Bridging the Gap Between Western Medicine and Performance | Kyle Baum

Kyle Baum and I unpack why recovery metrics can look perfect while your body still feels off, using HRV and the LF/HF ratio as tools rather than truth. We also dig into adrenal fatigue, low cortisol, caffeine dependence, gut health, and the hard skill every competitor needs: pulling back without losing progress. 

• LF/HF ratio explained as a subset of HRV and nervous system balance 
• why high HRV can still pair with poor training performance 
• blending data with biofeedback to guide recovery and deload decisions 
• injury readiness limits and why local pain can override global metrics 
• the performance dichotomy where “do more” drives success and setbacks 
• adrenal fatigue basics, cortisol rhythm, and common symptoms like morning exhaustion 
• practical reset habits like breathwork, sleep protection, and delaying caffeine 
• gut health links to chronic stress, digestion, motility, and nutrient absorption 
• food quality focus, whole foods approach, and avoiding extreme restriction 
• bridging Western medicine with functional health and root cause testing 

Check us out, athleticfortitude.com. Go download the podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Five stars only, baby. 

Transcript

LF/HF Ratio And HRV Basics

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is LFHF ratio and why is that the golden standard for recovery?

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Okay. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's a gold standard. What I'll how I would kind of preface it is like it's another tool. So to kind of explain this to the listeners, I kind of found this out through an app that I use. It's called the Elite HRV app. Okay. And I think most people are pretty familiar with our rate variability. Pretty good indicator typically of how well we're recovered, right? And what it, what essentially the low frequency, high frequency ratio, it's basically a subset of that. So it's basically you take your HRV and take like it's essentially an arm and an arm of that HRV. Okay. So your low frequency band is going to be related to your parasympathetic nervous system. Okay. So when we think about like, you know, high school biology, rest and digest, um, just the overall relaxation part of our nervous system. That's what that's gonna be indicative of. And then the high frequency one is this one in literature is a little bit more, I guess you could say, controversial. People say it's not just sympathetic activity, meaning like our fight or flight response. There is some parasympathetic input into it. So people claim that it's not the most accurate thing to go off of. However, what I have found is through the people that I work with, I'll have days where I'll obviously I track HRV. We track a lot of data within NLP. And there's some people that will have really high HRV and then they'll go to the gym and have an absolutely horrible session, they'll still feel tired, they'll, they'll, they'll appear underrecovered from their recovery metrics. Or I'm sorry, from their performance standpoint. So what I started to do over time, I was like, you know what? I was like, I don't know how accurate HRV is all the time. Do I think it's a it's a pretty good indicator? I do. I do definitely believe that, but I wanted to take it a step further. And then I was looking on that elite HRV app and I saw that ratio and I started doing more research on it. And basically that's what I found. And I found there's a really good correlation. So the lower that ratio is, the better I tend to see anecdotally that people are recovered. So I like to use both. And ultimately, I think, I mean, you could you could get very nuanced with this conversation too, but I think you also got to just take into account how someone feels too, a lot of times. You know, when when we talk about athletes, right, I think we are so ingrained in pushing ourselves and not knowing when to pull back. I think that's the issue. And I think that's when tools like this become advantageous. You know, where and then there's the flip side of the coin where people don't push themselves enough and they can almost like be hindered by too much data. It almost becomes too much of a mental game for them. You know what I mean? So it just depends. And that's like also part of coaching where like there's so much psychological or um psychology that comes into play. You got to know the client and you got to know when these things are applicable and when not, you know?

When Recovery Metrics Mislead

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Will there ever be a way to measure? So, like obviously you can measure like recovery, but what you can't always tangibly measure is the risk of injury or risk of like pulling a muscle. If you have a strained muscle, you may have the best scores of for everything, but that still doesn't mean that you can go out and run. So when you have some of these, you know, tissue injuries or you have injuries, will there be a way to track a readiness level to push other than how you feel that day and you know, just kind of micro or making micro advancements in your training protocols?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Man, I I think I feel like not foolproof because that like when you go out to a training session or if you are in a some sort of athletic competition, there's so many different inputs that go into that that it's really, really hard to have a definitive answer to that quote. You know what I mean? Because I mean, think about like there's hydration levels, there's elect electrolyte status, there's recovery from prior practices, there's sleep quality, there's nutritional intake. The list goes on and on, right? It's I feel like it's a really hard thing to pinpoint. But I do think you can get, you can have your best educated guess in terms of, you know, knowing that you're gonna be pretty safe from a soft tissue standpoint. Again, you you can never say for sure, but you know, if you have all these good metrics, you feel good, um, you know, you're you're fueling your body properly, you have appropriate gut health to absorb the nutrients that you're intaking, a lot of things that we've talked about, you know, then I think you can be as confident as you possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

The realm of performance is always, I always want to see like how far we can go. Because I think of like my my own experiences and just like human nature in general, is it's so hard to know when to push and when not. And when you get into the higher levels of competition, you realize the margin of error is much smaller. And that incrementally, that the person standing next to you is just as good as you, and that there is a razor-thin margin to who's gonna win that day. In that same breath, our brains will literally prevent us from going to like self-harm. And so we have this like human capacity to do so much more than we usually do day to day. The fascinating part to me is like, how do we bridge that gap between what's doing enough and what's doing too much to actually perform at the highest level? And so, with the constraints of like your practice, because I mean, you're you're not the one actually going out there training with people day to day and doing a bunch of those things. It's how do you best position people for success so that they can meet the demand of their sport or their goal?

