It’s time for another highlight show!

I love getting to hear these interesting excerpts from past interviews, and hopefully hearing these short clips piques your curiosity and inspires you to go back and listen to the entire show. Even if you heard these episodes back when they first aired, I think you will enjoy revisiting previous shows and hearing highlights of some of the great topics we have covered.

Enjoy the show!

TIMESTAMPS:

Mia Moore and Brad discuss the rationale for eating ancestral style with her own perspective, not necessarily aligned with Brad’s.  [01:17]

We are now realizing that the standard western diet has been a widespread dismal failure resulting in the fattest population in the history of humanity.   [06:34]

Dave Scott is discussing what he learned about nutrition, especially about carb intake, during his career as a triathlete. [09:01]

One should wait 35 to 45 minutes before having coffee in the morning and you can add carbs., according to Dave. [14:11]

Instead of saying it’s your passion, consider think of it as you’re pursuing your inspired purpose. [18:20]

If you fill your day with very high priority things, it’s easy to say no to people. [29:16]

Elle Russ explains how she had to take things into her own hands to come to solutions on the treatment of her thyroid problem. She has run into many doctors who were uniformed about thyroid issues. [32:02]

If you have any autoimmune disorder, get antibodies down to the lowest levels possible or undetectable. [46:09]

Gordo Byrn ties together the importance of fitness, family, and finances. He focuses on the impact of parenting on youth sports. [47:18]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• B.rad Whey Protein Isolate Superfuel
• Podcast with Mia Moore
• Podcast with Dave Scott
• Podcast with Dr. Demartini
• Podcast with Elle Russ
• Paleo Thyroid Solution
• Podcast with Gordo Byrn
• Endurance Essentials

LISTEN:

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B.Rad Podcast:

Brad (00:00):
You will discover that you do not have positive control. You cannot make a child a champion. All you have is negative control.

Brad (00:10):
Welcome to the B.rad Podcast where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three, world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and sciencey. Talk to laugh. Have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:48):
It is time for another highlight show. I love listening to the interesting excerpts from past podcast interviews. So I will tee each one up briefly. You can get a little burst and hopefully that will pique your curiosity to go listen to the entire show. That’s what these shows are all about. And if you did listen to the show, it’s nice to bring back some of the highlights and keep you thinking about the great topics that we’ve covered.

Brad (01:17):
Why not start with my favorite podcast guest ever? Mia Moore, of course. She’s my favorite. And when I get her, when I reign her in to sit down once in a while, we always have some fun times. This one was recorded, I believe, in a hotel room somewhere, maybe Vegas, who knows? We’re all over the place. But, the idea was that I would present her with the rationale for eating an ancestral style diet, sort of from a blank canvas, like a married couple talking and one of them’s really interested and lives and breathe this stuff. And then she can talk about her own reflections, sort of from an outside perspective. And so she shares some dietary strategies that have worked for her that might not necessarily be direct, directly aligned with the stuff I write about in books. And so it’s kind of fun to see how things that we can sync up on and converse about and uh, share opinions together. So here we go with an excerpt from Mia Moore.

Mia (02:19):
Something else I’m gonna go back to when I was doing that Scarsdale diet is more than just the food. It was also like my day change during those two weeks. I was, I’m one that always stays up late. And what happens when you stay up late, you get the munchies and now and at that point you’re not gonna cook something healthy. You’re gonna reach into the cupboard and see what’s there. Right? I know some people say they eat cereal, right? Because it’s easy. Someone may take a scoop of the ice cream that’s in the fridge, you never know. Or beef jerky, which is what I’ve done sometimes, cuz it’s there. Just your munching or popcorn our favorite with lemon olive oil instead of butter. But still. So I would stay up, I stay up late and I’m munching. That also adds calories to you and you’re not burning those calories.

Mia (03:08):
So with this diet that I was doing, I’m eating that breakfast, you know, after my workout in the morning that, you know, little breakfast, then I have my lunch and then dinner was, cuz you’re not eating a lot, so you’re hungry earlier. So I was eating dinner at five again, normally we’d dinner at what? Six or seven, which is why I stay up late. So I was finding myself going to bed earlier during those two weeks and actually getting more sleep as well. So, and working out every day. So it’s that whole psych, my whole, um, day changed. And I think that made a difference. And I think that makes a difference when we kind of go the other direction cuz we’re staying up late, we’re eating junk food late, we’re not working out as much or what, whatever it is.

Brad (03:51):
Yeah, there’s tons of research suggesting that eating after dark is adverse to your digestive circadian rhythm, which is so tied into your circadian rhythm overall. I’m not sure I’m highly sensitive to that one. Like I don’t, I don’t have any problem eating a meal after dark or even closer to bed than you, than just recommended. Right? That’s

Mia (04:12):
You right with me. I’ve found that it does make a difference. Everyone’s different is

Brad (04:16):
What I’m trying to say. Yeah. If you’re getting up past your bedtime, um, you’re gonna kick into sort of an alternative energy source, which is cortisol, the, the stress hormone that’s supposed to be dropping, dropping, dropping as you make the environment dark and you wind things down, close down your screens, all those things. But if you spike cortisol by staying up late, by getting the stimulation from a screen and from artificial light, that’s gonna prompt sugar cravings and quick energy because we’re not, you know, tapping into our natural energy sources, which are governed by exposure to sunlight and those wonderful hormone balances that occur first thing in the morning. We’re supposed to wind everything down. So it’s sort of like an override. So you’re jumping into, um, you’re pulling over into the gas station, um, to get another fuel source for the last hour. And yeah, that’s a good point you make that it’s available and easy and um, also, but

Mia (05:07):
That’s cuz it’s in your pantry. I guess if I Yeah, it wasn’t purchased in my household, I wouldn’t have it.

