Why Young Bodies Are Breaking

Chronic disease is showing up earlier and earlier, and it’s forcing a hard question: did our genes suddenly change, or did the world change faster than our bodies can adapt? We take a clear-eyed look at why type 2 diabetes in young adults, fatty liver disease under 40, rising anxiety and depression, poor sleep, and early-onset colorectal cancer are no longer rare headlines but everyday clinical reality. 

We frame it as an evolutionary mismatch. Our biology is built for whole foods, sunlight, daily movement, real community, and short bursts of stress followed by recovery. Modern life flips that script with ultra-processed foods, constant notifications, desk-bound work, chronic stress, and sleep that gets treated like a luxury. We get specific about how being overfed and undernourished, losing muscle, and living in a constant stress response can push metabolism, hormones, and inflammation in the wrong direction. 

We also talk about the uncomfortable parts: parenting boundaries, kids and screens, bedtime rules, and why “picky eating” often starts with what adults allow into the house. Then we widen the lens to environmental exposures like air pollution and microplastics, plus the hidden health cost of social isolation and loneliness. 

You’ll leave with five practical moves you can start today: move every day, lift weights, eat more whole foods, protect sleep, and manage stress with simple recovery practices. If this helps, subscribe, share it with someone who needs the wake-up call, and leave a review so more families can find it.

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Transcript

Rise Of Early-Onset Disease

SPEAKER_00 0:23

40 years ago, type 2 diabetes was mostly a disease of older adults, fatty liver disease, mostly older adults, colon cancer, usually after the age of 60, high blood pressure, heart disease, infertility, autoimmune disease. These were conditions we expected to see later in life, not earlier. Today, doctors are diagnosing them in people in their 20s and 30s. So what happened? Did our gene suddenly change, or did the environment change faster than our bodies could adapt? Welcome back to Living a Full Life podcast. Today we're diving deep into what dis-ease is all about. And in chiropractic school, they teach us to hyphenate that word. DIS hyphen E A-S-E, ease. The body works at ease. And whenever it gets interfered with or whenever it gets thrown off of balance, it goes into disphen ease, dys-ease. And if we stay in that state for too long, we develop what's commonly known as diseases in medicine. And then we have to go into the diagnosis pathway. But today's podcast is about why are younger people getting diseases that we thought usually happened later in life. The numbers really don't lie. Obesity has risen dramatically since the 70s. Type 2 diabetes is increasingly being diagnosed in younger adults, even in adolescents, type 2, not type 1. Fatty liver disease is now common among adults under 40. I was on that list at 33 years of age. Rates of anxiety, depression, and poor sleep continue to climb. Early onset colidorectal cancer has increased enough that screening recommendations now begin at the age of 40 for average risk adults. Our DNA hasn't changed much in 40 years, so what has? That's what we need to think about. What is going on around us? And the answers will be obvious when we ask the right questions. When you ask the right questions, you get the right answers. When you ask the wrong questions, you go down the wrong

Evolutionary Mismatch In Modern Life

SPEAKER_00 2:32

path. We actually live in an evolutionary mismatch. Our bodies evolved over the last thousand years for walking, hunting to get sunlight, whole foods, physical labor, community, stress that came in short bursts, short acts of work, doing stuff for our community, doing stuff for our family, getting tasks done to serve our village, our people. Now we have desk jobs, processed foods, constant notifications, chronic stress, poor sleep, artificial lights, sanitary lifestyles. Your biology is trying to survive a world it isn't designed for. The ultra-processed foods. Highly palpable, calorie-dense, fiber-poor foods make it easier to overeat and harder to meet nutritional needs. It's the way it's been designed. We default to that, and it creates most of the problems stem from there. Because of the high calorie and low nutrition, we get into mismatches for our overall nutrition balance. And I blame processed foods from the beginning. If you've listened to my podcast over the last four years, or if you listen to me over the years, we know that the processed foods is one of the biggest reasons for mismatch balance in the body. Another thing is we barely move. We truly barely move. This 10,000 step thing before we had these devices used to be, you know, five kilometers. Get out and do your 5K every day. Every day. Get out there and do five kilometers, three miles of movement. Now we have the 10,000 steps, which is the equivalent of that. And people can't even hit the 10,000 steps. This is the bare minimum movement that we need per day, and we can't even hit the bare minimum. Movement is no longer built into our life. Actually, physical education is being diluted each and every decade in the public school system as well. I remember having the push-up test and the chin-up test and the climbing the rope test, uh, getting up to the top and ringing the bell. If you couldn't do it, well, what happened? You got a lower grade and you had the other guys in the class make fun of you. That's just the way it was. And you had to do chin-ups in high school. If you couldn't do a chin-up, well, I guess you got a lower grade and the other guys in the class laughed at you. That's just the way it was. And now those things are no longer there because we're worried about the other guys in the class laughing