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Great question. I I think it goes back to kind of what we're talking about prior. I think it's you utilize the tools that we have available and you use best educated guesses. You know, I really feel like that that's the only thing we can do. You know what I mean? Like most athletes are gonna be driven, right? They're gonna have that drive to them that's gonna say, Hey, I'm gonna do, you know, the best that I can, especially if we're talking about high-level athletes, right? Typically, you don't have to ask those people to do more. It's typically about more about doing less and being smarter. And bridging that gap, I think, is is comes with experience. I think that's another, another part of the equation, too. It's like you start to understand your body a little bit more. Some people never learn, which I would maybe argue someone like yourself to some degree.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

I was about to say, I don't know, there's a particular reason I asked this question to begin with about the soft tissue things, but continue.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So the other, the thing that I think not only relates to you, but I think other athletes could take away from this too is when you start to feel like things are going a little bit downhill, when you're not feeling the same way that, or you know, the same way that you did at one point, hence you, more reliance on caffeine, lower energy levels, issues with digestion. Like when you start to notice biofeedback start to go downhill, that's when I think it starts to really take a look in the mirror and say, hey, am I doing too much? So I think our bodies, as we know, we're very resilient. But every no one's Superman, no one's God. At some point, you know, doing too much is going to cut catch up with you. And then you gotta be able to look yourself in the mirror and know when it's time to pull back. Or you have to have a coach or someone that is recognizing these signs, you know, tracking these metrics and saying, hey, Colin, you know, let's let's take a week off here, let's have a deload week. You know, let's make sure we're sleeping properly. Let's get our biofeedback looking much better. And then we can start to push hard again.

Soft Tissue Warning Signs

SPEAKER_00 7:34

It's really hard for me because uh, you know, I've told my listeners I'm training for this track event in a year, and I am like far away. By all measures, I have a ton of time, but like in my own head, it's I keep telling, like, I've had five knee surgeries. I still don't feel like it's still not even. Like my my left leg and my right leg are still not an even platform. And so my right leg is constant is still consistently overcompensating. It's something I'm working through. But in my mind, it's like the people I'm going against have not stopped training like at any period of time. And I'm fortunate that, you know, I have some just got some God-given abilities that have, you know, transpired over. And I think that an important part of like knowing training too is like the body remembers. So like even if I take time off from training, like my body will remember. And even coming back from two years, really almost three years of not hard sprinting because I physically couldn't with my knee, I haven't lost that much. And so there's like this dichotomy that I that I battle with right now is I don't have time to sacrifice. But the reality is I need to give myself space to heal. And so that's, you know, obviously what led me, you know, back to the things that we're doing is soft tissue injuries. And, you know, I've never had soft tissue injuries in my life. And so now I'm battling uh a hamstring and a calf. The the calf seems to be doing pretty solid, but the hamstring keeps nagging me. And so this morning I went to the track early. And, you know, probably part of the reason the hamstring was feeling a little bit is that you know, I'm at the track at five o'clock in the morning, but body recovered. I was feeling good everywhere else. My sleep score indicated that, you know, my recovery score indicated that, you know, back to your point about HRV, high HRV for the day. My hamstring was sore though, but I was like, you know what? I I have to run, I have to do something. Even if I'm not full speed, I have to push. And so I just did speed builders up to about 50 yards. No pull, nothing, but like really fatigued hamstring. And it's like I keep going through this cycle of what's enough, what's too much, how do I still get the adequate level of training I need while still fueling myself properly? And that is always the the internal battle. And not even, you know, not even if you want to put me in a high achiever, but just someone who's competitive is figuring out how do I align all this properly.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

