Wellness and Longevity with Dr. Mark Sherwood

The Retirement Promise And The Trap

Mark Sherwood 0:00

First responders, military for that matter. They they serve the nation, serve our cities, states, counties very, very well. And it's a tragedy that they don't um experience the ability to enjoy the retirement, if you will. You know, you work all the time with this goal and mindset and dream that I'm going to retire one day and collect my pension. But in reality, I think we're all being played. And I mean that literally. I think we're being played by the systems, played by leadership, and I don't think people are taking it serious.

Announcement 0:31

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice, and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates 0:41

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today. And this is a returning guest from a few years ago, but it's someone that you have to hear from on a regular basis because so much in this area is changing and his expertise is continually evolving. And it's my honor to welcome Dr. Mark Sherwood to the show today. He's a retired police sergeant with services that included the SWAT team and the development of a fitness program for officers that really was one of the best in the nation. He's also a former Oklahoma State and Regional Physique Champion and a former professional baseball player. His passion for wellness has exposed his message to millions, both online and traditional television. He's the author and co-author of several books, and he's written and produced multiple movies, including award-winning documentaries in the space of wellness. He and his wife, Dr. Michelle Neal, operate the Functional Medical Institute, where they are credited with changing the lives of over 25,000 patients, reaching 3 million people worldwide. All of you have heard of the term biohacking and longevity. That's kind of a buzzword today, but Dr. Mark Sherwood is the OG in this space. He was talking about this decades ago before anyone knew what it was. It's our honor to welcome Dr. Sherwood on the show. Mark, how are you doing, sir?

Mark Sherwood 2:00

Hey, Travis. It's great to be back. It's always good to see you, and it's even better to visit with you.

Travis Yates 2:06

Well,

The Shocking 66-Year Reality

Travis Yates 2:07

I know you have a new book coming out. Maybe it's Alcohol Authentic Longevity. And I want to get into that. But before we get into that, I want to sort of start with the baseline, Mark. Obviously, you come from law enforcement. So you came from sort of that sick care environment and what law enforcement is facing. I'll never forget when you were at the academy doing the fitness stuff, you actually called the pension board and you asked for the data on retired police officers, and you discovered the average age of death at the time was 66 years old. That to me was shocking. We all fill these terms around, but I mean you got real data from the state. And uh I remember you put that on a challenge coin when you gave it out to people that went through your in-service classes, and they would all go, What's this 66 mean? You got to have a conversation with them. But just kind of talk to us about that and why you think this topic is so important for first responders.

Mark Sherwood 2:58

Well, that discovery shocked me because the reason I went looking in the first place was because of the old FBI study from the 1950s that said the same thing. And obviously, to your point, Oklahoma state at that point was 66, and Tulsa County specifically was 65. You'll find this fascinating. I checked the stats recently, just kind of a nationwide thing, uh, about a month and a half ago, because someone and somewhere had heard it that I'd said that. And it's the same thing today, which blows my mind. Uh, but yeah, I think that um there's a lot to that. I mean, police officers, first responders, military for that matter, they they serve the nation, serve our cities, states, counties very, very well. And it's a tragedy that they don't um experience the ability to enjoy the retirement, if you will. You know, you work all the time with this goal and mindset and dream that I'm gonna retire one day and collect my pension. But in reality, I think we're all being played. And I mean that literally. I think we're being played by the systems, played by leadership, and I don't think people are taking it serious, even right now. And and uh it grieves me. I had a conversation just today with a person that was putting on a big old fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago and said, hey, you want to come and it's gonna cost you this much. And I'm thinking to myself, where's the money going? That was the question I asked, you know, and I don't understand what we're doing because we're not seeing any change in all these years. So there is some frustration there, but I think there's also hope and opportunity, even because we're having this conversation today.

Wellness Programs That Do Nothing

Travis Yates 4:30

Yeah, and I think what grieves me, Mark, is it's sort of the flavor of the of the year or month or whatever, where these departments are saying, oh, we care about your wellness and we've implemented this program or that program, we're doing this and that. But they're not really doing any of that. They just, it's all for virtue signaling, it's all for show. I mean, at the same time they're doing that, they're not recruiting effectively, and retention is off the charts, and morale is down, and officers are working their guts out on overtime, mandatory overtime, and the the stress level is at an all-time high. That's why you've seen the recruiting crisis. You see the average cop a day that enters a profession, 63% will be gone in five years. So you speak about leadership, and leadership is destroying not just the morale of law enforcement, but the health and well-being, is it not?

