What if we told you that you could feel better, live better and understand your body on a deeper level, all by simply listening to our conversation with an expert? That's right. We're joined by Dr. Austin Lake, a specialist in women's health and functional medicine. He unravels the complex world of women's hormone health, offering a fresh perspective on how functional medicine differs from traditional methods and how it can be a game-changer for women of all ages.
Dr. Lake's expert insights are truly enlightening. He dives into the importance of understanding a patient's medical history, not only to keep them alive but to help them thrive. He shares his knowledge on creating meal plans and using supplements to rebuild gut health, the potential dangers of certain thyroid medications, and why the birth control pill might not be the best choice for a woman's overall health. His explanation of gut health, leaky gut, and how vitamins and supplements play a crucial role are clear and insightful.
From a biblical perspective, we delve into the effects of hormones on mood and how best to support your wife during different phases of her menstrual cycle. We also explore how the quercetin and zinc protocol can benefit your health.
Learn more at Dr. Lake's website.
Check out Dr. Lake's Instagram.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
What if we told you that you could feel better, live better and understand your body on a deeper level, all by simply listening to our conversation with an expert? That's right. We're joined by Dr. Austin Lake, a specialist in women's health and functional medicine. He unravels the complex world of women's hormone health, offering a fresh perspective on how functional medicine differs from traditional methods and how it can be a game-changer for women of all ages.
Dr. Lake's expert insights are truly enlightening. He dives into the importance of understanding a patient's medical history, not only to keep them alive but to help them thrive. He shares his knowledge on creating meal plans and using supplements to rebuild gut health, the potential dangers of certain thyroid medications, and why the birth control pill might not be the best choice for a woman's overall health. His explanation of gut health, leaky gut, and how vitamins and supplements play a crucial role are clear and insightful.
From a biblical perspective, we delve into the effects of hormones on mood and how best to support your wife during different phases of her menstrual cycle. We also explore how the quercetin and zinc protocol can benefit your health.
Learn more at Dr. Lake's website.
Check out Dr. Lake's Instagram.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
This episode is brought to you by Private Family Banking, by MaxDTrailers, by Barbell Logic and by our supporters at Patreoncom. Did you know that patrons get early access to shows, exclusive content via the Pugilist Podcast and insider access to an ongoing discussion among Patreon listeners? Get these benefits and more by signing up at Patreoncom today. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hardman Podcast. I'm your host, eric Kahn, and going to be joined today by Dr Austin Lake. I connected originally with Dr Lake through Instagram, saw a lot of great content there and was really excited to learn more about really what he specializes in, which is women's health and particularly hormone health. Of course, many of the men on the show will understand, you're married and so you want to find the best ways to live with your wife in an understanding way and help her. Women as much as men are facing lots of health challenges because of nutrition and environmental factors, so I'm going to talk with Dr Lake about those things today. Dr Lake is the founder of the Offalus Health. He's also the creator of the Active Life Program. He received his BS in Exercise Science from the University of Northern Colorado, which is my alma mater as well, and there he minored in biology.
Speaker 1:In today's show, we're going to be talking about a number of things, including functional medicine. What is it? How does this differ from the approach you might find at regular doctor, including things like you know they are going to prescribe you drugs. It's a lot of big pharma. So how do we think through some of these issues? We've done the episodes on men's health with testosterone, and so I thought it would be good to talk now about women's health so that the men and husbands can lead well in this category in their homes. I think a lot of people that I've talked to through pastoral counseling and even through this show have dealt with issues trying to help their wife get to optimal health, and so I think this is going to be beneficial and helpful. One of the things that we talk about is how to love a woman, your wife, through the ongoing natural menstrual cycle, and so we're going to talk about supplements that can be used, some teas and other things, and ways to really love your wife through it, including like when is the best time to schedule a date, when is the best time to really up the game with emotional care that you're providing? Dr Lake is a Christian, and so we've connected really, through the King's Hall and other venues, really appreciate what he brings to the table. In this discussion, we're also going to be talking about things like supplements, which supplements matter, and particularly again for women, so we would encourage you. If you haven't checked out the episodes on testosterone for men, I did a couple with John Moody, and so those will be helpful as well.
Speaker 1:By the way, you can catch on Patreon. If you're a Patreon exclusive member, you can check out an episode that I did with Dan Brian and myself on particularly the issue of adoption. So on Twitter, I had some comments on adoption that drew the ire of many within evangelical circles, particularly with the G3 crowd Dr James White, phil Johnson none too happy with yours truly and we're going to explain that discussion and unpack it Again. If you're on Patreon, you can hear that We've also got exclusive episodes. We just did one last week with Pastor Dan Berkholder for the Pugelist about the glory of daughters in the home. How should you think through daughters after they get out of high school? What are they aiming at? Is it college, is it career, is it something else? And so that was a helpful discussion that we had with Pastor Dan Berkholder.
Speaker 1:You can join Patreon today for as little as $5 a month. Again, that gets you exclusive content access as well as early access to episodes like this one. They will drop early for Patreon listeners. We also really value the online discussion on Patreon, particularly if you download the Patreon app. A lot of Q&A that happens there. Listeners ask questions and interact with one another. I try to answer a lot of those questions and again in the Pugelist we deal with a lot of those questions, very practical issues that people are having with life, masculinity, church and everything in between. So sign up today at Patreoncom. You can follow the link in the show notes. And now, without further ado, we're going to jump into the conversation with Dr Austin Lake. Again, appreciate him coming on to discuss the issue of women's hormones and health. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. I'm your host, eric Kahn, and joined today by a special guest. We have Dr Austin Lake. Austin, thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1:So one of the things I want to start off with you obviously deal with women's health and particularly women's hormonal health. But as we kind of talk about this issue this is a Hard Men podcast A lot of people might be kind of shocked to know that a lot of our listeners are ladies, or husbands and wives listen together. We've covered testosterone. We've covered, I think, a topic on that that is really important for men. But kind of the other side of the issue is the ladies, and one of the things I've noticed in pastoral counseling is that we actually have a lot of hormonal issues with women. That is beyond just the normal function of the body, but maybe it's environmental. Maybe we'll get into some of the reasons why that's going on. But I'm just curious what you see going on with women's health particularly and why you're interested in that topic.
Speaker 2:Well, really it came out a necessity and so I had a practice brick and mortar practice where I was helping multiple men and women and just trying to optimize health and take care of chronic pain, chronic fatigue. And I just started noticing a lot of women were coming into the office and oftentimes they were giving medications for their thyroid hormone replacement therapy and they weren't seeing kind of results and success that they wanted. And so I started diving deeper into some of these other areas of health, like nutrition and sleep and stress and deficiencies and gut health and all these kind of things that at the time I wasn't really that well trained on. To be honest, I had some experience working in the more alternative world, just because I really didn't like the direction that healthcare was going, with pushing pills and pushing surgeries and more procedural attempts to help something that was not related to a procedural type solution. And so I started to kind of figure out well, what is it that makes a successful client or patient? What do they need? What are they missing to actually fix their problems? And oftentimes it was they don't know what foods to eat, they don't know how to improve their sleep, they don't know how to handle their stress and what supplements to take and what not to take and what time of day to take them and all these kinds of facets.