Brad (05:13):
Yeah, I’m not sure about the research on this, but maybe it’s that we really want sugar at those times and the quick easy to digest stuff rather than you know, is the, is making some scrambled eggs as appealing at 10:30 at night? Is popcorn? Probably not.

Mia (05:29):
It is for my son, my oldest. I’ll find him at 10 30 at night making scrambled eggs after his hour. Two,

Brad (05:37):
He’s got many more hours of gaming. So that’s kind of, um, he, he needs some nutritious food. Okay. So we have sort of a nice, um, overview and status report where the couple has obviously been discussing these things and living out our healthy lifestyle dreams over the last five, six years. Right. And I think maybe with this show, um, maybe I can, um, we can kind of role play here where I take you a little deeper into the wonderful immersion of ancestral health principles and then you can see sort of how that flies with your own personal experience coming from, um, you know, your background of having a, having an interest in healthy living, healthy eating, but now having to, especially as you alluded to a couple times earlier in the show, you’re having to embrace this radical new information that I walked through the door with one day where you said, yeah, now I guess you’re not so into vegetables.

Brad (06:31):
All that kind of fun stuff,

Mia (06:32):
Right? Yeah.

Brad (06:34):
Okay. So I think as we sort through, let’s say the bestselling diet books of the last five decades and what the trends and patterns have been, um, there’s some pretty interesting trends that we really should educate ourselves about and understand where things are at. And one of ’em is this toppling of conventional wisdom that has occurred at an accelerated rate over the last 20 years with the rise of the internet and the ancestral health movement and so forth. But now what’s coming to appears that the US government dietary recommendations which by the way have been exported across the world to all other countries, you know, we, we came up with this flawed science and questionable research and, um, come out with the food pyramid back in the nineties, um, and numerous iterations of it.

Brad (07:25):
And we’re now realizing that the standard western diet has been a widespread dismal failure resulting in the fattest sickest population in the history of humanity. And some of the highlights there have been the introduction of processed foods and the heavy promotion of these processed foods as actually healthy and superior to some of the centerpiece foods of human evolution. And amazingly, a lot of this information holds strong today, even as the research and the groundswell of information and success stories and failure stories have come about. But you still will go to the doctor and they’ll say, Hey, you should cut back on your eggs cuz your LDL cholesterol, quote unquote bad cholesterol is looking a little high. And some of these in some of these notions are about 40 or 50 years flawed and dated from what the news was back right in the sixties and seventies.

Mia (08:18):
I mean, like, who made cereal? The thing that eat in the mornings. I mean, to me that that’ll, that’s like the grossest thing, cereal. Oh

Brad (08:26):
Boy. You just set,

Mia (08:26):
You look at the ingredients.

Brad (08:27):
You just set me up for a good one there because Kellogg was this evangelical, um, health freak and he invented cereal, as a way of quelling the desire to in young youth that he wanted to indoctrinate into his religious values. And that is no joke, that’s why cereal was invented because he knew that stuffing the human with, um, this processed food would, um, diminish libido. So that’s kind of a funny start to the, the serial lifestyle.

Brad (09:01):
Here is an interesting interview with the Ironman triathlon legend Dave Scott. He was the six time champion of the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. He was at the very beginnings of the professionalism of the sport of triathlon. So he was a tremendous role model that I looked up to when I was aspiring to compete as a pro triathlete. And there was nothing like Dave on the Kona coast every October when he would show up fit and ready to peak and deliver another breakthrough sensational performance out there at his specialty of the Ironman.

Brad (09:37):
And Dave was highly studious and inquisitive about exercise physiology and performance nutrition always has been. And that kind of framed his analytical perspective that he had about training that was often written about back in the day when he was performing at his peak. But after he retired many years ago, uh, he’s gone on to be a very prominent coach in the triathlon scene he puts on training camps. He has great content coming out of his Dave Scott operation based in Boulder, Colorado. And on this particular show we focus on nutrition and diet and some of his awakenings and alterations in his philosophy that have occurred over time, particularly when Dave came out as a huge proponent of keto, when keto got popular several years ago. And the amusement here is that he used to be the carbohydrate king back in the eighties when he was pushing the cutting edge of endurance performance and winning these Hawaii Ironman triathlons and training for eight hours a day.

Brad (10:39):
There was literally very few humans that have ever pushed their body to the level that Dave Scott has when he was training at his peak and putting in all those hours of swimming, cycling and running and figuring out how to fuel himself. And so he’ll tell you about how back in the day he used to consume 600 grams of carbohydrates. And then as he embraced keto and experimented, he went down to vastly fewer than that. But he wants to clarify some of his positions. And he’s not a zero carb guy. He realizes the need for carbohydrates and endurance. But he talks about timing and some certain strategies that even in this very brief clip, you’re gonna get some good take away information. He’s gonna tell you why you should wait to drink your morning cup of coffee at least 35 to 50 minutes.

Brad (11:27):
I’m serious, 35 to 50 minutes. I told you this guy was highly quantifiable. So we’re plugging right in there. Start your watch in the morning and don’t drink your coffee for at least 35 and then you’ll honor Dave Scott’s suggestion. But let’s enjoy some commentary on diet from the endurance training machine, the man himself, Dave Scott. So Dave’s given us permission to have a protein snack in the evening. And just a little, just a little instead of the pie what about the commentary we hear on the other side the dangers of excess protein consumption? That was a big talking point, especially with the keto craze and it’s gonna knock you out of ketosis cuz it has some insulin stimulating effects. And now a lot experts, at least that I follow are strongly countering this. I love Robb Wolf’s epic one-liner on the topic when he says, if you wanna live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein and opening up this, this idea that maybe we were misinformed. And then secondly, before I let you answer the question, I’m I’m gonna give part answers, like, it’s pretty hard to overstuff yourself on eggs and steak versus regretting that Häagen-Dazs® and that that hostess pie.

