Episode 14 – Hacking Performance and Health with Shawn Wells: On Smart Drugs, Microdosing, Nootropics and More

Episode 14 – Hacking Performance and Health with Shawn Wells: On Smart Drugs, Microdosing, Nootropics and More

In this podcast, Dave Korsunsky, founder of Heads Up Health, talks to Shawn Wells about hacking performance. Dubbed the “World’s Greatest Formulator” by Dr. Jacob Wilson, Shawn Wells is the CEO of Zone Halo Research, a consulting group for supplement formulations and also Chief Scientific Officer at BioTRUST, responsible for R&D and Quality Control.

Grab a pen and paper; you’ll want to take notes! This podcast is full of useful information on brain health, hacking performance, and advice on how one can be more productive. Dave and Shawn cover smart drugs, nutritional formulations, lifestyle modifications, biohacking, stacking nootropics, top supplements for brain health, and even the topic of what is microdosing when it comes to LSD, THC, MDMA and psilocybin for health.

Shawn Wells, MPH, RD, CISSN, FISSN is an author, formulator, and clinician. He has a unique blend of expertise with a Masters Degree in Nutritional Biochemistry and a minor in Exercise Science from UNC-Chapel Hill. Shawn is also a lifetime biohacker-activist (“hacktivist” as he’s coined it), long-term keto dieter, scientist, nutritional biochemist, RD and certified sports nutritionist. You can read more about Shawn on his website, or follow him on Instagram: @zonehalo

Listen in iTunes!

This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • What is microdosing and how to use it to get in a creative space for performance or cognitive enhancement
  • How microdosing can reduce hyper-distractibility and increase creativity
  • Why mouth taping at night can improve nasal breathing 
  • How you can meditate anywhere, even in the middle of traffic
  • Why you need to turn off your notifications on your phone and your email to stop the dopamine rush that perpetuates the cycle
  • The importance of slowing down, increasing meditation and appreciation for the little things in life
  • Shawn’s favorite supplement brands and supplements as well as forms and doses
  • Why creatine is for brain health, methylation, ATP production, and protection of cells from damage and not just building muscles in the gym
  • Why you need a balance of nutrients for optimal nootropic stacking (a layering of 2 or more supplements to support brain health)
  • CBD oil’s role in a cognitive stack
  • What crystallized intelligence is and how it can open the door to more fluid intelligence
  • How mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of all chronic illnesses
  • Shawn’s opinion on the two most important labs that you should test twice a year
  • How berberine is just as effective as metformin in lowering blood glucose
  • How a brain injury (even minimal without concussion) can create insufficient cellular energy (ICE) so we have to provide it with cellular energy like exogenous ketones, the ketogenic diet, berberine and reducing neuroinflammation with CBD and other compounds
  • How berberine is anti-aging and improves insulin sensitivity, allowing for better body recomposition
  • Why it’s not good to graze on protein all day, and it’s better to have 1-2 larger protein meals
  • How ketones bypass mitochondrial dysfunction to provide cellular energy and help repair the brain
  • How fasting sharpens your senses as ketones increase, and why you’ll never be “ketone-resistant”
  • About resistant starches, and how different food was before we’ve hybridized it to be bigger, sweeter and more plentiful.  
  • Why keto is not the norm now since the introduction of the foods of commerce in our food supply
  • Why it’s normal to be fat-adapted, able to burn both glucose or ketones easily
  • About narrowing focus and not trying to multi-task all the time to get more done
  • Myths about LSD that have been perpetuated
  • How we can hold emotional traumas in our physical bodies and how to utilize microdosing to release physical pains
  • Why you should practice daily gratitude journaling with your health data tracking for a deeper understanding of what’s affecting you and the importance of using a paper journal

References

Oura Ring

Headspace Meditation

Zone Halo

BioTRUST Supplements

Ben Greenfield podcast on Psilocybin

Sleep Strips

“Your brain on FaceBook” by David Rock

Own the Day, Own Your Life by Aubrey Marcus

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday

MAPS research on MDMA

CIIS school in San Francisco

Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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Episode 13 – Understanding Human Longevity with Jason Prall

Episode 13 – Understanding Human Longevity with Jason Prall

The Human Longevity Project is not just a film series. It’s a wake-up call to those suffering from chronic illness and those who believe the eventual onset of chronic disease is unavoidable. By studying other cultures, and the elders in the communities of remote villages, this film sheds light on what is really important to establishing and maintaining health and how to live longer healthier lives.