Speaker 2:I was just like, yeah, those are good questions. And so I got trained postdoctorately in functional medicine and that's where I spent about two and a half years kind of refining some of these deeper questions that I had and started with this focus of how can I help women specifically. And I think, as you've probably figured out, when you're past oral counseling, a lot of women often go and they get tested more often, they have more doctor's appointments, they are more kind of in tune maybe with their health and maybe more paranoid at times as well, and so they often will start seeing more itises show up, they start getting more prescriptions, they start getting more surgeries and it's really I think it's kind of deep rooted in a lot of different factors that we can get into if you want to, but that's kind of how it started.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of people. You hear things like functional medicine. I have gone to a functional medicine doctor. It was interesting because I didn't know a whole lot about it. Some friends had said you should check this out. But what's interesting is when I was talking to the first doctor that I met with he said, yeah, actually in med school we didn't learn like any of this. We didn't know very much about sleep or nutrition, which is crazy right. You go to med school and finally through that process, you kind of learn like gut health is really important and sleep and some of the things you've mentioned. I guess if you had to start nailing down some of the issues like what are the top maybe three issues that you see with women, does it start with nutrition? Where do you kind of see the main problem?
Speaker 2:I think the main problem is rooted in and this is where the faith connection comes in because women have higher rates of perceived stress. This is talking about not necessarily like stress that's actually applied to them, but just maybe the way that it's perceived. You can start to associate negative forms of stress with a lot of issues with thyroid health or adrenal gland health and subsequently your steroid hormones or your sex hormones estrogen, testosterone, all that stuff. So hormones respond to the environment that they're in. Their messenger molecules they're always adapting to the environment that you're in. So if your environment is stressed out, you're eating on the go, you're eating processed foods, you're not prioritizing movement, you're not prioritizing sleep, like you start noticing dysfunctional hormones. So women are very baffled by why they feel the way that they feel. But if you look back and you look at, well, maybe they're married, they had birth control in their past. They started experiencing some efficiencies. As a result of that birth control which is very common, typically like Zinc and vitamin B6, you'll start getting deficient in those things. That can start to have a cascade of events on how you methylate or how you detoxify. So now your immune system can become impaired. Then all of a sudden, let's say, you get off birth control, you have a pregnancy, you don't sleep very well, you are just surviving for a year at a time and maybe you never fully sleep-trained your kid, maybe you never fully sleep-trained yourself again, and then you go right back into the workforce. If you're a working woman and you have all the stresses that you did before, now you have new stressors and deficiencies and it piles up. The next thing, you know, you hit 45, and you don't feel anything close to what you used to feel like and you start feeling crazy. And so well, what is your conventional doctor's approach? Well, we can put you on anti-anxiety medications. We can put you on more birth control, we can do a hysterectomy, we can look at some other options.
Speaker 2:For a lot of women, that doesn't even touch the original source of the issue. So you have to start to analyze your life and break it down and say am I checking these boxes of health? And if you're not, you got to start to check those boxes. And so typically it's with the things that you're eating most commonly.
Speaker 2:So if you're eating foods that are not serving you well, that are maybe causing an issue with your immune system, you have got to remove those foods, and so this is an issue where a lot of women think in terms of moderation, or even just people in general think in terms of moderation and it's like, well, that can work for some people, like you can just follow the whole moderate way of living, and kind of, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it's not going to kill me.
Speaker 2:Well, if you are having a hyperactive immune system, your immune system is going to be most commonly creating immune globulins that are your immune problems, are going to be creating antibodies that then cause an attack on that particular threat, and so if it's through a source of food or it's an environmental toxin, it can exacerbate the way you feel and you start getting a hyperactive immune system. So you got to be very careful in kind of identifying what that looks like, and so we have a way of walking women through that or our clients through that. But it's something that you can do on your own. You just have to be paying attention to kind of how you respond to certain things.
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Speaker 1:Here at the Hard Men Podcast, you know I'm a huge supporter of men who value hard-knows-hard work. Our country is literally built on the backs of men who have carried the weight of responsibility for their families and driven the economy forward. That's why I'm so excited to join forces with MaxD Travers, a Texas-based and family-owned company, to bring you this episode. I'm proud to partner with MaxD to see the vision of New Christendom establish one small business at a time. Maxd built innovative, hard-working trailers for the builders, fixers and growers of the world. The company proudly supports Blue Collar Hollers men whose businesses depend on MaxD Travers. You can follow their stories by checking out MaxD Travers on Instagram or by visiting the link in the show notes. Learn more about MaxD Trailers by visiting maxdtraverscom, where you can check out the article Ten Ways to Make Money with your Trailer. Yeah, that's really interesting For people who don't know, I guess, the difference between a functional medicine approach and then what you've described like just give them a pill or, you know, thyroid medication. What's the difference?
Speaker 2:I don't know how much I should get into this, but if you look back at history in the early 1900s, the Flexner report was the report that came out, and it was funded by John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. They had this quote agenda because Rockefeller is heavily involved in petroleum. He owned 90% of the world, or at least the United States, it's petroleum. They started figuring out that they could synthesize pharmaceuticals, and they used petrochemicals to do that. And so it really benefited him to have more advancement or more of a market grab if he could get these companies utilizing pharmaceutical drugs. And so they funded the Flexner report, which the goal of that on the front was to create standardization of the American medicine at that time, and so they created the American Medical Association. That allowed them to then say, hey, harvard and John D Hopkins, like you guys, have to create this curriculum, it needs to be based in this way and we have to kind of educate the upcoming doctors in this manner. And so they started doing that back in the 20s. And so since then you started seeing a pill for every ill. You started seeing more of these prescription medications being pushed, and anyone that was not doing that was considered to be quackery or was considered to be a pseudoscience or woo-woo or whatever you want to call it, and it's only continued since that time. And so if you talk to a naturopathic doctor or homeopathic medicine, they understand this, they kind of know the history of medicine.
Speaker 2:But a lot of conventional doctors, unfortunately, are trained in a way that it's very hierarchical, like it's very much of a hierarchy, and so if you are challenging what the information is coming down and you're not doing the studies yourself and you're questioning the methods, like you kind of get in trouble to a certain extent. And so it's very much that system in place where you trust the science, you trust the process and you don't question it too much if you're not the one studying it. And so a lot of these studies, as we know, are not all that clean cut as far as who's funding them and who's getting the kickbacks and all that kind of stuff. So you really have a hard time determining what truth is in our modern day and age when it comes to medicine. And that's especially true now, especially after what we saw with the pandemic and all that stuff that came out through then.
Speaker 2:So I think, for those who are wondering what is functional medicine. Functional medicine is kind of like the baby between alternative medicine and conventional medicine. It's kind of like this combination of the two where it's like we're not disregarding science and I'm not saying naturopathic medicine disregards it, but it's typically a little bit more Eastern medicine and people typically think it's a little bit more ying-yang like that kind of stuff. It's not that Functional medicine is, not that it's very deeply rooted in science. It's very much focused on root cause and trying to figure out the interconnected pieces that cause somebody's symptoms and trying to help empower the patient to actually do that themselves versus a procedure or pill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful and it seems like there's probably a connection. I remember reading books like the Big Fat Surprise I think it's Nine of Teckles. But you know, you get into stuff. You start reading about this and you're like, ok, well, big food and big pharma. There's other motivations that people are maybe not aware of. You start reading the history and you say, ok, well, this was obviously people were making money off of this stuff, which is a lot of the reason it pushed in that direction. I guess when you start, say, a lady comes in, you're mainly treating ladies who are 35 and older. A lady comes in, where do you typically, I guess, where do you start? I know you've talked about supplements and different stuff like that, but where do you typically start with those ladies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we just want to get an idea of their past medical history. You know what's been operated on, what's kind of past viruses they may have surgeries, you know issues with deliveries and births and things like that. We just want to kind of get a picture of what their medical history is like. We then kind of evaluate whatever lab information they have. So they'll typically bring us very conventional basic panels that we can then look at from a different perspective. Because oftentimes when you're looking at lab work, if you're looking at it from the perspective of a reference range, you'll see like well, if they're within the range, like they must be, fine is what you'll hear a lot. But if you're looking at it from a sense of well, we're not just trying to keep you alive, we're actually trying to help you thrive, how can we look at it from that perspective? And so we start seeing well, hey, if your alkaline phosphatase is a little bit low, it can mean this If you're having a little bit issues with an elevated MCV, it could be your red blood cells getting too big and your low and bottom B12. And so we can kind of start seeing the writing on the wall before it becomes a bigger problem and you can start to intervene sooner rather than later. And so we kind of start with that approach within layout for them, kind of what we're seeing, whether it's a hypothyroid issue or if they're having hormonal imbalances. Whatever that is for them, we'll say, okay, these foods are going to be suitable for you. This is your meal plan. This is the way it makes it easier for you to follow, so you don't have to think about it, you can just kind of follow the plan.