Dave (12:38):
Yeah, You hit it on my nose, Brad. And that, that’s, that’s very, that’s very true. And I think the misinformation that, that has been kind of doled out and uh, unfortunately it doesn’t follow all the, all the science is that if, if I have way too much protein and only protein in the morning, I come off a time restricted eating pattern, you can get a huge insulin response. But for example, in the, in the morning, and I get this question, I’m sure you do as well, what should I eat in the morning? Well, it depend, it’s contingent on what your normal eating plan is, whether you’re carbohydrated adapt or your low carb or your your keto or somewhere in between that and then what your exercise routine was the day before mm-hmm. <affirmative> and when you finish dinner, so, you know, try and answer those questions.

Dave (13:24):
Big, high intensity exercise or big volume the day before. In other words, you’re, you had a hardy workout, you finished dinner fairly early and now there’s this window of maybe 12 hours you, you should eat in the morning and it should be, should be protein. But you really kind of wanna wait because when you wake up in the morning, your cortisol levels naturally go up and they pump out glucose. And so you, you have these glucose stores, it’s called gluconeogenesis. The gluconeogenesis taps into protein sources and also fatty acids. And so you’re producing glucose without bringing in a donut in the morning or a bagel. Uh, and, and so you kind of want let that rise. And then the other thing where I think where athletes go wrong and certainly on racing, um, is that they have a cup of coffee right away.

Dave (14:11):
I’m a big advocate of coffee. I never drank it. I drink buckets of it probably too much. But you wanna wait in the morning to let your natural cortisone levels start to drop. So if you can wait 35 to 45 to 50 minutes after you get up, before you have the cup of coffee, some people say, I have to have it 10 minutes. No, don’t, cuz your cortisol levels are high and that’s just gonna heighten it and then have a little bit of protein, some fat, which will slow that down. And it, and you can also add a small amount of carbohydrates as well. So I think where people over overdo it again, is that they have tendency to eat too much and to elevate your blood glucose level after you have this window, it’s called the dawn effect, which I know you’re familiar with the dawn effect as cortisol levels going up, natural sugar being fed into your system via gluconeogenesis, and you’re kind of ready to go for a light workout with a light day before go out and exercise. You’ll start burning pretty fatty acids. That’s a good thing. You’re not gonna burn any muscle mass and then have your meal after that.

Brad (15:12):
I think I wrote you that I’ve been experimenting with different strategies lately, and I’m wondering what you think about Jay Feldman’s recommendation, I guess you could call it, where if you do give yourself some nutritious carbohydrates, uh, some time in the morning and you’re going to, uh, intervene with that gluconeogenesis, which is arguably a stress mechanism, and in the big picture when you’re trying to recover from a big workout or prepare for a busy, hectic, stressful day with, with workouts and things on the schedule, um, could that be a winning strategy for a metabolically healthy athlete?

Dave (15:47):
Yeah, I think it’s not a zero carbohydrate. I’m not an advocate of that. So even if you combine some protein and fat quite often it has a couple grams of, of carbohydrate. And if you’re a milk eater and you have whole fat plain yogurt and then you add a, you add some nut nuts, even macadamia nuts where about 90% fat, they have a very small amount of carbohydrate. That’s not a great example. You add coconut to it, which is a fruit, coconut shavings or, or then all of a sudden you, you’re starting to add carbohydrates if you wanna add a healthy fruit to it. You know, a lot of people say, well, I really like blueberries. They’re really flavorful, but well, they’re, they’re high in fructose. You don’t add a lot of them. Raspberries are less, blackberries are less than that.

Dave (16:30):
I mean, generally the berries are fairly good. So yes, I agree that you can add the carbohydrates and, and I think even people that are looking at keto nutrition, if they’re actually measuring their ketones, they’re not void of carbohydrates. I mean, you’re eating a lot of, of healthy cruciferous, somebody could green vegetables throughout the day and, and a lot of people will be in ketosis and be able to go back in that with a hundred, 130 grams of protein or carbohydrates a day, not 600 like you talked about, which I used to have. And that was a lot of bad ones.

Brad (17:01):
Okay. So there’s a sweet spot, uh, for for many people, including you somewhere between 600 at the extreme training level of the old days. And then, uh, you know, in the, I guess you could call it the ketogenic framework where, where deliberately watching those grams of carbs in order to, uh, kick into purported health benefits. So, how do we wrestle with this, uh, somewhat controversial topic these days?

Dave (17:29):
Well, I, I don’t think it’s really controversial. I think a lot of people just don’t really know about it. And I think when people initially if they wanna go to keto nutrition, they’ve gotta kind of flush their system. And you’re very versed on this area. So it may take a couple weeks initially just to flush out the glucose from all your organs and sometimes feel sluggish dur during that time. The last adaptive phase of, of ketone nutrition is the muscle, glycogen liver glycogen will go up with, with a high healthy fat, moderate protein and low carbohydrate. There. There’s a lot of, uh, great studies on this one called the Fast Study, that that was done. They, and they, you know, they were surprised. They said, wow, we’re seeing glycogen resynthesis on this keto diet. This is great news for people that are really staunch believers in it, that you don’t need to fuel yourself with carbohydrates.

Brad (18:20):
Okay, we’re back with one of my favorite podcast guests, tremendously inspiring and motivational every time. And he hits hard and moves at a quick pace. It’s Dr. John Demartini. So please go back and consume the few shows that I’ve had the privilege of joining him. And here he provides a really interesting, fresh perspective on the term passion and we’re so conditioned to the advice and the suggestion of pursuing our passions in life. And what are you passionate about? So he gives you a, some food for thought here where he doesn’t like to use that word in this context. And instead his favorite term is pursuing your inspired purpose. And he’ll tell you why that term passion can be, uh, literally interpreted as something that we don’t, uh, really mean with the, uh, colloquial use. And I really appreciate his insight. I still have the tagline on my website that says, pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. And I think everyone knows what that means in the, uh, general accepted cultural use these days. But here’s a little twist on it that’s gonna be really interesting for you. And I think provide a lot of value in a short excerpt. Not to mention the whole show.

