How To Hack Your Hormones, Fatigue, and Libido with Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly knows how to hack your hormones, reduce fatigue, and boost your libido so you can thrive and live optimal.
Chris is a computer genius, professional cyclist and the founder at Nourish Balance Thrive - a growing authority in the alternative medicine and health community and a hugely popular podcast in it's own right.
Today, Chris joins us on the OPP to discuss some of the most crucial practices and habits we can implement into our daily lives to have more energy, more fun, and more happiness.
What You'll Learn From Chris Kelly on the Optimal Performance Podcast:
- Using data to drive biological change and improve health & vitality
- Ditching the traditional endurance athlete's high carb diets for a high fat approach - and turning pro!
- The 3 areas most people screw up according to Chris's clinical tests
- Stress, blood chemistry and the difference between theory and application
- The ONE thing Chris wishes he knew at 25
- How socialization impacts your happiness AND your immune system
- Gut health, your stool and what scatology reveals about your health
- Tyrosine, Dopamine Brain Food and great minds...
- Red blood cells being the key to performance and because of their ability to deliver oxygen and how you can hack this
- Books, podcasts, and resources that Chris recommends for us
- Where you can find more of Chris Kelly
- Chris's Top 3 Tips to #LiveOptimal
Featured:
Chris's Website: Nourish Balance Thrive
Resources:
CILTEP for times when you want to boost focus and memory
MagTech for increased synapse density and reduced brain age [1]
Dopamine Brain Food for motivation, drive, and productivity [2,3]
Keep the conversation going in the comments below. How do YOU boost your brain, learn faster, or manage your time better?
Optimal Performance Podcast Transcription
OPP #55: Chris Kelly of Nourish, Balance, Thrive
Ryan: You are listening to the Optimal Performance Podcast. The OPP is brought to you
by Natural Stacks. Natural Stacks makes 100% natural and open source supplements
designed to help you live optimal. For more on achieving optimal performance visit
NaturalStacks.com.
All right, happy Thursday all you optimal performers. I'm your host Ryan Munsey.
Welcome to another episode of the Optimal Performance Podcast. We're joined this
week by our guest, Christopher Kelly. Chris, thanks for hanging out with us.
Chris: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:36] Ryan: So, for you guys listening, Chris is the host of a podcast of his own, Nourish, Balance, Thrive. He is a very, very smart, data-driven, bio-hacker, we're going to call
him. I don't think he would call himself that but, we're going to give him that nickname.
He is a software engineer and a professional cyclist. So, we're going to explore a lot of
different things today but, one of the things that excites me about having you on the
show Chris is that you have insight through your podcasts to what a lot of other high
performers and elite achievers are doing to obtain that optimal health. So, we're really
going to take advantage of your collective knowledge and see what you can share with
us to help us live optimal.
[00:01:27] A couple of the topics that I know we're going to hit: fatigue, hormonal fluctuations, and libido. I saw that on your website and I think that's going to be something that's interesting to our listeners. We have not covered those topics.
So, before we do all that guys make sure you head to NaturalStacks.com. You'll be able
to see the video version of this with the show notes, links, and resources plus anything
that Chris mentions that we want to be able to pursue. We'll have links for that. If you
have not done so, please go to iTunes and leave us a five star review. Let us know how
much you like this show and share the Optimal Performance Podcast. If this helps you,
helps you move your mission forward, helps you to feel better, to live better, please
share it with someone that you know that will also benefit from listening to the Optimal
Performance Podcast.
Alright, I'm going to stop talking. Chris, tell us a little bit about your background. How
did you become the expert and the Nourish, Balance, Thrive guy?
[00:02:30] Chris: I was forced. Necessity was my teacher, is the answer to that question and hacker
is the perfect word. I'm not a doctor. I'm a computer scientist. My undergraduate degree
is in computer science. Three years ago I was working at a hedge fund as a computer
programmer. And also, I'm a very keen amateur cyclist and one of my big goals was to
get my pro license. I was a [just born?] amateur cyclist at the time on a mountain bike
as they say, and I just really threw my heart and soul into it.
The training, obviously I was doing what I thought was right with my diet: low-fat, high
carb, replacing the glycogen after each and every ride diligently and really putting the
hours here. Twenty plus hours on the bike each week and I just got worse. The wheels
came off the wagon and I really just fell apart. And, I did what anyone would do, I went
to the doctor and working for hedge fund I had really, really good health insurance and
the primary care doctor was just worse than useless. It was a really, really quite appalling
It was just a lot of guessing and a lot of mindless use of flow charts, not like what I do in
my work whatsoever. There's no critical thinking, there's no problem solving, there's no
debugging is the word that I would use as a computer scientist. It's was all like wack-a-
mole symptoms. “I see some low libido, Viagra,” or, “I see gastrointestinal symptoms,
here's a steroid anti-inflammatory.” Only, that didn't come directly from him. That was
another appointment with a gastroenterologist that was even more useless than he was
and it was just a really shocking experience. It cost me a lot of money. I spent a fortune
in deductibles, didn't get any better, and at the time I just was starting to see the Paleo
[00:04:25] It was really serendipitous. I was a huge fan of podcasts just because I'm British. I'm
[00:06:03] Just, once your brain starts working and being a curious person anyway and a computer
from London. I was living in California and it was actually Yahoo, the web company
that brought me over here and I used to listen to the BBC World Service and that was
kind of a gateway drug into the podcast world. I started listening to people like Robb
Wolf and discovered Lauren Cordain and Joe Friel who was a famous endurance athlete
that wrote a book with Lauren Cordain called the Paleo Diet for Athletes and I thought,
“Wow this is worth a pump. You know, it sounds kind of crazy but, I'll give it a try,” and
it really, really helped me.
Right about that time I met the woman who's now my wife, who had just finished her
masters degree in food science and was really disillusioned with the opportunities that
lay ahead for her because she thought that a lot of what she had been taught in school
wasn't going to work for people. So, you become a registered dietitian and you have to
work within a framework that's been laid out for you and she was pretty sure that low
fat, high carb was not going to work for people. So, she didn't actually go down that
route. She actually ended up working for McKinsey which is a consultancy company.
And she was like, “Yea, your gastroenterologist is an idiot. I think this Paleo diet is a
really good idea because I can see that it eliminates a lot of the really common food
allergens especially gluten and dairy”, and sure enough I did get better. And eventually I
switched to a stricter form of the Paleo diet called the Autoimmune Protocol and that got
even better results. So, I excluded things like nuts and seeds and nightshades which I
have been able to reintroduce. And, a ton of things on blood chemistry including C-
reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation, improved. So, there was a lot of
things headed in the right direction.
scientist, I just wanted to know how things work. That led me quite quickly to
Functional Medicine and I'm sure people who are listening would have heard that term
before and I think it's as opposed to dysfunctional medicine. That's not even-- you run a
test, you find low testosterone, and you prescribe testosterone and that's it you're done.