Speaker 2:And then we follow a process to figure out more diagnostically, like what foods trigger their immune system, like I kind of talked about earlier. And then through that process we start to rebuild gut health, we start to re-inoculate bacteria, make sure that it's actually serving them instead of harming them, and we start to kind of work through that process, and so it's really much a phase by phase, and obviously we use supplements to do that. We don't I can't prescribe medication. So it's actually a very good gift for me to actually be very crafty in how I kind of go about helping people, and more times than not they have more prescription drugs than they can. Even they know what to do with, and so that's not really an issue of like, hey, we need more drugs. It's like, if anything, we need less drugs. We need to kind of work, wean you down safely and make sure that we're doing this with your doctor and doing it the right way, and so that's kind of the way we do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to ask you on that front. Like thyroid medicine, what's the issue that you see with it?
Speaker 2:The biggest issue is that it can. So the crazy thing about and this is where the conspiracy in me comes out and it's like you know you start seeing all these issues. But the crazy thing that I mentioned about all those gut health stuff and kind of the autoimmunity, hyper reactivity issues that you see, a lot of those things are related back to oftentimes gluten and dairy, and it's there's, the two together can cross react. When you have cross reactivity you can kind of create this issue of molecular mimicry, and molecular mimicry just essentially means that you're again your body is certain to identify it as a threat, and those two things can be a really big issue for a lot of women.
Speaker 2:The crazy thing is is that a lot of the most popular drugs, like levothyroxine and synthroid, actually have dairy and gluten and cornstarch and all these other ingredients inside of those drugs, and so it's like if you're trying to wean somebody down and they're taking a drug that actually has the ingredients that may cause more issues, you're definitely going to have an increase in dose for one thing. So like that can happen in some women, not all of them. But the other issue is is if you have a problem persisting and then you're giving a drug to make yourself quote feel better over the course of a long period of time. If you haven't addressed the root cause, you're going to create more and more problems because that problem hasn't been resolved, and so you start seeing other issues show up, and you start seeing potentially other autoimmune issues or other itises whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful. One of the questions I want to ask you to you mentioned the birth control pill. I've noticed, actually in recent years that even people who would disagree with me, they'd be like feminists, not Christians. But that community is even starting to say like, hey, I think we need to rethink this. It seems like it's really messing with the menstrual cycle, menstrual cycle being pivotal for regulating a woman's overall health, all that stuff, but so it seems like more people are recognized in this. But I guess, go into detail. Why is the pill problematic? What kind of issues is it causing or creating?
Speaker 2:Typically you can start to notice big issues with vitamin B6 deficiency, and so if you are a woman and you are taking the pill, you can at least look at taking a B6 supplement.
Speaker 2:Typically in the form of P5P is more the natural form of that, and so you can look at doing that. But one of the bigger issues is just that you have to ask the question of why are you taking it? Are you taking it to regulate your cycle? And if you're doing that, you're just only reducing your progesterone creation, so your natural production of progesterone can start to be decreased. So if you ever wanted to get off that and function normally, you're going to have a really tough time and you'll probably go right back to the pill Because you at least felt like a little bit more stable. But really what it's doing is just trying to eliminate your cycle. You know it's trying to kind of control for that and prevent the obviously a pregnancy, and so you can start to see some deficiencies, you can start to see issues with regulating a normal cycle and you can start to see a natural decrease in your production of progesterone, and so those are the kind of the biggest issues that I see typically with control.
Speaker 1:I guess the connection between gut health and inflammation. You hear those use quite a bit, but you know, in a lot of people I, you know, a couple of years ago I remember reading this and being like, oh, your hormones are tied to your gut health. Well, I guess, just walk me through that connection. How does that work? How is the hormone you know, your hormone state tied to what you're putting in your body to eat?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a good question. So again, if you think, if you think as your body, as if you think of your small intestine or your intestinal lining, your whole GI tract as a big tube, that tube is going from top to bottom right and its job is to basically protect the outside environment from the inside environment. And so if that inside environment is not wanting certain pathogens, it's not wanting certain chemicals or toxins in inside of your system, it uses your small intestine often to protect or kind of safeguard against that. And so when you start hearing about these issues known as like leaky gut which is just now you know the right, the correct term is enhanced intestinal permeability, which is now just starting to kind of hit more mainstream conventional medicine and they still even think it's kind of a fake thing, but it's starting to become more and more normative. But really what happens with that is the protective tight junctions that keep those things out break down. And so the crazy thing about this is a lot of Tylenol and Advil and Motrin, like those kind of NSAID medications. They will actually decrease prostaglanins. These prostaglanins are responsible for those tight junctions staying tight and so you can start to directly break down your ability to kind of keep the outside world from getting in the inside, and so that's kind of how you can connect that to inflammation.
Speaker 2:So how inflammation comes in now is you're eating something or you're exposed to bacterial waste, maybe it's something that's in your environment and it's coming in through your body.
Speaker 2:Your body is like okay, is this friend or foe? And if it's getting in and it's foe again it starts to ramp up an immune system response which is typically going to have more of an acute phase where you're kind of addressing acute inflammation. But if it happens long term or your body keeps developing more and more sensitivities, now it can be more of a chronic state of inflammation and that directly influences your hormones. Because again, you think back to your environment and if your environment is such that it's toxic, it's inflamed, it's deficient and your hormones are responding to that, you're going to have an immediate problem already just with that problem. But there are other connections that are a little bit more esoteric in regards to detoxing estrogens and kind of some more harder to explain science terms, but like it really can help impact estrogen clearance as well and not getting out certain estrogens and so you recycle hormones and it creates a big problem there as well, so you get more estrogen dominance and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting. A couple other issues that women may complain of weight gain, low libido. How does this tie into, I guess and you can even talk about those two separately but like how does that tie into kind of the rest of the big picture for overall health?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I always say that weight gain is an external sign of an internal problem. Like it really is. Your body is typically storing energy improperly or utilizing energy improperly, and so if you think about your mitochondria, which is inside of your cell, that's where it's always the powerhouse of the cell, like everybody remembers that from high school science, but like really what that means is like your body is that's where it's creating the energy.
Speaker 2:And so if you're lacking certain issues or certain efficiencies with magnesium is a big one, for instance, if you don't have enough magnesium, your body has a really hard time utilizing energy well, and so you are likely to start storing energy improperly. And that's when you start seeing adipose tissue kind of store up, and that's when you start hearing things like insulin resistance or type two diabetes. Because over a long period of time, if you're inflamed and you're eating foods that are processed and full of a bunch of carbs and they're not really suiting you well and your body's just like, hey, I've got enough sugar to last me forever, like I'm good, it starts becoming resistant to that sugar and starts pushing back and it puts it back in your bloodstream and so then it starts to store as a triglyceride or as a fatty tissue around your waist or organs and things like that, and so that obviously can create a further downstream effect for females You'll start seeing issues like PCOS, and this is most females that have PCOS. It's typically related to insulin resistance because of this whole sugar and energy imbalance issue, and so you really want to start to target that specific problem, to get at the root of PCOS.
