The Next Ridge

From Hormones to Healing: The Truth About PTSD, Wellness & Taking Your Life Back

• The Next Ridge • Episode 6

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:13:44

Are your hormones silently wrecking your health? Whether you're a veteran, first responder, or just someone who feels "off" and can't figure out why — this episode is for you.
We sat down with Dustin and Sarah, founders of Revival Wellness Clinic in Hayden and Sandpoint, Idaho, to talk about what's really going on inside your body when life, stress, and trauma take their toll. From testosterone decline and cortisol burnout to cutting-edge PTSD treatment technology — this conversation covers ground that most doctors never will.
Sarah, a nurse practitioner with a background in emergency medicine, breaks down how chronic stress, trauma, and environmental factors are tanking hormone levels in men and women — especially in high-demand careers like law enforcement, firefighting, and military service. We also dig into GLP-1 weight loss medications like Ozempic, the truth about TRT (testosterone replacement therapy), peptides, IV hydration therapy, and a brand-new VR-based neurotechnology called NeuroVA that is helping veterans and trauma survivors rewire their brains without medication.
If you've been struggling with brain fog, low energy, mood swings, poor recovery, or just haven't felt like yourself — this episode gives you real answers and a path forward.
Revival Wellness Clinic is now accepting patients at their Hayden and Sandpoint, Idaho locations. Take care of your body, your mind, and your future.
🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple Podcasts | 📺 Watch on YouTube
Search: The Next Ridge

🛠 For Real Estate Services or Questions:
Contact us:
John Fontaine -208-719-6881
Austin Johnson - 208-640-9001
Thenextridge208@gmail.com

👤 Connect with Revival Wellness Clinic
https://revivalwellnessclinic.com/

📌 Topics Covered in This Episode:

How chronic stress and trauma destroy your hormones — and why veterans, first responders, and anyone with high-cortisol careers are at the highest risk for testosterone and adrenal burnout without even knowing it.
The truth about hormone replacement therapy, GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and peptides — what they actually do, who they're right for, and why they're tools — not magic fixes — that only work alongside real lifestyle changes.
A groundbreaking VR-based brain recovery technology called NeuroVA — now coming to North Idaho — that is helping PTSD sufferers, TBI patients, rape survivors, and trauma victims literally rewire their brains through interactive gameplay, no medication required.

🛠 For Real Estate Services or Questions:
Contact us:
John Fontaine -208-719-6881
Austin Johnson - 208-640-9001
Thenextridge208@gmail.com

For the most up-to-date real estate listings check out our North Idaho Experience mobile app - click above to start searching today!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/north-idaho-experience/id6755906887

Grab our Relocation Guide:https://stan.store/JohnFontaineNIE/p/get-my-templateebookcourse-now-o8rm3ptl

Your Ultimate Selling Game Plan guide: https://stan.store/JohnFontaineNIE/p/subscribe-to-get-our-home-sellers-checklist


📱 Social Links
The Next Ridge Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenextridge208?igsh=MXh4ZzJ6aTI4dTVlbA==

North Idaho Experience
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/northidahoexperience/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/northidahoexperience


Brokered by:
REAL Brokerage LLC
Equal housing opportunity
======

****...

SPEAKER_05

So now we're back. And you're back from your cruise. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Cruise. We went up to Beaufort, stopped in Savannah. We would have been to Arizona. What else?

SPEAKER_04

That's it for now.

SPEAKER_06

Cool.

SPEAKER_04

Anything else gonna happen this summer? Any plans? Hmm. That's a good question. Are you doing bear camp?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. He paused. We can say it. You said we're on.

SPEAKER_04

It's okay. All right. When is that? Is that June? May?

SPEAKER_05

When did we do it last year? Well, I'll probably do the fall. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So get out traps.

SPEAKER_05

You guys missed it on Wednesday. Oh, yeah. We had Neuro Labs come in. The the designer of Neurova Labs come in. So it's a device that helps um helps the brain recover from traumatic injuries. So PTSD, uh TBIs, micro trauma. Micro traumas, traumatic events, like rape victims, stuff like that. Wow. Cool. Well, before we get into that, um let's introduce who we have here.

SPEAKER_01

Let's do that. Since they didn't catch the first one that we did already. I did record, it just stopped a minute and thirty seconds in. Sure. So we have Dustin and Sarah here from a revival wellness clinic. Um they have two clinics, one in Sandpoint and one now in here in Quarter Lane.

SPEAKER_06

Well, Hayden was our first location. Yeah. And then Sandpoint was second location. That's right.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. And uh it's just as you sound, it's a wellness clinic. So hormone therapy, um, sounds like now you guys got some new technology for some PTS stuff. Um that's amazing. What else? So on that, what does revival do? Or tell us a little bit about yourselves first. Yeah, well, well, yeah, Sarah, go ahead and start with that.

SPEAKER_06

Um so uh uh Revival Wellness Clinic, it's mostly hormone replacement therapy for men and women. Um along with that, uh as we age, a lot of people struggle with weight loss, so we do medical weight loss as well. Um the two go very much hand in hand. Um and then we have some additional services. Peptides are a big thing right now, so lots of peptides, and then um IV hydration, so IV therapies.

SPEAKER_04

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. What's your background again?

SPEAKER_06

Um I've been a nurse, registered nurse for God, I graduated in 2010, um, and then nurse practitioner for going on eight years now. Nice. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. So most of my background is in emergency medicine, which I really enjoyed, learned a ton, um, but saw the downfalls of that system um and wanted to get more back into prevention medicine. So that's when we moved up here to Idaho in 2022, and then we opened our first clinic in 2023.

SPEAKER_01

Nice. That's awesome. And you guys came from Colorado. Colorado. Yeah. And that was the Springs area, right?

SPEAKER_06

We lived in Evergreen, actually. So in the foothills of so just uh west of Denver metro area.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay, because the Springs is south of Denver. So correct. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then where you guys were, Evergreen was to the west of Denver area. So like over the Golden Area. Past the mountains.

SPEAKER_06

Like over the just northwest of Golden. Okay, cool. Into the foothills of Denver. Nice. Yeah, cool. It was nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I bet. Way that place has changed a lot, huh? It has.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

This is what politics will do to a great state.

SPEAKER_05

100%. Unfortunately. That's influenced our move up here. I mean that's a good thing. Quite a bit. I mean the changes that I saw in ten years of living there, oh, 11 years, was night and day. Yeah. Do you do what is Jesus?

SPEAKER_04

I'm retarded right now. TBI. Have uh what was it when they legalized weed? Was it 2013? 2014? Roughly. Yeah. Yeah, because I was over there. I think I left in 2014. That's when I left there. But yeah, it was great. And then when I came back in 2017, I was like, holy crap, it changed real quick.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, that's when it started, downtown Denver really started to deteriorate around that time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a moment. It is. And you you know, which is odd, right? You wonder why, like marijuana, right? Like what was it just that it was an influx of people that wanted to go to a state that was legalized? That was it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so, I mean, most people that can do that don't really have careers, right? So they're not fair. They're not pro really necessarily providing to society as a whole. So they have nothing to lose, like they're kind of degenerate. I don't want to say that.

SPEAKER_01

They're more of the degenerates, but yeah, the the folks that I think you know you're hitting on are yeah, career people or not career people that you know, where it's frequently tested. Right. Right? Where they can't do that, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And in a big city, they know they have resources. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01

So they can just kind of live off the system and and just mooch.

SPEAKER_06

And just do their thing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I was there in 2019. I was in the springs for a uh a prisoner transport. And that was the first time I'd ever been to Denver and then gone south to Denver. And I was blown away by the amount of like the homeless people on the sides of the highway. I couldn't believe I'm like, oh, Colorado's gonna be so awesome. Well, I guess the last time I'd been there was elk hunting, but we were off in the middle of nowhere, yeah. Um, which was awesome. But I yeah, I was just blown away by like the cities of tents and tarps and all this stuff just everywhere. It's you know, it kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_06

It does. Because like we we truly enjoyed like going down to do the sporting events like the Avs games, the Rockies games, all that kind of stuff, and then it just I mean, became like we'd always take the light rail system, which was really great, dropped you right off by the stadiums. Um, but even that, you know, downtown Denver became a problem, and then they start to infiltrate the transportation systems, and then it just becomes unsafe, uh uh which sucks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. Well, you guys found freedom in North. Yes.

