what most people miss or they overdid it. Go beyond a minute with the deep muscle burn mostly it's the full recovery bit and you don't do high intensity interval training.
Speaker 3: (27:11)
You do at least one day of rest in between. Most people, what most people, what they do is they do this ridiculous 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 30 seconds on 10 seconds of whatever arbitrary number and that is not unique to you. So for me, when I started doing high intensity interval training, I have a specialized stepper and I had no weights that I was doing flies with or whatever. So I got on the stepper minute or less deep muscle burn took me over 40 minutes to recover. Terribly embarrassing terms, really embarrassing, you know, whatever. Fine. I just swallowed my pride and I just kept to that principle of a minute or less to get into a deep muscle burn followed by full recovery. Fast forward a couple months, I am doing the same stepper with 10 kg weights in each arm doing flies and my recovery time is less than five minutes.
Speaker 3: (28:08)
Okay. So what improved? My recovery time went from 40 plus. I just stopped counting after 40 I was too embarrassed the first time to keep looking. You don't get your heart rate going back down to your not heart rate. I wasn't, I wasn't looking at heart rate. It was burn rate and breath rate. Heart rate is fine to monitor, but it's uncomfortable to wear those. Back then it was you, now you have these fancy watches and stuff that make it easy. But back then it was those awful chest straps and yeah, it was terrible. So I, so I look for where the burn rate is gone and the breath rate is normal. If you don't have access to an easy heart rate, even then, I wouldn't even do it if I was still have muscles burning. If I was panting. What happened was my recovery rate improved and my, the intensity I required to get to the same deep muscle burn in the same minute or less improved.
Speaker 3: (28:57)
That's the measure of progress, not how much longer I, I can go and not how much and, and not if I can keep going more for multiple days in a row. That's what makes it safe. Safety is about honoring your own biochemistry. And the reason why it's the minute or less is it cause you watch any David Attenborough special. Okay. And you look at biochemistry, you ha you are an anaerobic glycolysis, which is geek speed for quickly sprinting away, using burning sugar quickly without using your mitochondria, meaning the very efficient longterm energy producing organelle in the cells to generate your energy from the longterm growth repair. I don't know if your life's on the line and Wolf pack is not chasing you down. You're not interested in long term growth. Repair your shouldn't getting away as quickly as you can. Yup. You have a minute or less to get away and that is mapped into the biochemistry of your cells because anaerobic glycolysis is under a minute long. You'll watch any David Attenborough special. How long are those animal chases? How long are they? Less than a minute. But what about the hope
Speaker 2: (30:04)
Since hunting? You know like I mean I did a TV series on we are born to run that we born for long distance persistent type hunting that we always used to do on average around 20 kilometers a day in sisterly speaking from one village to the next or one tribe to the next week. We were doing long distance walking mostly.
Speaker 3: (30:26)
That's it. That's, that's the whole that, that's the key word walking. Yes, I did. I did an, I did an entire presentation on, on walking once. It's about 12 major theories for the emergence of by pugilism. Yep. Okay. There's multiple, multiple converging theories. One of which is the ability to walk down, pray versus sprint them down. And so that's mitochondrial, not an aerobic. Hmm. Okay. And the issue with, when we fear by Peatal, you only have two points of impact on your skeletal system versus four, which is more exhausting for a, a Quadro pet, you know, a horse or a deer or an antelope or a wildebeest or whatever. Additionally, we have less surface or exposure to the sun if we're by pedal. So when the sun's bearing down a quadrupedal, which has their entire back and their neck and their have fur, they're going to get, they're going to basically get cooked.
Speaker 3: (31:23)
They're going to burn up by the sun. Whereas humans, we have way less surface area to get roasted by the sun. In fact, one of the theories, we have an extra hour of hunting per day because of that, that siesta period where the sun is the hottest. We have an extra hour to literally just like walk up and poke a prey. Well it couldn't move it so hot because we, we invent, we can sweat. We've got like there's, there's 12 major theories we can also I mean you can look at Wikipedia is a wonderful article on bipedalism. It's, if people are really want to nerd out on this, I encourage them, go to Wikipedia, look this up. But things like we stand up, you know, a couple animals do stand or temporarily stand, but we like Stan, Stan, Stan, yup. And that also gives us a horizon view.