Speaker 2:For most women, there's other reasons. For some women it can be a little bit more hard to figure out, but that's usually the cause for most women, and so that's kind of how the weight gain thing starts to happen. There's also this effect on your thyroid, whereas if your thyroid is not getting what it needs maybe you're not absorbing enough iron, or you're not absorbing enough vitamin A or zinc or selenium or iodine, like you don't have enough of the raw constituents for what your thyroid needs. Now listen, your thyroid is deficient and it can't produce T4 and it can't convert T4 or T3, and you can't have good, healthy metabolism, and so you start storing up weight for that reason as well. And thyroid hormone is intimately connected with most cells in your body. It has a direct effect on everything that you do, and so brain health can be affected. Obviously, sex drive can be affected, it can affect weight gain, it sluggish bowels, a lot of different things, and so it really kind of has a whole cascade of events that can start to occur.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting. On the libido side, I'm assuming this is common Something in counseling I noticed more and more over the years On the male side obviously, but it just seemed like 10, 15 years ago. It was like overactive sex drive for guys was pretty common. More and more it's lower for the guys. I'm wondering if you're seeing that the same with women. It seems like all these things are out of whack. Sex hormones are going to suffer. Do you see that as well with women?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and it's one of those symptoms people don't like to talk about and I just kind of always assume it kind of goes without saying that you don't have to tell me you have a little libido. I already know that if you're having these other symptoms, you're not going to be having a good sex drive either. But again, I always try to keep things simple and really provide solutions. The things to focus on is you have to reduce your inflammation. You have to start increasing specifically B vitamins. B vitamins are really helpful, like B5, b6, at hormonal conversions. You want to make sure you're getting a good B complex in there. You want to make sure that you are having sufficient omega-3s, because omega-3s help the conversion of cholesterol into pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is kind of like the starting hormone that kind of cascades down into progesterone and some other hormones, and so it's really important to have.
Speaker 2:If you're having a diet that's high in omega-6s, like a lot of us do, we have a way in balance ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s you start seeing that you just lack the ability to produce good, strong sex hormones, and so you're starting with very limited material to kind of start with, and then, if you have inflammation, you don't convert well.
Speaker 2:If you don't have the cofactors, like certain B vitamins, magnesium, you don't convert well. And so now, all of a sudden, you're taking hormones and most people take testosterone or these hormones that would make testosterone and estrogen and progesterone and they start using it and they start creating more cortisol, because cortisol is that survival hormone that allows you to survive, and so that's a higher priority than is making babies or having strong muscles or long hair, and so your body's very intuitive, right. It'll figure out what you need in that moment. But too many people are living in a state of a high sympathetic nervous system, which is that fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system response, and they are just sometimes stealing the materials that they need to survive rather than giving it to what they need to kind of thrive and have more good sex drive, things like that.
Speaker 1:Obviously, in the modern medical establishment it's easier to you know, here's a drug, take the drug. But one of the things that I've been hit by is the way that our society today there's so much overload, constant stress, chronic stress, whatever you want to call it. I think it seems like that's one of the hardest things to change. When you're talking about people's lifestyles, right, because we go to work, we sit at desks, we're on conference calls all day. There's A just not a lot of movement, so a lot of being sedentary.
Speaker 1:But then you look at the way that people live we're up early in the morning, we take the kids to school, we race to work, we're fighting traffic you know a million things to deal with in the workplace. We grab a quick bite to eat on the way to the next meeting, go pick the kids up, take them to soccer practice. You know what I'm saying. It's like it's just a very stressful thing. So I'm curious how do you address the stress side of things and lifestyle choices when for many of us, like I've been there it's not like you can just shed all your responsibilities and shed all these things that you've accrued in your life, and it's hard to get rid of them. It's hard to change those things. So what sorts of counsel, what sorts of advice are you giving people for that?
Speaker 2:I typically say start by controlling what you can control. You know, and I think that's where I always say like, if you are eating things that make your stress response worse and limit your tolerance to it, you have to start there. This is where this conversation of conviction comes in. A lot of people don't really believe they have much say in how they feel, they don't really trust that what I'm talking about is even legitimate and they'll start throwing out well, this is a bunch of quackery, this isn't real, this isn't conventional medicine. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And it's like I hear that I was there. You know, 10 years ago I was there. I was the guy that said don't take vitamins, you're just wasting money, you have expensive urine. Like I was that guy who was like a big hater on this stuff, and it wasn't until I started getting chronic pain, chronic fatigue, couldn't fix it, didn't know what to do, and started fixing it on myself through other alternative means that I realized, like there are so many things that I do and think and believe on a daily basis that are negatively affecting the way I feel, and so this is where this connection comes in of you can't rule out, like you can't live your life based on emotions, right Like. You can't live your life, you can't let your emotional mind dictate, because that will often lead you to comfort, it'll lead you to avoidance, it'll lead you to dopamine, it'll lead you to sugar and feeling good in the moment and like. Again, this is where the biblical principles of being healthy really come in. It's like you have to start looking at your life from this perspective of like what is like? Who is God and like what does he say I am to do and how do I honor him with my life and with my body and everything that I do. And I think if you start to get away from that, there are consequences, and those consequences are typically you can't tolerate stress, you're anxious all the time, you're gaining weight like crazy, you're getting more and more fatigued, you're getting more and more medications, you're getting less active with your kids or your grandkids and over time, it starts to really rob from you. And so to me, it really is this kind of balance of science and art, and what I mean by science and art.
Speaker 2:It's like it's a biblical approach to health, like you really have to take a biblical approach to health, and I just posted something on Facebook today or yesterday kind of stirred people up a little bit. Now I'm so tired of going into churches and seeing all these Christians that look just like everybody else in the world and it's like where are the Christians? We have every superpower known to man through the Holy Spirit, through joy and discipline and wisdom that we have at our disposal, and yet we live like everybody else and like that doesn't need to happen. And it's not a prosperity gospel. It's very much like you're not using the tools and you even believe that the tools are going to help. You do what you think you should be doing and people don't even know what they should be doing. So it creates this like very much like just wandering in the desert, like unbelief. A bunch of you know Israelite is just wandering forever and it really is not necessary, like I just don't think it's necessary but I get it. But so, to give back to your question, it's just control what you can control and start to reduce the inflammation in your body so that you have a higher tolerance.
Speaker 2:So to give you an example, my wife and I were in a tough season last year, stressed out, we were kind of traveling around and not sure where we wanted to land and I was getting really short with the kids.
Speaker 2:I was just like didn't have any patients or tolerance and I was like you know, I'm just like I just I just can't deal with them right now and I sort of kind of like praying about it and I felt like you know, it's like, well, I'm drinking a bunch of caffeine, like I'm kind of hyping myself up, I'm not eating very well and like I'm just becoming very short.