SPEAKER_06

Love it here.

SPEAKER_01

Good. Yeah, don't we? That's the one beautiful part about this uh area and place is that um we don't have that. Yeah. We don't have hordes of homeless people. No. Thank goodness.

SPEAKER_05

I I gotta be honest, I mean it it is a concerning factor of mine, especially coming from Colorado. I saw what happened in Colorado in just a short time period. And with the influx of people, you know, from other states, you know, particularly maybe California, Washington, Oregon, does that mindset start to change here in Idaho? So that that's a concern of mine too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think a lot of people with the the amount of people that are moving here are concerned that it may change. But I don't know. I think because I think the people that are coming here are are like y'all. They're it's just like a like-minded people that are like they know what Idaho is about and what North Idaho is about. Um, and that's faith, family, and freedom and guns, you know, and it's like that's what people want to come here for to have those freedoms and not live off any kind of system that we have here. You know, I guess at the time, I mean, we're pretty read up here, pretty conservative in our values at least, you know, like we want to help people and people that need help get it, but we're also not gonna put up with people who don't want help and just want to not contribute. Right. You know, so I think I don't know. I think there probably are a lot of people that are concerned about that, but I don't think I don't know. In my mind, I don't see it, uh I don't see that that uh wall falling.

SPEAKER_00

I hope not.

SPEAKER_05

And I'll be honest, with with our friends or the people that we've met in the community that have moved here from out out of state, that's exactly it. They they all have the same mindset. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

They want to come here, be successful, thrive, be left alone.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's like we have this conversation multiple times a week. Yeah, we do. We do, man. Like I know what you're gonna say next, and like you're gonna finish my sentence, and I'll finish yours.

SPEAKER_01

It feels like God's building an army. I thought you were gonna finish it.

SPEAKER_04

I think God is building an army here. It does feel like that.

SPEAKER_01

Just like you said, the the people that are coming here and the clients that we've worked with, it's just like that. They're motivated to be involved in the community and be a part of something, but also want to be left alone and they don't want to be told what to do, and they don't want to have crazy tax increases, and you know that's awesome. It's a cool place. So you guys come up here and what what was the thought? So you you worked in the medical field in in uh emergency nursing um and saw kind of like the aftermath of what's going on. Like you were you were you're just putting band-aids on things for people, you know. And so you you had kind of a change and wanted to go into the preventative side, but not so much like uh in more of a what's the root cause.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's like that was kind of the concept behind the clinic.

SPEAKER_06

Yep, but so and I mean getting down to the root cause can be such a broad thing. Um, so I wanted to focus more so on on hormones. So and that's just a a part of the big picture.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Um and that's just I kind of wanted to specialize in that. So, you know, be the person in the area, like, oh, you need you know, want to check out your hormones, go check out revival, they'll get you hooked up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. No, it's great. You know, it I think on the surface level, you know, people don't realize how much your hormones have to play with everything that's going on in your body. And then how much all these outside factors are playing against your your hormone levels. You know, like all the plastics and everywhere, everything, everything is a fight against your natural hormones. Yep. And so you know, I think it's a great tool when uh if for the right purpose, right? Yes, you know, and and of course there's and just like steroids, you know, the whole steroid up and everybody was juicing and like, oh, this is great. What's the problem? Well come to find out to find out a little too much is not a good thing, you know. Sure. So it's good, and and it's good that more this is becoming more widespread, these like wellness clinics and hormone therapy clinics. Yeah. Because I don't know, I I feel like I never knew about any of that stuff until I moved out here. Like that that was a thing.

SPEAKER_06

Um or the opposite I mean, now like you mentioned, there's becoming more and more clinics, but um along with that, there's there's still a lot of misinformation out there about hormones. Um, you know, for decades we heard how terrible they are for you and all that, so a lot of people shied away from them. But I think that's starting to change, which I think is fantastic. It's still gonna take quite some time to for it to be more normalized, but um I people do their research. People, you know, with so much information out there, a lot of people do their research before they start to approach that subject.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and and I think, you know, I guess you look at it in the cost wise of things. I guess let's talk about like testosterone, right? It's one of those things that Nick again, environmental factors, especially for uh certain groups of people, uh first responders, military, um anybody that's been in a career or job where your cortisol levels are spiking up and down, or you've got a lot of traumatic brain injuries, right? Yes. Um that was new. I didn't know that was.

SPEAKER_06

ATSD too, whether it's physical or emotional.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And just it hammers that you're you know, and w so what's the root cause of that? Like with all those factors. So somebody say somebody's listening to this and they come from that kind of background. What is that stuff doing to their body?

SPEAKER_06

What is testosterone doing to their body? Uh I'm sorry, the those environmental factors, say like high stress or spikes, or but it also burns out your pituitary gland, which is where a lot of the signals to your testicles for men, your ovaries for women can that starts to become dysfunctional.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so it's all that stuff is it starts at the brain, correct? Essentially. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_06

A part of it. I mean, so you don't just produce hormones out of your testicles or your ovaries. You you have other pathways of producing hormones like from your adrenals and that kind of stuff too. But it's just like you just mentioned, you burn out your adrenals, then where else are you getting your hormones from? So you're and especially if you're in fields like that, let's say you've you know you're a police officer, you had a traumatic event, and you're chronically spiking your cortisol, that's like a double whammy. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So and that's like the adrenaline dumps and and stuff like that. So sitting in the squad room, eating cookie dough bites, and then going to uh worst career for you, man. After slamming a couple bang energy, dude.

SPEAKER_04

When I didn't know about bang, like when bangs first came out, I'm not kidding you, I was probably drinking two a night, dude. And I didn't know anything. This is before John knew John came around. Back then, I just would eat whatever. I didn't think about it. Yeah, right. Like I never looked at ingredients now. It's like, well, Doc, let's look at all the ingredients, you know. And we were just talking about this too, with wild game. Is wild game truly organic now?

SPEAKER_01

Well, the bears that we're feeding now absolutely not. City deer than city deer sometimes. City deer city deer. They got the roundup in them and all that. Well, yeah, you look at you look at, I mean, if you're hunting near any agriculture, it's getting sprayed and they're and they're spraying, like yeah, you're not getting truly grass-fed organic. Now, if you shoot that deer up on the top of a mountain, pretty darn organic, in my opinion. Or an elk that is living up in the valleys in the mountains, yeah. You're pretty pretty proud of it. It depends on how much you trust what's being sprayed in the air, too. The ball buried in an aluminum ball. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That's a good point. I freaking despise when they start spraying the sky. Oh, when people don't look up there, I'm like, dude, that's a freaking grid pattern. And it's nonstop, and then it was a beautiful day, and now everything's the sun's blocked. It's legit. It is straight up legit. There's a there's a vapor trail, and then there's fucking chemtrails. Complete different. Very different, very different. And then those clouds, like, oh, they're just clouds. Those are not clouds. Those are not clouds. You know what a real cloud looks like. Like the Wi-Fi clouds. Yeah, dude. Wi-Fi clouds message the Wi-Fi clouds. I'm like, oh yeah. I haven't seen those yet. Oh, you'll see the north.

SPEAKER_01

We saw them when we were when he was explaining them. Because uh he was like, dude, that's them right there. Because it looks like the Wi-Fi signal. It's from HARP up in Alaska.

SPEAKER_04

And when you see, you know how everyone's like, oh, we can see the northern lights here. I'm like, no, those are not real northern lights. Those are not northern lights. That's from HARP. They're manipulating our weather. Look into it. I'm not gonna go into details about that. Well, now those are not true northern lights. We're not supposed to see them down here. And then they're like, oh, you can see them with your phone only. Yeah, that's not a real northern light. No, no, and actually the real northern lights actually make sound like static, believe it or not. Really? I didn't know that. Static.