Speaker 3: (32:08)
Like we can see higher up, we can see farther, we can look down. It also gives us an advantage for watching for snakes, which are a real, real problem for for tree drilling chimps that became land walking, you know, by petals. In fact, you want to get some really kind of mythological here. What is a dragon? A dragon is a Firebrick is a combination of all the things that threatened treat drone chimps over millions of years. Forest fires and lightning strikes, tree climbing, snakes, predatory birds and tree climbing felines. So what's a dragon? It's got the wings of a predatory bird. It's got the tail and head of this tree climbing snake of a tree dwelling snake and it's got the paws and the jaws and the legs of a tree climbing feline and a police fire like the forest fires and the lightning strikes. So that's the dragons and like nearly every culture and like some of these kind of, these motifs are like genetically burned into us and we evolved as a way to compensate for all these major threats.
Speaker 3: (33:20)
When, so with the, with the hunting, going back to hunting you answered it with the walking that that walking is the most single, most sustainable, yet stable, yet strong motion in the entire human nervous system. And there's multiple, like you, you relax and contract basically every muscle. So you have this kind of, it's like respiration. You breathe in, breathe out. So you can do this for long, long periods of time and not [inaudible] get fatigued. So why is jogging, you know like when you're doing ultra marathons, obviously it's very short. It's as a slow, as a slow moving running. Why is that not the same? Because when you're jogging, you're in this kind of purgatory between walking and running. When sprinting rather running's a vague term. I prefer jogging and sprinting and walking. To be clear, to be clear, because when you sprint, you go into anaerobic glycolysis and you create this factually five mechanisms by which you secrete growth hormone as as a consequence when you sprint, you create the hormone physiology to repair and build up your system.
Speaker 3: (34:30)
And this makes total sense. If you're sprinting away from a tiger on Tuesday, you need a hormone mechanism to build you quicker, stronger, leaner, faster. Is that tiger on Tuesday is probably still there on Thursday. Yup. So you're free to run away from jogging, jogging, you, you go faster than walking, but you don't get the growth hormone release. You do. So you erode [inaudible]. It's just because jogging does exist, it doesn't mean it's the healthiest thing to do. Like because we have this intermediate thing between walking and sprinting, it doesn't mean it's healthy. It can be tactically useful, but it doesn't always mean that it's the healthy thing to do. And that's the confusion. Like people think that on training for my sport, well, training for your sport is almost never training for your health. No. Yes, I'd agree with it. And that's the same thing with jogging.
Speaker 3: (35:23)
Is it useful to jog in order to get food to bring back to your tribe? So you sacrifice a little bit of yourself in order so that you and your tribe can survive longterm. Absolutely. Is it, is it safe to run up, run up and try to poke a thing with a stick that has fangs hose or a clause is that, you know, it's, it's but, but there's the sacrifices that are involved and, and there's these intermediate, you know, phenomenon like jogging between walking and sprinting that have found utility even though they are dangerous long term for the individual.
Speaker 2: (36:02)
So, okay. So, you know, I'm coming from an ultra marathon background and I've run into a number of brick walls because of stuff that I have done. I haven't run into problems like, you know, I'm still a very muscular build and I know a lot of my ultra marathon colleagues if you like, and not the skinny marathon runner that's portrayed in the media or is actually a bit of a miss no more if you like. Nowadays it's all sorts of people that they do. And that we [inaudible] change towards the sport in which you are suited as well. So if you, you're saying a sprinter looks healthy and strong and fed up and, and more muscular, but he's chosen that sport because he is that way inclined. I kept Chuggy marathon runner is also, you know, a healthy individual and, but has a different just see the Jane's to Usain bolt.
