Today we’ll be talking about the very important subject of how to correct adverse lifestyle practices and disease risk factors.

We’ll be discussing important biomarkers to look out for on blood tests, the corrective actions we can do now for our health, and time-efficient fitness and exercises protocols that will help support longevity. I’ll also discuss why having an extreme devotion to fitness cannot help nor guarantee healthy cardiovascular function. 

TIMESTAMPS:

How do we know we are walking around with disease risk factors?    The spare tire is showing a sign of aging. [01:19]

There is amazing technology and resources now for you to get your blood and much more tested. [05:29]

Keep your morning routine fasting blood glucose level under 100. [11:28]

When you get your blood glucose testing done, it’s a good idea to get the male hormone test as well. The average male testosterone level is declining at a rate of 1% per year since the 1980s. [13:42]

At least once a year you should get a complete blood panel. The contention that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol is distorted. [18:46]
Triglycerides to HDL ratio is an important one to look for. [23:07]

Research shows that, for example, if you get up and walk after a meal, you can mute the insulin response by 50%. [26:47]

There are many other numbers that are important to look for. [28:40]

It is important to understand your blood readings because even the well-intended who change to keto, paleo, and low carb diets, may find that their body genetics do not do well. Understand how the diet affects the blood chemistry. [33:56]

Vitamin D is extremely important.  It comes mostly from sun exposure. If you can tan, you can make Vitamin D. [36:11]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• Inside Tracker
• Ultra lab test.com
• Let’s get checked
• Nutrisense.com
• Podcast with Kara Collier
• Podcast with Dr. Ron Sinha
• The Vitamin D Solution

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (00:00):
Greetings listeners, let’s cover a very important subject of how to correct adverse lifestyle practices and disease risk factors. How do we know if we’re walking around with disease risk factors? Well, we’re going to discuss some important blood tests and blood markers. You can look at and request to be tested on or go order your own tests because a lot of times your general physical routine panel won’t cover some of these important ones that the leading thinkers are identifying as very important to track your disease risk factors. And we’ll also cover some subjective factors like how you feel when you wake up in the morning. And I will say the show is partly inspired by a friend of mine who is very athletic, seemingly healthy, uh, maybe showing a little signs of aging. Uh, we’re all getting that spare tire around the middle of very common, uh, aging, uh, identification factor.

Brad (02:22):
Uh, but generally speaking, a very healthy athletic person went in to get one of those body scans. You see advertisements on the internet or in the newspaper and got some very troubling news that he had some clogged pipes and had to go in and get a pretty serious procedure to get a stint or a couple stents put in, uh, to get that, uh, heart working well again. So this is the kind of thing we don’t want to be hit with these surprises, uh, especially when they’re, uh, tragic, but also just knowing that you’re going along and maybe baking some risk factors that you can do something about. So this show is about going out and getting the right tests done, and then taking a look at various areas of your life lifestyle, and seeing if he can do some corrective actions before we get too far down the road.

Brad (03:13):
So we’re going to cover, uh, biomarkers, blood tests. We’re going to cover subjective, uh, measures of your health and vitality. Then we’re going to get into diet. Then we’re going to get into body composition, specifically the objective of reducing excess body fat and adding more lean muscle mass, which many experts are contending is the essence of aging gracefully and skating free of the epidemic disease risk factors, and patterns that we’re seeing in modern life. Then we’re going to get into fitness and some exercise protocols that’ll really help. That’ll be very time efficient and easy for anyone to step up, uh, sign up and, uh, agree to make this sensible and minimal time commitment to really nail the exercise objective as it relates to longevity and health, that we’re going to cover some lifestyle factors. So whew! Fasten your seatbelts. Here we go. Uh, but again, we must acknowledge now that the seemingly fit human or even super fit human like competitive endurance athletes that I’ve talked about.

Brad (04:25):
A lot of my peers from back in the old days, coming up with heart problems later in life, possibly very likely due to the extreme exercise patterns that went over and above and beyond the optimization of health into risking health in pursuit of extreme fitness. Uh, I was very alarmed to see a recent, uh, news headline that this, uh, great contemporary triathlete, Tim O’Donnell, uh, number three in the world in the Hawaii iron man, back in 2019, uh, suffered a severe heart attack in a race during a race in 2021, they call it the widow maker heart attack because of the almost complete blockage. Uh, so it was a really bad deal. He survived, uh, completely and is now intending to come back and race again, uh, which seems like a, um, a concern from the sideline here as a 39 year old, having a nice long career in the extreme sport of, uh, ultra distance triathlon.