Speaker 2:So I was like babe, we should, we should just cut out caffeine for a month and see how we feel and like kind of reduce that, eat healthier. And it's just like we got to do everything we can to help to love our kids well and love each other. Well, what do you know, like it really did work, like we felt way better, we had a bunch better tolerance, a bunch better patience and we could love our kids better. And it really is. Just you got to pray about it, you got to really you got to lean into that conviction that you have and you can't just keep feeding into your comfort and to your emotions, cause like those are lead you astray every time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, big time, and it's something we were talking about before the show. But when you get into this, this kind of concept of how we view people, right, like a lot of times in like church pastoral counseling situations, I think the church has tended to okay, people are spiritual, you know, and so we're gonna. You know, it's always a matter of like did you read your Bible enough or did you pray enough? Those things are all important. But really getting to the point where we see people as whole people and we're taking care of the physical as well as the spiritual, both of which this side of eternity or inseparable, and so they're really one cohesive whole. So how do we deal with that whole thing? But I think you're absolutely right too, with the habitual change. I think it's actually a lot harder to change habits. It's a lot harder to change your diet and to think about the food you're eating. My wife and I were even joking. It's even hard sometimes to stand like a you know your supplement vitamin schedule. So even developing tools we use I think it's an app called Round, but it's like it'll give you like alerts at the time of day when you're supposed to take whatever, because I forget. I'm like do you take this with this? Or I can't remember, but even just finding ways to create whole life discipline and change. But it'll just start with, like you said, change one thing and be consistent with the one thing and then it kind of cascades.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you specifically about the supplements. A lot of people I remember like a Jim Gaffigan sketch. He was like yeah, the beautiful thing about like vitamin shop and all the vitamins and stuff that you can take is they're really expensive and they also don't work. And you know, you laugh at it and you're like okay. So when I started going to functional medicine, they were like okay, you know, here's some different stuff you can take, Like vitamin D plus K2. You know, I know you've spoken about that too. Where does a person begin to start thinking about supplementation? Where should they start? What do you typically start with people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think where I typically like to start is a really good Omega 3, just to kind of balance out the Omega 6's that we are exposed to. You know, if you, if you go on my side, I have a full script account and it's it kind of shows different product protocols that I've created, but one of the companies you want to look for Omega 3 that has a high EPA value, of greater than 600 milligrams typically, and the same is true for DHA, and so it's one of those things that if you can find good quality that has that's not rancid, that's not going to be causing more problems, and it's trying to help you want to find a good Omega 3. So that'd be the first thing to do Make sure you take it with food. It's a fat soluble supplement that really help with inflammation. It's going to help with some of these hormonal issues that you're seeing as well, and then the second thing is probably going to be vitamin D3 with K2. I always say, you know, this video is probably one of my more successful videos, just because a lot of people are taking vitamin D3 and oftentimes are taking too much of it, and so too much vitamin D3 can often start to pull kind of calcium out of your bones, and so you need to have magnesium supplied and you need to have K2, typically combined with it. Some people say you should take them separately because they're both fat soluble. I think if you can get one or the other, and either individually or together, it's better than nothing. But you want to make sure that you have about a 10 to 1 ratio with that, and so most supplement brands that are D3 with K2 will have, you know, let's say, a thousand I use a vitamin D and about a hundred, I think, mcg of vitamin K2. And so that's something you can kind of look at is a good vitamin D3 with K2. And then I already mentioned magnesium.
Speaker 2:Magnesium can be a lifesaver for a lot of people. Cortisol often will cause a depletion, more of a depletion, of magnesium. The foods that we're eating aren't very high in magnesium, and so we're not getting nearly what we used to back in the good old days, and so we're causing this like we're causing a bunch of stress. We're living a stressful world, and then you have magnesium depletion, which then causes more cortisol creation essentially, and so you kind of become more reliant on it. That's a problem. So I like magnesium glycinate. It's a good jack of all trades magnesium Magnesium.
Speaker 2:If you have severe, like stage four, chronic kidney disease you don't want to be. You want to make sure you're careful about taking too much of that. But typically around 204 milligrams a day is what I typically recommend. If you take it before bedtime it can be very helpful for sleeping. Usually about an hour before you're trying to fall asleep can be very helpful.
Speaker 2:And then the other one would probably be for women. I would say probably a good be complex can be very helpful. A lot of women have this gene known as MTHFR about I think it's about 60 percent. Maybe the populate it's pretty high Of the women have this genetic snip, and so what this means is that you don't methylate well, you don't detoxify well, you don't really produce much, you don't really produce energy very well, and so you can start seeing a lot of downstream effects on your hormones. And so you want to make sure you're a good methylator.
Speaker 2:So a methylated form of a be complex can be helpful. But again, that's very much an individualized kind of answer because you want to make sure you're getting the right dosage. You want to make sure that you're not taking too much of certain B vitamins, because they do compete for absorption with each other and so too much like biotin can deplete B3, I think, and there's just different kind of competition like that. So you've got to be a little bit careful with that. But that's probably where I would start, for most people is I think that's four of them, maybe four, yeah, four.
Speaker 1:So probably there. Yeah, that's really helpful. One of the things I was going to ask you to. I learned this early in my marriage that you know, part of the thing of living with your wife in an understanding way is understanding exactly how her menstrual cycle and how that affects mood. I've seen this on your Instagram page. It was really helpful Just different ways to love your wife through that time period.
Speaker 1:Early on, I remember after like year one you know no experience in marriage we were talking to the pastor and I was like, yeah, I don't know what the problem is. You know, if my wife gets cranky, I just say what, are you on your period or something? And like the older guys, like you know, ready to smack me outside the head like, oh, don't do that, that's horrible. Years later you know wise enough to not do that. But I found the advice that you had really helpful in really actually creating understanding.
Speaker 1:Even so, I'll ask you about it and maybe kind of go through that. But it really helped me to know like there was actually hormonal changes that I do not experience as a man for the most part, where, you know, men can be pretty even keel throughout the month. Obviously there's stress and stuff like that. But a woman's body is changing drastically at the hormonal level throughout the month. So I guess, start to unpack that. Where is you know phase one to the end of the cycle, and then how you would encourage husbands to you know, know about supplementation and other stuff for it?
Speaker 2:I think the first and probably best step is just to ask her, right, like you can kind of just ask like, hey, like what do you notice you have the biggest issues with at different phases of your cycle, and she probably knows. And if she doesn't know, she'll start to dive a little bit deeper and kind of analyze a little bit more, because I think a lot of times we just respond to our environment, we just always respond and we're not really planning for it. I think if you can start to plan ahead and be like hey, I want to analyze myself this month and analyze phase one more, when I'm in that beginning menstrual phase, from day one to five, what am I struggling with, then if you can start to prepare for it, you can know I get a little more tired, I have more cramping, a little more mood swings, that stuff. You can start to be more mindful of it. For men, I think if you can have a general idea like first ask her, how can I best support you during this time? That would be the first step. Then I think the second step is when you and her are on the same plan and you have the same plan of attack, you can then say what supplements are you taking? What are you currently on you can look at? Is this a good quality? Because a lot of people are taking just garbage supplements. They really are not taking good quality ones. That's why I put out so much free information on this, because it's just such an easy thing to make sure that you're at least taking good quality supplements. You can start to research that with her.
Speaker 2:I think husbands we don't lead well in areas of health. Typically. I think we struggle to give that to our wife when reality is as being a household head, it's like what does that look like when it comes to your wife's health, to your health, to your children's health? I think we should be leading in that better, doing research on supplements and figuring out which ones are good, which ones are bad. It does take some time, but once you got it figured out and you've done some research, you really can't help to support and love your wife really well.