John (19:42):
I don’t use passion in my life. I’m not a passionate guy. Compassion means to suffer with somebody. Passion means to suffer. And most people have confused passion with a mission. An inspired mission is not a passion. And that distinction is not being drawn out there. And people don’t know the difference. Passions were considered lust. greed, gluttony, sloth. The Christians called ’em the seven deadly sin. They were immediate gratifying pleasures without pains. Those were the passions. And the reason why their passion is because anytime you pursue a one-sided type of life, the other side smacks you and you suffer. That’s why it’s called passion. So it’s being used since 1985, since the passion for excellence came out. People change the word and now the people think, well, it means being enthused about something. But even enthusiasm is confused in its roots en theo the divine within, under St. Augustine.

John (20:44):
And was that you have now poised equanimity within your mind, but people think it’s rah rah standing on chairs going, yes, yes, yes. That’s not enthusiasm, that’s mania. Mania creates mania, <laugh>. So I distinguish, I’m very much an etymologist and I look at the roots of words because they do have meaning and they have an impact. And the distinctions are important. So I don’t promote passion or compassion with people. Cause I think that those are a compassion is one wounded individual now buying into the wounds of another individual and going, Ooh, that has pain without a pledge I can feel for you. Mm-hmm. Which isn’t gonna make ’em grow. I’d rather have hit ’em as Emerson said, right between the eyes and say, let’s get in touch with reality now and let’s find out what you’re doing to create your suffering. Cause I’ve not seen suffering in people who know to manage their life.

John (21:37):
I see people suffering when they don’t, when they’re not listening to their intuitions and following what’s really important to them. So I’m not pursuing passion. I’m pursuing an inspired mission, a real purpose, a teleological purpose that somebody when they live by their highest values pursue. And Aristotle distinguished this in his time. The word telamus meant end in mind. And in his idea, the end in mind was the highest priority, the highest value. In fact, when Emmanuel cut the fourth most powerful philosopher talked about a priority, they were talking about priorities. They were talking about the highest priority, which we allowed ourselves to intuitively gather information. So the a priority state is the highest priority. It’s the one thing Gary Keller calls it. The one thing, find that one thing and stick to it. Right? Find your, Donald Trump taught me many years ago, you know, he’s a controversial character.

John (22:37):
I learned something from, I used to live underneath him. And, uh, and in the process of doing that, he said, find that one thing and do it over and over again and build momentum doing it until you become unstoppable and you’ll have incremental momentum to great achievement. That’s why I teach the break to experience 1,160 times about to do it 1,161 times a week. So I just keep doing something repeatedly until I was mastered, you know, like a martial arts or like a dance or like a singing or whatever. So finding the thing that you spontaneously are inspired to do, that you love doing that doesn’t require extrinsic motivation that is deeply meaningful to you. That you can’t wait to bring to the world. And that serves and structuring it in a way that it meets the needs of other people. So you have a sustainable fair exchange when you deliver it. That’s the path of a mission, not a passion.

Brad (23:33):
That is a longer sentence than all I like to do is play video games and eat pizza.

John (23:39):
Well, if you’re doing video game, my son has got a video YouTube channel and has got 55,000 people following. So that’s not just a passion, it’s his mission. He does it literally eight to 12 hours a day. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So if I see it as an escape, I see them in their amygdala. If I see it as a mission, I see ’em inspired in making incremental progress towards the mastery of it, doing it in a form of an economic exchange.

Brad (24:06):
It, it also occurs to me when you replace that word passion with inspired mission. Then we also get this realization that when you are on your inspired mission, it’s not necessarily fun and games and peachy king and popcorn and bubblegum all the time. Sometimes it’s difficult, challenging, potentially discouraging, et cetera.

John (24:26):
If you’re not filling your day with challenges that inspire you, your day is designed to fill up with challenges that don’t. <laugh> one is called eustress and it’s wellness promoting and it balances the cytokines. And the other one is distress and it polarizes cytokines. Storms.

Brad (24:44):
Yeah. That’s, that’s heavy. And I think now we have people jumping off the bandwagon who don’t deserve to be there. And I think it brings up a question cuz um, it seems to me with all this free exchange of information these days and the rise of influencers and people showing and telling how magnificent their life is, we kind of have created a culture of people who are, I guess, indulging in this type of programming, uh, but then failing to execute. And also perhaps people spreading this message in a distorted manner, such as pursue your passions like me and I’m about to get on my private jet and have some more passion on the Caribbean island. But forgetting the distinction that you draw between inspired mission and passion and, and frivolity, I guess well,

John (25:30):
Uh, everybody could maybe get this, that if you pursue, uh, and make money without meaning, it will lead to debauchery. And if you go and pursue money with meaning, it will lead to philanthropy.

Brad (25:45):
Mm.

John (25:46):
The love of human beings, not the party escape. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I, I had a, I’ll give you an example. There’s a gentleman, um, how can I say it without revealing who he is, uh, that I’ve known for 21 years, who owned a very large railroad company in America. And, uh, he finally retired. Now while he was owning a railroad, up until his seventies, he was very philanthropic. Very dedicated, very focused. The second he sold it and just had money without meaning, I watched him gain weight, have heart problems, health problems, and drink and treat his wife a little less than ideal. And so I’ve, I’ve watched what happens if you don’t have something to fill your day with that’s deeply meaningful, that inspires you, that does something that makes fulfillment. If you ask a thousand people in a room go to the most fulfilling moment in your life, I will guarantee you that 99.9% of them will say, it’s when I’m doing something that’s meaningful that contributes to somebody else’s life.