Brad (05:30):
Uh, but you know, someone like that, uh, strike striking down at the top of his game. One of the fittest humans in the world, it’s something we all need to open our eyes to, to realize that, uh, an extreme devotion to fitness does not necessarily guarantee you a healthy cardiovascular function or function in other ways such as your immune function, endocrine system, all the things that sometimes get compromised when we overdo it. So let’s get into it with category number one, we’ll call these biomarkers. And there’s so much wonderful technology and opportunity at our fingertips these days for the first time ever previously, even to get a blood test, you had to go through the medical portal and actually make an appointment and see a doctor before they would order blood work. Now you can get online and there’s so many great resources Inside Tracker is a really interesting and cutting edge one because they combine on this beautiful internet portal.

Brad (06:27):
When you create an account, they combine, uh, your blood work, your DNA testing results, so your genetics, and then also data from a wearable, such as a Fitbit. So you can, in one place, see the results of your blood work, uh, as reflective of your DNA markers, genetic markers, and then your actual exercise, lifestyle, sleep habits, whatever things that you’re tracking with your wearable device. Uh, I’m a huge fan of online blood testing. Uh, and everything goes into Inside Tracker. Even if I, uh, obtain the test from, uh, other resources, uh, such as in the past, before I started using it. So it’s pretty cool to track this stuff. And again, for pennies, even if your insurance doesn’t cover it, or you don’t want to bother with all that for pennies on the dollar, I should say you can go and order blood tests at places like ultralabtest.com or Let’s Get Checked. com

Brad (07:27):
They will allow you to do the testing at home. You prick your finger, fill up a tiny vial of blood and mail it off. If you’re too lazy or, uh, nervous to go into a blood lab. But ultra lab test is cool because you type in your zip code and you can go to the nearest lab. You show up fasted with a piece of paper that you printed out. Um, I’m paying, you know, 30, 40, $50 to do a testosterone panel. And I do that, uh, repeatedly. I’m tracking the male hormones as my primary interest, knowing that my complete blood work is looking pretty good. I do that less frequently, right? So whatever I want to choose, they have monthly specials and all kinds of things where you can peruse and look at all the values that are of interest to you. Now, if something comes up, uh, outside of the normal range, or you do some research and realize that your historic pattern is here and you’re concerned, then of course you can go, uh, and should go and seek, uh, expert medical advice.

Brad (08:27):
But this self quantification, I think, is a wonderful breakthrough where we can kind of check the results of our lifestyle. Behaviors also should be in this category. Prominently is the ability to now slap on a continuous glucose monitor, a little patch that goes on your arm. I’ve had great shows with Kara Collier and Molly Downey of Neutrisense.com N UT R I S E N S E. And if you go to Brad kearns.com shopping page, I have a $25 discount. If you want to sign up and what a great service it is, you sign up for a two week stint or longer. You can go for two months, six months, whatever, and they will send you the kit. You slap this little device, this little sensor onto your arm. And then with your smartphone, you can check your glucose in real time at 15 minute intervals, 24 hours around the clock.

Brad (09:23):
And so you can see how your body responds to meals, to fasting, to workouts, and look for ways to optimize your glucose health status. So we’re familiar with the fasting blood glucose test that maybe you get once a year at your annual physical exam. Uh, you can also buy the little, uh, devices and prick your finger and get your fasting blood glucose any time. And I actually use one of those as well. There’s a precision extra, you can order on Amazon. There’s a Metene M E T E N E device, maybe 30 bucks. And then you buy the little strips for a few more bucks, and you can have a nice, uh, availability of a glucose test anytime you want. But I really recommend getting the program with Neutrisense, because guess what, it comes with expert one-on-one individual consultation with a trained, uh, dietician nurse, very expert advice, and you can chat with them, uh, throughout your journey, uh, throughout your subscription.