Mark Sherwood 5:16

It is. And uh, no one will go higher than the leader. So the leader sets the tone, the leader sets the bar, and no one will go higher than the leader sets the bar. And we've set the bar too low. You know, for example, like we walk around in uniform. That uniform is a business card of something, not just personally, but professionally and emotionally, spiritually, if you will. It's the same thing. And we're we look terrible. Our business cards look terrible, and even my resumes underneath the business card, if you will, look even more terrible. So, no, we're not taking it serious. And you're right, it's just window dressing. I see it all the time. You know, we have even these insurance plans that that sort of latch on to officers. You know, I bet they do because it's three medications and it's prediction that is certain. But ultimately, they'll have words like wellness in there. And they don't do wellness, they don't know anything about wellness. In that moment in time when I was uh bringing that information out to the rank and file of the Tulse Police Department. Um, I also went straight to the insurance companies that we had at that time. I don't remember who it was, but I I had a conversation with them as why don't you talk about how to keep people away from you? You know, I don't understand you're really not about wellness, you're about profiting off of people's sickness. And I didn't get an answer, and that conversation didn't progress, obviously, but that's where we are today. We're not talking about the baseline cause of anything, much like you know, with crime and much like with leadership, what's the underlying cause of lack of leadership? What's the underlying cause of crime? What's the underlying cause of health? The way to think about those things are in the same bucket and the same methodology.

Travis Yates 6:54

Boy, you we could unpack that all day, what you just said, but let's first talk about the the leader in uniform. And of course, as we talk about here on the show, everyone's a leader. It's not just people with bars. In fact, sometimes those are the least of the leaders, but it's that leader in uniform. And imagine going to see a doctor that's a hundred pounds obese, right? But you're going to listen to what that doctor says. And how many people would? And so I think we owe it to not just the community, but we owe it to ourselves, right? So leaders have to have physical, mental, and spiritual. You know, lead yourself first. And it's not always easy in the stressful environment we're in, but I want to sort of walk us through the baseline of that before we get to longevity, but then that's very important, so we can enjoy that retirement. The people listen to this of all ranks, all sizes, all shapes, they're better, they're not as good as they think they are. And I want to encourage people to understand that. Like, I'll just give you an example. Like, I was looking in the mirror this morning and I've been really on cue for the last several months. And I go, you know what? I think that body fat percentage that Dr. Mark told me I needed to get to, I think I may be there. Now I had a number in my head. I thought I was a few points off, but I said, you know what? I'm gonna go get me an in-body in-body scan. So I got in my car and I drove over to the Functional Medical Institute, which is your clinic, Mark, and we'll talk about that later. And I jumped on the old in-body scan, and you know what? It was a couple points higher than I thought. And my point is, is we all have these sort of glasses on where we look at ourselves and go, I'm not, it's not that bad. It's not this bad. And I think law enforcement is particularly worse. I speak to departments every day about recruiting, and they'll say things like, Oh, we're not doing too bad. And I go, Well, what how many are you down? Oh, we're only down 150. I'm like, what do you mean you're not doing too bad? You know, so we sort of we see the good in this, but when it comes to your health, I'm a big fan of data.

Build A Baseline With Real Data

Travis Yates 8:43

And so what I want to encourage everybody to do is you need whether you think you're doing well or not, you've got to get a baseline. You've got to get the measurements, you've got to get the data. And Mark, what's the best way and easiest way for them to do that?

Mark Sherwood 8:56

You got to check your body fat percentage. You really do. Um, I don't care what people weigh. I really, it's completely irrelevant. You've got to get good blood work. Blood work that's done in your conventional labs is nothing short of pathetic and incomplete. And you've got to find someone uh to help you be that person. You need you mention a lot of leadership. I encourage people to um hear what I'm saying now with an encouragement, with an admonition, with a plea. Unlock the leader in you. Realize how special you are. You know, it's like all law enforcement who have the opportunity to wear that badge and that gun, that vest and that uniform, man, you're heroes. And when you think about that heroic mentality, why do you set the bar so low? Why do you let it be so low? And I'll give you this example that really hits home with most people. Um, if you have a child who's playing a sports uh, you know, game, and you have a coach that goes to the team around and says, All right, boys or girls, whatever you want to call them, I want you to go out there today. We're gonna face a tough team, and they're really good. They do a lot of things well. But I want you to give 80%. And that's okay, it's not too bad. Just give eighty percent. And if a parent heard that, you that coach would be on the hot seat and probably out the door the next day. It's not okay. And we have uh acquiesced and accepted the idea of average, and average is the enemy of excellence across the board. And you know, it's like you mentioned the idea of not too bad. It's a comparable trap. You know, we compare ourselves to the norm, but the norms are pathetic. We need to get out of the norms, we don't need to be um striving to be normal, Travis. We need to strive to be excellent, and excellence has zero to do with norms. I mean, it's like it doesn't make sense. And so I get the conversations a lot with law enforcement people, the ones that I get the opportunity to deal with, and they'll say, Well, the doctor said my labs are normal, and I'm thinking, one, you don't have a doctor, and two, you need to run because that's the wrong thing to say, because normal is problematic from the reasons I just stated. So, you know, you got to get good data, you got to get uh the that data that tells you something in reality, but you got to set your bar high, and that doesn't come from a system, that doesn't come from someone else, it doesn't come from your doctor, it comes from something perhaps that unlocks in you. But in right in your heart, you realize I cannot be normal. You're not normal, you're a law enforcement officer, for God's sake. You're not normal. So realize I need you to be excellent.

