Podcasts, colonoscopies, & your biological age
Podcasts, colonoscopies, & your biological age
What's on my mind and how it may help you
👋Hello, my friend. I’ll be honest. I’ve got a lot of thoughts swirling around my brain these days. So many, in fact, that I couldn’t decide which one to write about this week. So I decided to just give you a small taste of each one. Hope there’s at least one thing in here that improves your life by .0001%.
Let’s do it!
🎙️IW Podcast: Ep.34 - Rich Howe - How to Start a Podcast
Okay, this is a bit of a niche topic that you might not care about. If that’s the case, keep scrolling. But recently, my friend and Intentional Wisdom reader/listener, Rich Howe (👋hi Rich), reached out to tell me he was about to start a podcast. He’s got a successful niche newsletter business writing about stock spin-offs. Anyhow, he wanted to pick my brain and ask me a bunch of questions on things like: microphones, editing software, lighting, distribution, booking guests, etc.
So… I said, hey, let’s record it and turn it into a podcast. And that’s what you have here. 1 hour of Rich pulling all of the podcast knowledge out of my head. I was going to write a whole newsletter on the topic but… like I said above, I’ve got too much stuff swirling around this monkey brain of mine at the moment so if you’re interested, give it a watch or a listen, and tell everyone you know about it. And please know that my ego seriously needs to see more YouTube subscribers to my channel!
Colonoscopies - Get ‘em 💩
As I write this, I have just returned from getting my second colonoscopy ever. The doctor said “Do not work, do not drive, and do not make any legal decisions today.” I am taking this as “Do not work, and do not take care of your kids today but writing your newsletter is still okay.” That said, anything you don’t like in here, blame the propofol, not the author.
But about the colonoscopies… here’s my view: The prep is terrible. I literally lost 5 lbs in the last 24 hours. This is from a combination of fasting all day yesterday and then drinking that disgusting solution to “clean out your system.” I won’t get more graphic than that. Here’s a tip though: You can have honey, so this morning at 5am, I was doing the “one sip of solution, one bite of honey” method to actually get it down.
Even though the prep is the worst, it is just a means to an end and that end is worth it. Your doctor will tell you to wait until 45 to get a colonoscopy. Push back on this. Insist on getting it at 40. The rates of cancer (especially colon cancer) among young people are skyrocketing. Likely, this is a result of all the chemicals that have found their way into our food supply. I know two people my age who have unfortunately passed away entirely too young from this. Very, very sad.
My view is this: If there is even a chance to catch something like this early, you have to do it. Short-term pain, long-term gain. I’ll be back in 5 years - assuming today’s results were fine🤞.
Your biological age⏰
So, I’m deep down the rabbit hole of something called Function Health at the moment. I heard about it on a podcast (obviously) and was intrigued. Basically, the deal is this: You pay $500 and you get a very extensive set of labs - 100 biomarkers to be precise.
It’s basically all the measures you’d want to know for things like heart health, kidney function, pancreas, metabolic health, hormones, all your major nutrients, etc. Here’s the full list.
Anyhow, for insurance reasons, your doctor is pretty much only going to order you tests that are needed. And while the health care system is great at helping us deal with acute problems and diseases, it’s terrible at preventing them. Function Health is one of many new companies trying to use what’s now possible from a technology perspective to help you get a much earlier handle on your health before things start going off the rails.
So far, I’ve gotten 94 of my biomarkers back. They mostly look good which is great to see but I have 5 that are out of range. One is my LDL-c (at 111) which is too high and something I’m about to start taking some new proactive measures to lower — but I’m not yet considering a statin as I’d really like to avoid taking any medication.
The other ‘out of rangers’ are some auto-immune markers which I actually don’t know anything about yet. Once all 100 markers are in, a clinician at Function will review them and make recommendations to me. I’m curious to see what that looks like. So far, the system has already auto-recommended the top 5 supplements, and top 5 and bottom 5 foods for me based on my blood work.
On the auto-immune stuff, if nothing else, it’s something for me to flag to my doctor and at least get his opinion on if further tests are needed. We’ll see. I’ve learned not to get overly worried about stuff like this too early as that’s the biggest downside of some of these proactive health efforts… whipping yourself into an unnecessary tizzy.
That said, I REALLY like having this level of transparency into what’s happening in my body, and then tracking how it changes over time. To me, this is what the health care system SHOULD be, but in reality, it’s not there today. So if you want to take a really proactive approach to your health, you need to consider things like this. I’m also currently wearing a CGM which I’m loving btw and I’ll write more about that soon.
Oh, the biological age thing… this whole spiel was really just a set-up for me to humble-brag that (according to Function, anyhow) my biological age is 33.6. Yes, that is a full 12.7 years younger than what my birth certificate “claims.” Do I know what this means? No. Will telling me that I’m 12 years younger than I actually am probably make me a customer for life? Yes.
P.S. If you know anyone at Function, let ‘em know I want to have them on my podcast. I require free public analysis of my results, please!
That’s about it for today, but before you go…
Content Diet
📗Good Energy - Casey Means
I’ve already recommended some podcasts with Dr. Means. I’m reading the book now and I keep having one thought: How can I possibly get all of my friends and family to read this book? I’m literally MAKING my wife read it. She doesn’t really want to. But I think she’s actually going to do it to appease me. Maybe if I stop being so lazy, I’ll write up my top conclusions from this book but that won’t really cover it. Get the audio version and power through it for 12 hours. Then, let’s talk. I actually thing it might change… or dare I say, even save your life (or that of someone you love).
Disclaimer: For some reason, this book is getting politicized and dragged into efforts to support certain political candidates over others. My advice: Completely ignore this, the country has lost it’s collective mind at the moment as we all know and weirdly even things like books on health are getting drawn into it… I’d just focus on the really awesome science that is delivered in this book and forget the politics… usually that’s good advice generally, too.
🎙️The Doctor’s Farmacy (w/ Dr. Mark Hyman): Know Your Numbers: How Personalized Testing Can Optimize Your Health and Reverse Disease
If you’re intrigued by my comments above about Function Health, this is a deeper dive into it with two of the founders discussing what they do and how they chose the biomarkers to focus on.
P.S. These guys are not sponsoring me… I’m just really liking the product. But if they are reading this, I’m also not opposed to it! Let’s talk. IW is a great place to advertise… just ask my friend, Bill Shufelt, CEO of Athletic Brewing. They advertised here and subsequently doubled the size of their business to ~$800 million. Causation? Correlation? No one can say with any certainty.
📱Meet Yip Strickler who is waging a war on country club sand-baggers every where
Okay, this is just something that made me laugh this week. This guy on Instagram is calling out golfers who are sandbagging in their country club tournaments. He does “deep dive, investigative reporting” into golfer’s handicaps and publicly outs guys who are obviously cheating. In this post, he calls out a guy from a country club right near where I live. If you’re into this sort of thing, you may enjoy this. Thanks IW reader, Craig P., for showing me this one! I was dying watching Yip’s work.
Finally… here’s the full YouTube version of my conversation with Rich Howe. Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel! Did you know I get a notification every time someone subscribes? Yes, I am a big-brothering you on this!
That’s it! Thanks for reading my random hodge-podge this week!
See you in two weeks.
Greg