Brad (10:30):
So I think the minimum might be a month and they will talk you through all the things that are happening as they look at your continuous glucose monitor results and give you tips and ways that your body’s reacting to food that might not make sense to you. And I had such a great experience doing that. Mia Moore as well, and we’re a repeat customers. So, uh, we’ll slap one of those on now and then just to keep things honest and keep tracking. Uh, boy, it’s just really great to take to the next level from this occasional fasting blood glucose, number to looking deeply at all the factors that affect blood glucose that believe to be a portal to your overall metabolic health status. So I should also mention that fasting blood glucose, uh, overnight fasted, whatever 12 hour fasting is one marker, but there’s also this concept of glucose variability and your ability to tightly regulate glucose after meals.

Brad (11:28):
So we want to see not only your fasting morning blood glucose and keeping that under a hundred is the goal. Uh, if you’re over 125, you’re now classified as pre-diabetic. Uh, I think that number has bumped up a little bit because so many people are trending in that disturbing direction. So we want to shoot for optimal, which would be under a hundred routine fasting blood glucose level, but we also want to see what happens in the two hours after consuming a meal and your ability to bring it back down to a good average. So really we have three important glucose health markers. One is the fasting glucose number. The other one is the glucose variability throughout the day throughout 24 hours throughout a week throughout a month. And we want to have a lower standard deviation there, meaning that we don’t want to be spiking up and down all over the place.

Brad (12:27):
We want to be pretty good, really good at regulating those numbers where we’re going to get a spike after a meal we’re of course, going to get a spike, uh, during and after a workout. That’s, uh, an optimal, a desirable spike in blood glucose because you’re throwing energy into the bloodstream. So you can complete the set or complete the sprint workout. Uh, and then, um, finally we want to have good, uh, glucose response to meals. So we want to be able to bring that glucose down, even if we have a high carbohydrate meal, which might be appropriate if we’re, uh, trying to recover from an intense workout that was high glycolytic that burned a lot of glycogen. So all that stuff, uh, gives a much bigger and more comprehensive picture of your health status than just tracking, fasting, blood glucose, quick example, someone who’s even in pre-diabetic, uh, you know, poor glucose status might wake up in the morning and, uh, have a, a hundred on their reading, uh, because they’ve been going up down, uh, you know, the, the hypoglycemic response, because the person’s not, uh, healthy and good at controlling blood glucose that might be having those low periods and they eat a candy bar and then it goes back up high, and then they prick their finger and it says a hundred and they think they’re healthy.

Brad (13:42):
So we want to look at, uh, all three of those strongly recommended to go do the Neutrisense program. Even if you only sign up for a month or two months, you’ll get so much advice and consult directly. One-on-one on your results from, uh, the nurse dietician that you can take that and run with it for a long periods ahead in the future. Okay. That’s enough about the glucose testing, and then when you’re going in and getting your blood tests, uh, I am strong on the male hormone status because there’s so many variables that affect it, right? So I want to make sure that my numbers are in the good historical range, and I want to see things in the optimal zone rather than the average zone. So we should have some commentary thrown in here at this time when you’re looking at a blood values and the range is provided by the standard laboratories.

Brad (14:38):
We are talking about a pretty pathetically unhealthy average population. So when we’re looking at testosterone values, and we know from the research that the average male testosterone level is declining at a rate of 1% per year, since the 1980s, you can see this on my MOFO link on my website, talking all about it in detail and the importance of testosterone optimization, but that’s a pretty sorry statistic that dad and grandpa had a much better average testosterone value than today’s generation. There’s a lot of reasons people are blaming. One of them is the environmental estrogenic influences of today, the plastics and the pollution. Uh, but we also have these adverse lifestyle practices of not getting as much sleep as dad or grandpa did. Um, and, uh, having, you know, more junk food, more time with the mobile device, more stress in general. Uh, and so to be clear, when I’m talking about this average decline of 1% per year, I’m talking about, uh, not the decline that we get naturally from, from aging.