Ultra-Processed Food And Low Movement

SPEAKER_00 5:02

at you rather than physical fitness. So we barely move. This has led to muscle loss, poor insulin sensitivity in our adolescence, back pain, reduced cardiovascular fitness. I used to see kids for school physicals, athletic ability, endurance, uh, stamina improvement, uh, sprained ankles that would happen, some minor injuries. Now we got kids seven, eight, nine years old with headaches, uh, teenagers with back pain, and we wonder what's going on. Chronic stress. We're not built for chronic stress. We're built for acute stress, but not chronic stress. Your body can't distinguish between running from danger and getting tasks done for the Friday deadline for your for your company. It can't tell the difference. Is it is this a lion that's attacking us this week? Or is it the deadlines that have to be met for the accountant on Friday? Financial stress. We pretty much have everything tied into money, where in order to get anything done, even to eat or have shelter, it's based on money. So money has become even more and more stressful because we don't even grow our own food, we don't even build our own huts anymore, we don't have our own shelter, we're all dependent on mortgages and banks. So everything's become very financial. So financial stress is very real. Work deadlines, social media, outrage. People have more stress from social media, they won't admit it, but subconsciously it comes from there because they're not keeping up, they're not matching up, they're not uh keeping up with the Joneses, uh, they want more. Uh, the more doesn't make sense, it's fantasy, and it creates a whole bunch of issues, especially in young adults. The chronic activation of stress response affects our sleep, our blood pressure, our blood sugar sensitivity, and our overall recovery and healing at night. Many podcasts on all that. But now this is translating into our youth. Sleep is becoming optional. Many adults average less sleep than recommended. They're getting less than six hours of sleep per day. Our adolescents are getting less than eight hours a day, and our young kids are getting less than 10 hours a day. This disrupts hormones, it dregulates appetite, suppresses immune function, it dilutes recovery, and it can even affect memory in young adults as well. So sleep is becoming optional when sleep should be optimized. That's what we should be doing for our kids. Optimize sleep, routine, bedtime, stay hard, hard and clear of what time they they go to sleep. Wake up times are hard and clear, rules are set, no screens in the room, dark as can be, uh, good temperature, comfortable mattress. We have many podcasts on this. The number one thing you can do for your children and being slack in that department, even with your teenagers, shame on you as a parent. Shame on you. If you listen to this podcast, you are now knowledgeable, so you cannot be ignorant as a parent. You have to set these hard deadlines. And if you don't, I'm calling uh Child Protective