Speaker 2:I created that post. I talked about that. You can definitely check it out. But really that was the biggest thing is just understanding that during the early times it's going to be more of a soothing, comforting. Even peppermint teas or lavender teas can be very helpful. Make sure you're encouraging at early bedtime. If you guys are staying out watching shows or pushing your bedtime too late and you're realizing you're watching the clock and it's like hey, she's struggling right now I really need to encourage her, encourage myself and lead in this and maybe go to bed a little bit sooner, put the phones down, put the TV down, whatever you got to do, and start to encourage that. And then I usually recommend again you got to be careful with this.
Speaker 2:But some iron can be very helpful at this point in time. I usually like a bisglycinate form of iron. It's usually a little bit easier on the stomach, it doesn't cause as much constipation. You can look at that because of the blood loss and some other things are. Just. Magnesium can be very helpful just with cramping, with sleeping and things like that. So that would be kind of that first phase.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of like days like one through five, from days like six through 14, you're going to be kind of more. This is kind of leading up to more ovulation and so this is when energy will start to increase. They're going to be a little bit more motivated, they're going to feel a little bit better. This is when exercise intensity can start to increase a little bit more. If your wife is someone who loves to exercise, but she's always pushing it four or five days a week and she's not feeling great and she's starting to get more and more fatigued, you may want to encourage a little bit of kind of letting off the pedal a little bit early on in the cycle and then but this is a time six through 14, you can start to kind of ramp it back up again. And this is often when hormones are probably the most stable for a female. So like it's really kind of a time to encourage more of this kind of adventurous exercise and just more social kind of stuff, cause if she's going to feel typically, she'll feel a little bit better during this time period. So typically, and again, your B complex, your mega three supplements, maintain your magnesium intake during this time, just like you normally would.
Speaker 2:And then when you're at ovulation you know it's baby making. Time like this is when you can. Again, you're typically going to be at peak energy, peak mood, and this is where plan dates, plan some more intense exercise, more hiking activities, like it could be a little bit more fun and just to kind of you know, let her you know. Again, she has to kind of analyze her own cycle and see if this is true for her. But for a lot of women this is kind of where they typically land. So you got to want to figure out and plan this stuff pretty well. But that's typically what you want to kind of focus on in that phase, that's around day 14. And then around day 15, day 28,.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of like the second half of your cycle. Again, your progesterone levels will start to rise. Estrogen will remain high. If women have low progesterone, if they're very stressed and relying a lot on cortisol, their progesterone levels may not rise as much as they should. And so you're going to experience what's called like an estrogen dominant state and you start to have this really true deficit or in dysfunction in your hormonal balance. And this is where you can start to be more emotionally sensitive. You may have more physical discomfort, body's kind of preparing for your cycle to begin, and so again you got to kind of ramp up the emotional support. You got to kind of reduce stressors, ensure bedtime, you know. Ensure, you know, reducing alcohol, sugary foods, caffeine, because all those things aren't going to help that estrogen dominance propensity. So you really have to kind of be very cautious of that. And then at this point in time there's some mixed research on this.
Speaker 2:I've typically recommended this supplement called Chase Tree Berry. It can help to improve progesterone. You want to maybe increase magnesium glycinate again. You can kind of play with those dosages a little bit between the 200 and 400 milligram range. Some people recommend even higher. I just I don't really feel comfortable with that, so I usually stay in that range. And then obviously Omega-3s, your vitamin D.
Speaker 2:You can look at increasing zinc. Zinc's a one you got to be careful with again, because zinc is something that will deplete copper and we don't want to have copper deficiency either. So you want to make sure you have like a pretty lower dose of zinc, which is typically around like 15 milligrams. But you got to be kind of, you got to be a little bit more considerate of those things, just because everyone's a little bit different in what they're toxic with. I had a client just recently. She and her sisters are really they process zinc really poorly and so you got to just be mindful of like if you're taking a bunch of zinc all the time, it can actually cause more problems and it's trying to help. So you got to be just mindful of those things. And yeah, that's kind of like the overall gist of it. It's on my social media page so they can check it out if they're more curious and actually seeing it, cause it is kind of it's a little bit complex, but it's not that bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really helpful. A lot of, I think, supplement information on there I found really helpful when you are giving people coaching on this. One of the things I found cause I was looking it up taking vitamin C with zinc or magnesium, or I guess are there resources that you would point to for people in terms of like when to take like magnesium? I think you said before bed something like that yeah, so it's.
Speaker 2:I have a whole list and I can probably put that on my website. But you could probably simply Google that and Google like most common vitamins and best times to take them, and I always recommend doing that from a functional medicine standpoint. But I do have a list that I use for my clients and I provide to them, but I haven't posted it anywhere. But I could definitely do that Cause, yeah, there are some combinations there. You want to be mindful of just the kind of big ones, just anytime you have a fat soluble vitamin. So, whether it's vitamin A, D or K, and I think, yeah, whenever you have those vitamins, you got to be a little bit mindful that they will absorb better with food, and so you want to take those with a meal. If you're taking something like a B complex, it's typically better to take that on an empty stomach. It's more water soluble, so it can absorb a little bit better. That way A lot of people will combine too many supplements at once. They're taking like everything at one shot, Like I typically recommend to kind of split it out a little bit, just so you're actually getting proper absorption and, more importantly, assimilation into your cell.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I think you know, if you're having issues like colds and things like that, a lot of a very popular protocol that's been going on post COVID was the Corsetin with zinc. Corsetin apparently helps to absorb zinc better into the cell and so you can kind of combine that with vitamin C and so it makes a little bit more effective. But yeah, there's a whole lot of things you can play with and kind of experiment with. That's honestly one of the things I take very much into an individual consideration whenever I'm kind of planning somebody's regimen, just because there's a lot of things to kind of pay attention to. But there are some general recommendations out there for sure. Yeah, that's really helpful.
Speaker 1:What about the? I guess if people are interested with the Active Life program and talking to you, what is that? What do you guys do once they're in the program? How do they get started? All that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not that hard, it's just you can. I'm actually creating. This is something I'm in the process of doing. I guess this is like my announcement of it, because I haven't really told anybody yet, but I'm in the process of building a pro. Because here's the thing my program I take one-on-one clients is very much like hey, we're gonna run you through the process, we're gonna do hormonal testing, we're gonna make sure that we're creating this regimen for you that you're actually seeing results within like a four month span. That's something that you have to apply for. We wanna make sure that we're getting the right people in the program and that it works out for them and it's actually a good fit, and so that's something they can apply for. On my website they can go to theactivelifeprogramcom. There's several links you can click on you to supply answer some questions.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that I'm working on that I'm trying to think of is for people that are kind of in this more beginning stages is kind of creating a program for families and whether it's grandparents or younger parents too. It's just a program that is more strictly Christian based and it's not to exclude anybody else, but just to kind of come from a Christian perspective, because something that my wife and I really are passionate about is just helping grow families and I think families are kind of under attack and it really not getting the support that they need. And I really do believe that if you can cast a vision like you guys talk about, I love your guys' podcast, like your podcast in the King's Hall, like it's really been like my buddies I wanted to give a shout out to Tom because Tom and Zach they told me to listen to you and I was like I don't have time to listen to their podcast. But I started listening to your guys' podcast and I was like these guys, like I am not crazy First of all, like I'm not a crazy Christian nationalist person, like I actually like these things are biblical and I know that raising a family is a good thing and like seeking the Lord and taking to many like these are all great things right, and so I've been trying to do that for people's health right and kind of leading families in that area of health.