Brad (15:48):
And we can arrest that to be a very minimal decline as the years go by. Uh, the average is about 2% decline per year, but we can, uh, cut that down to like 0.4% if we do things right. So in other words, uh, when you’re 30 you’re can expect to have a certain testosterone level, and then when you’re 40, 50, 60, it’s going to decline, but it can be really a gradual and minimal, or if you had worst lifestyle habits when you were younger, uh, such as I did, because I was training at such an extreme level and traveling so much when I was a professional triathlete that my serum testosterone levels were vastly lower than they are today as a guy in his mid fifties. So in my physical prime, supposedly ages 20 to 30 that’s the years that I was racing and, and training like crazy.

Brad (16:38):
Uh, my typical serum testosterone values were, uh, between 200 and 300. And today they’re between 700 and a thousand. So the difference coming from a more balanced, uh, fitness program, not the extreme exhausting fitness program is the main one and also eating better and doing everything I can to optimize testosterone, even though I’m past that those peak physical years. So again, you can arrest that age related decline in testosterone, but what I’m talking about here with the stat with the research is that age for age. So when grandpa was 43, when dad was 43, and when you’re 43 today in 2021, for example, right, they were significantly higher on average at the same age, back in the eighties, back in the nineties versus here in 2021. And this is research from around the world. There are studies from Japan, United States, Denmark, prominent studies showing that the average 24 year old today, the average 44 year old today is just dropping, dropping, dropping at an accelerated rate.

Brad (17:48):
So, uh, that’s what I test all the time. They know me in the blood lab, down the street. I’m like, yep, it’s me again. And, uh, they draw, you draw a few vials and I go home and go about my busy day. Uh, but I have a good, uh, body of, uh, results here to track to make sure, Hey, if I deliver one or two, uh, adverse test results where, um, you know, I’m, I’m down from the previous ones I can look and see, Hey, am I in an over-training pattern? Uh, am I getting enough sleep and take corrective action? So I strongly recommend if you’re an athletic type, if you’re healthy, if you’ve gotten a clean bill of health on your most recent comprehensive blood panel, uh, your, your heart disease risk factors and other things are okay, you can still go in and kind of do this, um, uh, this optimization health optimization testing of things like the male hormone panels.

Brad (18:46):
Now, when it comes to doing the comprehensive results, of course you want to get those complete blood panels at least once a year, where they’re looking at your lipid profile, that’s your heart disease, risk factors, things like the cholesterol levels, triglycerides, and, um, complete blood count, looking at your immune function, liver enzymes, all those kinds of things. And for the most part, you can get your report back and look to see that, uh, things are in the normal range, anything out of the normal range, you’re going to discuss those with your physician, right? Uh, but I want to pay particularly focus on the heart disease risk factors, especially, uh, with the, uh, the leading thinkers, trying to sort out the story and the misunderstanding that we have here around cholesterol. And we’ve been programmed to believe by so many resources and experts, uh, contending that there’s the good cholesterol HDL and the bad cholesterol LDL.

Brad (19:46):
And this has now been seen as an extreme over-simplification and distortion of the cholesterol story and the entire lipid hypothesis of heart disease as it’s called, which emerged back in the sixties or seventies is now being toppled as being highly inaccurate and oversimplified. So HDL is that there’s no dispute there that it’s widely regarded as the good cholesterol, because what it does is it scavenges the bloodstream for damaged dysfunctional molecules and cleans them out and recycles and repairs. And so when you have a high HDL level, that means that your body’s doing a good job tidying up and not allowing the stages of heart disease to take place the inflammation, the attachment of the molecule onto the arterial wall and the inflammation that it takes place, the immune response and the formation of a clot, all that kind of stuff. So if you have high HDL, you are looking good.

Brad (20:48):
That’s a really good health attribute, but it, when it comes to LDL, uh, it’s now undisputed that there, uh, different kinds of LDL molecules, there’s the small dense, LDL, small and dense enough to be able to lodge on the walls of your arteries and potentially cause problems. And then there’s the large fluffy LDL molecule, which is large and fluffy and generally benign in the bloodstream. So if you have a high LDL number, you’ll want to engage in further testing to determine whether it’s mostly large fluffy LDL, or you have a concern about the level of your small dense LDL in the bloodstream, and perhaps, uh, by the many expert contention, perhaps a better way to track your heart disease risk factors are to look at your triglyceride number versus your HDL number. So the triglycerides to HDL ratio is being, uh, asserted as the best marker, the best value to assess your heart disease risk and your cardiovascular health.