This film series interviews not only the communities and their elders in over 50 different countries, but also professionals working in the various areas of medicine who are teaching the principles of what is necessary to maintain or regain health in our culture.

The western world is filled with convenience and ingenuity, but at what cost? Can we have the comfort of modern society but balance our innate desire to connect with the earth and one another to promote better health?

Listen in as Dave Korsunsky, founder of Heads Up Health, talks with Jason Prall, creator of The Human Longevity Project, about the film series on how we can adopt more simplicity, better quality food, and connection to our communities into our lives for better health.

Jason Prall is a Longevity and Optimal Health Practitioner in Southern California who worked as a mechanical engineer and struggled with his own health before finding his way to health and wellness. He helps people around the globe as an entrepreneur, filmmaker, and Health Optimization Practitioner.

Learn more about how tracking with Heads Up Health can help you to quantify and track the impact your lifestyle changes have on your health.

Listen in iTunes!

This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • Advice on how to live longer; the Human Longevity Project interviewed 9 countries of experts and elder populations to understand what life was like for them including birthing practices, childrearing, work, social aspects, and more
  • Why the aging we see in our Western world is not seen in other parts of the world
  • More about what can we do from a lifestyle perspective to manage health
  • About the difference between managing chronic disease and health
  • How societal influences affect what is accepted for health
  • That one of the biggest things Jason Prall learned was that “time wasn’t money” in the cultures with the best longevity, rather time was something to be cherished
  • How we can engineer our way back to simplicity through the use of biohacking devices because they offer trackable data to see what works for our unique bodies.
  • How finding your purpose helps increase longevity, but finding balance is important
  • About getting more of a calm, serene aspect into your life
  • Why technology we’ve created can is beneficial and not necessarily bad; we just need to find a way to balance it
  • How we have to take responsibility for all of our actions and be proactive to move forward with our health
  • Revolutions start with just 3% of the population changing
  • How EMF’s are impacting our health and how 5G will be a disaster if implemented on a wide scale, for our health
  • How Eastern traditions help balance our technologically intense society
  • Why we are losing the community aspect to our meals, and will have to recreate this in the future for human longevity
  • Why community trumps all the aspects of bio-hacking sleep, HRV, glucose, ketones, etc.
  • How lifestyle changes are quantifiable and thus changeable with Heads Up Health, Oura ring, and Elite HRV with tracking and other devices
  • How technology can help us connect to our innate intelligence of what we are feeling and what is going on in our body, so we understand what health actually feels like
  • Why we can’t go backward with technology so we have to learn to use it to our advantage in understanding how to live longer and healthier
  • How we see the world affects our health and if we are grateful for the opportunities that we have, we can overcome more of the health challenges

References

The Human Longevity Project

Oura Ring

Elite HRV (heart rate variability)

Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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Low-carb Lab Testing — Part 8: The Coronary Artery Calcium Test – A Better Way to Evaluate Cardiovascular Health

Low-carb Lab Testing — Part 8: The Coronary Artery Calcium Test – A Better Way to Evaluate Cardiovascular Health

What is the CAC test and why should you care?

If you’ve been following a low-carb or ketogenic diet for a while, there’s a chance your cholesterol has gone up.  And not just your HDL, but also your LDL—the so-called “bad cholesterol” (even though that’s a total misnomer).  Maybe your cholesterol has actually gone sky-high, and your doctor not only wants you to start taking medication immediately, but she’s also ordered you to quit your “crazy” high-fat diet.  Even if you follow some other kind of diet—Paleo, vegetarian, low fat, or no special plan at all—maybe your cholesterol is high, and you’ve been told you need medication, or that you should exercise more.