Speaker 3: (37:02)
So genetics, there is a reality with genetics, okay. That that is a reality. But there's, there's the people that show up to win the Boston marathon. This is where bell curve statistics matter. It's, it's the far, far, far edge of the bell curve that is glamorized and talked about and try to emulate and runner's magazine or whatever, and that's just simply a, an extreme of it all and the reality is is that most of us people are going to do marathon running marathon. Running as a whole is in terms of the cortisol system is extremely unhealthy because it erodes away your muscle tissue. The way you tell the difference between a marathon or an a cancer patient is you look at their thighs. Marathoners still has some thighs, but it has a thighs because that's the only muscle group. It's actually getting real any type of exercise in terms of muscle building, muscle engagement, whereas cancer that everything's eroded equally because you with, the thing with marathon is a cortisol is secreted for such a long period of time so consistently that it erodes the muscle tissue and if people in benefits to doing jogging and marathoning in different senses like they get outside, they get sunlight, they join a huge supportive community.
Speaker 3: (38:30)
There's an entire ecosystem of community support, language, a jargon, a clothing on meetup groups. Food groups, food, like you plug into a tribe. And that has meaning. Like I worked with someone in [inaudible] who was a depressive and he loved his marathoning and the clinical call that I made was keep marathoning because that's where he is with people. He doesn't isolate himself. He's in the sun, he's moving. And I said, we're just going to work on your other nine pillars. But it is, it is more clinically appropriate that you keep marathon because it fits the higher imperative, which is, which is mood. So I'm not an absolutist, a real clinician as a pragmatist, not a perfectionist.
Speaker 2: (39:23)
Yeah. And, and for me, like running and for a lot of my community, a running safe, they're there. They saw, you know, the psychological stuff. For me, it's like my life. I don't think I'd be alive if I didn't have running because of runnings. A power to get you out of the, the, the shit that you run in, in the psychological saints and the depression and the and give you a sense of, of doing something positive. And of course the endorphin high, the runner's high, that you get all of that good side of it. So I'd agree with, with all of that
Speaker 3: (39:55)
And people say what you said, what are this about Brazilian jujitsu or dancing or like, or it's, and the thing is what people confuse is the tactic, whether it's marathoning or jujitsu for the one true way. Sure. And that's where the fanaticism comes in and that's where it gets dangerous. Where people think, Oh my God, you were questioning my running, how Jerry Wade completely change my life. It's like, no, I'm not. I'm not, I don't deny the life changing things that it's done for you. But my job as someone who's in natural medicine is to not ignore the consequences of people going too deep into whatever thing they're doing it with marathoning or something else. And that's why the 10 pillars is a rounded out picture. And what I tell, I'll tell you what I told this gentleman that I helped up in Oakland. Okay. I said, okay, do your marathon, but, but do this for me. I want you to do walk, sprint, walk, sprint a couple of times during it. And then when you get to the finish line, I want you to sprint to the end, into a deep muscle burn and finish there because the anaerobic bursts will help you chew up the cortisol so it doesn't perpetuate after you're done. So it's so you can adapt even marathoning to make it less damaging but still enjoy the other peripherals of enjoying the marathon
Speaker 2: (41:24)
W and we, with our run trading system that we have, we are very holistic in our approach. So we get a lot of birds out, runners coming to us who have done high monitor training. So we, for example, don't do what I call junk miles. And we do the minimum effective dose basically, and we build and mobility work can be Boden. So daily mobility work and, and strength training runs specific strength training so that we can maintain our muscle mass so that we go, yep, it's, it's it's a new approach to the running way of life, if you like. And it's building and some of the stuff that you saying and this is why I love these sort of conversations and being able to openly discuss these instead of going, Oh, well that's not true. And I don't agree with that. It's to say, well, yes, there's there's some different things.