Brad (22:04):
So you want a favorable ratio of triglycerides to HDL. Under 3.5 is urgent and one-to-one is optimal. Those stats are from Dr. Cate Shanahan, Dr. Ron Sinha. He also contends that triglycerides to HDL is the best way to track heart disease risk, superior to looking at that LDL number and many physicians who are not in the know who have not kept up on the latest research, because they have no reason to, because it’s not part of their practice, same with issuing dietary advice. They are not involved in that game unless they are willfully and independently from their role as physicians. Anyway, looking at that LDL number and dispensing statins because the LDL is too high and calling it bad cholesterol, these are red flags warning signs, uh, that we’re just scratching the surface of the true story here of the oxidation and inflammation patterns that are the true, uh, culprits in the heart disease process.

Brad (23:07):
So if you have elevated triglycerides, this is a red flag that your heart disease risk factors are elevated. A lot of people say that over one 50 is the point where you should be concerned. Dr. [inaudible] wants us to try to get those triglycerides under 100, because we, again, we want to be optimal rather than normal average or okay. When it comes to this, uh, vast population of unhealthy subjects that are compiling the numbers that get us into the normal range. So you may have heard 150 from your physician. Let’s call it under 100 as optimal for triglycerides. And with HDL, you want to urgently see a number that’s over 40. So if you’re under 40, that’s a sign of trouble and adverse lifestyle practices, uh, suppressing that HDL. So when HDL is over 40 at a bare minimum, then you’re starting to look good and starting to do what you’re supposed to do with dysfunctional molecules and inflammatory problems in the bloodstream.

Brad (24:12):
Now I said, triglycerides under 100 and HDL over 40, but earlier I said that one-to-one is optimal one-to-one or better is optimal. So if we can get that HDL up to 50, 60, 70, and get those triglycerides down under a hundred down to 90, 80, 70, then we’re starting to shine. Some people like my mother has HDL over 100, the highest ever seen by many people who have seen those blood results. So she’s looking fantastic with that high HDL number. And the triglycerides of course, will be probably going hand in hand with someone who’s engaging in the health practices that will get that HDL high. So again, look at that triglycerides to HDL number, pay close attention to that. And if it’s not good, take immediate corrective action with your diet and your exercise habits to kind of close that gap and get that ratio down to one-to-one. If a physician wants to prescribe you statins because your LDL is elevated, do some further, more questioning, and if you’re not getting satisfactory answers or they draw a blank, when you say what about my triglycerides to HDL ratio, I strongly recommend going and finding a different physician and listening to the content that I’ve recorded with Dr.

Brad (25:34):
Ron, Sinha, Dr. Cate Shanahan and get with the game, get with the program. We do not want to, uh, take prescription medication unless you absolutely have to. And you’ve exhausted all lifestyle practices, or at the very least, if you don’t want to listen to a podcast host, uh, over the recommendation of your doctor, if you’re going to swallow some prescription medication, please do every possible thing with your lifestyle practices to mitigate the need for that prescription medication. When you go back and deliver a favorable blood test. Okay, so we have the triglycerides to HDL as the big one. We have the glucose value under a hundred fasting blood glucose. If it’s not on your routine annual exam. Oh my gosh, please urgently go and subscribe to the Nutrisense CGM experience, or buy yourself a little meter. If you don’t want to invest in a subscription with expert support right away, you can buy the $30 meter and start taking some readings, uh, not just fasted in the morning, uh, but perhaps, you know, one hour after meal, two hour after meal and try to clean up, uh, that glucose health.

Brad (26:47):
And what’s so great about the continuous glucose monitor and the smartphone technology, where you just zap the sensor, you place your smartphone up to the sensor. Boom, you get your glucose reading is, is a really great tool for behavior modification and the motivation to do so. For example, uh, the research shows that if you get up and walk after a meal, you can mute the insulin response by 50% just for walking very slowly for 15 minutes. So if we engage in this simple lifestyle habit, wonderful lifestyle habit, I love walking after meals. It really feels great. If you can get up and walk a bit, you will see in real time on your smartphone, the effect of that on your glucose versus the previous night, when you sat around or immediately started watching TV after dinner. And so that’ll kind of keep you focused and motivated as opposed to just learning the information concept.