Your doctor is only looking out for your best interest, but if they’re not up on the latest research, they might not know that your cholesterol level tells you very little about your risk for cardiovascular disease or a heart attack:

There’s “a growing volume of knowledge that challenges the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis and the utility of cholesterol as a surrogate end point.” (DuBroff, 2017)

It’s possible to have low cholesterol but massive heart disease, or to have very high cholesterol but be in great cardiovascular shape.

If you don’t want to start a war with your doctor, but you also don’t want to abandon a way of eating that’s helped you lose weight, have more energy, and maybe even reduce or eliminate diabetes medications, you can experiment with lowering your cholesterol by using the Feldman Protocol, which we featured here at Heads Up Health.  But there’s a much better way to evaluate your cardiovascular health than just looking at cholesterol.  It’s called the coronary artery calcium test (CAC).  We’ll explore it in detail in a bit.  First, let’s look a little closer at the problems with using cholesterol as an indicator of heart health.

Cholesterol is Protective

Evidence continues to build that cholesterol levels—including LDL—are not accurate indicators of cardiovascular disease risk, and that the medical community as a whole may have gotten “the cholesterol story” very wrong.  For starters, there’s the inconvenient truth that many people who have heart disease or experience a heart attack have “normal” or even low cholesterol.  Low cholesterol is no guarantee against a heart attack, nor is high cholesterol a one-way ticket to heart disease and sudden death.

In fact, evidence suggests that higher cholesterol—again, including LDL—may actually be beneficial, especially in your golden years.  A growing body of research indicates that high LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) is inversely associated with mortality in most people over sixty years of age.  Inversely associated means, the higher the LDL, the lower the risk for mortality.  To be fair, everyone’s risk for mortality is 100%, at least so far as we know.  So when we say there’s a lower risk for mortality, it means that someone has a smaller chance of dying from anything other than a nice old age.  This finding—that high LDL seems protective in some ways—has given researchers “reason to question the validity of the cholesterol hypothesis.”

This is especially true for older people.  Epidemiological and observational studies show that, for most people over 60 years of age, high LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality.  Researchers have also noted a “reverse epidemiology” among the elderly wherein slightly higher blood pressure, BMI, and cholesterol seem to be protective for health.

High Cholesterol Is Not a Disease

Cholesterol is a surrogate indicator.  It’s a measurement, not an illness.  Neither high total cholesterol nor high LDL-C, in particular, is a disease, in and of itself.  They have long been considered markers for cardiovascular disease or risk of heart attack, but this ignores the crucial fact that neither the number of LDL particles in your blood nor the amount of cholesterol carried in them indicates anything about the degree of atherosclerotic plaque built up in your major arteries.

Measuring the amount of cholesterol in your blood provides no information whatsoever about the accumulation of calcified plaques in coronary arteries—that is, how “clogged” your arteries are—or are not.  With this in mind, the obsessive focus on lowering cholesterol by any means necessary may have actually worsened the very epidemic of heart disease these treatments were intended to stop.  The authors of one paper made a powerful case that “the epidemic of heart failure and atherosclerosis that plagues the modern world may paradoxically be aggravated by the pervasive use of statin drugs,” and proposed “that current statin treatment guidelines be critically reevaluated.”

Bottom line: statin drugs do lower cholesterol, but having lower cholesterol doesn’t guarantee protection against heart attack or heart disease.  Plus, statins don’t just lower cholesterol.  The biochemical mechanism by which they do so comes along with a host of other effects, some of which have drastic implications for cardiovascular health.  To name just two, statins interfere with healthy mitochondrial function and also impair the synthesis of crucial vitamin K2.  Vitamin K2 is a “traffic cop” for calcium: it helps deposit it where it belongs, like in your bones and teeth, and helps steer it away from places you don’t want it, like your artery walls, your joints, and your kidneys.  So you can see how a deficiency in this critical vitamin could lead to arterial calcification, and it has nothing to do with the amount of cholesterol in your blood.  (You can learn more about this fascinating but underappreciated vitamin in the book, Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox.)