Chronic Stress And Always-On Culture

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Services on you because you deserve some type of slap on the wrist. You definitely do. This is basic information. And as a parent, you got to take authority over your life and of your children's life until they're an adult. It is your responsibility. Something bad happens that your children do, you deserve to go to jail too. That's my beliefs, and that's just the way it is. This world's getting out of control. And the only way to have accountability is parents down. You hand down the generational information from your generation to the next. You made the choice to start a family. It's your damn job to take care of these kids. I do these lectures all the time. I've got young parents with young kids coming in all the time. They're like, Oh, my kids are picky eaters. All they eat is Pop-Tarts and chicken nuggets. That's it. That's all they'll do. And I'll look at the dad or the mom and be like, How does your child know what a Pop-Tart is? Who gave them the Pop-Tart? Who gave them the heroin? Who gave them the cocaine? Who gave them the marijuana? It's your damn fault that they know what these things are. I lumped them into the same bucket as that crap of harsh drugs. So people understand the emotional intelligence of this, that they cannot know this stuff if they're not exposed to this stuff, right? That's a four-year-old, much more difficult for your teenagers. Good luck trying to screen the world from them. You can't. But setting these boundaries at a young age become normal. I have a 12, 10, and 7-year-old. My 12-year-old has had the same bedtime since birth. She doesn't know anything different. 7:30. Oh, it's time to wind down. It's just the way it is. We're starting to get whispers of, hey, my friends get to stay up till 10. I'm like, great. Those parents have less brain cells than I do. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. I I have no clue what to tell you. Um, but this is the way it is. Nothing's gonna change. Nothing you could possibly say is gonna change it. 7:30's wind down time. That's it. That's it. They're getting older, they're starting to get into, you know, uh sports, and these things are gonna run into, you know, 7:30, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, and I'm gonna have a discussion there. They're like, Dad, people are up like playing basketball and like nine o'clock. What are we gonna do? I'm like, well, I guess now you get to do that. You're a teenager. But these are the things that are going, and I made this little

Sleep Boundaries And Parenting Hard Lines

SPEAKER_00 10:17

curve in 2026. This is your first podcast listening in a while. I said, in 2026, I'm gonna do the hard truths on my podcast. No more trying to PC all this stuff for everyone. These are the truths. And if we if we bend them and we turn them, then we have bendable health, we have bendable behavior, we have bendable all the problems we see in our society and in our kids is because we bend. Don't bend. There's firm parameters, black lines, and boundaries that when you set, you teach your kids how to set those black lines and boundaries as well. It's a beautiful thing to pass down to them. We are overfed and undernourished. This is the American diet. Lots of calories, low nutrition, low protein, low fiber, low omega-3 fats, not enough magnesium, not enough potassium. That's pretty much where the diet's lacking in the foods that we choose. Many people consume enough or too many calories while falling short on these things: protein, fiber, vitamins. So a whole food diet is the best to do. Whole foods, nothing that comes out of a box, no cereals, no packages, no crackers, nothing that comes out of a bag or a package or a can. It's the best way to make sure that you get whole foods. Supplementing some extra stuff on the side that comes in in those things is okay. But if we have a base diet of breakfast, lunch, and dinner of whole foods, you set yourself up for success for the rest of your life. And then there's environmental exposures too. Air pollution. Can't control that. These are now we're getting into the things you can't control. I can't be tough on this because when you step outside and you start breathing, it's just you have to breathe. And unfortunately, that pollution's there. Microplastics, we talked about this last week on uh specifically microtoxins and microplastics, tobacco smoke, secondhand smoke, excess alcohol, certain chemicals that are around from cleaning products, pesticides, herbicides, lawn fertilizers, all the stuff that's around spraying for mosquitoes, whatever it may be that's around there, and our government spraying stuff from the skies all the time. There's things you can't control. There's things you can't control. Pollution is there. These are all contributors to overall health burden rather than the sole cause of disease, but they cause a burden. And you got to control this stuff. So air purifiers in your home, filtered water in your home, things where you can take some control. So when you're in your home, you're a little bit safer, changing the air filters, opening the windows, getting circulation in there, trying to minimize the stresses as much as you can, but we can't control what's out there. And the hardest one to talk about is social isolation. This is happening for young adults a lot. Humans are wired for connection. Loneliness has been linked with poor physical and mental health outcomes. There's been so many cool studies in the metaphysics component for humans as well, with loneliness and just the thermogenesis in their body, just the way that they offput heat, they create heat in the body. It actually goes way down. Their thermogenesis goes down, meaning that they lose appetite because they don't need the calories because they're just depressed, right? They just don't need them. And if they're eating to supplement the loneliness or the depression, now we're getting excessive calorie intake and very low thermogenesis. Weight