SPEAKER_01

Makes you wonder. I think part of the problem, I think society in in general right now is everything is demonized. Right? Like you've got it's I don't I think oh gosh, I'm trying to how do I word this? When you're on your journey, right, to try and do better, and people think that you have to draw this hard line in the sand on things, like energy drinks or diet soda. Now, I I am a proponent, I drink diet soda, I drink Coke Zeros.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, when did that happen?

SPEAKER_01

That's very recent. It is because I just I don't I stopped drinking, I I started drinking less alcohol. I don't drink beer like hardly at all anymore. Yep. And so like prior to the whole diet soda thing, like I'd have a beer, maybe two a night. Sure, you know, you know, and and it was just normal that not like I was getting drunk every day. You were just getting the Midwest out of you. Dude, you were coming.

SPEAKER_04

It didn't want to leave, bro. It didn't want to come out.

SPEAKER_03

I had the same experience, bro, when I first moved out here. It took a while for the Midwest to get out of here. You're detoxing, bro. I did.

SPEAKER_01

And so like now like and I drink I could always probably drink a little bit more water, but now like I don't drink as much beer, but I'll have like my I'll have my Coke Zeros, right? And like, but now there's study there's studies that say, oh, aspartame can kill you, um, it's there's carcinogens in them, okay. But then you look at the other studies and you're like I would have to drink 48 cans a day for it to be a harmful level for my body. It's a lot. Now, granted, is it a great ingredient for you, but it's at such a small dose that and it's so infrequent that it's not building up in my body. Now, if you got people that are drinking a 12 pack a day, you're probably you've got some other problems. Yeah, you know, you're you know, but like yeah again, i it just gets demonized on one side or the other, right? And and I think you just gotta do it what fits. For your journey, for your fitness journey, or your health journey, if drinking more um, you know, Coke Zeros or zero sugar soda prevents you from drinking, I don't know, more alcohol or prevents you from drinking sweetened stuff, but it's a it's a path to get away from it, man. Like it's great. I think it's I think it's great for weight loss. There's no judgment here, man. Sometimes I feel like judgment quite a bit. I don't judge you. No, but like I I just think like zero, yeah, I do. I feel like there's just so much um negativity on both sides, right? Like it I think it's hard for and the demonization, right? Like you can't go on social media, which is the worst part of everything is social media, right? You can't get on there and say so you get on there and someone's telling you eggs are bad for you. And then you get on there and someone's telling you, oh, you can't have a steak is bad for you, or like everybody's trying to demonize.

SPEAKER_04

Everybody's an expert, those are the losers, though, bro. Well, those are the losers of the world. People that think meat's bad, eggs are bad, and they're all the they're the parasites of the world.

SPEAKER_01

But it's but it's also on the other side of the coin, too. Where like I the carnivore MD dude, that guy's great. I I love that guy. But do I think he toes the line pretty far on one side? Yeah, I think he does. He has when he and when you talk, when you when you hear him talk about it, he's like, look, I know that I'm way down this rabbit hole. Like, this is how I live my life, and I'm not telling anybody else this is how you need to live your life. I'm just giving you the facts that like here I am. But now you've got people scared of touching receipts because he's talked about how like the receipts from stores have the thermal paper has like it can kill you, can cause cancer, everything can cause cancer. Everything's getting to us.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Well, it's you got to take all the information into moderation to take it a little bit, take in both sides if you can, take in all thoughts of the argument, yeah, and form your own opinion. Exactly. And that's the problem. People don't critically think anymore. Well, they they take the word of somebody else, like an influencer, like and that's the word of God. But you need to be able to critically think on your own. For sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04

The problem though, with the people that are anti-meat and anti-egg, they're fucked up, dude. Like they want to take that from us. Yes, they do. That's that's the problem right there. They're not good people. I I could care less what you say. They're they want to take away our rights. Like, just leave us the fuck alone. You do your thing, we'll do our thing. Yeah, let's just all get along. Yeah. But they're nuts. I think they're illegit nuts, dude. I think they're I think they're NPCs, bro. They don't have souls. I swear. I'm gonna I swear they're NPC, bro.

SPEAKER_05

That doesn't hurt my feelings at all. I don't care how you live your life. Absolutely. And that that's just going back to the uh living in Idaho. Let me live the life that I want to live, how I want to live it, and get the fuck out of my way. Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. I know I don't care if you don't want to eat eggs. That's more eggs I get to eat. Yes. For me, yeah, but so for instance, right, like so again, we go like on the ingredient side of things, right? Like when you look at ingredients, so the in this there's carbonated water, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium, citrate, citrate, yeah, citrus, malic acid, caffeine, sodium, benzate, potassium sorbate, sucralose, L-theanine, whole coffee fruit extract. Anyways, uh niacin, there's more.

SPEAKER_04

You know what the big one though? The big red flag for me is natural flavors.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what is it? Because they can hide. Well, how many things could be in natural flavors, right? So the thing of it is is and that's a and I get that, but like when you're like what are all of these things in here? Well, about 90% of these are stuff you get from food, anyways. Like these are all all this stuff is in food that you eat already. So that so I I can understand when people are like, well, if you can't pronounce the ingredients, like stay away from it. Well, do your research, right? Like, look into it a little bit. Don't just go, ah, I can't drink that because it has potassium sorbate in it. Well, look at what other foods out there have potassium sorbate or what other natural foods have it. Is that a banana potassium? Banana's full of potassium sorbate. What's sorbate? A lot of fruits of potassium. Sorbate, though. I wish we had, I wish this is where we need often. What is sorbate? What else has okay? Now we're gonna listen to it.

SPEAKER_04

No, and I agree. Everything in moderation, man. You gotta live your life and all that. I mean, we're we live in a world that's designed for us to inject or or not inject, uh, that's the wrong word. We're surrounded by chemicals.

SPEAKER_06

Yes. We are.

SPEAKER_04

We live in a world surrounded by chemicals from from everything. From your the time you're born, right?

SPEAKER_06

They they utero now they're seeing.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, well, yeah. And then um gosh, like they were talking about well, we could vaccines is a whole freaking other topic for babies and all that stuff. Um but uh placentas. So they were doing a study. I'm gonna go back to the meat thing again. Um vegetarian. If you want to be vegetarian, whatever, I don't care, right? Right. Um but they were doing studies showing women who were on a plant-based diet during pregnancy. The placenta looked like they smoked like a pack or two packs of cigarettes a day when um when the child was born and all that. And I feel like you're missing key. And that's where I always go back to the whole um the vegetarian world. If you hey, I'm gonna drop you off in the middle of the woods and go survive, you know, what what are you ultimately gonna do? You're probably gonna try to find some birds, you're gonna find some something, right?

SPEAKER_05

Some kind of protein. Guaranteed you're not gonna know how to live off of whatever plants are available, right? Right. I can only eat so many dandelions. But they can go to the grocery stores like, well, I know I can eat lettuce and cucumbers and those aren't you can't find that in a natural environment. Can vegetarians eat fish? I don't think vegetarians can't. Vegans can't. Oh, yeah, vegans can't. No animal product.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, vegans are. Vegetarians, I think, can. Well, there's a difference. Yes. My eyes get so confused, dude. There's too many. Right drone rules. Oh, okay. Retrown rules. So the potassium sorbate. Uh, so it is it is chemically produced, right? Um, however, sorbic acid occurs naturally in different plants, mountain ash, um, and then other berries can be can be found.

SPEAKER_04

I can see mountain ash, it can be very acidic.