Speaker 2: (42:14)
And what you were saying here is, is I've seen it on my own body. I've seen I've made the mistakes on my own body. And I've, we've, we've worked at a system where people can still do their passion without killing themselves. And that is by building in going anabolic, going strength training, growing by having the right nutrition looking for, you know, the signs of that your body is losing muscle mass. The adrenal whole Dremel sides. Obviously I haven't done too well on that with myself, but it more as from the stress of the last few years I think. Yup. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of your things was having a loved one who's sick and it's differently what's caused my problems or some of them as well as pushing my body too hard because we do from a personality type, in my case, very extremist. So have in the past gone to the absolute, you know, limits of crazy. And that in itself I'm having to moon to it has its benefits because you achieve amazing things, exceptional things, but it also has its price. And as you get older, you start to realize that the extremes like you seed in some way, sometimes it's better to be in the curve in the middle somewhere and not always be on the, the absolute limits. So this is a really interesting conversation and I'm fascinated with the whole adrenal side.
Speaker 3: (43:43)
I'll also, I'll show you a bit more about my particular adrenal journey. So at first I'll describe it for those who are just listening what I'm showing my March, 2015 results and I'm flat lined on my adrenal testing adrenal. This is a four spot adrenal test. There's an upgraded version where there's a six five it's called the cortisol awakening response. We don't have time to go into that, but I'm just going to show you the four spot. Basically, your cortisol has a rhythm where it's highest in the morning,
Speaker 2: (44:06)
Okay?
Speaker 3: (44:06)
Because you need high cortisol to keep sugar in your blood, to keep your brain alive while you sleep because you don't eat while you sleep and then it goes down through the day and eventually it's lowest at night so you can sleep and then arises during your sleep so you can keep your brain alive. I was flatlined and then it got slightly better in March, 2000 when I retested it in March, 2017 I was still super low when I woke up, but my other results were in the normal [inaudible]. Then I bought a year later in February, 2018 I had approximately the exempt, the same results as the March, 2017 despite a much better lifestyle, I had a massive amount of stress. I had the death of my mentor, the, the neurodegeneration of my father with dementia, which is why I came back to the States. And so like, despite much better lifestyle, my, my adrenals basically did not improve. And then I have January, 2019 11 months later, it's now near textbook normal. Wow. Because a, just so much stress of have recovered from so much of the stress in my lifestyle. So continue to improve. So you can see that stress, stress is stress is one of the four of the 10 pillars that can be sledgehammered. Yeah. Okay. So most, so let's, I think it'd be prudent just to cover the 10 pillars and brief. Yup. And then I can speak more.
Speaker 3: (45:28)
I can speak more about there's hope. Yeah. So basically the four, the 10 pillars and briefly brain and hormone system. Second pillar is bowel and digestion. You know, prioritize your poop, do your number twos. So how well do you chew? How well do you poop? You know, common mistakes. People rush eating or they have bad bowel movements or they skip pooping or they ignore gut problems they've got testing. Can check for hidden infections and how well you digest food. Pillar number three is a physical body, which includes old injuries, a bad dental work, which is rife in New Zealand. Fortunately all you know, rugby accident, it was rugby found it was in when I was in New Zealand. I saw demographically for men, the primary source of untreated injuries were car accidents
Speaker 3: (46:19)
A car accidents, rugby injuries and violence between men and for women. It was car accidents via a horse falls and violence from men. Yeah, those are the three. The three main things I saw based on the gender, demographic, gender, demographics for physical injury and body pillar is also genetics. So I run a lot of genetics testing through you know, all these for people, like for people in New Zealand or around the world listening to this. Like I do, I do telemedicine. So like all the test kits or drop ship nutrients or drop ship discussions are had through, you know, phone. I mean it's so far. So like I can help people wherever they are and the test kits can be sent to wherever. And the great company fit jeans that's actually in Australia, but there's a provider through New Zealand and there's, I talk mostly about inflammation.
Speaker 3: (47:14)
The antiinflammatory genes are really important for your runners because people who do who over-exercise this is something really interesting. People who act, the more they exercise, the fatter they get. Yeah. You come across some of these people. Okay. So that's a genetic issue where they over initiate inflammation, they over propagate and they have problems quenching it. So when you exercise, you do trigger inflammation. That's normal. But if you over initiate it and it over propagates and you can't put it out, like instead of a fire hose, you have a squirt gun. Yep. This is where you get inflammatory
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