Enter the CAC Test

Since people who have heart disease or suffer heart attacks run the gamut from low cholesterol to high cholesterol and everything in between, using total cholesterol or even LDL as the determinant of whether someone’s at risk for a cardiovascular event is as misguided as gauging metabolic health and carbohydrate tolerance solely through measurements of blood glucose, while ignoring the crucial role of insulin.

With all this in mind, more physicians are taking advantage of the coronary artery calcium scan.  Unlike serum cholesterol measurements, which, again, are only surrogates, the CAC provides direct observation of arterial calcification that has already occurred.  Not atherosclerosis an individual might or might not be at risk for based on their cholesterol, but the actual disease in progress.  Why rely solely on surrogates when you can have a picture of the actual state of your arteries?

Data is accumulating that confirms what many doctors already know, even if they’re hesitant to admit it: cholesterol levels often don’t correlate with atherosclerosis.  Data show that “significant ASCVD [atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease] risk heterogeneity exists among those eligible for statins according to the new guidelines. The absence of CAC reclassifies approximately one-half of candidates as not eligible for statin therapy.”  In plain English: half the people who would be put on statins based on cholesterol measurements were not candidates for these potentially dangerous drugs when their actual coronary artery calcification was measured.

Other studies bear similar findings.  According to a study in Korean adults, over 50% of individuals for whom statin therapy was recommended had a CAC score of zero – no calcification.  Based on actual arterial calcification—or, rather, the lack thereof—these individuals were at low risk for cardiovascular events, but without having gotten the CAC test, they might have been treated with statins based solely on the surrogate measurement of LDL.

What about the other side of this?  What about people with normal or even “low” cholesterol?  Does that go hand-in-hand with low risk for a cardiovascular event?

Not quite.  Just as people with high cholesterol might have little to no arterial calcification, people with normal or low cholesterol could have high CAC scores and be at greater risk for heart disease, heart attack, or sudden death.  This exact scenario played out in a study of CAC in low-risk women—low-risk, meaning they had cholesterol in the conventionally “normal” range: “Among women at low ASCVD risk, CAC was present in approximately one-third and was associated with an increased risk of ASCVD and modest improvement in prognostic accuracy compared with traditional risk factors.”  Plain English translation again: one-third of women assessed to be at low risk for atherosclerosis already had measurable arterial calcification.  Say it with me for emphasis, folks: the amount of cholesterol in your bloodstream tells you nothing about the amount of atherosclerotic plaque in your arteries.

What is Coronary Artery Calcium and Why Test It?

Unlike your cholesterol, your CAC score gives you visual proof of arterial plaque.  The reason to measure calcium, specifically, is, “Coronary artery calcification is part of the development of atherosclerosis; it occurs exclusively in atherosclerotic arteries and is absent in the normal vessel wall.”  In other words, whether your cholesterol is low, high, or somewhere in the middle, if you have detectable coronary artery calcium, you have atherosclerosis.

And the reason to measure the extent of calcified plaque is that these plaques can rupture, break away from the artery wall, and block the artery, cutting off blood flow to the heart—which is one-way heart attacks happen.

If you’re wondering why calcium might end up in your arteries, the main reason is that it’s one of the ways your body repairs damaged blood vessels.  According to Ivor Cummins and Jeffry Gerber, MD, in their book, Eat Rich, Live Long:

“The body’s response to damaged coronary arteries is always the same, and that response is what the CAC scan directly observes and quantifies.  Your body tries to repair itself by depositing calcium in the damaged areas of the arterial wall.  As the damage continues, these repair processes quicken.  They desperately attempt to shore up the arterial walls before a rupture occurs.  This growing calcium becomes the telltale sign of imminent danger—the ultimate canary in the coal mine.”

What is the CAC Test?