It's a great question. And I think some again, it goes back to saying to an athlete, it's so hard to say to someone like yourself or like myself back in the day, you know, to to pull back. It is, it is hard, but sometimes, like, and that's why, you know, I said it to you the other day. I was like, my job is not to be your friend right now, it's to be your coach. Like, I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear. And I'll be honest with if I was with you and and you said to me, Hey, my hamstring is sore, I I mean, you got to be very, very careful about how hard you're pushing from a running perspective on that day. You again, you could, and this is why the conversation gets very nuanced. But again, to your point, you could have all the data saying, you know what, I'm recovered. I feel good, I slept well, you know, my energy's good, whatever you want to say. Um, but if that particular body part is not ready for that day, guess what, man? That that's when you probably have to say to yourself, like, hey, uh, we can maybe do something, but we probably shouldn't be up more than maybe 70, 75% of top speed. I I would probably say, you know, truly don't tax it because the thing that I I worry about for you and and for all athletes is like the do more attitude is a lot of times what got us to achieve at a high level, but it also can be our detriment. Right. And you have to know that if you keep pushing in that way, you will continue to set yourself back. Right. So you have to come very in tune and you have to be okay with saying, you know what, I did wake up early. I did have full intention of feeling good and having a really good quality session. But I know for my long-term success leading up to this event, I'm gonna be better when I am more available and I can go actually put this time in during, you know, with a quality session when my hamstring is not sore. Right. And then, you know, when you're not sore, it's like, then your mind can just be free to go have a really quality session when you're feeling really good in all aspects. Not like, hey, you know, my hamstring's sore. Like I'm kind of like, you know, I probably shouldn't push it. Like I'm just gonna do, you know, it it essentially becomes a almost a junk set. I don't want to say a junk session, but like it's not the quality session that it could be if you just said, hey, let's take it easy today, and then we'll come back and we'll make sure we hit it hard. You know, and and again, I don't, I don't know exactly, like you're doing speed builders, like I don't know how fast you were getting up to, all that, all the nuance of the of the session there, but those are the times where I think you got to be really, really smart about it because you will, and you experienced it already, you will set yourself back further if you don't start to listen to yourself and to your body.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

It's a dichotomy of performance that I love to discuss is the same things that get you and elevate you to a certain place are the same things and qualities that can pull you back. And the do more mentality, like how you described it, is you always will feel like you're never doing enough. What that does for you is it gives you an insane work ethic. It gives you the ability to accomplish great things. But in that same breath, if you do it too much, just like anything else, it'll boil over, it'll bring you down, it'll knock you down a few pegs, which is the opposite of what you want. You want to be there and be at your best when it is time for compete day. And so that is the the dichotomy that all athletes face. And that's like the importance of a team in the making sure that all elements of the team are connected to is sometimes the the harder part, depending on like what level of competition you're at, is you don't like sometimes your your training staff isn't talking with your nutritionists and vice versa. And that's what can make a a lot of things more challenging as well. There's some people who don't have a full team but have different parts and members of a team instead of having the the full holistic approach. And you know, most elite athletes obviously have the holistic approach, it's just they may not be taking full advantage of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Right. And I I think you could you can even relate that to life. Like I know from from my standpoint, and and honestly, this is actually probably part of your issue too, Colin, is like, you know, running a business, it we know we know, you know, how stressful that is. And I, you know, I know from my standpoint, I'm a prime example of this. Over the past, you know, over my whole entire time in anesthesia school, obviously that in and of itself is very rigorous. Doing what I'm doing on top of, you know, what I'm doing at NLP in my business, it it's honestly, there was a period of time last year where I was so busy with both, I was starting to forget about myself. And, you know, my training was suffering, my nutrition was suffering, my ability to recover was suffering. I wasn't sleeping well. And ultimately it cost me probably, good lord, probably 20 pounds of muscle, to be honest with you, over time. And it it just starts to make a detriment on your health. And it's like you gotta be able to balance things. You gotta be able to balance like going hard and knowing when to pull back. And and again, that mindset that you were just describing, it's it's a blessing and a curse. You know, it get it can get you far, but at some point it always catches up with you no matter who you are.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah, you have to know when it serves you and when it doesn't anymore. And that's the that's the tricky part. And that comes with maturity, that comes with experience, it comes with you know learning through trial, tribulation, failures, successes. Exactly. It what's the saying? It's the doctors make the worst patients. And I find that to to be, you know, with myself too. It's you know, sometimes the advice that I would give, I wouldn't always take, even though I should take it.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And for you, like what is that like as like a coach who knows so much about the nutrition and diet side and making sure that you are positioning yourself to be healthy, but then in your own breath, it's like sometimes those things get sacrificed because of all the things that you're doing. So it's like, how do you balance being the coach and then yourself being the patient for lack of a better word?

Coaches Struggle With Balance Too

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah. So, like I said, last year I was doing a really, really bad job at that. And I think from a coaching standpoint, there's times where you almost can feel feel guilty about it. Like you know what to do. You're coaching other people to do it. You've done it for so long at a high level. And, you know, just because you're running a business, just because you're in school full time, doesn't mean you have the excuse to not do these things. And, you know, I it's hypocritical of me to coach people if I'm not living in integrity. Right. So it I had to snap out of that very quickly and get myself back to the point where I was doing all the habits that I've done for well over a decade. You know, and and I think it just honestly comes down to developing a routine. It's like, it's like with anything, it habits win at the end of the day. And, you know, it can take time to develop those habits, especially when your circumstances change and especially when your life is extremely busy. But at the end of the day, there's always a way. I I'm a strong believer in that. I think if there's a will, there's a way. And, you know, the people that want to will figure it out. And that's obvious, that's how I've lived my entire life. And I think that's, you know, why I've had success in sport and in in life so far. And I'm gonna continue to live my life that way. So, you know, for me, it was just figuring that out again and and coming to my senses and saying, you, you can't coach people, you can't be the example if you're obviously not living it yourself. So, you know, I wanted to make sure I obviously, you know, was living up to that expectation and I've, you know, I've done a much better job, especially here in 2026. So definitely, definitely proud of that, definitely getting back, you know, to my normal self and I'm starting to starting to try to put you know more muscle back on, try to get back to where I was, you know, April, May of 25, basically.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Talk