Whole Foods And Being Undernourished

SPEAKER_00 13:27

gain happens very quickly, insulin deficiency happens really quickly. Um, diabetes diabetes can happen really quickly. These things are there too. That's a tough topic to talk about, but loneliness creates that. So having your kids active is a great, great thing to sacrifice as an adult for your children, is keeping them engaged in the things that they may like: movement, sports, music, exercise, extracurricular activities, socialization, play groups, whatever it may be. These things are wonderful things for your kids. Today's children are growing up with less outdoor play, more screen time, less sleep, more processed food, higher stress, and we're creating healthier adult. And is this creating healthier adults or just treating disease earlier? I know. I feel like we're treating disease earlier. I can see it in my practice with just helping kids and families at a younger and younger and younger age. We have more children patients for functional medicine than ever before. One, because parents are aware that's great. And two, that these chronic issues are starting to show up at a younger age. Hence why I do this podcast. Just a wake-up call. That when we do this, the nice thing about kids is when you dive deep into their health, you get into diet and gut. And once you clean up the diet and you facilitate the gut, you figure out what's going on with the gut, you heal the gut, these kids rebound very quickly within weeks, months. They they're they're quick. Adults, because of how long we've been alive, that damage can cause, can be more chronic and more deep. And still the root is usually gut and uh inflammation, and it takes a little bit longer and a little bit more protocols. Maybe some organs are affected, like the liver and the pancreas, and then you got to do protocols for those too. A little bit longer of a process, but even they get better as well, autoimmune issues and the things that happen through there as well. So, here are five things that you can do and take away from this podcast right now to help offset for you and

Pollution Microplastics And Home Controls

SPEAKER_00 15:27

your children. Move every single day, make it a priority. Walk after dinner, do something every single day that is active, not because of calories, don't measure how how much energy you output it or what's going on. Because movement is medicine. Your body is designed to move. Lift weights. Teach your teenagers that lifting weights and some resistant stuff and doing hard things is good for the body. Maintain muscle throughout your life. It is pretty much the main component of thermogenesis and how many calories you should be eating every day. Is your basal metabolic rate based off of the amount of lean muscle mass you have in your body? That's the main energy source in your body. The more muscle you have, the more you can eat. But you're not gaining all the muscle because you want to eat more. You gain muscle because you feed yourself more. That's the way it goes. You feed the muscle, it grows. When the muscle grows, you need to feed it more, and that's just how it goes there. Hard to maintain that type of lifestyle long term, but doing some resistance and maintaining strength is vital and very important. Eat more whole foods, just add them to your diet, eat more of them. What that will end up doing is filling you up so you don't have room for process stuff. Focus on foods with minimal processing and then prioritize sleep. Treat sleep like the cornerstone of your health and your family's health, not a luxury. Not a luxury. Be like, oh, last night was good. I got some good sleep. Every night should be good sleep. It should create a cycle of good sleep all the time. If it starts to change, you have to be on it. You have to be on those symptoms. Why is it taking me longer to fall asleep? Why am I waking up throughout the night? What's going on? I have to get up and go to the bathroom more. What's why is that happening? Am I drinking late? Do I have prostate issues? Do what's going on? We have to be on

Loneliness And Kids Needing Connection

SPEAKER_00 17:17

top of that stuff early and not let them get out of control. And manage stress. Good luck with this one. I always say that on my PAC podcast because stress is everywhere. We are more connected now than ever before because of digital and tech. But we have to manage stress. Breathing, prayer, walking, time outdoors, hiking, family time, family game nights, community, meeting up with friends, and giving yourself time to recover. Just time to yourself. Chronic disease isn't just about getting older, it's about the thousands of small choices and environmental influences that shape your health over time. The good news is that the same small habits that contribute to disease can be replaced with habits that build resilience. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to move in the right direction, one choice at a time. If this hit home for you, share it. Hit the share button, share the episode. You can do it through text, you can do it through email. Like, comment on the episode. If you're following us on Spotify or YouTube or

Five Practical Health Moves

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Google Play, wherever you're listening to us, uh subscribe. That way we can grow the channel, have more listeners to it. And if you ever have any questions, this is an engaged podcast, info at fulllifetampa.com. You don't realize this, but some of your questions have led to podcast topics that I went off and talked about. Or if you have any guests, you want me to start. If you're getting tired of my voice, let's get some more guests on here and talk uh more about health. That'd be great too. Stay well, stay healthy, take care.