The CAC test, also called a “heart scan,” is a non-invasive, special x-ray of the heart and coronary arteries, performed via CT scan (computerized tomography).  The scan itself takes only 20-30 seconds, but the whole procedure, from start to finish, takes about 10-15 minutes.  Fasting is not required, but you may be asked to refrain from smoking or consuming caffeine for four hours before the scan, since an elevated heart rate can reduce the image quality.  Many insurance companies cover this test, but if yours doesn’t, or your doctor won’t order one for you, you can pay for it out of pocket, for about $150 in the U.S.

Test results are usually given as a number called an Agatston score.  This number reflects a composite measurement of the total area of calcium deposits, and the density of the calcium.  According to the Mayo Clinic, a score of zero means no calcium is present, and risk of heart attack is low.  When calcium is present, the higher the score, the higher the risk for heart attack in the long term.  A score of 100 to 300, considered “moderate plaque deposition,” is associated with a high risk of heart disease or heart attack over the next three to five years, and a score over 300 indicates very high to severe risk.

The key thing to know here is, many people (especially low-carbers) have very high cholesterol, but CAC scores of zero.  Even if your score isn’t zero, if it’s very low, that might put your doctor’s fears to rest even if you have high cholesterol.  Keeping the peace with your doctor isn’t a bad reason to have a CAC test, but an even better one is to put your own mind at ease.  

The exact meaning of different coronary calcium scores differ depending on the source cited, but here’s a general guide, according to Axel Sigurdsson, MD:

Coronary calcium score 0: No identifiable plaque. Risk of coronary artery disease very low (<5%)

Coronary calcium score 1-10: Mild identifiable plaque. Risk of coronary artery disease low (<10%)

Coronary calcium score 11-100: Definite, at least mild atherosclerotic plaque. Mild or minimal coronary narrowings are likely.

Coronary calcium score 101-400: Definite, at least moderate atherosclerotic plaque. Mild coronary artery disease highly likely. Significant narrowings possible

Coronary calcium score > 400: Extensive atherosclerotic plaque. High likelihood of at least one significant coronary narrowing.

Here’s another look at CAC scores, from Eat Rich, Live Long:

Data adapted from Cardiac CT Imaging: Diagnosis of Cardiovascular Disease

However, a high CAC score doesn’t mean you’re automatically in imminent danger.  If your plaques are stable—that is, they don’t keep increasing over time—your risk for a cardiovascular event remains pretty low.  On the other hand, even if you start out with a relatively low score, if that score increases substantially over time, your risk is much higher.  Remember, as arterial damage worsens, calcium deposition increases, so if your CAC score is going up, your arteries are in worse shape.

From Eat Rich, Live Long:

Track Your Progress

The Heads Up Health app is the perfect place to track your Coronary Artery Calcium scores. See the video below for more information:

Not a Perfect Test

Although a low CAC score generally indicates a low risk for cardiovascular events or disease, it’s not a full guarantee.  Unstable coronary plaques vulnerable to rupture may be present in the absence of calcium deposition.  And a high CAC score increases the chances that you have vulnerable plaques, but it doesn’t identify specific places where a rupture or blockage might occur.  Dr. Sigurdsson wrote:

“The presence and extent of coronary calcium are first and foremost markers of the extent of atherosclerosis within the coronary arteries. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that the coronary calcium score does not necessarily reflect the severity of narrowing (the degree of stenosis). Still, a patient with a high calcium score is more likely to have a significant narrowing of a coronary artery than a patient with a low calcium score.  An individual without coronary artery calcification is very unlikely to have a severe narrowing of a coronary artery.  Although cardiovascular events can occur in patients with very low calcium scores, the incidence is very low.”

Take Action

If your CAC score is zero or very low, keep doing what you’re doing!  But if you have a high score, don’t let fear overtake you.  Instead, use that knowledge to spur you to action.  Specifically, consider adopting a low-carb, higher-fat diet.  Nothing’s more damaging to your blood vessels than chronically high blood sugar or insulin.  Low carb and ketogenic diets have been shown time and again to reduce inflammation, reverse metabolic syndrome, and be beneficial for cardiovascular health.