Brad (27:45):
Hey, walking after a meal, mutes the insulin response by 50%. Isn’t that interesting? You say, as you’re watching TV. So, Boy, zapping it and seeing those numbers, it really works out well. Uh, Mia Moore had an incredible experience with their first stint with the CGM, uh, because we happen to slap that thing on. And then we did a bunch of hiking over the ensuing two weeks. And her numbers went from ify at the start to exceptional in two weeks. Okay. So if she was in the medical system and coming in with a fasting blood glucose level, uh, that was too high, they would possibly consider this person for prescription medication. And then, uh, lo and behold, two weeks later, uh, she’s getting top scores and that was thanks to a lot of hiking. Uh, but again, you can kind of take control of your own health, see the results of your lifestyle practices.

Brad (28:40):
And that will really, really keep you focused, I think. Okay. Here’s some other numbers and important test values to look for. Uh, you may have heard of hemoglobin A1C, uh, often written as H B A 1 C, and that is a reading of estimated average glucose in your bloodstream over a longer period of time. So we’re looking at the, uh, the content over like a six week time period. And that’s supposed to go hand in hand with the fasting blood glucose, which is obviously a real-time snapshot right now. What’s your blood glucose? Well, it’s this, uh, but the HB A1C is trying to look at what’s happened over the previous six weeks. Let’s say, uh, I’ve heard Dr. Peter Attia that he does not really love this value, even though it’s widely used and widely regarded because it has too high of an error margin for him.

Brad (29:37):
Uh, knowing that for example, a 5.5 is pretty darn good. And, uh, 6.5 is diabetic or pre-diabetic. And he thinks that the error margin is 1.0 because people have a different lifespan of their red blood cells, just genetically or for whatever reason. And the life span of your red blood cells is going to affect that reading, however it’s widely used. And you might as well look at that on your blood test and aspire to get your HBA 1 C under control and into a good zone. Uh, so many experts like Dr. David Perlmutter wants to see you at 5.2 or below as an optimal HB A1C reading. And if you are over 6.5, even if the test results aren’t as accurate as Dr. Attia likes to see, um, if you’re over 6.5, you’ve got some problems to consider. We want to go hand in hand with looking at that, uh, uh, comprehensive glucose values that you get from the CGM and get your glucose under control.

Brad (30:43):
Get your HB A1C lowered over time. There are also an assortment of inflammatory markers that you can test for one of the most popular ones is high sensitivity, C reactive protein, often abbreviated on the blood test as H S – CRP. And that is an indication of kind of an acute inflammatory marker. So if that thing’s elevated, that means you got problems going on right now. Uh, I know of a college athlete that had an extreme concern where he started feeling crappy and went for weeks and weeks. Uh, went to the doctor, had an extremely high, high sensitivity C-reactive protein marker, obviously something going wrong in the bloodstream. They couldn’t really figure out what it was, but he knew that he had to rest and go and try to look at, uh, various health and lifestyle practices to turn things around, including rest, because it was probably, uh, likely a result of the extreme devotion to athletic training and pushing the body really, really hard.

Brad (31:47):
And you want that C reactive protein under 1.0 to be considered in a low inflammatory or an optimal inflammatory state. And if it’s up at 38, oh my gosh, you’ve got problems. Go see the doctor, uh, go do some further testing, try to get things under control. Um, there’s also homocysteine. There’s creatine, phosphokinase. There’s liver enzymes, and things that are, some of them are on routine blood tests, some of them aren’t, but if you’re feeling crappy, you definitely want to get as many inflammatory markers tested as possible and looking to land in the normal values. And if you don’t, uh, we got to do further testing, further investigation. Another one that is, uh, very rarely ordered, but an excellent marker of your metabolic health is your fasting blood insulin test. And so you have to stomp your foot, uh, and, and be assertive and request that your doctor throw this into your, uh, annual blood work or go and pay for and get it tested yourself.