SPEAKER_01

So all it is is it it helps preserve it so it doesn't get moldy. And like it's in a lot, it's in cheeses, it's in milk, it's in it's in stuff that expires fairly quickly. Um and again, they used to they used to source it from berries, they used to use that to put it in the food, get it naturally. So this is this mass produced this study mass produce it. Yeah, because they because they can't, it's far too expensive to get it naturally from these from the food. And that's why healthy foods are more expensive than the non-healthy foods. Oh, a hundred percent, dude. Yeah, isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_04

Dude, and then and then the whole organic thing. Oh, it's such a scam. But you know what's crazy too? This is what really freaking is nuts. If we average American probably has like maybe a quarter acre for maybe, maybe a little less. But if we all did our own gardens, you know, everybody instead of this grass, like, oh, I've got to have the perfect grass. Fuck grass, dude. That shit's so gay. Seriously, it's like I mean, seriously.

SPEAKER_05

We're just putting a shit ton of grass in the house.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's hard, but like, what are you doing? It's uh yeah, I understand it's the American aesthetic, right? I had the perfect lawn, but like, what does that grass do for you? Nothing. Like, dude, throw some like white Dutch clover out there. I did that because now the honeybees, I'm not a honey bee person, I'm I'm not a bee farmer, beekeeper, um, but the local honey bees now come to my my yard and they're all over just doing their thing, so helping support them that way. Yeah, but it and it's really good for the soil too, the white Dutch clover. Um, but uh, anyways, that's a whole I had to go in my soapbox right there because I'm like, it's just another scam. Like, I gotta spend all this money to do this for my lawn. And now, meanwhile, if we were all like building beautiful gardens everywhere, yeah, our yards, no, dude, I told you.

SPEAKER_01

We could really change, have a shift. I think I think you see that way more up here. I think I don't know how many homes we show, and I'm like, oh, they have a garden. Oh, they have chickens and an atrium, dude. I just saw my first atrium. That was really cool. But to cast to be on the other side of the coin of that, it's like if you're that kind of person that that's what makes that's what brings you joy in life, is having a manicured yard. There's just some some dudes, man. That is like a dick. Who freaking cares? Who am I to judge? You're right. And then you know I'm a dick. I get it. Let's get it out. If you love your yard looking like a golf course, cool. Cool. Like if that brings you joy in life, because there's some dudes out there. There's one of my neighbors, he's that way. Yeah, he's an old guy. You know, he's just like it's it is meticulous. His yard is meticulous, but like that's what he takes pride in. That's what he loves. So like I get it.

SPEAKER_04

Because he have flowers and all that. Yeah, dude. Well, see, I'm I can get down with that. When it's just grass, and like you gotta have like the million lines in it all the time. Oh, yeah, some puts plants.

SPEAKER_01

Some people are like got a little touch of the tism and need to have I know you're right. They got they have to be in line. It's got I am when I mow my grass, I have to I try to stay in the lines. I do a horrible job. I need to I looked at my blades on my mower. Oh, bro. I've hit way too many pine cones and rocks to not have them sharpened. Yeah, apparently that's really in yeah, having a really sharp mower blade is good for your good for everything moving.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I'm sorry that you guys are offended by my grass talk. And to everybody else, I mean I'm I'm the minority here, I know that everyone's like, no, fuck that.

SPEAKER_06

We'll send you pictures of our beautiful lawn when it comes out.

SPEAKER_04

I can't wait to see it. I'm sure it's some looks really nice. And I probably would want to lay in it. Just don't put Roundup in the soil because too. I'm gonna get heated now. Yeah, I know. Calm down. Let's get these chemicals out of here, please. Stop spying.

SPEAKER_01

And yeah, I and that's the part too is like, man, if you want to do that stuff, like try and find a better way to do it than spraying all that stuff. Because it just goes in our water, you know, and like I get it. But like there's gotta there's a different, there's gotta be a better way. I don't know. I don't know anything about lawns. Well, it's like it's like big pharmaceuticals. I gotta cut my grass.

SPEAKER_04

Dang.

SPEAKER_01

You got big food, you got big pharma, and you got big lawn. Big lawn. Big lawn.

SPEAKER_06

With the chemicals.

SPEAKER_01

I do get I did, I man, I watched this guy, a video of a guy getting his yard ready for the spring, and he's one of these, you know, like he's out there with like sand and he's like spreading sand everywhere, getting everything perfectly level, and he's like, I'm like, and this dude is geeking out over this. Like this, he his mower is like, I don't know, it's like a golf course mower, it's like for the greens. You know, like one of those guys. I'm like, geez, dang, dude. But I'm also the type that like I I when I mow I have to have the bag because I don't like grass trimmings everywhere.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because they just get everywhere.

SPEAKER_06

Mm-hmm. That's true.

SPEAKER_01

And then they die and then it looks brown, and mostly because I don't I wait so long to cut my lawn that they're like two inches long.

SPEAKER_04

Please don't mow in May. No mow may. No mow may. It's a real thing. Do not mow. Yeah. Everybody listening, do not mow your lawn in May.

SPEAKER_00

April.

SPEAKER_04

It's good for the bees.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know, dude.

SPEAKER_01

This is uh if I'll I'm gonna hold out as long as I can, but it's already starting to get out. I know it's an early state. Because we had such a we didn't have a winner at all. I know. Weird crazy weird winner. Yeah. I'm like looking at the the grass along my patio and like there's no way of making it through May. It's already this small.

SPEAKER_04

I did it last year. I'm not kidding you. It took me like four hours to go through that stuff because it was two feet tall minimum. Oh my gosh. It was so I had to use the weed whacker to start, yeah, everything. That's a lot of grass. I know. But the bees love me. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure they did. Yeah, they love me. So back to hormones though. I mean, we I mean that touches on it. We we're touching base on everything.

SPEAKER_01

Everything's out there to kill us. Yeah, especially and we're talking about like health journey, right? Like, and that's what I think people that are looking into clinics for hormone therapy are finally like the uh so many people are waking up and realizing that wow, maybe some of one, maybe my life choices have damaged my hormones. Maybe it's my career, but waking up to the signs of it, right? Because and I think especially in like those high stress jobs, military's first restaurant. Well, even childhood trauma is huge, man. Childhood trauma is major. Yeah, and like people are waking up, like, oh, maybe this is why I'm the way I am, or this is why I'm having hard time with all this stuff, because uh of these factors that I I can't see or I don't know. Like man, I'm trying to clean up my diet, I'm trying to trying to do all these right things, but I'm still not getting there. Well, and so can you explain what happens like to your hormones when they get out of balance so bad or like your testosterone drops? What are your options to help that? Is it is it uh strictly getting on you know hormone therapy, or are there other ways to try and get some of those back? Or you know, I know because like once you get on TRT, um your body stops producing it, correct? Or like really to some degree, it really di diminishes it because you're supplementing it. Yeah, is that with most of it, or I just want to dive into that a little bit, like just the the science behind what happens when your hormones are all out of balance.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. So I mean, it's it's very complex. Some hor some hormones affect other hormones, so I mean, even having some thyroid dysfunction can alter your testosterone levels. So um when I'm you know looking at a gentleman, I'm looking at kind of a big broad picture uh with labs, and then of course, symptoms, which there are a schlew of symptoms. I mean, there's the common ones that you know come up like, oh, I'm not meaning attaining as much muscle mass or my you know, my workouts um they're the recovery is a lot worse than it used to be. Um I'm having a harder time losing weight, um, fatigue, motivate lack of motivation, there's sexual dysfunctions, um, but it can be more subtle things like anxiety out of nowhere, or you know, different um other symptoms you wouldn't necessarily think are related to testosterone, uh lack of testosterone. Um so when I'm looking uh you know, when I'm looking at labs, I'm considering all these factors. There's there's different reasons for low testosterone. Um sometimes, like as we kind of mentioned, there can be, you know, factors from previous, like chronic PTSD, you know, untreated PTSD. There can also be physical factors. So having you know undecended testicles when you were younger, or if there was trauma to your testicles, or certain medications can actually plummet your testosterone levels. So the SACTAC game. That was that was brutal.

SPEAKER_04

Damn it, Mike. I'm gonna find out you might.

SPEAKER_01

Dang it.