Adrenal Fatigue And Low Cortisol

SPEAKER_00 17:42

to me about adrenal fatigue. What is adrenal fatigue and why do high performers fall into the category of being at risk of having that happen to them?

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah. So adrenal fatigue, the best way to describe this is so everyone knows the adrenal glands sit on top of our kidneys and they secrete something called cortisol, right? It's our stress response hormone. And, you know, I think when everyone hears the word cortisol, they think about high cortisol, high stress, that being bad, right? And and to an extent that's true. But like any hormone, there's too low and there's too high. Okay. And after a period of time, you know, it's it's variable within the individual, but after a period of time where someone is under stress, like so chronic stress, can be several months, can be several years, depends on the person. But you can ultimately see if that cortisol and those adrenal glands are pumping out the cortisol at a very high clip, your adrenal glands can actually get tired and start to turn them off. Essentially, it starts to basically shut down your adrenal glands from producing enough cortisol. So then you'll see, you know, morning lab draws, hence yourself, be where cortisol is very low. Okay. And you actually, it'll be flagged on on your lab work as being lower than even the Western medicine standard range. And again, that's exactly what we saw with you. And it matches exactly up with your symptomatology. So you'll see, you know, when people have that, they'll have a really, really hard time getting out of bed in the morning. They'll feel like they're dragging. They'll feel like very often you'll hear people say, like, um, you know, I'm I'm not awake until I have my morning coffee, like things like that are very, very common. And, you know, it's not something that's talked about enough. It's not really, really even recognized in Western medicine, but it is, it's so true. I see it all the time in people that are that have undergone chronic stress and on various fronts.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

So when we got the blood results back and you start like asking me symptoms, you're like, Are you like really tired in the morning? I was like, Yes. You're like, Are you really stressed? I was like, yes. You were like, Do you rely on coffee throughout the day? I was like, Yes. And then you just start going down the line, asking me all these questions. And I was like, Yes, these are like everything that I experience like day to day. And then you were just like, Well, we found your problem. And so when it comes to the adrenal fatigue, the super low cortisol, it's how do you reset that? And how long does that usually take for it to reset?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah. So great questions. Um, first of all, I want to talk just so people understand what an appropriate cortisol rhythm. I just want to make sure people understand this. So whenever you wake up in the morning, about 45 minutes to an hour after you wake up, that should be your biggest cortisol spike of your day. Okay. And from a lab work perspective, we say like 12 to 15. Okay. For example, yours was four. So three times, you know, less or a third of what we want, essentially, right? So that that is what gives us that alertness feeling. That that feeling that we can, you know, should be able to wake up and like basically kick ass every day. That's what we want. When that gets to a point where it's blunted and you don't have that proper spike, that's where you're going to see that extreme morning fatigue occur. Right. Now it gets in a normal curve, it gets to that spike, and then it should slowly taper off throughout the entire day. And at nighttime, it should be at its lowest. And what that does is that it allows melatonin to properly start to spike to obviously get your body ready and prepared for deep and restful sleep. So they're they're basically opposites of each other. Whenever you're having cortisol bees highest, melatonin is gonna be its lowest. And whenever melatonin's highest, cortisol is gonna be its lowest. So makes sense, right? Melatonin spike, cortisol is gonna be lowest when you're sleeping. Um, so that's very important to understand. Now, from a healing perspective, when I when I catch stressed individuals or seraphs, you know, sympathetically dominated individuals, I always like to catch it when cortisol is high. I will say it's always easier to catch it when it's higher and fix that part. Okay. That typically can can be fixed in a matter of Depends how high, but like, you know, if you're talking a cortisol reading of like say 16 to 20 or 25, typically can be healed in probably eight to 12 weeks. Sometimes less. Sometimes less, 100% less. Sometimes it could be two weeks, sometimes just pulling people out of their whatever their environment is or pulling away them away from their stressors or giving them habits to really tap into that PNS. On the flip side of the equation, someone who has low cortisol, it takes longer because you have to start to supplement with, you know, the the habits that are very similar to what you're doing from on the the uh the high side, but then you have to have some strategic adrenal support in play to to also help with that too. And and typically you're you could look, I mean, I've seen people take up to a year to really get them back to a like that 12 to 15 mark. It can take a while. And it takes, it takes diligence. It takes a really, really, again, kind of like we were saying, an understanding of, you know, when you are stressed out and trying to how like how you pull your body out of that state. You know, it can just, it can take a while and patience is the key, and then consistency with, you know, getting yourself in that parasympathetic state with like deep breathing exercises. You always preach about like box breathing, regulating your sleep wake cycles. I always talk about like you have to protect your nighttime habits, like, you know, kind of things I've told you already, you know, from your protocols and whatnot. It's like get get away from screens, right? That's gonna, you know, that's number one, that can cause, you know, artificial cortisol spike. It's gonna, you know, delay your melatonin spike. It's gonna ultimately inhibit your body's ability to get into deep and restful sleep. You know, so protecting those nighttime habits to really make sure you're sleeping properly, getting into those deep stages of sleep. And then, you know, again, tap the habits are the biggest thing, I would say. And, you know, what I always say to people is like air is free, right? Everyone has access to air. The more you deep breathe, the more that you do buck, box breathing, the more that you're gonna tap into the PNS. So that's like, I feel like that's the easiest modality that people can do. What I typically have people do when they are really low cortisol, I'll have them try to start their day with literally 10 to 15 minutes of really deep and intense breath work. Start your day living in the PNS. Don't go right to your coffees, right? Or don't have caffeine at all, like kind of like we're we're doing, right? So, you know, really living in on that and really starting to train and make that part of your lifestyle is really, really important in terms of healing.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