Travis Yates 11:40

Yeah, let me let me tell our audience something they're not gonna like because about nine out of ten people I say this to in person completely reject it. If you're going to your doctor that's on your health care plan, for the most part, you're not going to health care, you're going to sick care. They're trained to diagnose a problem and give you a pill. They're not trained for anything else. In fact, they get about four hours of nutrition training in med school. And and so they're not, they're not designed to keep you healthy. In fact, the system you talk about, Mark, it's designed to keep you sick because they want you to keep visiting doctors, they want you to keep getting medicine. They love, especially they love, they love retired cops on Medicare, and they'll keep them just sick enough to where they put them on, you know, several different prescriptions over and over. It's just if you're paying to make it simple, if you're getting that doctor service for nothing, trust me, you're in a system that's not really for your best better health. I mean, don't believe me, look at the data. We spend more money on healthcare than any country in the world, and we're our our life expectancy is going down. It's going down. It's worse today than it was last year and the year before. And so the medical profession is designed for that. You have got to get out of that system, probably gonna have to spend a little bit of money, it's not a lot, to get the right blood work, to talk to the right doctor. And most of them, most clinics like yours, Mark, you they offer a subscription plan where it's not much money a month, and you get access to these doctors that are have expertise in these areas we're about to talk about. And the first one I want to talk about is we talked about getting not stop worrying about weight, it's got to be about body fat. And 20% is average. You just talked about not being average. So we got to get sub that, right? So don't worry about the weight on the scale. Let me tell you how backwards the doctors are today. I know I'm going off on a tangent. This is how bad the system is, Mark. Do you know that when you and you may not know this, you know when you go to your health care doctor or sick care doctor today, they weigh you, but they weigh you in kilograms or they weigh you where you can't see the scale. Have have you heard of this trend?

Mark Sherwood 13:34

I have because they don't want to like make you feel bad. Exactly.

Travis Yates 13:37

Yeah, yeah. The the number one predictor of death of metabolic diseases that are killing millions of Americans a year is weight. And that's that's the most important thing a doctor can talk to you about. They have now blocked that from you even knowing it and blocking the entire discussion. So this just it's it's all out proof that they don't care about your health. You have to get out of that system, and you're gonna say, Who do I go to? We'll get to that, but you can contact me or Mark, we'll give you all the contact information. Trust me, in every major city in America, there's somebody you can go to. Mark, you're online, they can come to you, they can do, you can do all the stuff for them online. But you've got to get out of that system. Trust me, don't rely on YouTube, don't rely on the gurus out there. They all say something different. You have to get out of that system and get to an expert. So let's talk about someone that wants to get started, Mark. Uh, they've they've acknowledged they've got to get healthier, they got to get better. I think they would find this easier than what they think. Let's talk about sort of those steps they should take. I've got some ideas, but I want to hear from you.

Mark Sherwood 14:34

Well,

Four Controls That Change Everything

Mark Sherwood 14:35

when you make the decision, that's a decision that connects your head with your heart, that 13-inch connection line, I call it. And then once those get synced up and you've resolved to do that, it's like you decided to hold your hand up and say, I'm willing to give my uh life for this profession if need be. You you've sworn yourself into the idea of I'm going to serve not my fellow man in the law enforcement capacity, but I'm going to serve my fellow man and my family in a personal capacity, which is a higher honor, I feel, indeed. But the first thing you have to do is realize there's four things that you do have control over. Regardless of what anybody tells you, you have what you have control over what comes in and out of your mouth, you have control of what comes in your eyes, your ears, and your head, and your heart, and you have control of what you're going to do with our body, right? The movement part. And so it's it's how you move, it's how you sleep, it's how you de-stress, and it's how you eat. Those four things right there are key. And it costs zero to make adjustments. And the cost of eating well or keeping away these uh things that we disguise as foods that are not foods, the cost of your expenditures for lunches, dinners, breakfasts goes down substantially, and you begin just doing those things right there that cost nothing and save you money, you will save your deductible from your insurance, which is like great, keep that in your pocket. And so that's where you start. It doesn't have to be complicated and start there, and then you can progress from that position.