You could train a monkey to do that. Whereas, Functional Medicine you do a proper
investigation like a computer scientist would or a chemical engineer would when you're
trying to solve a problem. That's what we do. I ended up quitting my job at the hedge
fund to start a Functional Medicine practice with my wife and I now employ a registered
nurse, a the CEO of Nourish, Balance, Thrive is also a medical doctor and a pro-
mountain biker, and my Chief Medical Officer is Dr. Tommy Woods who is a Ph.D.
Fellow and also a medical doctor who has been on my podcast many times. Yeah, we're
just having a lot of fun making people feel better. We've run labs on 700 athletes now.
So, we're sitting on a ton of data and I think we have a pretty good idea of what makes
people feel good at this point.
[00:07:00] Ryan: We're going to ask you what that is in just a minute but I want to go back to
something that you just said. As you went through that transition, I think one of the
interesting things with the Paleo or the high fat, low carb approach, making sure that you
get enough energy and nutrients to fuel-- It's one thing if you're not incredibly active
but, as active as you have had to have been, transitioning from– and the thing that got
lost in all that is that you went from an amateur to now a professional cyclist.
Chris: Yea, that's right. So, I do have a UCI Pro license now. Though I should make it
clear. Sometimes people put me up on this. I'm a hobby pro. So, I'm not Laurens ten
Dam who makes his living riding his bicycle. I'm someone who shows up and race at
that same level on the mountain bike but nobody pays me a salary. Nobody even gives
me a bike. I don't want to take stuff from people because then I would owe them
something. So, yes, I call myself a hobby pro.
[00:08:05] Ryan: Well, I only bring that up to demonstrate that you had to keep your energy intake
probably higher than the average person.
Ryan: Even if all high fat, low carb foods are on the table that can be difficult but, you
removed even more. You said you took the nuts out and the anti-inflammatory and the
gut healing variation. How did you keep your energy intake high enough to sustain what
Chris: Yes, true and you hear this on the podcasts all the time. People saying you can
out-eat any exercise regime. I don't care what you do, you can out eat it. That's not true.
So, I can show you a three and a half thousand calorie bike ride, right. So, I can create a
HUGE energy deficit in a day and, yes, you really do need to get those extra calories in.
I can tell you from personal experience and the people I've worked with that saturated fat
is by far the easiest and the safest, most non-inflammatory way to get that extra energy.
So, I'm eating tons of avocados and steaks and a lot of NZT oil, a lot of coconut oil, a lot
of fatty fish. So, yes, a lot of extra energy and calories is coming from saturated fats I'd
[00:09:29] Ryan: Very cool. You kind of hinted at your over 700 athletes that you've got lab work
for. You guys are having fun making people healthy and learning what it is-- I want to
know, if you could tell the listeners three things or four things, what are the secrets?
Where do you see most people going wrong?
Chris: So, yes, that's a really good question. I wasn't expecting that till the end of the
podcast. I've been listening to your podcasts.
Ryan: As soon as it came out, I went, “No, we can't go with three because that's not the
three to live optimal.” But, this is like in your practice and with those lab results, what
are you commonly seeing as red flags or areas that need emphasis, clinically?
[00:10:22] Chris: Right. It's the things that you talk about on this podcast, right? So, my most
powerful tools. So, that's how this kind of went down: you find something good, you
don't want to be a jerk and share it-- I went onto the Ben Greenfield podcast and talked
about my story there with Jamie, who's one of their medical doctors, and we had a bunch
of people that came to us and said, “That's me as well. I've got a terrible fatigue and I
can't sleep at night and my libido sucks. Whatever you did, do it for me”, and that's what
started the business. Two years later I know that by far my most powerful tools are diet
and sleep and stress mitigation.
So, if you're still eating a crappy diet, if you're still eating cereal for breakfast and
sandwiches for lunch and pasta for dinner then I'm going to high five my wife and have
a little dance around the kitchen because we know you're going to be giving us a
testimonial in two weeks time. That's my most powerful tool. Then, sleep is the same
but, most people by the time-- you know, if you're feeling tired then getting adequate
sleep seems like an obvious thing to try. So, by the time most people talks to me most
people have emphasized that and understand the importance of sleep. Certainly for me in
the beginning I couldn't sleep. I was trying and I couldn't but, you get into bad habits so
my thing was to stay up all night watching old reruns of the Tour de France on the
couch. So, how the hell did I ever expect to get good quality sleep because I just stopped
even trying even though I knew it was important. So the sleep thing that's when all the
growth hormone happens, that's when testosterone happens, that's when all the good
things happen, when you're asleep, which is so important for an athlete. So, sleep is
super duper important.
Then, stress mitigation. I say that now but when I started a new business and had a kid
so, maybe it's more of an issue than I know. It's good stress. Like I'm having a lot of fun
with it but, for other people they're not. They hate their job and their commute sucks and
the wife's a bitch and that kind of stuff or my husbands a dick, and that can really play
into this thing. We measure cortisol. It's the primary stress hormone on the labs and we
see a lot of the people whose cortisol is just off the charts. Cortisol is sending this
message to your brain or your brain is creating this message that I'm being chased by a
tiger right now. Is now a good time to make babies or make bigger muscles or to even
do some digestion or immunity? So, the stress can ruin everything too. So, to
summarize, diet, sleep and stress I think are the three most important things.
[00:12:58] Ryan: So, I want to touch on stress a little bit more. The being chase by a tiger is a useful
response if you are in fact being chased by a tiger. What gets us in trouble is when it's
chronically elevated and even at lower levels than that. So, you just mentioned you have
a brand new child and you've got a business, what kind of practices do you have in your
daily life that help you mitigate stress and keep cortisol at bay?
Chris: Well, do you know what? I've done a number of things in the past that have been
very helpful and Headspace – I'm sure many people have heard of Headspace.com,
guided meditation. Andy Puddicombe puts you through the process of learning how to
meditate, being one of my most useful tools in the past but, I've not been doing that
recently. I don't really feel like I'm doing anything to do stress mitigation at the moment
and maybe that will come undone in the end but, I've measured my cortisol using my
very fancy mass spectrometer test and I really don't have a problem with cortisol
production. So, when I look at it I actually have a low cortisol production at the moment.
So, I think it's difficult to go by symptoms and you'll see this.