Brad (32:51):
Uh, so fasting insulin is believed to be a strong indicator of how well you are eating and whether or not you are over-producing insulin, like most modern citizens that eat the standard grain-based, uh, high carbohydrate diet and produce too much insulin. Insulin produced in excess, is highly inflammatory and directly contributory to the main disease patterns of modern life, which would be metabolic syndrome, uh, type two diabetes, all that nonsense that we can easily steer clear from when we modify our diet. So if you have a high fasting blood insulin, you are in the category of adverse health and lifestyle practices, immediate correction necessary. Under three is a great result. That means you are a fat adapted, healthy eating active person. And if you are under 14, it’s absolutely essential. If you’re over 14, we got big problems and we need to have a complete dietary overhaul.

Brad (33:56):
Uh, there’s also a test called A P O B, apolipoprotein B 100 and the APOB uh, tests for your genetic risk factors for heart disease. And APOB is a certain type of protein that resides in the LDL particles. And if you have, uh, adverse value here, uh, you are categorized as someone who is, uh, has a genetic predisposition to heart disease, increased risk of heart disease, and perhaps, uh, decreased tolerance for the high-fat diet as recommended, uh, in the keto low carb paleo scene. You’re going to be trending toward higher fat and lower carbohydrate intake. And so a lot of people, uh, do poorly, especially when they, uh, transition into eating more saturated fat. So, uh, people criticize the, the keto scene as the bacon and butter diet. And a lot of people indeed will go and have some adverse blood values showing that they don’t really handle the increase saturated fat intake, as well as some other people who might feel fantastic and have plenty of that in the diet and have good blood values, no, no concerns there.

Brad (35:10):
So if you can test for APO B, that will give you a nice indicator and the functional medicine physicians or the advanced people, uh, can really go to town with some of these testings to make sure that a dietary change that you do make, uh, goes well with your genetics. Uh, vitamin D is another one, which, uh, unfortunately, uh, the mainstream, uh, medical scene and the normal values are disturbingly low for the comfort level of the true vitamin D experts, vitamin D advocates. I recommend an excellent book called the vitamin D solution by Dr. Michael Holick. And he describes in detail why you want to be well over the 30 nanograms per milliliter, that is widely regarded as normal, or, okay. So when your doctor comes in with your blood test result and says, everything looks good, your vitamin D is 31. So that’s normal and go on, have a nice life.

Brad (36:12):
Um, these are the things that you want to second guess when you get deeper into it with the world’s leaders. Dr. Phil, Maffetone also big on this. I proudly, uh, remarked to him one time that my vitamin D was a 55 or something that was nice and high, and he goes, I want to see you up at 75. I’m a little concerned there about you’re 55. And so, uh, as you may know, vitamin D comes mainly from sun exposure. Predominantly from getting enough summer sun, very minimally by comparison from diet or from supplementation. And supplementation can be an excellent idea if you are sun challenged or dietary challenged. And so going through the winter, uh, popping some vitamin D pills might be one of the best and most valuable supplements to take, because arguably almost all of us are sun challenged in comparison to our ancestral experience of health and being out in the sun all day, uh, as we evolved as humans.

Brad (37:16):
And so now when we’re inside, when we live at a latitude, that’s disparate from our ancestry, right? If you’re a dark skinned, uh, heritage, and you live up in Scandinavia, you’re at an extreme disparity and have an extremely high risk of vitamin D deficiency. So, uh, the normal range starting at 30 is still considered very low, uh, by the vitamin D experts. Why is vitamin D so important? It’s involved in all manner of, uh, immune cellular metabolic function. It’s really important for the manufacturing of sex hormones, uh, as is cholesterol. That’s why when we talk about good and bad cholesterol, all cholesterol is good and extremely essential for all manner of health functions. And we have to kind of look further into the story and know what we’re looking for here. So we want to strive for a vitamin D up in the 50 or 60 level, rather than the 30, that is, uh, known as normal.

Brad (38:16):
Vitamin D has a profound influence on a gene called P 53, which is nicknamed the spellchecker gene because it’s in charge of regulating healthy cell division. What is unregulated cell division? That is the essence of cancer. So when your P53 is working well, because your vitamin D status is excellent, this will protect you from many forms of cancer. And this is all kind of, uh, uh, interesting content in the books about vitamin D the detailed articles about vitamin D and something that we need to pay much closer attention from. Unfortunately, there seems to be a widespread fear of getting adequate sun exposure due to the risks of skin cancer. Uh, but we have to understand here that, uh, melanoma, which is the serious form of skin cancer, that can be often fatal or require, uh, chemo and, and be a bad deal. Uh, one of the biggest risk factors for melanoma is insufficient sun exposure causing that low vitamin D level, causing that increase risk of unregulated cell division.