Travis Yates 16:13

Yeah, and I think that I think we get caught up in the hypes of these fad diets and things are quick and we can do things quick. And I think you've got to get a mindset. I know I'm thinking for myself, you have to get a mindset that hey, it took me a long time to get in this position. It's gonna take me a while to get out of it. Uh, so I need to work on lifelong habits, build those habits, and you don't have to necessarily do it all at once. Like I actually wouldn't recommend someone to go out there and go do this, go do this. Maybe use one at a time. Like I would apply, I tell somebody, hey, listen, uh, you know, walk 10,000 steps a day. Don't don't go do hard CrossFit and holiday this that spikes your appetite. Go just make a go, walk 10,000 steps a day. Do that for a few weeks, and then then and then go, you know what? Reduce your calorie intake, three, four, or five hundred calories. Track it closely. Because we always we're eating more than we think, right? And we have this luxury of technology today where this is all so easy. You can look at your watch, you can look at your app, you can just do this stuff. And then, and don't even worry about the macros and all this, not just do one step at a time, build those habits, Mark. And before you know it, probably two or three months, not as long, you're drinking the water. You're eating, you've got the habit of eating what you need to eat. You're getting your protein, right? You're doing these things, and it's actually pretty easy. In fact, I find it actually easier than trying to find something. I used to just drive around and go, okay, I'm hungry, and I would just look up and I'd see a restaurant, I'd just pull in. Like it didn't even, like it just it was just wherever. But I find it much easier to go, you know what? For lunch, I'm gonna do this, and I think dinner, I'm gonna, it's kind of pre-planting. And and I'm always concerned about protein intake. We'll talk about the importance of protein and weight loss in a minute, which these these shit, I mean, I just went to a convenience store and grabbed a 42 gram protein drink. You know, you got to look at the other things in it, how much sugar is in it, this and that. But I mean, if people go, oh, I can't eat a uh, you know, if I if you weigh 180 pounds, you need 180 pounds, I can't do that one for one protein. Yeah, it's actually not hard, but you can't go to the fast food places to do it, right? You've got to think about that. So I would actually encourage people, if you get your mindset right from the beginning, like, hey, I'm gonna just spend time on this. This is gonna be my new hobby, take it slow, that's gonna last. That's why the people rebound and these diets don't work. And we've seen, I mean, the the the weight loss industry is billions. And the reason it's billions is because people keep going on them and they never work. And so, what do you have to add to that, Mark?

Mark Sherwood 18:36

Well, you know, dieting is always a bad idea. You take the T off that word, what does that spell? Die. And and with dieting, you it's always a focus on what you're doing. That's dark, man. That is dark. Yeah, it really is. It's crazy. And you you always focus on what you're not supposed to do. You need to avoid this, you need to avoid that. And I don't even prescribe to that idea anymore, Travis. I'm always giving people big old lists and say to them, I don't care how much you eat, just stay on the list. And that that's a freeing thing for most people, you know? And so when you start making changes, it's realizing it that what you're doing is not working. And that's not a hard thing to get to that conclusion. But when you realize what you're doing is not working, you take one step in the right direction. You're completely off course if you're not walking in health. So just take one step back. It's like when you're when the boat goes off course, you know, 45 degrees, to try to do a sudden U-turn on that when you might flip over everything. And that analogy really holds a lot of truth with what we're talking about. So it's one degree, one step at a time, but you got to be intentional about that. You can't fall back into these comparable traps, as we talked about a moment ago, and said, Well, I'm doing better, I'm better than Travis. It it doesn't matter. The competition is won. Remember, you're unlocking the hero, unlocking the courage within you. And that's where it starts and that's where it finishes. You're dealing with the person staring at you back in the mirror. It's it even with 10,000 steps a day, it might be insurmountable. You might have knee issues, back issues, and things like that. Well, start off with a thousand steps a day, two thousand steps a day. Start off walking in the mailbox twice or three times and pick up your mail three times, one piece at a time or something if you have to. But it's just one meal. Like today, I was telling somebody just the other day if you wake up tomorrow, I want you to take the first meal and do a good job. And don't even think about meal two or whatever that is until you do a uh good job of meal one. And remember, the best analysis that we have with food is we are driven by nutrients plus oxygen, and calories are nothing more than theoretical units of energy that can fluctuate. So put in good nutrients, get good oxygen, chill out, and you're gonna have plenty of energy. And the better you eat, the higher nutritional density you put in that body, you will be hungry far less and eat less, and you won't become obsessed with what I call food noise all the time.