Just go to the Mayo Clinic website and have a look at the symptoms for low cortisol and
then look at the symptoms for high cortisol. They are exactly the same. Literally, they
are exactly the same. So, you can not know if you have a problem with cortisol just by
symptoms alone. You've really got to do a test.
[00:14:35] Ryan: And that's a big part of what you guys do in your business right?
Chris: Yes, that's right. So, I'm not a magician. When someone comes to me and says,
“You know, I'm feeling tired, my libido sucks and I'm not recovering from workouts
anymore. What have you got for me”, a whole bunch of tests is what I've got for you.
So, I've got a urine metabolite, hormones – testosterone, cortisol, progesterone,
estrogen, melatonin – and we also look at urinary organic acids and there are 75 of those
so, I won't list them all. Then we also look at blood chemistry and then we look at stool
testing. We look for parasites and overgrowth of opportunistic pathogens in stool. That's
what we do. We do the work up, the process is very much in keeping with the bio-
hacking ethos. It's your data you need to figure out whats going on inside your body.
Nobody cares about this problem more than you do so, you've got to do this
investigation. It's a bit like, I think of it as being like when the engine check light comes
on. So, if you're a guy, you're waking up in the morning and you've no longer got an
erection. The engine check light is on. So, you need to bring your car into the shop and
have the mechanic hook up that machine – It costs $60,000 dollars. It's made by Bosch –
and then they do that diagnostic test and it comes back. “Okay, so, the number three
cylinder is not firing and you're deficient in this and this is locked.” You can do that with
your body now with the type of biomedical testing that we do. So, that's what we do. We
find problems in lab tests and it's not a medical diagnosis. There's a huge difference in
what we do. When we go to a doctor, the diagnose and treat disease whereas we're
targeted at helping athletes improve their performance which is very difficult-- Very
different, I should say. A doctor doesn't have a way to bill for that. So, it's different and
[00:16:24] Ryan: So, walk us through what that experience is like. Let's say I say, “I want you to do
for me what it is that you do.” I come to your website and sign-up? What's that process
Chris: Yes. So, I've put together a webpage that explains what's involved. Maybe if I sent
you a link for that. It's NourishBalanceThrive.com/epp and I'll send you the link to that
and you can see what testing is involved. Most of the testing can be done at home now.
It's amazing. One of the things that's so exciting in being in this industry is the testing.
It's just getting better and better all the time and just to be part of that is amazing.
So, like I said we do urinary hormones. So, you just pee on some filter paper four times
during one day and then I can tell you what's going on with your cortisol, your
testosterone. If you're a woman you might be more interested in your estrogen and
progesterone but, not necessarily because those hormones can be important for men too.
Then the organic acids so, these are the stuff of metabolism and you can actually
measure, you probably heard people talk about the TCA cycle, the Krebs cycle. All that
biochemistry tends to be quite boring to people until it's their biochemistry.
[00:18:14] Then, the blood chemistry you know. Rather than going to the doctor and asking them to
So, if you identify as a bio-hacker, when I show you your Krebs cycle and you can go
onto WikiPathways.org and look at the pathways and see what you have an elevation
and you have a deficiency in, and you look at your enzymes and the co-factors that are
involved, that's kind of interesting. You can also find yeast overgrowth and bacterial
overgrowth and I know that you talk a lot about neurotransmitters and you can't measure
them all. In fact, it's impossible to measure neurotransmitters in urine but, you can
measure the metabolic ratios. You can measure the metabolites like homovanillate. So,
we can actually tell you what's going on with your dopamine and serotonin using one of
these organic acids. And that's just a urine sample.
draw blood, you just order a test from my website, I send you a pdf requisition form and
go directly to Quest and they do the blood draw. I have some fancy software that defines
the title reference range is. Then, at the end of the whole process we've got a whole
bunch of data and I get the person on Zoom. I use this video conferencing app called
Zoom which is phenomenal. Then, I share my screen and I do it like a training course
where I actually explain to people the results.
Many of you have been to the doctor and your doctor is holding your test results like
this, looking like it's like a playing card being held close to your chest. I think people,
especially people who listen to podcasts like this, they don't want that. It's your data and
you should understand it. You're in a really good position to take action on it. So, that's
what I do. I do my very best to help understand what their results mean. Then once they
understand what the principles, they can take the action that's needed to fix the problems
that they've found.
[00:19:11] Ryan: Very cool. Then with that data, do you help people plan and set the course for the
way they eat, the way they train, and work on their habits to get these things going in the
Chris: Yeah, exactly. So, my wife has been coaching people, athletes, endurance athletes
primarily, with their diet and she's basically teaching those people how to eat in the way
that I eat. So, the eating part is fairly straight forward. The cooking and the shopping and
the planning, is very much more challenging and that's what Julie does. So, she does that
part of the coaching, she does.
[00:19:50] Ryan: Implementation is always harder than theory.
Chris: I've never had a problem with eating. High carb, low carb, it's all been fine but,
figuring out exactly what you should eat is rather more difficult. And I've gotten to this
amazing place now eating this diet – and I'm sure it's not just the diet but, the diet is
probably the most important part – where I can do-- So, last week I did 16 hours of
activity on my bike. Fairly low level activity. Then, this weekend I went out at the end of
that 16 hours with the local pro, like the fastest local pro we've got on the scene here in
[Norhost?] scene anyway, and just smashed it for three hours with this kid. I'm sure he
wasn't riding as hard as he could but for that was smashing kit and I felt great and I was
able to come home, get some work done, maybe do some podcasting, look at some
health plans and feel really good and that I think is a huge win over what I had before
where I do even just a couple of hours worth of exercise and then I'd just be eating carbs
all night and sat on the couch.
[00:20:52] Ryan: So, I think that's a great testimonial. A lot of times when you hear one of the
objections to the low carb approach is that for so long we've been told that we need carbs
for recovery and I think you just touched on the fact that that's really not the case.
Chris: It's not the case for endurance exercise, yes. I'm sure there's lots of people,
strength based athletes, that would contest my point here and they're right. You get to a
point where you're exerting glycolytic pathways that are glycolytic, they use glucose and
so you've only got so much of that. It makes sense if you're a crossfit athlete or a power
lifter or a body builder when you eat some carbs. Then you're working out twice a day
you use a carbohydrate powder and replenish that glycogen as quickly as you can. For
an endurance athlete like me that's doing 16 hours in a week, 140 beats, you shouldn't be
using carbohydrates at that level of exertion. If you are, I think it's a mistake. You're
going to run out of glycogen and then you're on that sugar roller coaster and just feeling
like crap all the time.