When

Rebuilding Cortisol With Daily Habits

SPEAKER_00 24:33

does the transition happen to when you can start adding back some of your previous habits, like having some coffee, or if you are in a cold state area, maybe not going outside as much, like how can you navigate like some of that space and some of that nuance?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah. So I I what I tend to say to people is whenever you're starting to notice biofeedback get better. Right. So whenever you're starting to have a little bit of an energy increase in the morning, when you're feeling a little bit better waking up, things like that, that's when I'm that's when I can say, okay, let's start to add a little coffee back in. No, that's okay. Now, again, the habits need to stay anchored. Like I still want people waking up doing their breath work, things of that nature, maybe delaying that coffee to maybe, you know, a little bit later in the in the morning, you know, maybe not first thing. Um, let, you know, to so it's not basically, we don't want to blunt the the response that we're, or I I guess uh kind of skew the response that we're getting. I don't I don't want to see an artificial spike in energy because we just consume caffeine. I want to know truly, you know, from a natural standpoint how your adrenal glands are functioning, you know, in the morning and how that's impacting your energy levels without any sort of outside supplement, basically.

Stress And Gut Health Connection

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Now, is there any correlation between gut health and adrenal or are those two completely separate topics?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

They they can be intertwined. And where that can be intertwined is when if you have SIBO, gut dysbiosis, something of that nature, that can be a stressor on the body. What I find too is a lot of people that are sympathetically driven, there's a massive correlation between that and people with gut health issues. Because again, when we go to back to high school biology, you know, the PNS, parasympathetic nervous system, what's the what's the nickname for that? It's rest and digest. So if you're constantly living in the sympathetic nervous system, no fight or flight, you're not allowing your body to properly digest food, motility is impaired, stomach acid is depleted, which impacts nutrient absorption and overall digestion of your food. So there's there's a hundred percent a correlation. They're not obviously directly related per se, but there definitely is a correlation between the between the two.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Now, why it seems like particularly in America, you know, this may be anecdotally, but you hear a lot of stories about the stomach acid or people having gut health issues, specifically in America. Like, what is it that we're doing improperly that's leading to some of these gut health problems?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

I think that's a very, very nuanced question. I think you could, you could look at that from a lens of I think our food quality is not as good. I think that that's a big part of it. I think when you listen to people go over to Europe, and I think we've talked about this before, honestly, people tend to have way better digestion. And I and I think that's a lot of that has to do with they are eating more single ingredient whole foods. So the the thing that I say to people, before I do any sort of advanced testing, and you know this already because I've talked to you about it. Whenever a client comes to us and is it, you know, complaining of certain digestion issues, chronic bloating, acid reflux, you know, whatever it may be, diarrhea, whatever constipate, whatever it may be, I always like to look at the low-hanging fruit first. And one of the things that are part of that low-hanging fruit is just looking at your food quality. Are you constantly consuming processed foods? Um, you know, are you eating a bunch of high glycemic carbohydrates? Like, what does that look like? And can we start to shift you into eating more of those clean whole foods? And a lot of times people start their a lot of their symptoms start to just go away in a lot of, in a lot of uh, you know, a lot of senses. So I like to start with that. And I think that that's a big component of it. So I think it's our food quality. Um, but then again, I think the other component is kind of like exactly what we're talking about. I think it's so many people are just are stressed out. I mean, for obviously a variety of reasons in America. Um, I think we do a really, really horrible job of being able to, you know, decompress. And, you know, I just think we're always in a go, go, go mindset. And I think that's really, really detrimental, not only for our gut health, but but for several mechanisms within our body, to be honest with you. So I I think it, those are probably the two biggest things. I think food quality and overall living in a sympathetically dominated state.