Travis Yates 21:11

I mean, and most people listen to this, probably most people are probably addicted to sugars, which is carbohydrates. And what I have to encourage them and say is that is an addiction. You're but if you can do this for a week, if you can tough this out for a week, that goes away, and you're gonna feel like a million. I mean, you're gonna feel incredible. Like you may not have lost any weight in that week, but you are gonna feel the difference. And I want to talk about the scale because everybody gets so obsessed with the scale. You cannot start doing some of these things, see the scale not move, and then go, oh, it's just not working, because that's not how it works, right? Scale scale is like any other data. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. But if you're doing the right thing over the course of time, it has to go down. That's just science. If you're in a caloric deficit, we're talking about why about I think 500 calories. I'm not the Expert, but I think I think 500 calories is sort of the good, the deficit to be at. And we'll talk about that in a minute. If you're doing that and you know you're doing that, you've tracked everything, and you know that you haven't missed the ketchup or the oils that are kind of driving those calories up, the scale is going to move. It has to move, right? Now, why is I think in America, and I know me for a long time, we thought, well, if I don't eat, that's good. That means I'm losing weight. That's that's good. Don't eat, don't eat, don't, don't eat. That's the danger GLP1s we'll talk about in a minute. That's that's going to create more problems. That's why people rebound so badly, is they they cut their calories too much. And and yeah, 500 calories, do the math. That's about, I don't know, a couple pounds a month, two or three pounds a month, maybe, maybe four pounds a month, you know, because it's 3,500 calories is a pound. You can do the math on that. What's that? Well, that's a pound a week. That's 3,500 a week. So, you know, and be like, that's not enough. No, no. If you did this for 50 weeks, that's 50 pounds. If you did this for 100 weeks, it's 100 pounds. Right. So you have to think about that way. And and the reason the 500 calories is so important is Marcus, tell us the dangers. If you go in and you and you cut your calories by half, by the way, with the GLP ones, it's actually easy to do. We'll talk about that in a minute. Tell us the dangers in that.

Metabolism, Protein, And Smart Training

Mark Sherwood 23:16

Well, when you look at the body, there's something called metabolism. Metabolism is a breakdown process of the way everything operates. Our bodies take nutrients and break them down from micronutrients to micronutrients. And then some of the micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids are then used as cofactors or energy substrates to make, you know, mitochondrial energy, which is ATP, which drives your cells. Now, all that said, when you understand metabolism, it's better to have a faster metabolism, meaning you use those things faster, meaning your body is working quicker, meaning you're able to utilize even fat broken down into the ketones as energy as well. So you want to have a higher metabolism. However, when you take away the nutrients and you go sub-nutritional optimization, let's call it, uh, what you're doing at that point is the body sees that, hears that, your brain interprets that says, oh my goodness, this is a time of famine. So I need to slow down my metabolism because I can't use this stuff over here anymore, because I need to hang on to that. I need to conserve my resources, common sense. So when metabolism slows down over the course of time, your ability to utilize nutrients at a certain speed slows with it, meaning your ability to low have lower body fat and even maintain muscle goes down. And what happens is over the course of time is yeah, you might lose a little weight, but you're going to crash from metabolism, you're going to get less healthy. So that's why we completely uh tell people to avoid the idea of using scale weight as a primary goal of anything.

Travis Yates 25:03

Yeah, because the muscle you have is gold. That's keen, right? Yes. And you really can't lose massive amounts of weight without losing some muscle. It should just be a little bit, though, if you do it right. That's why the protein intake is important. Say 0.8 to one uh per pound you want to be at. So if you're at 250, you want to be at 200, try to shoot for 200 grams of protein. Would you agree with that, Mark?

Mark Sherwood 25:28

I would. If you can stay in there, and of course, some of that is uh age specific, you know, sex specific, you know, how much you're training and stuff like that. But lean on protein. That's the message of the day. You know, protein. Well, people need to understand that uh fats, for one, cannot be converted into glucose. We know that. Proteins and carbohydrates can, but carbohydrates are much more uh readily available to be converted into glucose, which drives insulin, which drives fat storage if we have too much of that, right? So it is better to lean on proteins and lean on fats, and that way we can drive the glucose uh levels down, thereby driving needed of insulin down and thereby uh driving the body's system where we can, you know, use some of that as fuel versus the glucose, because it's better to be uh, you know, sort of fuel switching back and forth, if you will, if you like that term. And so, yeah, we we tell people to lean on protein all the time. That's a good general rule of thumb. Even if you go above that a little bit, it's okay. But but trust me, when you shift the intake of these foods to that direction, you will be hungry less. And so you won't really worry about too much stuff at that point in time.