SPEAKER_06

I still remember that day. Yeah, it's not there's there's several factors that we're thinking about as to, you know, some if a man comes in and their testosterone levels are on the lower end, uh, you know, you know and it can and it can then dictate how we provide treatment. So yes, there's straight up testosterone. You know, if you've done the if they're coming into the clinic and you're like, I've tried working out, I've tried dialing in my test, you know, my diet and all that, and testosterone levels maybe come up a hundred points or or so, but you're still feeling symptomatic, um, then there are a couple options. You could, you know, for some HCG alone can be helpful or just straight up testosterone. But yes, like you mentioned, once you're on testosterone, your natural production will come down. Um if you ever decide to come off testosterone, there's a safe way to do it, but um you can you will go right back to your baseline if you decide to come off of it.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, so you won't be will you kind of come back where you started? Is that what you're saying? Oh, so you won't be like at zero.

SPEAKER_06

No.

SPEAKER_01

Your body won't like stop producing it at all. Very rare cases of that. Well, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01

I thought like once you got on it, you're on it. And if you want to come off of it, like you're gonna That's what I thought. You're gonna start going. You're gonna feel like you're gonna go back to your basic level.

SPEAKER_05

You're gonna switch the other team, you know. But it's gonna be more noticeable. Sure because our decline was slow, it was a slow progress process. And when you start supplementing, you regain that that testosterone level. Yeah, so you're sitting at a higher level, and then if you take yourself back off, you you have that we'll call it a crash because now it's noticeable. It was like I was operating at this level, I felt great, and now I went back to my baseline and I feel like shit. Sure. Yeah. Well, you felt like shit before, you just didn't know. Didn't know it because it was it was the norm. It was gradual and it was the norm for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Uh question, uh, so when people do come in, uh, besides just going immediately into like uh I'm sure I already know the answer. You probably already do this, but it's like, hey, let's put you on this, this. Do you actually like look at like, hey, what's your daily activities look like? Like, what are you eating? Uh what's your what's your full day look like for you? Are you waking up and actually going to see the sun? Or are you just literally just rolling out of bed, slamming a drink? Exactly. So I assume you already did that, but I just for listeners, if you maybe you should start with that as well and see what your day-to-day looks like. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I think there's there's so much stuff you can start doing on your own before you start you know diving into like I just need to inject myself with something like that. Well, and I think that's I think that can be a problem, right? Because I think we when we kind of talked about this on the last one, uh, that didn't get recorded. Um that I think some people see hormone therapy as a cure-all, right? Like true. I'm gonna get I'm gonna just start taking testosterone and I'm gonna be freaking Jack Reacher, you know, right? Alan Richardson.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, I would that'd be cool to be that big. That dude's a giant. Yeah. It makes Superman look small. Dude.

SPEAKER_01

I actually saw I I watched the uh uh a video of the whole incident when he beat that guy up after he pushed him off his motorcycle. Oh, yeah, I saw that. That's cool. So like I don't know, did you guys see that? You know the actor Alan Richardson, uh, who plays Reacher and he played uh who else does he play? Oh you would Fad Castle in Blue Mountain State. He's just a big jack, dude. Anyways, he uh and the guy's yeah he so he's like ri he's going through his neighborhood riding his motorcycle with his kids, and some dude, like one of his neighbors or a neighbor in the gets out and like jumps in front of him while he's coming down the street on the bike. He dumps the bike and he's wearing like a little camera on his chest, so he's recording this whole thing. And some ring cameras recording as well. Well, the video they show everybody right away is just Alan, this Alan Richardson beating the hell out of this guy. And uh, but then come to find out, this dude jumped out in front of him and like wouldn't let him get back on the bike and is just yelling at him. He's like, Are you are you crazy right now? Like, get so he gets back on the bike and he tries to leave, and the guy pushes him off his bike, and that's when he like pushes him and starts beating him up. He's like, Don't freaking push me off my bike in front of my kids. Exactly. Like, yeah, he he just beats this dude up and he's trying to get him to just stay down so he can get on his bike and leave. And the guy just keeps coming up and just keeps hitting him. And uh, so then there's the police body cam footage, right, of them interviewing the guy that jumped that he beat up, that jumped out in front of him. He's like, I just came out to ask him to slow down, and his story is way off way off. And then uh you get they go up to Alan Richardson's house and he's just sitting there super calm. He's like, No, yeah, he's like, obviously, uh like I'm this is kind of high profile because of who I am, and he's like, I'm gonna get a hold of my attorney um just in case. Like, oh no, we're not saying you did anything wrong. And and then he's like, I have a video. He's like, because all they saw was the ring camera, the cops, they saw the camera footage, and he's like, Did you see what happened before that? He's like, I think they cut it, and then he shows them his body camp or like his little chest camera, GoPro, and they're like, and you're like, that dude had every bit of you. Exactly. Have a great day. So, anyways, to go to go back to what we were talking about. Um Were you on a Roy Rage? Is that what you're trying to go across? No, just like that people's expectations that when they get on some kind of hormone therapy that or a GLP one, that it's just gonna be some kind of magic pill or magic injection that's just gonna magically make them be huge or like get skinny. And the truth of the matter is like it's a tool to help you in your journey once you've gotten to the point that's like, man, I think I think I need to find some like I need a little extra help in this. And but I think society the way it is, it's just everybody's looking for the easy way of a quick fix. And that's not where that's not.

SPEAKER_06

And that can be very dangerous, actually.

SPEAKER_01

Definitely, yeah. Well, the the whole uh with the Ozempic, right? That was a big thing for a long time. Oh yeah, and you look at like Hollywood folks and they start getting like the the Ozempic face, and it's like it's bad because they oh it's working. Well it it was it's like suppresses your appetite, correct? Is that yeah, it works.

SPEAKER_06

It works with by three main mechanisms, but appetite suppression is one of them.

SPEAKER_01

And and it's just like that's not good. It's not healthy.

SPEAKER_06

No, and if you think about that long term with those types of the GLPs, if they're used incorrectly, you will accelerate osteoporosis by muscle wasting.

SPEAKER_01

Oh wow. So that's where you're seeing that correct that muscle loss. Oh, okay. So so for something like GLP1s, um, which is for weight loss, that is just more of a tool, temporary tool to get you It should be. Should be. Okay. It should be. How long do you do you suppose somebody should do that? Uh what's I guess it just depends on the person?

SPEAKER_06

It depends, yeah. And I agree, and these are the conversations I like to have with my patients. I do like to use it as a tool too. So at some point, the the goal is to come off these medications, right? Um so address the underlying issue as to why you know what got you there to that point you're wanting to be on these medicines. Part of that's hormones, a lot of it is lifestyle. Uh and oftentimes the combination. So same thing like with testosterone or really any medication. If you're not doing the foundational work, you will either be on this medication forever, which can have long-term detrimental effects, the GLPs potentially. Um and same with testosterone. Yeah, I can give you testosterone, but if you're not putting in the work, you're not gonna see the results that you maybe were expecting.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, well so and some people write, like you may you may feel uh great. Like say you just I I think everybody maybe yearly should just go have their labs done. I think that's a very I think just go see what your blood looks like because you never know what's going on in there.

SPEAKER_00

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

Um even if you feel good, like just see where you're like where you're at. Um but you know, if you're uh a person that feels good and but doesn't feel like they need that kind of stuff, like great. Awesome. Because your levels could be lower, but you could still feel great.

SPEAKER_06

Right, and that's fine. Yeah. But there may be a point where you don't, and yeah, and that's and that's a different that's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because I is it so is it true that just kind of like everybody's baseline where they feel good at what kind of different levels? That's just personal, right? So like some some might somebody might need to be at like an 800 uh to feel well to feel well, and somebody could be at a 300 and feel fine.