[00:22:05] Ryan: Alright. I agree with that. That's a great answer, great answer. So, I think that the
thing that a lot of people miss is that their looking at a lot of--
[00:22:15] Ryan: Yes, they're not putting the context in there and you have to be goal dependent.
So, if I am doing crossfit, I am using different energy pathways, then, yes, I will need
more glycogen,--
Chris: Yes, the goal is not--
Ryan:-- I will need more carbs.
Chris: Yes. It's a really good point. The goal is not low carb, the goal is something else.
So, for me as a mountain biker, my goal is to compete at a high level and then not suck
as a father and not suck as a small business owner. That's kind of the goal. For somebody
else, they're going to want something totally different. Low carb may or may not come
into that solution. It's really up to you to figure that out.
[00:22:52] Ryan: Yes. That's very similar to the conversation that we had with Mark Sisson a few
weeks ago. What we're doing needs to enhance the rest of our life. I like the way that
you said it better, not suck as a father. [laughter]
Chris: I've learned so much from Mark Sisson and I've really enjoyed that podcast. He's
such an amazing guy. Of course he's been talking about all this stuff forever and I found
out about it fifteen minutes ago so, I am Johnny-come- lately. My experience is a
testimonial to everything that's in Mark's book, The Primal Endurance-- How long has
he been doing Primal Endurance?
[00:23:25] Ryan: Primal Blueprint and then Primal Endurance is his new one.
Chris: Primal Endurance is the book that I've just finished reading. It was like, I read that
book and I was like, “Yep! That's the book I should have read ten years ago.”
Ryan: So, if you guys are listening and you haven't heard that episode, go back and listen
to it. I believe that one was episode 49. But, that's Marks and he talks about how to
become a fat-burning beast. Chris, how old are you?
[00:23:59] Ryan: So, one of my questions was going to be what do you wish you knew at 25 and
you're not allowed to say Primal Endurance?
Chris: Oh my goodness. Can I go back to two years old? I've wasted my entire half of
my life. I honestly believe that. You know the problems started for me as the beginning.
Stinky diapers that didn't make sense. My mom ran out of breast milk so, I was fed from
some thin out of a tin called SMA, with soy and God knows what else in it. Then, I was
weened onto carbohydrates and I ate a ton of, I call them biscuits, you call them cookies.
I was probably severely insulin resistant by the time I was in my early twenties let alone
any older. So, I really want to talk to myself at four years old. And, it's almost an
emotional experience when you see someone with half your genetic material.
My daughter no doubt, you see other traits which are very similar to your own, that she
has a lot of my genetic junk. So, for her to not have to suffer that experience and to get a
decent education-- So, I feel that my education was wasted because I just couldn't
concentrate. The teachers would describe me as disruptive and I would have moments of
brilliance. I would sometime pull out of the bag and get an A for a science exam or
something but, for the most part, I'd be setting fires to the Bunsen burners, trying to start
a fight or something, pulling a stool out from somebody's ass just before they would try
to sit down or something like that. It was just disruptive behavior that was just being
driven by my biology at that time. It all went away when I fixed the biology. So, yes, I
want people to know that this is not your destiny. You can control and manipulate this
[00:25:49] Ryan: Alright. That's very cool and that's why we're doing what we're doing with the
podcast. We want to empower all of you guys listening with the tools to be able to do
that. So, Chris, tell us two or three – I know it's not fair to you to use favorite because
you don't want to call any of your podcasts guests better than any of the others but, two
or three of your most interesting podcasts. What have you learned from all the people
that you get to interview?
Chris: Blimey. Talk about putting me on the spot. That's a difficult and good question,
isn't it. You know, Bryan Walsh is a Naturopathic Doctor. So, I'm like this-- I'm really
good at networking at this point. I realize that starting a business is all about who you
meet and the relationships that you form. Starting the podcast has been the most amazing
way to do that and part of the reason I started the podcast was that I wanted to figure out
exactly how this thing just worked. Like, “What just happened to me?” Somebody gave
it to me like a black box and it worked. Took the supplements, ate the diet, got the sleep
and I felt fantastic and I really wanted to understand how it worked. So, I got all these
people on the podcast and Bryan Walsh, a Naturopathic Doctor whose been really, really
generous said-- Bryan, he teaches medical students anyway as part of his day job and I
feel like he's really taken me under my wing and really taught me so much stuff. He's
done a couple of good podcasts with me. The one that really blew my socks off was the
one on social isolation.
[00:27:23] So, just very briefly, know that social isolation can actually change the way that your
immune system works. Imagine if you were living in a tribe and you were surrounded by
a bunch of people, then you'd want to be protected by communicable diseases. Like, if
there was a virus going around or something, you'd want protection from that. But,
imagine another tribe came along and invaded and set fire to your hut and all of your
people were dispersed into the woods then, you'd want a different sort of immunity.
You'd want protection from, let's say you fell and stabbed yourself on a log or tree or
something and suddenly you've got a bunch of inflammation and stuff floating around in
the site and it's all over, then you'd want protection, adaptive protection. The same thing
can happen – and people have done a lot of careful work looking at this – that when you
isolate people, socially, it changes the way that their immune system works. It changes
everything and I've just not heard anyone else talk about that stuff on any of the podcasts
even though it's so important.
You have to look at the way we live today. Everybody's connected via-- I don't even
know what all the things are anymore. I know Facebook and I know e-mail and I just
about know Instagram and then I've heard of things like Snapchat and all these other
ones. So, are these things really connecting people socially in the way living in a tribe
once did because that sure as hell is changing the way that our immune systems work.
He's just such a thoughtful guy like that. He's deep, deep in the research like that all the
time but, he's also an amazing critical thinker. So, yes, Bryan Walsh, absolutely. Such an
Then, Kirk Parsley as well. He's a medical doctor and former Navy SEAL. He's just
been on my podcast when he talks about sleep and how important that is and that was an
Then, I love-- One of my favorite things, when you find a cool test, like go find the guy
who developed that test. So, for example with the Dutch test, the urine test that we do,
the urinary mass spectrometry that looks at hormones, I went and found the analytical
chemist, Mark Newman, that developed that test and he is just amazing. He describes his
knowledge as being an inch wide and a mile deep and that's just perfect. It's so true.
Like, there's nothing he doesn't know about with hormones and measuring hormones.
So, to get him on the podcast and just hear the story behind the test that you've had so
much benefit from using is just the coolest thing.
[00:29:55] Ryan: Awesome, Awesome. So, I want to go back. I forgot to ask you about this before
because you mentioned the stool samples before in your test and that's actually
something that we've discussed having an entire podcast about. Stools and Scatology.
Tell us a little bit about what you're looking for. I know you mentioned that you were
able to see parasites in the stool if there are any. Talk to us a little bit about stool.