Travis Yates 26:39

And I think we put too much emphasis on hard cardio um because that's why that's why I mentioned the 10,000 steps. Because what the hard cardio, I mean, if that's what you if if you love mountain bike riding or you love running, by all means do it. But you have to be careful if you're trying to eat in a deficit that that doesn't spike hunger. Like, like don't don't listen to your watches. Like, you know, you're going to run like, oh, I burned 800 calories. No, you didn't. You did not. In fact, I so much don't believe in what my watch tells me. I don't add the cardio into my eating at all. I just look at my metabolic rate. And if I get to work out, I get to work out, but I don't go, oh, I burned 800 calories, that means I get to eat 800 calories. No, it's so that's a big mistake. So a lot of that you could walk 2,000 steps and doesn't really spike hunger, that that zone two, so to speak. But but I'm not taking the hard cardio away from people. If you love to do that, and that's great if you'd love to do that, you just have to be very, very careful, do you not, that it doesn't make you actually eat more because you're going to lose weight from your from your diet, from your from nutrition. It's not exactly the cardio is doing it.

Mark Sherwood 27:41

That's right. And people need to know this. I mean, even when I was on the police department, you know this, uh, you know, and this is fascinating because it ties into the addiction component of the sugars. If someone's addicted to sugars and carbohydrates, remember that uh glucose will drive dopamine the same or more than cocaine. That's why they call it cocaine dope back years ago. Now, if that's true, we need to understand that cortisol or the stress hormone also creates blood sugar because in the in the presence of chronic stress, digestion goes down and the body's trying to do something to help you out and help you go. So when I was at the police department, I stressed things like even yoga or stretching or walking, uh, for the most part, weightlifting, as opposed to and compared to this high-intensity uh cardiovascular crossfit. Now, even though the police officers and those that are listening right now are going to say, I enjoy that, of course you do, because you are by nature addicted to dopamine. That's who you are. You you you just really need to know this. And so there are people out there that are unscrupulous, uh, trainers that have never been police officers that take full advantage of this and they get their money, their time, and they get injured and they get more fat and they get more inflamed, and it's not okay. I watch this occur over and over and over again, and it's like you gotta shift the brain. It's just like when you shift your diet and the inputs to get better known outputs, you have to also shift your exercise mentality from an input standpoint to get better outputs. And you're right, we should not use the exercise to quote unquote burn calories. That is not how it works. The nutrition we bring in, high levels of micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino fatty, amino acids, fatty acids again, will give our body enough uh material to combine with oxygen to make necessary energy. Energy is meant to be used. When we go exercise, then we have plenty of energy. And exercise creates the desire of our body to create more energy. So the mitochondria, those little organelles inside of our cells that actually drive it, they'll actually fuse together when we exercise. And they can't be efficient and fuse together to make more energy unless they have nutrients. So you can see we've reversed the use of reverse psychology and we've got it all wrong. And we need to rewire the brain, rewire the way we do stuff so we can get our health back.

Travis Yates 30:20

Yeah,

Testosterone Testing Done The Right Way

Travis Yates 30:21

and we have we're gonna have to bring you on because there's so much other stuff we have to talk about. But I do want to mention briefly testosterone, because uh Pete Hesip with the Department of War just recently said, listen, we're gonna be tested for testosterone. And you go, well, why would you do that? Those kids are in their 20s and 30s. Well, first responder professions, because of that cortisol, because of that stress you talked about through time, will destroy your testosterone. And so it's not just, oh, I'm over 50, I need to get it tested. If you're in the first responder community, you need to get it tested. Now, Mark, you can't go to your regular doctor and get it tested because I'll let you explain it. First off, they don't know what they're doing. And second off, there's a range for testosterone. That range for your age may be 250 to 1,000. And if they test you and go, oh, you're 251, you're good. No, that's actually terrible, right? So explain if someone wanted, because I talk to people all the time about testosterone, they they they complain about being tired or whatever. And I go, If you had a testosterone check, and they almost all go, Oh, I went to my doctor and he said it was fine. I go, no, no, no. What's the number? Well, he didn't give me a number, he just said it was fine. So explain if somebody wanted to get their testosterone checked, um, and I would encourage you to do it. If you're feeling tired, uh you're lethargic, um, just in general, you need to know it. What's the best way to get that tested appropriately?