Brad (39:27):
Most melanomas are found in areas where the sun don’t shine. Okay. Anyone familiar with that are in the medical scene, uh, can assert that you’ll find the melanoma in your armpit or other, such places it’s like, well, it certainly couldn’t have been from, uh, you know, getting numerous sunburns there. Uh, but in contrast carcinoma, that’s the, uh, typically, less serious form of skin cancer. These are the ones that they’re scooping off the surfers face, uh, you know, seven times as they, uh, get old and, and pay the price for the excess sun exposure in the high exposure areas like the back of your hands, the ears, the face. So by all means, cover yourself up as desired to protect yourself against excess sun exposure and wrinkly skin and carcinoma. Uh, but what we’re talking about here is exposing large skin surface areas to the intense sun that comes at the time of day and the time of year when it’s possible to tan.

Brad (40:32):
So we’re talking about only a slice of the 12 month calendar where vitamin D production is even possible. And that goes hand in hand with the ability to tan. So even, uh, today, if you are in someplace like Southern California, uh, you know, sunny, Southern California or Arizona, as we get into November, December, January, uh, it’s impossible to tan, even if you’ve laid out all day in the sun, uh, unless you’re on a reflective surface or other factors, there’s all kinds of fun, uh, variables here for your tanning potential. But if you can tan, that means you’re making vitamin D. And so we want to try to maintain a slight tan and expose the large skin surface areas of the body. So bathing suit, getting your back, your chest, your legs, don’t worry about your face. We’re talking about a small portion, a small percentage of your skin surface.

Brad (41:25):
So you can always cover your face if you want to stay young and youthful and get your roles in the movies. But get those big skin areas out. So for big vitamin D making potential in the peak times of day and year, and again, if you can’t tan, that means you’re not making vitamin D. So as the seasons change, and we’re here heading into the winter as I record this, that’s when you can consider supplementation to kind of get you through the winter. But the cool thing about vitamin D manufactured from sun exposure is that your body will store it and will keep your vitamin D status, uh, throughout the winter. Even if you don’t get a lick of tangible sun exposure. Okay. Does that make sense on the vitamin D front? Uh, and as I said, sun exposure being the predominant way to get that, check this out. A general tanning session, let’s say 20 minutes in a bathing suit in the summertime, uh, is going to produce around 10,000.

Brad (42:24):
IU”s of vitamin D. Of course, your skin tone and other factors are important, but let’s say in general, you can bag 10,000. IU”s of vitamin D with a quick tanning session versus the highest foods on the planet for vitamin D will give you perhaps a thousand IU”s. And that would be things like Cod liver oil or the oily cold water fish family,: sardines, mackerel, anchovies, salmon, and herring are the highest by far the highest vitamin D values of all foods and the joke of the commercials where they’re talking about drinking your glass of milk to get vitamin D. A glass of milk will give you 100. IU”s of vitamin D. A nice serving of oily, cold water fish. We’ll give you a thousand and a quick suntanning session, uh, during the hot times of the year 10,000. Okay. So it’s all about sun exposure.

Brad (43:19):
Uh, the supplements, a lot of them will come in 1000 or 2000 IU”s pills. So I’m going to say, get some sun during the summer months during the warm times a day, and then supplement in the winter, and that will help your vitamin D status. And we’re not even through all the blood tests we’re going to get into the sex hormone panels and other things in part two of this wonderful show about correcting your disease risk factors. Oh, thank you so much for staying with me here, and hopefully you can take this stuff to heart, go and look on some of these internet blood testing options like inside tracker.com and get with it, man, get in, get into your numbers and see how you’re doing. Take corrective action if necessary, and definitely stay tuned for part two. Thank you for listening. Have a great day.

Brad (44:10):
Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support please. Email podcast@bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions, and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list of Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published and a wonderful bi-monthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with apple podcasts or wherever else, you listen to the shows that would be super, incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually record a soundbite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember B.rad.

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