SPEAKER_06

Right. Everybody's different, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I think the biggest thing for me was um the brain fog, um the you know, the um I was just gr uh groggy all the time, tired. I didn't have any energy, I wasn't sleeping well. Um how about the mood swings? Did you have mood swings? The mood swings, yeah. I had them really big talking about that. Yeah. Yeah, and that was and again, like physically I felt pretty good. I mean, I have put my body through the ringer up until this point in my life, uh but that of my own choice, right? Like I just have always been physical and doing something. Um but it was it for me, it was the it was the mental side of things, and then I needed to see what was going on because even when I tried doing better sleep, tried cleaning up what I was eating, um, and it and it helped, but it was I just didn't feel like it was enough. Um and uh yeah, and and it's been great. Um I I've I think I've I just feel a lot better mentally. Physically physically, I don't think I noticed too much of a difference. Um, with like maybe a little more better recovery time. Like I feel like I'm recovering a little bit better, but by no means do I feel like I'm 18 again. Um I know I I've heard some people that would get on it and they're like, oh my god, I feel like a teenager again. Like, I'm not, and I don't feel that good. But I don't know what else you're taking. That's true. Yeah, but like, um, yeah, I think it's just uh an individual basis if you feel that way, and maybe you feel like you're you're going through all the steps, you know, you're you're uh cleaning up what you're putting in your body, right? You're getting better sleep, you're you're doing all these things, and it's still not there, not there, then I think for sure, go check it out. For sure.

SPEAKER_06

You know, and even for some, you know, who uh same thing, it can it can be used as a tool. So use you know, especially for someone who maybe is overweight. weight and just really struggling to to dodge that um bear putting them on testosterone can give them that motivation like there okay there I'm feeling a little bit better now I can get my ass into the gym and and do what I need to do. So I've seen plenty of instances like that too.

SPEAKER_01

Almost like a I don't want to call it a placebo, but like on the same lines of like okay I've started this now it's time to feel just another step on the journey for sure. That's really cool. Yeah I think uh I think it's it's a great tool. Um and and I used to be like a hundred percent against the GLP ones as like I'd see them and I'm like and I still see the commercials and the way they advertise for it it almost feels like they're they're obvious it's big pharma they're pushing stuff they're you know they want people to get on it because they want people to buy it because it's some magic for life bro. Yeah and like and that's where I think clinics like your guys' is help so much with that where you're not like you're gonna get you're gonna lose all the weight in being informative and letting people know like well I'm glad you're here but this is a a tool this isn't you still have to look at what you're eating you need to exercise regularly you need to and when you're exercising like you gotta push a little bit like you need I can't just like and again take this if you're starting your journey like if your physical exercise starts out with man you go for a walk three days a week.

SPEAKER_06

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Great. If that's more than you were doing the week before sweet. But like you constantly have to keep pushing yourself to the next level. So when you're walking three days a week and you do that for two to three weeks and now you're starting to see some results okay now let's incorporate some resistance training. Yeah like let's let's work on some more of that. And so on the health side of things when it comes to fitness and weight loss so men do pretty well in you know like whether that's crossfit or resistance training or cardio training we can pr our bodies will adapt pretty well and do okay with that. When it comes to women is it and I just heard this so I want to get your guys' opinion on it when it comes to like CrossFit don't do women do better their bodies react better to strength training or just resistance training than um like just straight say like Pilates. You know like just I just do Pilates four days a week.

SPEAKER_06

That's hard because I I do always encourage a a combination of resistance training and cardio. Now when you're a little bit when you're younger like 20s 30s coming into your 40s um you can get away with more cardio than strength training. As you get into like the perimenopausal and menopausal phase of life you really need to focus on strength training because it's gonna hold your muscle mass which in turn reduces your risk of osteoporosis. We don't have that risk of osteoporosis when we're in our 20s and 30s like we do when we start to age. So I I do like to encourage more resistance training in the in the older generation the later generations. Pilates is great.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I was just throwing that up too no hate on Pilates is so hard it's freaking hard yes I'm not I'm not knocking on the I'm just like an hacker button my mind.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah absolutely but comparatively to like lifting weights on the other on the on the other side of that like if if the thought of like going to a gym and lifting weights just is nauseating to you and Pilates is your option then I'm gonna encourage that. Right.

SPEAKER_01

It's better than nothing it's better than nothing.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely but you don't get as much resistance training with Pilates as you would you know like traditional resistance weights. And I think there's a lot of especially when I talk to my weight loss patients um and I always say you don't have to be some gym bro like you just some weights you can get at home even resistance bands you know something. You don't have to go sweat in the gym for two hours a day. Like dedicate half an hour to do some reps get it in that is better than nothing.

SPEAKER_05

Absolutely body weight exercises are great. Yeah you don't have to have gym equipment to do it.

SPEAKER_06

Especially when you're just getting like just starting out right and don't overdo it and don't either don't injure yourself.

SPEAKER_01

And that's the other thing that I've learned in the last few years like I used to think that I had to be in the gym five days six days seven days a week right like man I and like every day okay I have one rest day I think that was also detrimental for myself too because I'm not my body's not recovering. Like those rest days are so important. Yeah and you know when your body needs a rest man yeah you know your body's telling you that you gotta take it off and it's just you get in your mind you're like oh no the inner bitch is is in there telling me not to go but the older you get though I feel like I mean I've definitely noticed that like I'm taking a day off.

SPEAKER_04

You can just feel it man you just know you know like I'm gonna I'm gonna have an active recovery day and I'm just gonna go for a long walk.

SPEAKER_01

Because again exactly you know just you don't have to walk some sunshine and but I feel like I think I've been going to the gym for so long like I kind of feel like an addict sometimes like if I can if I can't get my fake like if I can't go to the gym I'm not gonna have a good day like a good workout. If I can't go spend my hour hour and a half working out like my day my day is off. And I don't and because I know anything is better than nothing, right? So then I'll try to get something in but I still don't it's it's a mental thing. Because like I just feel like I need to be in the gym to get a workout because I've tried working out at I I have I can work out at home. It's not a big deal I'll go for a walk or go for a run or do some body weight exercise or something but I still feel in my mind I'm like I didn't go to the gym dinner bitch won today.

SPEAKER_04

Didn't get it done you did something but you didn't do it all that's a good thing many so weird it's I think it was just a disciplined thing honestly it's just been something I've done so long and I forget the actor yeah I forget the actor but he said if you can't take care of yourself in your 20s and your 30s the rest will take care of itself. Yeah you know you just gain that discipline because you know what your body feels like and you want to treat it like a temple right you want to eat good I noticed a huge difference when I eat clean now that I've been counting the calories I stopped doing it because now I stick I eat the same shit every day. And you know your and I know my stuff right but man what a difference between even like uh um my stool dude seriously like I was a huge I was for like three years I was just doing high protein high fat like zero carbs and I was always wondering what why my stool was not great. No fiber bro exactly no fiber but now yeah I'm putting back like I'm put incorporating oats in the morning with my protein and then uh like I love Japanese purple sweet potatoes and then green beans oh my gosh but man everything's great again you know and I'm noticing like getting more way more lean again um it's just anyways that's that discipline right because we've been doing it for so long and you want to treat your body good and you you want to see go to the next step right that whole journey.

SPEAKER_01

And it's I think it's it's interesting when you start like uh focusing on how you're feeling because I think for for years right you just you're kind of just going through the motion whatever is in your 20s and 30s right like trying to figure out like you're just trying to figure out like what is this generally paying attention to your body like you know how much should be you're just like whatever I'm eating this I'm doing this I have to focus on this whether it's your job or career or school or whatever you're not like conscious about what's going on a three day bender on a bachelor party in your 20s you know start drinking right away in the morning keep going you know I know that makes me ill thinking what did I do to our hormones hurt myself drinking three years of bachelor parties all summer binge drinking we would literally show up in the Wisconsin Dells we'd show up we'd go to the liquor store our shopping cart would be just full full to the brain's the worst part is we always came home with extra like because we went because we'd go out to the bars I know and then we'd spend your money there. Oh my gosh the the most ridiculous I spent oh my gosh when I came home from Afghanistan in two in 2013 I was at the bar what what was it Tuesday through Saturday every night because I was home I was like I felt like I'd missed out on a year of life that I needed to like make up and so if Tuesdays were like I don't know what Tuesday was.