Chris: Right, yes. My favorite subject. So, this is one of the areas that I'd say technology
is advancing the most rapidly and I think this is still the dark ages. I think in ten years
time we're going to look back at this time and say, “Ugh. Do you remember when we
used to still do culturomics. Oh my God. I can't believe it.” Now, that's cutting edge but,
that's not to say it's not useful. It is useful and I would say about 90% of the athletes that
we work with have some sort of GI complaint. So, with the brain fog and the fatigue and
the insomnia and the low libido comes either gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation or
maybe some combination of those things. So, that's the clear red flag. Like you should
do a stool test at that point and find out what you've got going on in there because there's
some good information that could be had.
[00:31:15] But, sometimes, you've just got someone who's just got brain fog and then you test them
and they've got some kind of parasitic infection, maybe Entamoeba histolytica or
Cryptosporidium or, this morning I saw Blastocystis hominis, which is one of the more
controversial parasites but, in the presence of other symptoms which you can see on the
test results, like autoimmunity, then you should treat it. I feel like the parisitology is
pretty strong. Like there's not that many parasites and they do a pretty good job of
detecting it but of course, what we really don't know is what goes on with the other
microbes, the bacteria in particular. We know that some species of bacteria, like bifida
bacteria, for example, seems pretty important for Westerners. The techniques for
measuring these things are really coming along in leaps and bounds. So, I've done lots of
the-- Have you heard of the uBiome test?
Chris: Yes, I've done lots of those and I've looked at it and I've even developed an app
that takes the uBiome data and turns it into a phylogenetic tree. So, do you know what a
phylogenetic tree is? It's just kind of an organizational chart of things, of animals. So,
you can actually see rather than just saying, “Well, you have your five dogs and three
cats”, I can go all the way down to the species level and say you've got three Yorkshire
Terriers, you've got one German Alsatian-- It's much, much more detail and there's a
feeling of – and I don't know this and I'm not speaking for uBiome when I say this – but
I have a feeling that there's like an FDA thing going on here where they're like, “Okay,
you can do this test and you can report on this data but, you're absolutely not allowed to
make any associations with diseases or health complaints of any type.” So, it's a bit like
23 and Me, where they're allowed to do the test but they're not allowed to say anything
about the results.
So, that's what I've done. I've acted as a third-party writer. I import the data from
uBiome and then create this phylogenetic tree report and I've absolutely have no idea
what to do with it. I look at the data and I know this is probably good. There's hundreds
of studies that show achromancy is good, the question is is the achromancier along for
the ride. You take somebody who's healthy and they have a ton of achromancia and then
you take someone who's not healthy and they don't have the bug, which is the cause and
which is the effect? I feel like that is still being played out and I really don't want to say
either way which is the cause and which is the effect because in ten years time I'm sure
everything will have changed.
So, at the moment I'm like with the gut stuff, clearly the athletes have a huge problem
with their gut but, at the moment I feel like I'm acting like a carpenter whereas, in the
future, I may be able to act like a French polisher. Do you see what I mean? Where I
may be able to manipulate the microbiome and really get some results that way. At the
moment, we're just pulling nails out of stuff. “You don't want that, that's definitely got to
go. And you definitely don't want that. H. pylori, no that has to go.” It's really quite
crude but it gets great results. People, they come in and they have a bunch of GI
symptoms and you get rid of one of these bugs, my GI symptoms are gone and by the
way my brain fog has cleared up. That happens all the time.
[00:34:27] Ryan: So, let's assume that some of our listeners don't know some of these bugs by name
and aren't quite as familiar with healing the gut. What advice would you give or what
would you tell people to look for and how can they optimize their biome beyond the
usual? I don't really know where I'm going with that. See if you-- [laughter]
Chris: No, I know where you're going with that. The signs that you can look for. So, one
of the signs that I always ignored was the consistency of my poop. Like, for the first 35
years of my life I pooped up like a cow pie.
[00:35:49] So, my goal is to teach myself out of a job. These tests I'm talking about, I use the
Chris: That's not normal. It should be like a smooth, slippery sausage and come out quite
clean and sorry for all the people still eating their breakfast. You're probably not
listening to this podcast anymore because everyone's so over it now. But, that's a good
sign. It should be like that. And that's not the be all, end all. Like if you've got brain fog
but, you have perfect poop, there's still a chance you've got something undesirable down
there that you can test and eliminate with antimicrobial supplements. But, that's a sure
fire red flag, if you've got clear digestive complaints and you don't need me.
Doctors Data Stool Test and I use Biohealth, and I think you'll find if you poke around
on the internet a bit, you'll be able to find these tests for yourself and you can order them
online. They're quite expensive but, I think they're worth it. You know, if you're a bio-
hacker and you're into this stuff then go figure it out. Go figure out what it means to find
Blastocystis hominis on a stool test. There are some people who are doctors and who'll
be listening to this saying, “Oh God, this guy's just causing trouble”, but, I think this is a
really cool way for this problem. We know there's not enough good doctors out there and
we do also know that there's a lot of really smart people like you out there. You have a
brain and you have the ability to think critically and when you take some of these long
technical words like Entamoeba histolytica, there's not really that much junk out there on
the internet. So, if you type in Entamoeba histolytica into PubMed, then you're going to
find some good research and in two hours time you're going to know more than most
primary care doctors about gastroenterology or about that particular bug or the way it
affects it. That's what we encourage people to do.
[00:36:58] Ryan: That's interesting that you say that. I don't think a lot of people would think, “Hey,
two hours of reading about this would put me ahead of probably 90% of the people out
there.” But, that is a good point.
Chris: Yes, so, to be very fair to the doctors. So, Jamie is working as a primary care
doctor and it's just not fair. She has a $270,000 education that she's trying to pay off and
she's not allowed to use it. Her day is divided into 15-minute time slots and the only tool
she has in her box, she doesn't have your Natural Stacks, no tyrosine, no phenyl-alanine,
and a bunch of methylfolate in that toolbox. She has a prescription pad and that's it.
Forget about diet and lifestyle and stress and all that stuff. What can you really say to
someone in 15 minutes? That person can probably get greater benefit from just spending
the day listening to a bunch of podcasts than they could in 15 minutes with a
So, the other system, those people are amazing. They have incredible educations but I
think they're trapped inside of a system that does not allow them to use their education.
[00:38:07] Ryan: That's interesting. I think we all would agree on that but, I don't think I've heard
anybody phrase it that way. And for those of you listening those are the ingredients in
dopamine brain food, if you didn't catch that.