John (26:56):
And they say thank you. So if you’re not doing that, you’re missing out on the fulfillment in life. When I spoke at the United Nations thing last year, I was on, I was talking on innovation and it was interesting. And people don’t realize that it’s challenge that makes innovation, not support. If you have the same assimilated system, you have what’s called assimilation and accommodation. When you have information you’ve already heard before and you assimilate, just goes in, it’s not a challenge. It’s the challenging information that makes you think, it makes you come up with new ways of doing things. So pursuing challenges that inspire you that are high in your values wakes up genius creativity and innovation to give you cutting edge, things in business or in life. So I, that whole chapter is how to maximize the mental powers we have and how to be doing something that is meaningful and inspiring spontaneously.

John (27:48):
So you’re not having to be motivated to do things. Anything you need motivation to do is not important to you. And anything I need motivation to do, I delegate. If somebody comes up to me and says, look, I want you to do this, and it’s not inspiring to me and it’s not. No, I’ll, I’ll tell you what, I’ll, if you want to pay me for that, that’s fine, but I’m gonna hire somebody to do it <laugh>. And as long as you pay me at least as much as what I’ll hire, it’ll get done. But I’m not gonna do it. I’m gonna get somebody else that is inspired and loves doing that to take care of that I don’t want to do. Anytime you do things lower on your values, you devalue yourself. And when you devalue, so does the world. So if you want to go backwards financially and in business and you know, just keep doing low priority stuff and if you come up with the excuses why you can’t get away from ’em, then you’re holding yourself back and it’s all BS because it’s not true. I’ve taken, well, thousands of people saying I can’t do it. I, I show ’em how and then they go, oh yeah. And then they go do it.

Brad (28:46):
Yeah. The, the excuses are true until you break through and it’s no longer making an excuse. Yeah. That’s looking like we have to, uh, get good at, uh, drawing personal boundaries and, uh, you know, communicating authentically rather than just going, getting bounced through the pinball machine. And everyone knows I can come over and interrupt you at work to, cuz you’re good at spreadsheets. And so I bust into your office and all of a sudden the the low priority distractions become your day.

John (29:16):
Well we had, we had in our office years ago, little whips, little whip that a whip. And anytime they would press something that wasn’t on the job description or wasn’t by authority, by the, the rules of command, they pull a whip out, go, go back to your, go back to your space, <laugh> just for fun. But see, if you fill your day with very high priority things, it’s easy to say no to people.

Brad (29:39):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

John (29:40):
If you’ve got a, think of a day when you’re just full on and it’s high priority and somebody says, can you do this? Uh, not today, absolutely not today. But if you don’t have priorities, you’re not filled with priorities, it’s easy to be vulnerable to those things. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s Parkinson’s law. If you don’t fill your day with high priority actions, it fills up a low variety of extractions. It says that’s entropy. Entropy takes over anything that’s not organized with neg entropy. The same thing with money. People don’t realize it with money, if you don’t put your money into assets, you’re gonna end up having it spent on unexpected bills. There’ll be liabilities. Oof. That’s a big one. And people don’t get that. That’s why automatically forced savings, literally daily into investments going out every day. Investments, cuz then it grows in value. And I’m buying appreciable things instead of, and I don’t have all the unexpected bills as a result of it. It’s organized. And any bill that’s fluctuating, I find the averages throughout the time and I set a certain amount and I do an agreement of a setting amount. So I’m taking out volatilities outta my business and just stabilizing it. Anything that’s volatile pushes money away. Anything that’s stable pulls money in basic laws of management of time and space and energy and matter.

Brad (30:57):
Okay. So that was the opening a secret of seven .

John (31:02):
That’s the first one. The second one is on business. You know, nobody goes to work for the sake of a company. They go to work to fulfill what they value most. And if they can fulfill what they value most, they’re engaged in the company. If they can see how their job description’s helping ’em get what they want, they’ll do it. If they don’t, they’ll come up with sickness, they’ll come up with excuses, they’ll come up with all kind of distractions. They’ll take time off and go and stand in a 45 minute line at a Starbucks, which is ridiculous. Anybody that’s got time to do that, it’s obviously not engaged. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, cause people are engaged, are gonna wanna do that. They don’t wanna get away from doing something that is meaningful. So I tell people that if you’re needing some stimulant, you’re obviously not inspired by what you’re doing. If you’re inspired, you don’t want to be distracted by volatilities like that. Mm. But if you don’t, if you don’t fill your day with high-priority actions, it’s gonna fill up a lot prior distractions. And if you don’t see how what you’re doing is helping you fulfill what’s meaningful, don’t expect to maximize your performance.

Brad (32:02):
Here comes my good friend and longtime primal blueprint coworker Elle Russ. She is the hostess with the mostess on the l Russ Podcast, bestselling author of the Paleo Thyroid Solution, still one of the best and most comprehensive and actionable books for thyroid sufferers, especially those who have suffered at the hands of mainstream medical treatment. And that is sort of L’S calling card where she was so deep into the medical system and on all kinds of medications and protocols and suffering and struggling, and then took matters into her own hands, experimented with dietary transformation and cutting-edge holistic health practices and wrote an entire book about it. And she is hitting hard on this subject because she’s very passionate about it. She talks brazenly about how she felt, uh, she was mistreated, misdiagnosed, through the medical system and what she did about it. And what you can do to educate yourself further about these conditions that are so prevalent. The reason why they’re so prevalent, a lot of it’s related to diet and lifestyle habits, and she’ll give you a fresh perspective. Might be causing your physician to shake their head a little bit at times, especially when she has spicy commentary. But you do have to respect the journey that she’s been on and how she’s been able to heal herself and spread the word and help others. So here we go. Elle Russ talking about thyroid.