SPEAKER_04

Wait was this in Duluth yeah oh my gosh we can do this right now all right so Duluth was um the Rex.

SPEAKER_01

Tuesday night was the rex no the reef the reef the reef Tuesday night was the reef yeah Wednesday was the rex Wednesday was college night at the rex Thursday night was up bar and karaoke at Spurs and then Friday and Saturday was Dividend. Yeah first street and then grandma's on Saturday no we had a problem we had a problem yeah we had a problem so getting back to like what you're you know focusing on just just trying to pay attention to what your body is doing and I'm still learning you know but like I feel like now again I've been counting calories and watching more of what I eat but also like kind of keeping that 80-20 rule. Yep like 80% of the time I'm 9020 he's a little strict I'm 90 I'm not going to no it's not no it's not because when we stop at freaking uh what's it on our way to hunting uh the uh Regis St. Regis yeah every time we stop at St.

SPEAKER_04

Regis homeboys grabbing two two or three of these they have the best cookies in the world big old cookies you know what St.

SPEAKER_01

Regis Montana but you know what that's good for that mental health it is man because it's a little hunt season nothing matters and you're burning a million calories a day you need some cows and yeah but no and and and that's the thing is like if you take it too serious it's not going to be fun it's not sustainable perfect yep whatever is sustainable for you go with that and and try different things like John you were saying you know you did the high fat high protein and and then kind of realize like man this isn't what this isn't working well for my body right you know because like there are people uh like the carnival or MD dude like that dude thrives on that some people do yeah some people and but that's what you have to realize if you're watching that stuff try it and if it doesn't make you feel good or like you don't feel then pivot try something else you know it everyone is so different and not every one thing is gonna work for for for everybody.

SPEAKER_04

So you know it's and I'm realizing that like I got two kids and they like to eat crap sometimes most of the time but the thing is what you guys are doing on your journey though like your chan like your mac and cheese right you guys are finding alternate different different brands and all that right yeah yeah we're doing better still some protein pasta in there like us dude hey I can still make my smoked mac and cheese but I'm just gonna use protein pasta.

SPEAKER_01

I want some smoke it's not a huge change there's still a lot of cheese and a lot of like you know it's not the powdered craft exactly right like just make you can still have good food man speaking of that cheesecake thing oh my gosh the cotton I'm on the cottage cheese chain like you were gonna love this.

SPEAKER_06

I'm not a big like dessert person.

SPEAKER_01

Oh this is okay so I took a tub of cottage cheese and then I use the immersion blender and just you can do whatever whatever blender blit blender or whatever just make it smooth. Yeah and then put it back in the container and mix in um I did a maple syrup a little honey um cinnamon um I think that was it maple syrup yeah maple syrup cinnamon honey yeah um and then cookies if I needed a little sweeter I'll just use some like uh zero calories sweetener yeah um and then mix it all up and then I used this is the the dirty part of it uh biscoff cookies and you just put the cookies in it like just kind of sink them down in there all the way around and then put the lid on overnight don't touch it next day it's gonna blow your mind it's amazing it tastes it was like Biscoff cookie cheesecake and it was incredible and the macros are great great depending on how many biscoff cookies you put in there so so if you're really counting keep it a light on the Biscoff cookies or find a find an alternative cracker to put in there like a cram cracker or something something um but holy crap I could have sat I was in my house alone when I opened this and tried it and I was literally like what the hell did why have I waited so long but there's so like you can still have good food and tasty stuff sure that's high in nutrients right and but like you know if you want to have some Oreos have some Oreos once in a while yeah we also have to live we also have to live I I wrote this down uh the Nera novaica label lab do we even talk do we touch base on this touch on that real quick yeah because I want to talk about their PTSD and this uh this so that all started um Sarah and I went to Bufort South Carolina um first week in a March I don't know if you've heard of core medical medical yeah I had been planning to go so we went to the core medical military appreciation weekend which was awesome it was awesome um with the idea of build a network kind of grow our community work into our community um and see what other options are out there I have some other things I would like to do down the road that I was trying to get some ideas from core medical the the weekend um but we met a guy who's a veteran uh army veteran that developed technology that it works through a a meta headset but he developed technology and that helps the brain recover from mental trauma or traumas you know whether trauma PTSD TBIs micro traumas physical trauma but like um and so we met him there and I was like dude like after hearing some of the the stories the success stories and some of the people that were there at the event too they shared their stories of personal Sarah and I looked at each other like we have to have this at our clinic so we went and talked to them hey dude we want this technology and it's like where are you at?

SPEAKER_05

We're in Idaho I'm in Utah how about if I just drive up for a weekend or whatever oh cool and and we'll I'll do a presentation so that was his past Wednesday um super cool dude so we're gonna be kind of their well their first partner in Idaho awesome um but I really want to be able to incorporate a lot of our patients are prior military um a lot of our patients are first responders perfect dude like we have to have this available for our community yeah so we're gonna bring it in um we're looking at beginning of June um implementing that in our clinic and be able to provide that for our community but it's unreal like some of the success stories were just mind blowing wow I mean anything from you know being blown up in Iraq or Afghanistan to rape victims they had some success was with a guy that had a stroke like he was he was starting to regain some of his functionalities like man it's amazing. That is so cool so it's it's a video game you play on a headset.

SPEAKER_01

Oh that's okay as an asset you just put it on and then are you in is it just something that plays and you watch no or you're it's interactive so that's how the the connection the connections are remade in the frontal lobe is through through playing.

SPEAKER_04

Do you have to take anything like a like a medic or like a plant at all beforehand? No just straight put it on and go. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_05

Interesting and it's like a what do you say like a 34 36 minute treatment?

SPEAKER_06

I think it's closer to 45 minutes. So there's like there's a warm-up period to kind of get your heart going your heart rate up then there's the actual activity and then there's a cool down so so that your your brain doesn't stay in that fight or flight situation.

SPEAKER_05

It's like in a chair doing this or no it's cool so it's totally interactive the sampling that we did um it was it was a shooting shooting game. So you're on on the back of a Humvee shooting targets as you're driving through like an airfield not human targets. Yeah not humans just like steel targets targets. I mean you had an M4 and you're loaded. Oh yeah you had to you had to grab your magazines you had to load it like and then you you'd shoot it it would keep count or well it didn't have a counter but you would know as you're empty so oh shit so you have to pull your magazine out reload re-rack and you'd keep going through the whole scenario and so these scenarios so th this guy has kind of curated these scenarios in to and that's what's helping is are they like specifically tailored to maybe what kind of trauma you're trying to fix.

SPEAKER_06

They're just it's very it's just a broad Yeah there's several different scenarios or rooms or whatever you want to call it um but they they respond to the individual player for lack of better term. So it tracks your progress as you're as you're playing. So some people will progress through the scenarios a little faster than others and it and that's kind of how your brain's adapting.

SPEAKER_05

Yep. It'll complicate or increase the intensity of the of the room it'll speed it up or add more targets or if you're not keeping up it'll slow it back down for you.

SPEAKER_04

Now that look I'm in this is legit serious I'm not trying to make goofy here but can I be in Lord of the rings and fight orcs for this I don't think that's one of the scenarios life like life scenarios. That'd be pretty legit if I could like do my I mean we can we can suggest that down the road more sci-fi scenarios.

SPEAKER_01

Yes seriously had a guy that wants to kill orcs all right I've got a couple guys that would want to do that.

SPEAKER_05

Not target legit orcs hear nothing other camp so oh awesome yeah so he's um I he wants to come out I think for fall. Cool oh that's a better time so he's gonna be at bear camp in the fall time super cool dude.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome I'm so excited I get excited for that fall bear camp every year. That's such a good conversation.

SPEAKER_04

That was my favorite part is just the conversation on the fire.