Whole Foods And Sustainable Dieting

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Going back to the the food quality, if you're someone who is dieting or looking for a diet, what are like the easiest go-to, like three whole foods that everybody should have in their diet and three things that they should absolutely avoid and cut out of their diet?

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Okay. Uh I think the the best way to go about the must-haves is, and again, I think I've told you about this before, but the pick it, kill it, grow it diet. Okay. So if you can pick it from a garden or um grow it in a garden or or kill it for meat, then that is all of those foods are gonna be okay for you or or better for you to eat, I should say. Okay. I feel like if you stick to if your diet is 80, 90% of that, you're you're gonna take care of that part of that equation. In terms of things that I think people should eliminate, I don't necessarily know if there's a a right answer to say completely eliminate, because I do believe there's there's a there's a way to have balance with everything. You know, I don't think there needs to be a completely, you know, cut out food group or completely cut out sweets all the time or or whatever. Like you can have like, you know, people talk about seed oils all the time, but you know, the ever everything is everything has seed oils. And I think it's more about the omega-3 to omega, omega-6 ratio. So again, you can kind of get in the weeds with this conversation, but I I don't think there's anything that I would say that you should absolutely eliminate, unless, of course, it's like causing you symptoms. If you know you're reacting bad to a certain food from a digestive standpoint, then I would say, okay, take it out for sure. But I don't think we need to live in complete, you know, uh restriction. You know, I don't I don't think that's appropriate. I think that that also has its own set of problems as well.

The Gap In Western Medicine

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Talk to me a little bit about, you know, what you're doing and and why you're so drawn to solving the gap with Western medicine, and maybe talk a little bit too about what is the gap in Western medicine that we're missing that is restricting people from not only just performing at their best as athletes and people, but also feeling their best.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah. So this all started, I think, when I started to get exposed to Western medicine in my nursing career. You know, I would, I would walk past people in the ICUs when I was an ICU nurse, and I would see a lot of young people, a lot of people that probably shouldn't be in a hospital setting. And I worked in acute care, I worked in, like I said, an ICU, you know, and I would see people that were 30, 40, 50 years old with strokes, things of that nature. A lot, now there are genetic components to those things, but a lot of that stuff at that age is lifestyle mediated. So, you know, from my standpoint, I always knew I had a passion for health and fitness, obviously from my, you know, football career and whatnot. But whenever I started to see those things, it kind of sparked something in me where I was like, you know what? I really feel like it would be impactful to impact people like that before they even got a chance to be in the hospital system. You know, it like if I could have, I always said I would walk past rooms and I'd be like, God, I wish I could have impacted that person five or 10 years ago, you know, and just help them make better choices surrounding their lifestyle. And they probably wouldn't be in this situation right now. You know, their family probably wouldn't be in this situation right now. So that was a big component of it. And then whenever I started working with more and more people with NLP, you know, I got exposed to some women. And really, I got to give the women the credit for this. I started to get exposed to a lot of like what we call functional health cases, things like PCOS, Hashimoto's, a lot of these gut health issues that we're talking about, some of this adrenal insufficiency things that we're talking about. And I started to realize, you know, a lot of these women would be going to their Western medicine doctors, and their answers were always the same. It was like either, hey, let's go on birth control or let's put you on an SSRI. Let's just do something from a medication standpoint to mask your set of symptoms and let's never address what is actually causing the symptoms. So, from my standpoint, being the obsessive, you know, person that I am, and I, you know, I've clearly I love school. You know, I've done enough of it at this point. I just, I'm obsessed with learning and I love physiology. So I started to dive into what is more of functional health. And I got a certification in it. You know, I've spent at this point, good Lord, tens of thousands of dollars on mentorships. And I just started looking to these things a lot more. And then whenever I got highly educated on them, I was solving some of these cases. And it's by far the most meaningful work I've ever done in my life. Like, to be honest, the physical transformations that we produce at NLP are cool. I like that part still, but I find way more meaning when I can impact someone's life in ways that just doctors can't at the end of the day. And, you know, where Western medicine falls short is kind of like I said, they always are looking for the band-aid. They're looking for the medication fix. They're never assessing a patient from a holistic standpoint that's taking into account, like, hey, what is your what does your sleep look like? You know, what does your nutrition look like? You know, what do all these things look like that are ultimately driving your symptoms? So right, they never look into the root cause. And then, you know, from a lab work standpoint, like, you know, insurance is always involved with them. So they're there people aren't getting approved to get the proper lab work and the proper testing done, which just leaves a massive gap because there's so many people that will have a lot of symptoms. They'll go to their doctor, they'll get a very, very basic panel done. And all that comes back, you know, quote unquote normal from Western medicine ranges, and their doctor kind of brushes them off and says, You're you're fine. And there's nothing we can really do for you. And people are just stuck frustrated and left with no answers. So, you know, from my standpoint, obviously being ingrained with nursing and then anesthesia now with Western medicine, you know, it's I I see both sides. Like there's obviously a really important part to Western medicine. Like we obviously need that. And, you know, doctors are so important. I have a such such a high level of respect for them. I don't want to get that part, you know, misconstrued. But I do think we do a lot of people disservice, you know, from a lot of different standpoints. So I wanted to bridge the gap between having a model of like, hey, there, you know, essentially NLP is kind of a combination of it's fitness coaching. It's, you know, we have an aspect of Western medicine in it because obviously I'm ingrained in it. But then I'm I'm kind of marrying the functional health side of things, root cause analysis all into one. So it I want it to essentially be a one-stop shop for people so they can come out not only feeling their best, but also looking their best.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