Elle (33:37):
Yeah. So I mean, just, just for starters, 200 plus million people in the world have thyroid issues. 25 plus million Americans, and 60% are undiagnosed. Now, if 60% are undiagnosed, there’s probably a lot more that are actually on thyroid hormone replacement and not optimized, not being treated right. You can actually be on thyroid hormone replacement from a doctor who has somehow gauged a thyroid problem, but mis gauged it enough to where they’re giving you a little bit of treatment and it’s not the right one. So there are still people suffering even though they’re like, well, my doctor said it’s not my thyroid because I’m on thyroid hormone. Nope. You can be hypothyroid. So I guess I would just start off by, you know, giving everyone a little bit of a rundown. I always talk about the thyroid being the master gland, and that’s not me.

Elle (34:24):
That’s not in my opinion, that is just biology. And so why is it the master gland? Well, first of all, for everyone that doesn’t know, for men, your thyroid gland is below your Adam’s apple. And for people watching, now you can see me pointing to the base of my neck. That’s where your thyroid gland is. And it’s a little butterfly shaped gland. It is the master gland because it is in charge of, number one, the production regulation of all of your sex hormones. Okay? Number two, your heart rate. Number three, your body temperature. All of these things are completely necessary to live a proper life. Have methylation processes occur responses to infections, things like this. So those are just some of the things. Those are some of the main things that the thyroid is responsible for. So let’s give one scenario. A 25 year old came to me a few years ago, 25 year old male, and he had low testosterone.

Elle (35:15):
And now if it were me, I would say, okay, hold on. What 25 year old boy doesn’t have high testosterone? Let’s look at the thyroid first. Right? We always gotta look at the master gland first to rule it out, but a lot of doctors don’t do that. So instead, the doctor did the classic western patchwork operation, which was, well, let’s give this kid testosterone, but it didn’t help. And so finally he came to me. We got his blood tested. It turns out he had a horrible thyroid problem. And what was the solution there? Put him on thyroid hormone replacement and then get you off the testosterone. And then his natural levels will come back because it is supported by having the right level of thyroid hormones. So, back to how important the thyroid gland is, it’s very rare that someone is born without a thyroid gland at all.

Elle (35:59):
That is extremely rare. However, when that happens, if it is not caught right away, mental disability will completely come in and or death immediately because it is responsible for the development of brains and everything else. So if you can’t live without a thyroid gland, AKA thyroid hormones, like what do you think life’s gonna be like when you have subpar, golf reference for you, a subpar levels of thyroid hormones, it’s like a slow death. That’s how it feels. And that’s what it’s like. It’s this accelerated aging. And then all these things start to happen to you. You fall apart. And that’s why there’s 30, 40 symptoms that I list in my book, of which I had 30. And so then you start to fall apart and then you go, oh the doctor test your hormones. Oh, you, you, you know, you got hormone problems, but then they’re not looking at the thyroid.

Elle (36:43):
So they’re giving you, and then you’ve become like a fricking quilt with like patched work stuff and you never got to the root. One of the biggest examples is when I, uh, so with women, it often manifests itself in gynecological issues like miscarriages, infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, uh, abnormal bleeding, early menopause, all these kind of things, anything gynecological. And in men, same thing too. It would be related to low testosterone. So it would be lack of erections, it would be lack of recovery from exercise, disrupted sleep. So one of the things that happened to me is I was bleeding all the time when this happened. And I was 30 years old and I just kept having my period all the time, which is not normal. And the doctor did the patchwork by just giving me the birth control pill.

Elle (37:28):
They were testing my thyroid incorrectly and were like, ah, it’s not your thyroid. And just kept giving me pills. And I kept bleeding through them. They didn’t work again cuz no one was getting to the root. Then I went to another gynecologist and they diagnosed me with polycystic ovarian syndrome. Now, most people would say, well how could a dumb doctor like do that? No, no, no. If you and I looked at the ultrasound and looked at the textbook in medical, we would’ve absolutely concluded that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the question should have been, why? Why is a healthy 30 year old with great gynecological history suddenly having this problem? So instead that doctor wanted to put me on metformin, and all I needed to do was correct my thyroid and I have never had a gynecological issue since. So this is so important for women, especially if you’re trying to get pregnant.

Elle (38:13):
You do not wanna have unnecessary miscarriages. You wanna have a healthy pregnancy. It’s important to rule out before that. And then also important to rule out before doing any type of sexual hormone replacement. I’ve heard people be like, I have been suffering. I’ve been trying, I’ve had dealing with thyroid issues for 10 years. Now, when someone says that to me, and I’m just gonna tell everyone listening here, the only reason anyone who suffers for years and years is because of one or both of the following reasons. Number one, you are dealing with an uninformed doctor that has no clue how to deal with this. Number two, you are uninformed and you can’t help your doctor help you. You can’t help your doctor practice medicine with you. And so it’s usually the case where the patient is ignorant, you know, not their fault. We expect doctors to be the experts in this, right?

Elle (39:00):
I have a philosophy degree. I did not expect to become a thyroid expert. You know, so, so that is really, these are all of the issues that happen. And there’s more along the way where on an uninformed doctor can fail. But that’s sort of the gist of it. And so this is essential to human health. It’s essential to anti-aging, it’s essential to our hormonal makeup. And we have more receptors in our brain for the biologically active thyroid hormone than anywhere else. So what happens is, is one of the symptoms is brain fog or cognitive issues. You start to speak like a dyslexic, you can’t find the words. You’re slurring words. You can’t think, you can’t remember. You’re reading a paragraph 50 times. You’re starting to think to yourself, oh, I’m getting dumb. Something’s wrong with my brain. You know? And it’s very, that’s a very scary one to kind of admit because you just feel like, oh, maybe I’m aging or something’s wrong with me.