SPEAKER_01

Dude that's and that's that's the whole reason for it why Joaquin does that is it's for to help each other. You know the bear hunting is great. That's the fun part like that not the fun part but that's the reason everybody comes we want to try and get a bear but like the reason I think everybody really is there is because you can each other come around and be around each other and we lose a part of that too.

SPEAKER_05

Like when we leave the military we we le we lose a lot of that community. And so again that goes into some of my goals for down the road but we need to be reconnected with each other for sure because we're the only ones that truly know what our experiences were or like at least that we can be relatable to each other. Right. Where I mean yeah I Sarah understands that we with with her background and being in trauma medicine we have more of that that we can understand from each other. But not quite the same general society like people don't understand what we do or what we go through or what our experiences are so when we try to reintegrate into society it's it's not the same. No understanding so we have to have that we have to have that amongst ourselves or amongst our veterans amongst our first responders like we have to have that community I agree.

SPEAKER_04

And is does Joaquins focus on do they have uh first responders able to go to that yeah I think he's opened that up I think so yeah it should be first responders and because I I don't I and you probably all can agree with me but I swear dude like I saw I saw a lot of Afghanistan but I saw way more shit as a cop dude yeah because I mean such a small pop literally such a small population in the military really actually sees combat isn't involved in stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I really do like I truly in my opinion I think law enforcement firefighters deserve more than what the vets have yeah I agree I I truly believe that um and I think everybody that's listening can probably agree with that too because they're like they're on tour every single day many every day any service member that's been overseas can probably relate to you knew you know when you're when you're going over there you understand why you're going you're going to war like you flip that switch in your brain you were like actually it turned on for me when we were coming in on the C17s when they do the fucking combat landing and it's like they're wow and you're like holy like we're here and then uh but then it's like okay we're in the combat zone like I'm ready I'm ready here. Yeah you know and then and then like that flip that switch turns on when like you hear gunfire or like you hear your first mortar attack or whatever like you're like okay yep this is what I can expect for the rest of the time I'm here in being a first responder you gotta turn that on and turn it off every day every day multiple times throughout the day multiple times throughout the day right you're going from like I said earlier you're sitting in the squad room BSing with the boys having you got cool little John John Used to make the uh squad room into the lodge. So he'd go to every computer, turn on, go to YouTube, and put the fireplace on, and then he'd turn the lights down. And this is usually after.

SPEAKER_04

We can't turn the lights off. I'm on they got all pissed anyway.

SPEAKER_01

But you go from Yeah, and it's like it's after 3 a.m. The bars are closed. We have three hours left to just like asleep. I'm just gonna hang out in here. But you go from you go from that being in the lodge, just hanging out, BS and kind of decompressing, and then all of a sudden at 4 o'clock in the morning, you got a fatal accident, or you've got who knows, right? A dead baby or whatever. And now you're you're going from being totally relaxed, thinking like, ah, just got a couple more hours of my shift, to a an intense situation. Um and then now your shift's over. And now you have to come back and go home. Go home. Be a normal person again. Uh take care of your family and and not not bring, and that you know, that's that's the struggle, is don't bring your work life home and don't bring your home life to work. And you have to keep that so separate because both can affect each other so much. You know, you're having a especially in in in first responders, right? Like you're having a bad your home life isn't going well, which right, that's life. Shit happens, but now you show up to work and you're totally jaded, and now you're taking it out on everybody that you're dealing with at work, and then vice versa, right? You have a bad day at work and now you're coming home and you're taking it out on your family, and they did nothing wrong, but you had to deal with Joe Shithead for the fourth time that night, and he still is not learning, um, and then you know you're gonna deal with them the next night. So, like, I totally agree. I think first responders, like the benefits uh for first responders should be far more than what our military gets. And don't get me wrong, I again, John and I come from both worlds. Um, I have utmost respect for anybody that's in the military and signs that like you sign that contract and you have just signed your life away. Like you have written a blank check to the US government for the value of your life. That is not lost on me. But when you look at and I and I think those benefits that we get are great, but I think our first responders get left uh out. And because they do a 30-year career working in law enforcement, and that's I I can't even I did five years and I can't even imagine doing another 25 years of that and the toll that it would take on my body and my mental health.

SPEAKER_06

And then your family.

SPEAKER_01

And your family. And there's a reason why first responders and especially police officers, the divorce rate is very high. And suicide rates. Suicide rates are so high. Yeah, but I'm happy that there's stuff like this coming out and that it's open. And and if you're a first responder and you're listening to this, you know what we're talking about. Whether it's maybe your career is going good and you're not feeling that yet, but take care of yourself. If I can say one thing, it's just to take care of yourself, take care of your family, your friends. You know, don't be afraid to walk away from the career either. It is not the end. That is not the end. Like, I I get it, if you're 10 years in, 15 years in, but that you're vested, like you're you're sucked into that trap at that point, but like it's it's not the end. There's so much else out there, and you can be very successful in doing anything else, but uh your mental health is not worth it and physically, like Greg Anderson dude said, He's like, I think whether it's military or it's law enforcement, 10 years max. If you do either, at 10 years, you should be able to walk away, get something out of it, and be done. Because nobody should have to do that for over that long time.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think the road should be five years. Yeah, you do patrol five years and then move on to something else, you know. And again, detective, whatever. I don't know, just change it a little bit. And then like 20 done max.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. I think first responders should be on the same cord as the military. 20 years, here's you're done. Please go on. Because after that, man, you just get salty. God, after 10 years, guys are just pass away within like the first like two years.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Two to five years. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's crazy. No, this is uh yeah. If you're listening to this, um and you guys are in Court Elaine, check out Revival, please. Go go support them and that's be so cool. Get your guys out. I feel all so excited.

SPEAKER_05

You guys, the reason I invited you guys is because you guys are gonna participate too. If you'd like to you may not know, I already signed you up and I'm oh yeah, dude. I'll I'm I want I want both of you to participate in that. Oh, sweet man, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've absolutely I know I'm sorry I couldn't make it the other day. I freaking I was getting busy right now. Yeah, which is great. Good, good. But yeah, I had to drive up to Spirit Lake for a showing, and that got scheduled that morning. That was one of those got the phone call like business. We want to go sell this place.

SPEAKER_00

I'm like you know, right?

SPEAKER_01

Um super excited to check that out. Um and yeah, anybody in the area, please go check that out. Take care of yourselves, take care of your body, um, and take care of your mind. Um, and if you're listening to this and you're not in our area, um, hey, think about moving here. It's a sweet place. Um, but otherwise go to your nearest, you know. If you're feeling off and you feel like you've you can't get things going, go get your blood work done. Go just check it out, see how you may you may find something out. So, but yeah, Dustin, Sarah, thank you so much. Uh John, do you have anything else? No, I think this is great.

SPEAKER_04

We actually recorded this one. Yes, we did. I think it's red over there. Yeah, from time to time. Make sure it's still going. We're good. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate you both.

SPEAKER_05

Hopefully we can get to do it again. I mean, yeah. Maybe we can talk about bear camp at some point. Yeah, for sure. We can talk about our our uh when we try this thing out.

SPEAKER_04

We can talk about it. What is it? It's called nerv nervivore. Nerva. Nervivore. Oh Jesus, okay. I spelled that way wrong. Nervivore.

SPEAKER_06

No, so neuro.

SPEAKER_04

N-E-U-R-O. V-A. V A. Okay. Neurova. That makes sense. Neuro. Nervivore.

SPEAKER_06

Sounds like a V A in the in the designer, Brennan. He um he was a vet himself. He went through significant trauma.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, he got he got blown up and then spent a couple years in the brain clinics. Oh, gosh, I've got that.

SPEAKER_06

And then dedicated his career to finding or developing this. That's so cool. That'd be good for my brain.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you'll love him. Super cool, dude. Awesome. I do get excited. Yeah, appreciate you both. This is awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for coming on, guys.

SPEAKER_00

Of course.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, and everybody at home and who's watching this, thanks for listening. I hope you guys got something out of this podcast, and uh, we'll see you on the next one.