I've heard different theories on like why the healthcare system is the way it is, particularly with doctors and prescribing medications. I've heard, you know, for from different things is, you know, patients so desperately just want a type of solution that people will recommend that. And people are looking for quick fixes. And so doctors are willing to do that because it's less stress off of them. They don't have to worry about the pushback from the clients or the patients, excuse me. In your perspective, what is it that uh we tend to seem to go to the medication or the band-aid route? Is it the way the education system works? It like what is it that's being taught that it's medication prior to lifestyle changes?

SPEAKER_01 36:22

So I think that's largely dictated by what we're what we teach in medical school, to be honest with you. I I think we're we're in a in a society that preaches like, here is these issues or these set of symptoms, and this is the the repertoire of medications that we have available. This is the easiest thing to give somebody because you're like you said, like a doctor's not coming home with you to watch your diet, tell you to exercise more, tell you to sleep better, tell you to do all the basics, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

And that that's the thing. Sorry to catch you off. I was thinking about from like a liability issue, too. If like a doctor sends a patient home and says, hey, change whatever and you'll be okay, and say they don't change this and then they have a further catastrophic event. Now is there like liability on the doctor where they have to worry about either their credibility or lawsuits that may come with that? And uh normally doctors are pretty protected through the legal system. Yeah. But like, where does that like that factor into play is they don't want to have to deal with the backlash? Because most people, you tell them to do something, they're not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Correct. And to be honest with you, I don't think that's the issue, Colin. I really don't. I don't, I don't think there's any worry about a lawsuit or anything like that from that standpoint. I I think it's again, this is not me trying to badmouth Western medicine, but I think it's the laziest form of medical management that we have. I I just quite literally, I think it's it's completely lazy. Now, to your point, though, in and in doctor's defense, you can tell someone to do something all you want. It doesn't mean they're gonna do it. It doesn't mean they're gonna change their life. It doesn't mean they're gonna change their habits. You know, it it just unfortunately doesn't work like that. Um, you know, even from my standpoint, like even in our program, sometimes, you know, we we obviously have day-to-day touch points with clients if need be. And sometimes even that's a struggle for getting people to kind of, you know, start to do things, right? You can, you can coach and you can coddle as much as possible, but it doesn't, it you're you still can't do it for the person at the end of the day. You know, so there has to be some sort of, you know, uh jump starter mentality. There has to be some sort of motivation from that individual. But I think again, from a Western medicine standpoint and the doctors, I just don't think it's not that they don't care. It's just I I don't think the the model's not just set up, it's not set up to be that way. They're not, you know, they're they're billed from, you know, how many patients they see. And, you know, they're built from a, you know, pharmacology standpoint, right? The more drugs that they give out, they're obviously a lot of these people are are, you know, have deals with pharmaceutical companies and things of that nature. There's at the end of the day, I hate to say it, but there's always money involved. There is. So I think that's the biggest component to it.

Breaking Caffeine Dependence For Energy

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Something I want to go back to that we we talked about earlier, because obviously uh I'm going through a lot of this with you right now, is going back to like adrenal fatigue, caffeine. And for me, by all measures, I was addicted to caffeine. Multiple cold brews a day, didn't matter time of day, needed them in the afternoon for a pick-me-up, needed them in the morning. Now, I haven't had caffeine in in 10, 10 days whenever we we started this. Music to my ears. And if you like, I actually didn't think it was possible for me. I I I gutted through the first couple days, you know, from like a mindset shift, right? And you know, obviously that that's a lot of the work I do is like I told myself, like, these first few days are going to be brutal, they're going to be awful, but you can do it, right? And so like the approach each day was do it just for today. And so then you do that enough times and you don't really have to think about it. And so the the crazy part to me is actually like I do have like more energy now, day to day, even without the caffeine. And so now for me, it's like I I look forward to just like having like a cup of coffee eventually because I I enjoy it. Now, I will say I've been crushing decaf, but it's not the same. It's what is it that, like, what is it that gives your body energy? And if you don't have a raw supportive energy that you need and you're relying on caffeine, what is it that you can do from a simplicity standpoint to get yourself off of caffeine and get yourself more energy day to day?