Mark Sherwood 31:38

Well, first understand, I think it's important to understand people why you lose that and then what it is. Number one, you mentioned the stress. So testosterone, like other hormones, is constructed from cholesterol. Cholesterol also makes cortisol. When cortisol is perpetually elevated, which is the life of the police officer, right? Cortisol is having to be made at a higher pace than it is for someone that's non-law enforcement, generally speaking. So the body's gonna secrete more cholesterol to make it. But wait a minute, police officers get statin drugs. Hold that thought. Oh, yeah, we're gonna hold that one. There you go. But so what happens is all of the cholesterol that's being made is, and rightly so, pointed towards the synthesis to create more cortisol because this is your threat out here. Forget this in here. This is your threat out here. So over the course of time, that shift occurs. You're shifting towards making more cortisol and your sex steroid hormones, which become unnecessary because you cannot reproduce when you're in a firefight or a gunfight. That's a bad idea, you know, for you and your spouse to just go in the backseat of a police car and have sex while you're in the middle of a gunfight. You're gonna get both killed. So that doesn't make sense. So the testosterone goes down. Testosterone are and other hormones are chemical messengers that pass through the bloodstream. So they're like emails. And so your brain sends a signal to make them, they get sent to through the blood system to get there. But if the blood system is all messed up with blood sugar issues, it's like driving a car down the road with all kinds of potholes and road bumps in there. Now, when you go check it, there's a couple of components to keep in mind. And and this is key. And I'll try not to be too complicated because this is important. Total testosterone is the least of your concerns. The most of your concerns is something called free or bioavailable testosterone. Because when it goes to a certain level down, testosterone is by mechanism supposed to convert into estradiol, which is estrogen. And there's a level over there that's protective against heart disease. That's the connection between hormones and brain and heart protection. But if you're not checking the free or bioavailable, only free and bioavailable, one and the same, can convert downstream and make the estradiol. So total tells you just maybe 20% of the story. And you're right. People that look at the total ranges, which by the way are taken from this society of people we have today that are sick. We've never been the sick at all in our history of our mankind. Right now, we did it. Good job, America. And uh thank you to the U.S. government. We did it, we profited on it. But those ranges are horribly low compared to what they were maybe 50 to 75 years ago. So you can't look at those ranges. You have to look at optimization of the total testosterone in relation to what's free or biobatable and what rolls down and make estradiol. And then also look at the big picture, too. Why is this person low in the first place? But uh, I think we all get that. It's a complicated subject, but you need to go to someone to check it 100%, and it needs to be someone that knows what they're doing with it 100% as well.

Travis Yates 35:05

Yeah. Uh is there any places they can look in their community, Mark, to go, is this this is a good place? Is someone, is there any sort of associations they can look at?

Mark Sherwood 35:14

You know, it it's challenging because uh the whole idea of functional medicine out there is a is kind of a nuanced term anymore. Um, that there's a danger, and I think people know about it, is just going to a men's clinic or something like that or or spa because they don't look at the the pathways around. I I see a lot of men that go to those places and they just keep running their testosterone up higher and they actually block those receptors. They become hormone receptor resistant, which is complicated area, and they don't check their, they don't care about their heart and their blood sugar, and they come in looking like ticks. I mean, completely swell up round red faces and all puffy, but their testosterone is is 2,500 or 3,000. But I'm thinking you just drove yourself down to type 2 diabetes, metabolic resistance, insulin resistance, and heart disease, and nobody seems to care. And that's just from perhaps unscrupulous clinicians, perhaps from people that are utilizing police officers like that for cheap and just get their hormones, and and perhaps as well um naivety or ignorance as far as what to do with a person like that.

Travis Yates 36:26

Yeah, ultimately, you there you you've got to find somebody good, ask around, call us, we'll we'll help you out with that. It's very important. I want to end with GLP ones. By

GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs And Risks

Travis Yates 36:35

the way, there's so much on the longevity end that we're not gonna be able to get to. We'll have to bring you back, Mark, talk about that sort of a part two. But I re recently read that one in eight Americans are on some form of GLP once. I don't have to tell you what that is, they all know what it is, and that is crazy to me. There's a huge danger in that. And I know you you utilize this in your clinic. Uh, talk to people that are either on them now or thinking about getting on them about sort of some traps to avoid.

Mark Sherwood 37:01

Well, GLP ones, we all know what they are. And there's there's the GLP one, two, and three. We can talk about that a different, different show, different day if you want to, but ultimately it does speed up the ability for us to hear the full signal or the satiety signal, if you will. So you feel full faster and eat less, right? But they're given to people with the idea to lose weight. Now, granted, we do need to lose weight. Granted, people are really sick, granted, if people are really fat, and that's not okay because fatness is also an increase of systemic inflammation, which is a baseline part of every disease process. But they're given to people to lose weight under the idea that if I eat less, I will lose weight. No one's talking about nutritional density. So if the stomach is the size of a fist, which it is, two fists is a heart, one fist is your stomach, that space in which we can fill up that's supposed to be full of micronutrients, high nutrient density, is reduced. It will swell up, you know, in a non-GLP status uh position. But the GLP, when that thing gets full, you're gonna hear the full signal and you cannot overeat. And I'm talking about the improper usage of these things. So what you've done is you've created less nutritional density potential, meaning you're gonna slow your metabolism, meaning you might lose scale weight, but you're going to lose muscle tissue and you're gonna look like a sack of sand as opposed to a hunk of lead. Two examples that are very extreme. And then what happens is when the scale weight stops because the metabolism has been crashed, you're gonna do what? You're gonna go back to your doctor and say, I need to lose some more weight. And they're gonna say, well, take some more GLP1. So you see people using extraordinary uh amounts of this stuff now, completely severing their appetite, completely crippling their metabolism. And over the course of time, there's all kinds of continuing data that the more you you do that, you could even paralyze your ability to digest food over the course of time, creating so much constipation, which is another issue, so many GI disturbances over time. These are caution flags. Now, we use them in a completely different way, and we've had incredible success in our different methodologies of those things. But that's where people use them today. And I think one other caution flag that people need to know is they want to get them paid for through insurance. This is key. Once you get that insurance system going on, they're gonna stamp a diagnosis code on you and label you um metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, blah, blah, blah, obese, morbidly obese. And guess what? Even if you do fix it, you still are. Those go into the system and they're gonna continue to raise your insurance rates. And that's where police officers are getting duped by this. They they'll raise the rates. Next year comes along, they'll say, Well, we got a better deal for you.