Chris: Yes. So, I should interrupt you and talk about that. So, one of the things that I've
found so compelling when I first discovered your website was we do these organic acids
tests and then based on the levels of these organic acids we know that the person has a
deficiency of dopamine or serotonin. We look to some of the products like the ones you
sell at Natural Stacks to solve those problems and I know from personal experience they
work really great. Tyrosine works fantastic. So, it's just kind of a coincidence that I
found your website as one of the potential solutions for the problems that we find in our
lab work. I think that's pretty cool.
[00:38:55] Ryan: Well, that's great minds think alike and I know Abelard will be happy to hear that.
He's our product creator for that formula.
Chris: Yes, and some of it is not a secret you know. I met Tommy through the Robb Wolf
broadcast, he's my Chief Medical Officer and a doctor and a Ph.D fellow and he said,
“Oh yeah. I used to take tyrosine all the time before an exam. It almost always perked
me up and help me concentrate.” So, it makes sense.
[00:39:20] Ryan: Yes. So, I want to go back to stool. A few episodes ago we had Anne Louise
[00:40:57] We see people with nutritional deficiencies, particularly in folate which I see in a
Gittleman on this show and she said that if your stool is clay colored then that is an
indicator of less than optimal bile production. You mentioned texture, what about color?
Anything we need to know there?
Chris: Oh, yes. I've never really thought about that too hard but, yes, you're absolutely
right. So that's what gives-- the breakdown of bilirubin is what gives the stool its color
and that could be a window into other things as well. Maybe some of the conjugation
pathways in the liver not working very well. Some of the enzymes are blocked and you
can look at some of that on a blood chemistry. You have total bilirubin, direct and
indirect. So, you can look at some of that to look and see if that was a reason. So, it's
really whenever I look at the test results, it's never one test in isolation. So, that's why I
use this video conferencing app, Zoom, because I share my screen and then people can
actually see me jumping backwards and forwards between the test results to confirm or
deny. I start with this list of possibilities and then narrow it down to a list of
probabilities. So, that's absolutely true.
It's one thing that we see a lot of is endurance athletes with problems with red
blood cells. So, most endurance athletes listening to this will know that oxygen
deliverability is key to performance. The more oxygen you deliver to your exercising
muscle the faster you'll go. So, your VO2 max is going to be really important.
bunch of your supplements, right, that methylfolate. What that does for red blood cells
is it allows them to eject the nucleus out of the cell. So what we see in lots of endurance
athletes is really big red blood cells. They have an MCV – MCV means Mean
Corpuscular Volume – the MCV will be like 99. Then I look at the organic acids test, a
urine test, and you see an elevation in a marker formato glutamate. Formato glutamate
builds up when there's a deficiency of folate.
So, at that point you know with reasonable certainty that that person has a folic
deficiency and that's holding them back from producing normal sized red blood cells.
But, you could have other things going on. So, if you had like a bunch of red
blood cell destruction, maybe you had an intracellular infection that was causing a lot of
inflammation and the red blood cells were breaking down too early, well that hemolysis,
that hemoglobin would end up getting broken down and conjugated and gotten rid of in
the bile. So, that would end up in the stool but, I just don't know. I've never known of
anybody to diagnose that by looking at the color of the stool. But, that's where it goes
eventually but, you don't want it so, the problem is you have to get to the root cause.
What is going on? Is there an intracellular infection that's breaking down the red blood
cells too early? You have to think about all this stuff. In my experience the symptoms
and qualitative evaluations are not that helpful and you've really got to do the
biochemistry and understand that.
[00:42:26] Ryan: So let's go back. You were talking about red blood cells being the key to
performance and because of their ability to deliver oxygen. So, let's make that
actionable for our people listening. Are there dietary protocols? Are there training
protocols that we can use to hack that and increase that?
Chris: No. That's all supplements. I'd love to say that I'm a Whole Foods stop and ask
first guy. The hacking I've done on my red blood cell count is all being supplements.
Sorry. So, you can do a basic blood chemistry, you can look at hemoglobin, and you can
look at some of the other markers like the color of the red blood cells. That's the MCV
and the MCCH, I forget all these abbreviations. It's the hemoglobin concentration. I
think if there's just like the color of the red blood cell. Certainly you need certain
nutrients in order to make red blood cells. So, iron is one of them. You need zinc,
copper, folate I mentioned, also B12. I can see B12 deficiency with the organic acids.
There's methylmalinate. But, you have to really, really understand how the process
works, the production, the destruction, and then the loss of red blood cells in order to
[00:43:58] So, what I have seen a lot of is athletes that say, “Oh, I've got an anemia. I just
have to take some more iron.” An anemia and an iron deficiency are not necessarily the
same thing. There's lots of different types of anemia. In fact, most of the master athletes
that we test-- Most of the guys we test are my age, 40+ and they actually have a
deficiency of iron. I'm sorry, an overload of iron. So, when we look at their ferritin, it's
in the hundreds and with that there's a percentage saturation, it's another marker on the
blood chemistry. If it's really elevated and that causes a ton of oxidative stress. So,
you've seen that iron overload. You've seen a rusty nail right. It's a pro-oxidant. The
same thing happens with iron excess in your body. So, you need to get rid of that excess
blood by giving blood.
That's actually one of the drawbacks, one of the pitfalls of the Paleo diet. I think
it works a little bit too well in that respect. The guys, their smashing back those ribeye
steaks with a ton of butter on it. That's a really good combination for absorbing iron so,
eventually you may become iron-overloaded because men never lose blood and that's
really the only way you lose iron.
[00:44:58] Ryan: So, is that something that mean who take a Paleo or Primal approach should be
Chris: Yes. It's almost like, I don't know what it is, maybe you've just got this huge
selection bias from the people that I work with. They hear me on the podcast and they
come forward to do one of our programs and maybe I'm just selecting a certain sort of
person that always has iron overload. At the moment, it seems the rate of iron-overload
is through the roof. So, if you're listening to this and you're finding it interesting, go
check your ferritin because I think you might be iron-overloaded. How about that for
wild speculation? But, it could be true and it's not difficult to test and the solution is
extremely altruistic. When you go donate blood, you're helping somebody, you'll save
someones' life and so, maybe, that will be a good thing for that reason alone.
[00:45:46] Ryan: Yes. Absolutely. That's interesting. Alright, Chris what are the last two or three
books that you've read or podcasts that you've listened to that have benefited you?