SPEAKER_01 40:37

So ultimately, energy is gonna stem from the food we eat, ultimately, right? So if we think about metabolism, it is the breakdown of food. And it needs to ultimately end up as something called ATP. So ATP is the it is the energy currency for our body, right? Every single thing that I'm doing right now, me talking, me moving my hands, me speaking, my vocal cords moving, like all of that is driven by ATP. Okay. And if you don't have adequate ATP production, then you can have sluggish energy levels. Now, where do where do things in the electron transport chain and ultimately, you know, how does that impact AP ATP production? There can be, that could be a three-hour-long conversation in and of itself. You know, there's there's insulin resistance, there's, you know, chronic inflammation, there's chronic stress. Like a lot of these things impact, you know, cellular messaging systems, like that from the the physiological standpoint gets very complex. But ultimately, the lowest hanging fruit in terms of giving yourself energy are, you guessed it, the basics, right? Number, number one, making sure you properly fuel your body with enough calories, enough micronutrient content, make sure you're sleeping properly. And if you do the basics well, you will start to realize that you don't need caffeine. You don't need to rely on caffeine. And to your point, like with what we're working on in your situation, the other component to that is keep stress as low as possible. And I know that's it's easier said than done. Definitely understand that. But, you know, working on the habits that we're we're having you work on and kind of some of the things I was touching on early in the podcast, that's how you manage these things. And that's ultimately gonna be the most beneficial thing in terms of helping your adrenal gland health and ultimately, you know, kind of releasing the shackles that caffeine has, I think, on so many people.

Using Caffeine Without The Crutch

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Can you use caffeine as like a performance enhancer if done correctly? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

100%. I uh obviously we we know it. It's it's the most, you know, abused drug in the entire world. So do I think it could be used advantageously? Absolutely. I I use it advantageously, you know, but at the same time, you know, for example, you know, my unfortunately, my uh kidney stone issue last week. And I went, well, I guess it would have been nine, nine days without caffeine. I had no issues because I do, because I do that periodically. Like my energy never dipped. Like, yes, I was in a lot of pain, obviously. But like I never felt any detriment in terms of my cognitive function, my performance, any of that because I make sure I'm diligent about cycling off that from time to time and not being overly reliant on it. Right. And I think that's where more of an America needs to live. They need to understand that they don't need it. It's not the crutch that they think it is, or it's not the crutch they need to lean on as much as they think. Let the body function naturally. You know, I always relate things back to, you know, an evolutionary perspective, right? Like if we think about, you know, sleep, for example, we slept in caves. Like we had the best circadian rhythms of all time because truly our sleep wake cycles were were predicated, were were dictated by light, right? Our light exposure. So, you know, whenever we were in a cave and the sun was going down, guess what? Our our melaton was spiking very efficiently, right? And we had very little cortisol spikes because we didn't have screens, you know, we didn't have light exposure. It was the most optimal time, honestly, for human health. And obviously, we were eating clean whole foods, all that stuff. You know, the same thing from this standpoint, we didn't we didn't have caffeine thousands of years ago, right? You know, we didn't need it. And we went, we hunted for our food, like we were very efficient, you know, beings at that point, even back then. So I I think it just we need people to understand that it can be used advantageously. And yes, there are times where it can absolutely be beneficial, but it's just not to the point where it's like, hey, I'm relying on this to function. That's not good.

How To Work With Kyle

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Well, hey, I appreciate you coming on today, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

We could have talked a lot longer. I will say, I gotta go celebrate. My daughter just passed her allergy test. Heck yeah. Okay. We're gonna go out and uh enjoy that. Love it. But if people want to reach out to you, they want to get involved, they want to work with you, where can they find you? And if you're working on anything new to, you know, please shout that out as well.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Yeah, so biggest thing for me in order to reach me, I guess the best way to do that is Instagram, just at Kyle Baum2. Um, that's gonna be my personal page. You know, from a things that I'm working on, just things in in my life. I'm obviously continuing to look to grow NLP as much as possible. Um, you know, we've had great success this year so far. I'm very thankful for that. Um, I'll be graduating CRNA school in December. And then I'm looking in in 2027, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch a branch of NLP that deals with educating other people on how I kind of did what I did. And it's probably it's gonna be more focused for from a for nurses, to be honest with you, is teaching nurses how to get away from the bedside, how to potentially go into a career with functional health or or combine functional health and fitness coaching and teach them kind of my skill set, what I do, how I started NLP, and you know, how I you can ultimately be financially free and not have to rely on on bedside nursing for the rest of your career. So I'm super excited for that part. You know, it's it's a like I said at the beginning, like physiology is a a massive passion of mine. You know, I'm I'm gonna continue to study it and continue to make myself better, not only from a coaching standpoint, but you know, from a mentorship standpoint as well. And, you know, I'm just really looking forward to, you know, as time goes on here.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, you know, for coming on today. Thank you for all you you do for me. And hopefully, you know, our listeners will will reach out to you and you know start getting healthier. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. Tune in next week, next week. Check us out, athletic42.com. Go download the podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Five stars only, baby. Appreciate you, Kyle.