Travis Yates 39:58

We'll lower our yeah, don't try to go get a life insurance policy after that.

Mark Sherwood 40:01

Oh, it's it's just a it's a dump of con jobs.

Travis Yates 40:05

The other thing that is just mind-numbing. Uh, my my son called me and he had a friend that got on the GLP one, and he goes, She hadn't eaten for five days. Yeah. And I go, let me guess. She went to a sick care doctor and they gave her a prescription, and they didn't tell us anything. And and come to find out, yeah, they gave her a really high dose to start with. And by the way, you this the drug works like a miracle, like you won't eat if you take the wrong dose. And so think about what we said earlier in the show. 500 calorie deficit, drink your water, you know, um, do a little bit of do your 10,000 steps, use the drug if you use it to do your 500 calorie deficit. Because and if if you can't, if you can't eat that much, you need to lower the dose. In fact, I the dosage is the health, the sick care system gives you is ridiculous. You should always use the lowest dose possible and stay there as long as you're at 500 calories below your your caloric caloric you know expenditure. Would you agree with that?

Mark Sherwood 41:08

Yeah. Um, you know, it's like there's the standard of care is frankly not caring at all because it puts you in a box of just this is what we do for people. But how about what we're supposed to do for Mark or Travis? Isn't that what personalized care should be about? And so they don't do that. And that situation you're talking about can can also create uh body dysmorphic issues where someone looks at food and says food makes me fat, therefore they end up getting uh these uh behavioral issues that deal with uh, you know, anorexia, bulimia, things of that nature. And I've dealt with people many times that got on those GLP1s and started to take up the whole idea of purging because that would keep them skinny, so to speak. But it's not healthy, um, misguided, misdirectioned, uh, and again, not unlike our system, it's quite profitable.

Travis Yates 42:03

Yeah, and I think you've said it before that it's a very powerful drug, but that means it takes incredible responsibility. Yes. And don't rely on your general doctor to help you with that. If you can utilize it correctly, and your clinic is a prime example, it can help an incredible amount of people. So, boy, Mark, we could just keep going, going on and on. I want

Authentic Longevity And Where To Start

Travis Yates 42:23

to be respectful of your time. But first off, people are gonna want to hear more. Where can they get a hold of you? Where can they get your new book, Authentic Longevity? And that'd give them sort of a read before we get to our next episode. To because that that is once you can get healthy, then you think about okay, let's talk about longevity. Because I think they're separate. You got to first get healthy, get to where you need to be, and then go, okay, what for the long term do I need to be doing? And that your new book is incredible. How can they get the book? How can they reach you?

Mark Sherwood 42:51

Well, they can get the book. It's it looks like this. I happen to have one right here because uh someone asked about it earlier. It's called Authentic Longevity, and uh it's it's got an interesting subtitle, Unlocking Lifelong Vitality, the Sherwood Way. So as you you you know me well enough, we're a little bit different, but it's found on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, of course. You can get online and find that. It it's a really, really good uh read. We poured everything we think we know at this point in time into it, about everything that we've talked about today and more, so people can really get a hold of how to you know put all this together. Um, our main website for our clinic, which we do serve people around the country and world, is functional dr.com. And uh people can go there and kind of find out more about what we do, social media stuff there, and there's some free blogs and stuff like that as well.

Travis Yates 43:37

Incredible stuff, Dr. Mark Sherwood. I can't thank you enough. And if you've been listening and watching, thank you for doing that. And just remember to you to lead, you have to lead yourself first. And I can't think of a better way to do it than to look at the physical body, to make sure you're leading there correctly, and that will spring out to those around you. So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And just remember lead on and stay courageous.

Announcement 44:00

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