Speaker 2:And that's really what the objective of the program is is to help kind of provide some guidance for moms and dads who want to cast a vision they want to figure out how to maybe bring the wife back into the home, how to, like, actually support the kids and raise them well and feed them well and actually, you know, prioritize things that matter, right, and so that's kind of what I'm working on right now. It's pretty close to being done, but it's probably gonna be a work in progress. So right now it's just a sign up. If anyone wants to sign up, they can sign up to be preregistered. But that's probably where I would encourage more people to go is, if you're a woman who's 35 and up and who really wants to get one-on-one coaching, you can apply to do that via my links and my app. But if you want to just maybe look at getting some introductory material, I'm working on that right now, so that's kind of in the works.
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Speaker 1:I wanna dig more into just sort of the Christian household and some of those ideas I know for myself. This was like everything. It's a work in progress. You read different books, whether it's food and nutrition, whether it's what's going on in society. 2020 was pivotal, kind of. Saw some more things. We've called it apocalyptic. Right, it's an unveiling. You start to see, like, honestly, before 2020, I wasn't like majorly. I knew a lot of people who were like anti-vax and I was like I don't get it, what's the big deal? And then I started researching it and I was like, oh well, okay, maybe they weren't so crazy, but I'm just curious your process sort of like. How did you come to some of this, whether it's the household views or I think you were saying before we were on that you're in college, you were a Christian. When did this begin for you? Kind of tell me some of that story.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in Iowa and we moved to Utah when I was like 12 or 13, salt Lake City and then the other Twila, stansbury Park area, so that connection with you. But brother got diagnosed with cancer when he was 14, and I was 12. And we were, you know, living in Iowa. It was a very pretty small town, your Central Iowa, central Iowa, Story City, and we didn't have a ton of resources there and so we didn't know my brother had cancer when he moved to Utah. We just my parents felt like they were supposed to, they felt led to do that and they felt like they were supposed to get out of there and they didn't really know exactly why. Well, we get to Utah and he gets diagnosed like eight months in he was actually seeing, he was playing football, got a groin strain, wasn't healing and it was kind of missed for months and months and months. And so you know, I was at that time I was very frustrated. I was like man, these doctors or these physical therapists, whoever they were working with him, like they missed it, you know, like they could have diagnosed it much sooner. So that kind of got me thinking about the medical field. But the other part of it was the doctor that treated my brother. He was like one of two specialists in this type of child cancer and so he was like the top of the game when it came to actually saving people's lives and preventing death. And he was amazing, right. And so it's kind of crazy because God's providence was, you know, we moved to Utah, didn't really know why brother gets diagnosed with cancer. He saves him, puts him in remission. He hasn't had any problems. Then it's been an amazing story and has two kids, three kids, now three kids, and like they told him he wouldn't be able to have kids, like all these cool things, right, and so that kind of started sparking my interest. And just medicine, I'd stay in the hospital with them when I was a kid, like I would stay there for days on end, just why I was getting his care, and so I just kind of got exposed to this and really started getting a passion for it so fast forward some years. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I saw a lot of issues with, really, my household. My parents are amazing people Because all the issues with with my brother and just all the stressors they had of moving and just all the stressors with the cancer Like it really kind of piled on to them financially. My dad worked his butt off for for years, you know, trying to get out from that weight of that financial pressure, work two full-time jobs all the time and had heart attacks when he was in his 40s and 50s and, you know, died on the table several times and just my mom got an Autamine disorder because all her stress of dealing with that and just trying to keep up the. You know she homeschooled five kids there's five of us in our house and so like we were just like surviving right, like so I experienced it daily for years, like what it's like to live in a household that's that's under the weight of stress and under the weight of like health problems and just under the weight of the world really. And so I think, through that process, you know I always had this like and I, if I can help somebody, not have to be this way and have to go through these things Before it's too late, like I will like it. So it kind of became this like passion of mine and I think as time went on, like God just kind of kept pushing me in these directions and I hated blood, like I never wanted, like I didn't, I don't, I still don't like blood and so I didn't want to become like a medical doctor doing surgery and or anything Like that. Like I didn't want to do that and so I kind of took this path and I don't really know why. And and next thing, I know I'm doing this stuff and I think pre pre COVID was really what kind of actually during COVID I was doing all the stuff.
Speaker 2:Pre-covid started doing more of it during COVID and I kept just getting so frustrated with everybody and what everyone was saying online. It's like, you know, people aren't telling the truth about what's happening and I because I was in this world a little bit longer before all this stuff started happening as soon as it started happening, I was like this is, this is a bunch of you know what, like this isn't true. And so I started asking this question like well, somebody needs to say something. Like why is nobody saying something about this? And I realized they're getting cancelled and all that stuff. But I was like somebody still has to say something and I felt convicted.
Speaker 2:You know, in my soul is like, well, why don't you say something? And I was like, well, like I don't know, people aren't gonna listen to me, like I'm, whom I, you know, and so I started just kind of like praying about that and asking God to like okay, like, if this is, you know, if you want me to say something like, open the floodgates for me, like, allow people to come into me that that want to hear what I have to say, because I don't really believe that what I have to say Is going to be that helpful. You know, like that's just the honest truth. But he kind of kept pushing me in that direction. I felt, you know, my soul, my heart, was convicted, and so I put out some posts and like they blew up and that was like a year and a half ago and I met 375,000 followers and I don't even know what's going on. I gotta know why I'm talking to you right now, honestly. But that's, that's how it worked out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is crazy because I remember, in the midst of all the you know chaos with the pandemic and everything, I was working for a news media company. So, just happenstance, I guess God's providence right we were meeting with some concerned doctors and it was like Dr Robert Malone, and what color was there, and stuff like that, but it was really interesting. Yeah, but one of the guys there, dr Jordan Vaughn he had said a Christian guy he said listen, he said the frontline of our culture war right now is with medicine and it's with doctors and a lot of people are failing the test. You know, and it's interesting because we talk about, you know, we I'm a pastor predominantly, so we talk about pastoral courage.
Speaker 1:But but it was that night at that talk I was thinking, wow, you know, doctors have to have courage to and people in all fields have to have courage, and so I think that has been an encouragement to me is that, you know, we've had people step up who are like medical embalmers and we're like, hey, I'm seeing some weird anomalies here and I know it could hurt my job, but I need to say something in your story. It's really interesting because a lot of times the things that we're afraid of, right, we're like oh no, you know, I could lose business, I could be fired, I could have to reroute my life or whatever. I guess what would you say to people, maybe in similar professions, about, like, if this is sort of like the old adage, right, see some things, say something, but like, what encouragement would you give them just to be courageous?
Speaker 2:no matter, where they are. This gets back to a lot of what you guys talk about and casting a vision for for future generations, and I think it's. I think, as soon as I started thinking about this number one, like that God has given, he has complete dominion, overall right, and he has given some dominion to his, his children right to extend his kingdom. And I didn't really believe that, you know, when I was, when I was younger, like I didn't really even think about that. And so as soon as I started to think, okay, like well, if I'm trying to extend God's kingdom, how does that change what I'm doing? And one of those things was well, like I, I have some information that I believe to be true, I've seen it work in people's lives, I know it's effective and I'm just holding it back and I'm not extending this in this kingdom. So it's like that's, that's ridiculous, that's selfish and that's a coward. So I started to pray on that. And then the same is true with you know, children and all that kind of stuff and and just multiplying and growing the kingdom.
Speaker 2:So I think for people who are struggling, it's like you got to kind of re reimagine what, like what, what life is about, right. Like it's not about our Seeking comfort and always having comfort. It's about sometimes it is suffering, like sometimes there is suffering that will come your way for doing what's right, and like as, as a Christian, like we can embrace that with joy and gladness. Like we can embrace that because we know, like that's not the end of it, for For the advancement of the kingdom and for our children and so on and so forth. And so I think that's one way to kind of process.