Elle (39:51):
It also fosters depression, not just because your body’s falling apart. Yeah, that sucks. It’s literally depression. You just can’t, you can treat depression with thyroid hormone if you wanted to. So again, someone’s depressed, check the thyroid because the Prozac will last two, three months and then it’s not gonna work cuz you never got to the root of it. And honestly, I’ve taught in LA I spoke with the head of a very famous psychiatric ward of a major hospital and I asked him, do you test these following things before you put someone on like an S S R I? Nope. He’s testing the 19 73 outdated thyroid tests that no informed doctors use. So how many people are, I’m not saying there’s never a use form. How many people are on these things and then they’re not working because the doctor says, now your thyroid, it’s fine.

Elle (40:39):
I also had a doctor tell me when I was bloated fat, hair falling out, acne, bleeding, um, he said, well, it’s not your thyroid. And then he hit my gym shoes in the office and said, just use these more. And I, and I wanted to jump off a bridge because, Brad, at that time, I was exercising two hours a day. I was doing everything I could to get ahead of this insidious weight gain. So that is like one of the number one symptoms. Now some people don’t have weight gain, but most people do. And that’s a, that’s the first sign. It’s like either a gynecological issue or a male, you know, issue there. Um, and or you’re cold all the time. Your brain, you’re exhausted. But then it usually is like the inability to lose weight. And so then what do people do?

Elle (41:25):
They go to keto, they do all this stuff, they’re trying to, and that’s not gonna get you there either. Or it works for a few months and they feel good and then it crashes. Cuz again, they never got to the heart of it. And frankly, on the keto note, if you are seriously hypothyroid, and it is not a result of being type two diabetic. So let me explain that. If you’re edge towards type two diabetes, which your audience knows is what you give to your yourself, un unbeknownst to you, it’s not an autoimmune form of diabetes type one. It’s what you kind of eat yourself into it. And when you get into that, yes, you can become insulin resistant and that could cause a thyroid problem. But short of having that be a thyroid induced thing, let’s just a normal person in this world, you’re gaining weight.

Elle (42:06):
You weren’t overweight before, you didn’t have type two, suddenly you’re gaining weight. Now you’re gonna try to go do keto and do all these things. Well, you’re gonna get fatter because you really don’t have any of the fat burning T3 to support this high fat diet. And not only that, it’s really gonna mess up your lipid panel. So what happened, mine was messed up too when I was hypothyroid. So the doctor will give you a statin, right? Or you have high blood pressure, they’ll give you a blood pressure pill. Again, this goes back to the testosterone. It’s all of the things related to the thyroid, the master gland, and they spend time patchworking the symptoms that come from it versus addressing it. And Hashimoto’s is the autoimmune form of hypothyroidism. So let me explain that. So I’m sure people listening realize, like when you have an autoimmune disease, what happens is your immune system makes a mistake. It makes a mistake, it starts attacking a part of your body.

Elle (42:58):
So when you have MS, your immune system makes a mistake and starts attacking the myelin. Shes, they’re on your nerves. And that’s why people with MS feel like they’re plugged into a light socket all day long or these awful symptoms, uh, you know, type one diabetes, right? The autoimmune form your immune system makes a mistake, starts attacking the pancreas like an enemy. And now your pancreas gives up, stops producing insulin, and now you gotta go on insulin. So with Hashimoto’s, what happens is your immune system makes a mistake and starts to try to murder the thyroid gland <laugh>. And so that’s how that happens. And it, you know, creates antibodies again, just like rheumatoid arthritis, ms or any of these other autoimmune conditions. So that is one cause of it. Now, when we’re talking about like autoimmune hypothyroidism, that can be actually kind of caught quickly and it’s totally related to diet. It’s one of the things we know for sure a thousand percent is that gluten will ignite the if you ingest gluten, the Hashimoto’s antibodies will increase.

Elle (43:55):
Why is that? There’s molecular mimicry going on there where there’s a component of gluten that kind of matches thyroid tissue to the mistaken immune system and it’ll start attacking, it’ll start going into fight or flight and, and doing an attack mode. So for example, we have I won’t say her name, but we have a former colleague from Primal who, was not on thyroid hormone replacement, but she was starting to feel exhausted and depressed and all this kind of stuff. And I, she came to me and I said, okay, well you know what? Let’s get your thyroid checked. We checked her thyroid and she was positive for the Hashimoto’s antibodies. Now, let me explain this. Let’s say one of the antibodies, the level is zero to 34, hers was only 14. Now some people with that might not even feel it, but she did.

Elle (44:36):
And because she had a positive number, I said to her, Hey, this is indicative of an, you know, cuz if I take that test, it kind of says less than six, or not applicable because I don’t have Hashimoto’s. But when you’re positive at all, ooh, red flag. And I asked her, I said, Hey, look, just be honest. Have you been eating a lot of gluten by any chance? And she said, oh my God, I have been eating so much pizza and bread and shit in the past couple months. I said, look, I should change course right now because if you keep going in this direction, you will have to go on thyroid hormone replacement. So in order to avoid it, cut it out right now, stop the train and let’s see what happens. Three weeks later called me, oh my God, my brain is lit up.

Elle (45:13):
I feel fricking amazing. Hi, welcome to Paleo, welcome to gluten-free being the move for that. So she just saved herself an entire lifetime of possibly having to go on thyroid hormone replacement. Now here’s another Sarah. Someone has Hashimoto’s. They are on thyroid hormone replacement because they have to be, but they don’t feel the antibodies in the background because they’re on thyroid hormone replacement. So they actually don’t feel these antibodies. That’s also a problem because that’s a silent killer in the background. So whether you’re on thyroid hormone or not, or or what, and if you are in, if something’s indicated that you have Hashimoto’s, you really gotta go gluten free. Sometimes you have to go autoimmune paleo, autoimmune protocol. It just depends and people can look into that. But there’s just been a trend where people have noticed that some foods and even seasonings like paprika and things like that, can really affect people with autoimmune disorders.