Chris: Wow, I just listened to so much stuff. I can't remember it all now. I sit in my
sauna and listen to podcasts for at least and hour a day. It's like my little pet project and I
don't actually read that many books. So, I'm really, really lucky in that I have Tommy
that helps me navigate literature. We've talked about this on podcasts that evidence-
based medicine, I think it is a system in crisis. Just because somebody's sending you a
rodent study showing you that this is true, it doesn't mean anything to you, literally
nothing. So, you need someone to help you navigate that literature. I spend most of my
time not reading books but reading scientific studies that have not just been pulled off of
PubMed by me but, are actually being sent to me by Tommy.
So, at the moment, we're looking a lot at exogenous ketones supplementation.
I'm organizing Keto Summit so, a part of that has been doing research on ketone esters
and the salts and I've been talking to a couple of researchers, one of whom I know you
know, Dominic D'Agostino. Then, there's another woman Professor Kieran Clarke in the
U.K. has a ketone ester product. People are just sending me tons of scientific studies to
read all the time and the only reason I can read them – and I should make this just as
important – the thing that allows me to read these studies-- so, you've got that in your
education, your $200,000 education that you got Ryan that enabled you to read these
scientific papers. For me, I was able to get a tiny fraction of that education, just enough
to be able to make sense of these papers, from Bryan Walsh's training course called
Metabolic Fitness Pro. So, Bryan teaches biochemistry on a white board. It's awesome. I
absolutely love it. It's one of the best things, the best $200 – I think it's a bit more
expensive than that. It might be $400 – it's still the best $400 dollars you'll ever spend,
is that training course. That's what I do. I spend all my time just reading scientific
[00:48:00] Ryan: So, talk to us a little bit about these exogenous ketones.
Chris: Yes. So, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this already know about ketosis and
the diet I described, this high fat diet is ketogenics. That's the magic keyword you're
looking for is ketogenics or ketogenesis or ketosis. The diet that I follow some people
would call it quite restrictive if I'm right. So, I'm not eating any carbohydates what-so-
So, my daughter is out there eating some banana chips out there and I don't eat
the banana chips. I just eat the vegetables and a lot of fat and avocado and stuff. Some
people would say that's a hideous diet and never want to eat that.
They want the carbs and they don't want the restrictions. So, you can get some of the
benefits that I've described, so this ability to do very long endurance exercise without
having to eat a ton of food or without running out of fuel, from exogenous ketones.
That's something else.
They're coming out with a novel product that's really just emerging on the
market. I've been taking the ketone salts which is produced by Patrick Arnold who
maybe some people have heard of.
[00:49:05] Ryan: Is that KetoForce? It's got the KF on the bottle.
Chris: Yes. KetoForce, it's called. So, those are sodium potassium salts and it tastes like
sea water. He has another product called Ketocana, which is also the salts ,and that's in
a-- that's a mineral, that's a ketone mineral. It's the calcium and sodium. So, it's a slightly
different product but it's with stevia so it's slightly more palatable and they worked quite
[00:49:36] Ryan: So, when you're saying you're taking those, can you explain exactly the
application. Are you taking them by themselves are you taking them with MCT oils or
are you using them before you train? How does that work?
Chris: Yes. So, I'm mainly only using it with bike races. So, we know that when you
metabolize a ketone or a fat in general, you generate more ATP per unit oxygen and we
talked about earlier about oxygen deliverability being key for exercising performance
for endurance athletes. So, this is not well fleshed out, this idea at the moment I have to
admit but, I've been taking the ketone salts before bike races and, anecdotally, the do
seem to-- I have found it to be a massive appetite suppressant and I think that's telling
you it's doing something. So, I won't be hungry. Before I'd finish a bike race and I'd
want to eat somebody's arm. Whereas now I almost feel like I've been out all night
nightclubbing like in my early days when I was 18. That old feeling where you really
feel quite revolted by food.
I just really wish I had a better way to test it. I can't say that I did this race and
got this result and then I took the salts and I did another race and everything else was
controlled and kept equal and the salts showed a seven percent improvement in
performance. I just can't tell you stuff like that. It's all anecdotal. You have to put
together the pieces of the biochemistry and just being able to raise your ketones by just a
little bit should help you. I've just been drinking it. The KetoForce, I just mix it with
water and a little bit of apple cider vinegar, some lime. It tastes pretty awful still but it's
palatable. Then I have my own.
So, the MCT oil, I've turned it into powder. I have my own product that I call
Phat Fibre and it's a free flowing powder of MCT oil and that's super handy for me as a
bike racer. You know when you go to bike races you really want to carry an oil. So,
that's why we use this. It works quite well to raise blood ketones as well.
[00:51:31] Ryan: Is the Phat Fibre available for everyone?
Chris: Yes, it is available. So, this is a brand new thing that Tommy and my wife, Julia,
and I designed recently. We've just done our first pre-production running. You can go to
it. Because I'm British it's Ph and fiber is spelled -re: PhatFibre.com. This is our first
pre-production run. So, it really is a bit of a prototype product. It works great for me
personally and if I end up using all 220 bags myself personally, it won't be the end of the
world. So, I'm really very interested to know what other people think of it.
[00:52:05] Ryan: Well, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. For those of you listening go to
Natural Stacks, go to the video version of this blog. We'll have a link to PhatFibre.com
and you guys can check that out over there. It's interesting that you're experiencing the
anecdotal evidence. We saw Dominic, you mentioned Dominic D'Agastino, we saw him
speak at the bulletproof conference. I actually think it was 2014 when he presented some
of his research on exogenous ketone use and I think he was using the same salts that
you're using. It's his research and it's been a long time since I saw him present on it but,
they were using it with Navy SEALS during their underwater dives and also with
cyclists. I believe, if memory serves they were able to achieve performance with as little
as a tablespoon, a single tablespoon dose. They had research showing whatever the
benefit was. I don't remember but, performance was enhanced on cyclists and-- because
with Navy SEALS underwater part of what they have to do is conserve oxygen and
these are guys that if they're trying to be sneaky they don't want a whole lot of bubbles
coming up to the surface. So, they're using special breathing tanks that are even smaller
than a normal scuba tank that they have to conserve oxygen in. Being in ketosis, they
used oxygen more efficiently.
Chris: Yes, that might be true but I think the main reason-- The application was to
protect against neurotoxicity.
Ryan: Brain aneurysms and stuff.
Chris: Yes, exactly so that you have oxygen toxicity and the ketones are actually
neuroprotective. So, this is interesting for Tommy as well. His Ph.D. is in neonatal
neuroprotection. So, these babies who are born with some kind of hypoxic injury, they
get born with a cord wrapped around their neck or something like that. The current
standard of care is to cool these babies by just a little bit by a few degrees and that has a
neuroprotective effect so, that there's not as much brain damage from the hypoxic injury.