Speaker 2:It is just to reorient. Reorient your kind of mindset around why you're even doing what you're doing, and like if we're just existing, you can exist With the best of them and not really do anything in this life. And like I just I just didn't want that and I still don't want that. Like I hope that God can continue to encourage me in that direction, that people like yourself and and the guys on your show they keep can turn encouraging that, because that really is Not often heard in our culture. I think it's something that we're missing too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful. One of the things I want to ask you to. I've seen some posts on this on specifically Instagram, but dealing with conspiracy theories and I.
Speaker 1:Know that's right. Well, it's funny because in the office, you know, we have Brian's of a and Dan Burkholder and there's times where we're like, are we crazy? You know? Like, what are, what are our conspiracy theory takes. So I, yeah, I just want to ask you about that. As you kind of look out at the world, you know, there's a lot of things Again over the last couple years where where we said like, okay, I think this is a real issue. Other people Maybe don't see it. I guess what, what? What are you seeing from your vantage point? That maybe can you know People would call conspiracy theory, but it's like, hey, I think this is, this is real.
Speaker 2:I mean, where do you want to start? Which one do you want to talk about? It's just the craziest ones, you know, preferably. I listened to your that haunted cosmos podcast today and I Said that some of the things you were talking about I was like, yeah, it's like keep talking about it, but I, um, so I will just say, you know, I mentioned Tom, my buddy, before he.
Speaker 2:I was like in college, you know, 15 years ago, like the conspiracy guy, like I was like always questioning things, always challenging everything. People like you're nuts and like and I still think I'm nuts, you know, I still think they're right to a certain extent. But I will say a lot of the things that I challenged my buddy Tom on, you know, as he kind of went through the pandemic and went through this stuff, he started looking into this stuff deeper too and he's like dude, I think I think you may have been onto something with some of these conspiracies, like I don't think that that are complete Fabrications. I think there's like some truth here, right, and so you know I'm gonna get in such trouble here, like I, gotta like.
Speaker 2:I'll just say there's just I have a litmus test of like if you believe certain things about certain activities that maybe people like NASA do, then I, if you don't really question that. I really question you. I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 1:Well, it is funny, I saw a comedian on this because, uh, he was like now, I'm not saying I'm a conspiracy theorist, but he's like you. Don't think the government lies to you at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that, yeah you know, and so it is funny, I and for me, honestly, the ones in the last couple years have been like food related. Like I said, we read you know, big fat surprise, mm-hmm. A lot of that stuff was crazy. Because you go back and you read about like how Crisco was invented, that they like originally invented it for like Grease, for like mechanical stuff, and one of the scientists was like Kind of looks like lard, I bet you could make people eat that, you know.
Speaker 1:And then you start having all these long-term effects, diseases, stuff like this that starts erupting that wasn't there before and I think that's a big part about the medical side too is you don't like in my mind when I read that book and it's like pre 1900 and we're like yeah, all these kind of conditions were not like this isn't the way that it has to be. You know it's not normal actually in human history for people to die of heart attacks at 40. You know, like that that's a big problem. But even to I mean, we've seen it in the evangelical world with everything going on medically, where it's like you know you had pastors who were pushing narratives from the World Health Organization and stuff like that. But but I do think and this is what I would say you know for for what you're doing, I think a lot of people are looking for alternatives, right.
Speaker 1:They're looking for people that they trust. I'm just like they're looking for pastors that they trust. They're also looking for doctors that they trust. So I wonder if there isn't more of like Sort of guys who are counter establishment or outside of the establishment, where you just, you know, in the old days it was like you had a town doctor and you knew each other and it wasn't like you look at healthcare today and it's like you know. I remember when our kids were born, you go to, you know you get your bill and it's like it charged me like a thousand dollars for like three ibuprofen which I probably shouldn't have been taken anyway. Like what, what happened? Where's all the money going? I Wonder if you see that you see like more people being open to that kind of alternative Medicine or just alternative Arrangements for healthcare.
Speaker 2:It's, it's good. I was. That was one of the things I was blown away by. It was when I was starting this whole journey and I started my practice. What I was talking about was not well received, you know, and now I talk about it, I see it. I see it all over Instagram at least the people, and it's obviously the algorithm. I follow certain people and they promote those kind of People, but it's way and it's much more well established.
Speaker 2:The things that were once considered conspiracy are now becoming more Found in literature, to be true, and so I think the things that people can do is just to remember one you can always search funks medicine doc. They may not always be alignment aligning with kind of what you believe and things like that but they're probably gonna be a much better option than a Stainer conventional doctor, which you know. Conventional medicine is fantastic when it comes to Surgery and emergency care and saving lives, right, that's really what they're kind of designed to do. When you start to get into more of these management of diseases, when you start noticing some more issues long-term. But again, some people are very content with getting a pill for every ill, like. Some people would prefer that, and that's why they choose To go there. And so you can always present somebody with like hey, this is a good option for you. Like this is gonna help. Like 80% of your Chronic disease are connected to lifestyle, so there's a chance that you can reverse a good chunk of what you're dealing with by lifestyle. But you're like yeah, but I don't want to, and like just give me the pill. So there's, there's so much of this like.
Speaker 2:Again it gets back to like Like who is God calling you to be? Like what is like, what is the truth in this matter? This is why I say like Christians should be and I'm doing the should statement. I know you're supposed to should on people but like they should be a prime example of what it means to be Polistically healthy. Like mind-bottling spirit, like, like anxiety and weight gain and inactivity, like all these things can be way reduced by lifestyle that we have all the tools and resources that we need to from our spirit and from the Bible to actually implement on a consistent basis.
Speaker 2:But it is hard, especially if you're relying on your own, your own mind and your own you know emotions and in the conventional doctors above you that are telling you should take this pill and you're not questioning, you're not challenging that like that's a problem. So I think if you're at least willing to challenge the narrative and say I'm gonna just I'm not gonna take your word for it, I'm gonna go and take a couple other people's word for it too and see what they have to say, you can start to grow and move in a better direction that's more closer to truth. But I think people just aren't willing to do that very much and they think being a conspiracy theorist has gotten labeled to be such a negative thing. But really what it is is it's a critical thinker like you just gotta be a critical thinker and that's really what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, you're just thinking deeply on stuff and I would say too, it's like we all joke about the. You know, I looked up my conditions on web MD and it turns out that it's always cancer. But yeah, that real realistically, I mean there's been a lot of times where we would go to the doctor and he prescribed, he said you need to do this or you need to do that. And I look it up and I'm like actually there's like five studies that's say that's terrible. So I think a lot of it, too, is just people taking responsibility for their health, for their families, etc. Yeah, yeah, this has been really helpful conversation. I really appreciate it. I want to ask you so, website wise, what is the website? Will include this link in the show notes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can just go to the active live program comm and that should. There's a couple different websites I have, but just search the active live program comm and that should pop up my most recent website. Otherwise, you can go to my social media handles. It's just dr Austin Lake and you can. You can find me there.
Speaker 1:Awesome, perfect and again, we'll provide links for those in the show notes for our listeners. Definitely encourage you guys to check that out again, dr Austin Lake. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast yeah of course, man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for listening to this episode of the hard men podcast, and special shout out to our patreon supporters. If you're not yet a patreon supporter, you can join today for as little as five dollars a Month, and that definitely helps keep this work going. We are Glad to partner with you for content that builds a new Christendom and reclaims biblical masculinity. At the same time, you can check the show notes for the link to become a patreon supporter of the hard men podcast today. Stay frosty, fight the good fight. Act like men.