Elle (46:09):
I interviewed Seamus Mullen famous chef, cured himself of rheumatoid arthritis. One of the things he said in in the interview was, yeah, I can never eat Szechuan food. And I said, oh, is that because of like the spices or something like that, or the oils? Or like, what is that? He goes, no, it’s because when you cook those peppers at a high heat, it releases a level of lectins that will give, will affect my rheumatoid arthritis. He was on 12 medications and a complete mess for seven years. And it only took him one year to get off all the medications because he adjusted his diet. It was a chef, figured it out. And now he’s riding bikes. He’s been pain free and rheumatoid arthritis free for years, you would test his blood. Now no antibodies. So your goal if you’re out there and you have any autoimmune disorder is to get antibodies down to the lowest levels possible or undetectable. And sometimes that’s achievable. Now, sometimes people need other methods and other modes of getting these antibodies down, and there are modalities for that. So that is a form of hypothyroidism that’s autoimmune inspired. And often if caught early in the teen years or whatever, can, can stave you off of further problems. Then there’s just hypothyroidism that happens for seemingly unknown reasons like me.

Brad (47:18):
Here we go with my old friend, Gordo Byrn, former elite, ultra distance triathlon, world champion, and former venture capital, high rising hotshot who retired from the money scene and then went into a career as a professional endurance athlete at an advanced age, and now has transitioned into one of my favorite bloggers in the world. He writes about family, fitness and finances, and I want you to connect with his wonderful newsletter, which is very crisp and short and always delivering some really thoughtful, actionable insights and tying together the important subjects of fitness, family, and finances. And here in this excerpt. In the show we talked about, uh, many great things. But, uh, this is, uh, really memorable takeaway and some of my favorite insights about parenting, especially as it comes to the hyper accelerated experience of youth sports today. And all the well-meaning parents who wanna make their kids into a champion by a sheer force of, uh, financial expenditure and driving them around to an overly accelerated competitive experience. He says, you’re gonna realize that you don’t really have any positive control on your child’s destiny as an athlete, but you have a whole bunch of negative control. You can really screw things up. I love that very much. And then secondly, another great parenting insight at a glance is the difference between the impact of what you say and what you do and who you are as a person. So just a short excerpt from Gordo, I think you’re gonna love his blog. Please sign up and then go listen to the entire episode two Gordo Byrn.

Gordo (49:03):
I think you need to decide as a family what your definition of success is and not let other people tell you what being successful is. And, you know, I had to think this stuff through. So for myself you know, around the time of my 30th birthday, how am I gonna define success? What is it? And then, you know, 12 years later, young family gotta think it through again. Mm. What is successful? How are we gonna define it? And yeah, and when I talk about knowing the game you’re playing. Define your own game. Don’t let someone don’t, don’t let your culture define the game that you and your family wanna be playing. I would also say that if you dig deeper and you really want to give your child the opportunity to be a great athlete, you will discover that you do not have positive control.

Gordo (49:59):
You cannot make a child a champion. All you have is negative control. Mm-hmm. You can screw them up. So your only ability is direct the situation. And when you embrace that, you’ll realize that, well, ultimately it’s all I’m trying to do is equip this child and then this teen with a toolbox of skills and experiences and a work ethic, and then they will be released into the world. And this’ll happen way before high school because you can’t control their effort at practice. It needs to be coming from within them. And you can drive ’em to practice. You can make ’em practice, you can make ’em do doubles, but you can’t make ’em train. And we, we already see this around 14, 15 in swimming. Kids have been at it for a long time. They’re not really into it that much. Parents won’t let ’em out.

Gordo (50:56):
No. They checked out and they’re, you know, that’s it. So they, they’ve leveled out and, and that’s it. And that’s a really tough thing for a kid to have to deal with in their teens in high school when they got all this other stuff going on in their social life. They’re trying to figure out who they are in the larger world. So these high pressure parents are actually setting their children up for failure, not for success because you have to give the child room to grow at every level. And then when they’re an adult, they will have the ability, if they want to take themselves to the next level in an area that they want to take themselves. And I think this is really important to remember, if you have very high goals for your children, and, and my goal is not to limit them.

Gordo (51:46):
My goal isn’t for them to do anything. It’s to have them do. And, you know, if I got a President of the United States and a gold medalist and a CEO living in the house, I don’t want limit where they can take themselves, but I don’t really care about pushing them. I just wanna be the, i I want ’em to be at grade level. And, and I, and I, and I think as a society, we waste a tremendous amount of resources on big name sports and the college education system. And the only way we were able to do that is by the amount of money that we put in by consuming the products. And the government puts in by subsidizing debt and subsidizing the whole system and the cities put in with the stadiums and all this. But that’s a cultural decision. I don’t have to play that game with my family. I can be aware of it and make my kids aware of it and then praise them on the things that I value and I believe Mm.

Brad (52:41):
And see where that goes. And one of my great reflections or insights is that I had far less influence than I thought I did throughout the various years of parenting young people. And so you get really wrapped up trying to, trying to do everything the right way, and then you realize that they’re their own creatures and they’re gonna follow their own path even if you make the perfect speech or if you show them the perfect environment. And so that kind of takes some pressure off the parents, I think.

Gordo (53:11):
Yeah, they’re, they’re always watching. They don’t really care what I say, although they, they’ll be polite and listen to me. They just wanna know what I do. Hmm. So my actions, my choices, you know, my decision to exercise every morning, my decision not to drink alcohol, my decision not to smoke, my decision to eat salads and vegetables and healthy is what is teaching them, not what I’m talking about. It’s, they are learning from what I do. They’re learning from how I treat them, how I treat every person that they see me interact with. And most importantly, how I treat their mother. That is probably the central relationship education that they get is via my marriage, in terms of seeing how that works, what a healthy relationship looks like, how we problem solve, what happens when we disagree, all that kind of stuff. They just pick up by living it.

Brad (54:14):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast brad ventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.

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