It may turn out that something like ketone esters or salts might also have a
neuroprotective effect but, that's pure speculation and nobody has really done any
research like that. So, that's one of things I'm sure would have been done in ten years
time would have been down and it's a [?] area.
[00:54:38] Ryan: You guys talked about that on one of your more recent podcasts. There's one that I
listened to before we recorded this. What number was that on your show?
Chris: So, the neuroprotection the evidence-based- - Oh, we don't have numbers.
Ryan: But, that was the title: The Evidence-based- -
Chris: Yes, evidence-based medicine.
Ryan: Okay, I'll put a link to that.
Chris: Is evidence-based medicine a movement in crisis?
Ryan: I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you guys listening if you can't
remember or you can't find it on iTunes.
Chris: That was a good episode actually.
Ryan: It was a good episode.
Chris: It was just really good because Tommy is just so brutally honest. Like, he almost
threw himself under the bus. He's a scientist, he does peer review for a living, he looks
at other peoples work, he's a brilliant editor, he's a brilliant writer, a brilliant scientist
and he just gets really cheesed off with people citing rodent studies to support their
claims. You should always be suspicious of that. If you look at the product page and
they're using rodent evidence to support the benefits, that's questionable to say the least.
You're almost better off not citing anything.
So, yes, he talked a lot about the limitations of what science can do and it's not to
say science hasn't done anything. It's just that it's being used and abused in many ways
that I don't think many people intended to happen.
[00:55:53] Ryan: Right. Well, Chris, where can our listeners get more of you?
[00:56:53] So, you can look at the test that we do and the coaching that we do and you could
Chris: Even more than this!
Ryan: Yes! That's the idea right. They get a taste, they like you, they want more.
Chris: Yes, absolutely.
Ryan: Or, if they want to go through some medicine and some treatments and stuff with
you. Some protocols.
Chris: Yes. So, I feel like we've got it to a well-oiled machine now at this point. Before it
was a bit more piecemeal. People would come to us and they would do one test and then
that would lead to another test and that would lead to another test and eventually we
would get the result that we want and it would take a little longer than people were
expecting. We always got there in the end but we spent a lot of time looking at what are
the people doing to get them the best results. We thought about that quite carefully and
put it together into a program and you can see that if you come to
NourishBalanceThrive.com/epp we now have a program. \
just sign up right there and that kicks off the back end process and we will send you the
test kits and all of that. You can also book a free consultation with me. I'm kind of
running a little bit-- If you've ever had your schedule just get booked up and booked up
and booked up. You're saying to people, “Well, you can talk to me but, actually it's quite
a long time until you can do so.” There's a little bit of danger with that.
You can also talk to my colleague Amelia, whose done all the same functional medicine
training I have and come to NourishBalanceThrive.com/epp and there's a button on that
page where you can book a free consultation. We can talk about what's going on for you
and how some of the testing that we do might elucidate your problems. So, yes, that's
how you get started.
[00:57:39] Ryan: We'll put that link on the website too. You guys will be able to one-click and shoot
straight over there. Alright, Chris. Now is the question you thought I was trying to sneak
in earlier. Your top three tips to live optimal.
Chris: Okay. I think number one. I've thought about this so carefully when I first
realized that you were asking this question to every guest an of course I've totally
forgotten on it and that's because I haven't started [steel?] tap yet. We've talked about our
micro process now so, I haven't-- Let's do better. Go easy on me. I'm not taking steel tap
is what I'm going to say first. The first thing is, and I think I've already mentioned this,
that nobody cares about this problem more than you do. Not your doctor, not your wife,
not your coach, not your personal trainer. Nobody. Nobody cares about this problem
more than you do. So, if you've got a body composition goal or you want to qualify for
the Boston Marathon or you want to get your UCI Pro Mountain Bike license, nobody
on Earth cares about that problem more than you do and as soon as you start realizing
that, good things will start happening. Take charge like this is your problem.
Then, the second thing I'd say is that you've got to know what's going on with
your biology. Like, gone are the days where you can just go to a coach and just have him
say to you, “Well, you know, I've got this great training plan that Joe Friel invented in
1974 and it gets great results for 99% of athletes”, because by the time you get to 40
years old you've done everything right. You've tried everything, you've done everything,
you've plateaued. Your biology is defining your performance at that point and so the
only way you're going to get better is to do some investigation and actually figure out
what's going on inside of your body.
I think the third thing would be understand the limitations of your doctor. We
talked about this a little bit. The doctor, they diagnose and treat disease and they do a
really good job of doing that. So, when I break my arm on my mountain bike the
doctor's do a phenomenal job fixing that up. I would never be without them. If I get hit
by a bus tomorrow please send me to the E.R. They do an amazing job. But, if you walk
into your doctor's office and say, “Look, I'm interested in qualifying for the Boston
Marathon”, they're going to look down, there's like 10,000 of these ICD10 codes right,
they're not going to find one that says 'wants to qualify for Boston'. That's not going to
happen. So, you're going to have to pay for that in the same way you pay for your
running shoes or if you're a triathlete the same way you're going to pay for your carbon
fiber wheels. I can guarantee you, like literally I will give you back your money, if you
do one of our programs and you don't get-- If the carbon fiber wheels make you faster,
I'll give you the money back. I guarantee it. So, that will be my top three things.
[01:00:25] Ryan: I love the last one. That's great. I love all of them but the last one is great. I would
agree with you wholeheartedly that our trauma care system is phenomenal
Chris: That's amazing.
Ryan: Beyond trauma, the whole healthcare/sickcare is...
Chris: Yes. We had a baby visiting literally like two weeks ago and this baby was born
with all of their insides on the outside. Everything from the diaphragm down was
outside when she came out by Cesarean section and the surgeons just tucked everything
back in and stitched her up. You can't even see it. There's just a tiny little scar over her
belly button and that's it. How amazing is that?
Ryan: How does that happen?
Chris: I don't know. I really don't know but, it's phenomenal how they can just fix things
like that. But, yes, if you walk into a doctors office and say, “I've got brain fog”, good
luck. They've got nothing for that. “You're tired, I'm tired, my receptionist is tired, what
do you want me to say.”
[01:01:24] Ryan: Right, right. Well, Chris, this has been an awesome podcast. Thanks so much for
hanging out with us. For those guys listening, head over to NaturalStacks.com, you will
be able see the video version of this along with all of the links and resources. We've got
quite a few from this episode. So, you'll be able to click right on those and be able to
visit any of the stuff that we've talked about. Make sure you head to iTunes and leave us
a five start review and if the Optimal Performance Podcast is helping you to live a better
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know so that we can reach as many people as possible and help as many people. That's it
for this week. Thank you guys for listening. We will see you next Thursday.