Not only can you slow the progression of arterial calcification, but you can actually reverse it.  This was virtually unheard of in the past, but that’s because the only things recommended to people with high CAC scores was a low-fat diet and cholesterol-lowering medications.  Since coronary artery calcium has virtually nothing to do with your cholesterol and a lot more to do with repairing damage to blood vessels injured by chronically high glucose and insulin, it’s no wonder a high-carb diet and cholesterol medications made no impact.

On the other hand, a ketogenic or low-carb, high-fat diet might be just the thing to help those blood vessels heal and restore your cardiovascular system to its best functioning.  Use the tracking system here at Heads Up Health to record your CAC score and keep track of all your other health data in one convenient place.

Episode 12 – Personalized Nutrition Based On Your Gut Microbiome: Interview with Dr. Stephen Barrie from Viome

Episode 12 – Personalized Nutrition Based On Your Gut Microbiome: Interview with Dr. Stephen Barrie from Viome

Fix your gut, fix your health. That is the sentiment that Dr. Stephen Barrie espouses in his work as a founding pioneer in the gut microbiome field for the last 35 years. His most recent work in developing Viome provides personalized nutrition recommendations based on your gut microbiome to support your health.

Dr. Barrie is a physician, entrepreneur, scientist, teacher, keynote speaker, and author. He founded Genova Diagnostics in 1986 and developed the first clinical intestinal permeability lab test, SIBO breath test, and comprehensive stool analysis. Dr. Barrie has also spent seven years assisting the Chinese Central Government in incorporating Functional Medicine into their healthcare system.

As the Chief Business Development Officer at Viome, Dr. Stephen Barrie has contributed to a system that takes microbiome testing to a new dimension. Viome offers home testing with results accessed through a phone app. Results show gut, metabolic and body scores, as well as what you can do to support keeping your gut microbiome, and therefore you, healthy.

Viome helps you understand how the bacteria in your gut affects your health, what bacteria you have and how to feed it with foods that are optimal for you. It can even help you support proper blood sugar regulation by recommending foods that help balance your gut microbiome.

Listen in as Dave Korsunsky, Founder of Heads Up Health, talks to Dr. Stephen Barrie about how both of their companies help people quantify elements of their health — sometimes a puzzle! –and how this health data empowers users to take control of their health so they can make their own decisions.

Listen in iTunes!

This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • How we can understand the activity of the microbiome with Viome and gain practical info on how to implement the findings
  • What a microbiome is and how it’s bigger than just your gut
  • That the metabolic genetic activity of the gut is 1000 times more than all our other human cells
  • How there are 8000+ different species and the more species you have, the better your health
  • How a dysbiotic gut means that your health is affected due to the diversity getting narrower, creating an unstable environment
  • Why the cause of virtually every chronic disease is the microbiome, including Alzheimer’s and Autism
  • How to get started with Viome and the user-friendly app
  • Results provided are implementable, as the data is interpreted with algorithms that are beyond human interpretation
  • How based on your gut microbiome, you can react positively or negatively to a food no matter how healthy it is
  • Why Dr. Barrie believes there is no one universal healthy diet, that it depends on what is going in your gut microbiome
  • That you can restore your gut health and open up your diet to many more healthy foods
  • How we can look at the gut to provide insight into glycemic reactions of foods without having to test blood sugar
  • Due to gut microbiome differences, two people can eat the same thing and have different blood sugar reactions
  • That the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy and the gut microbiome are linked
  • How you can combine the personalized nutrition suggestions from Viome with any dietary restrictions you already follow for deeper healing
  • That the gut can up- or down- regulate the inflammatory pathways in the body
  • Staying on a restricting healing diet, too long, can be detrimental to long-term results, so retesting can give you new personalized nutrition suggestions every few months
  • You can reduce flares of autoimmune diseases by supporting your gut health
  • How HRV can be linked to gut microbiome activity and health with tracking
  • Most brain activity is not independent but following what the gut is telling it
  • Improving your HRV will also help improve your microbiome and vice versa as your microbiome sends messages out and is also listening to incoming input
  • What a PREbiotic is and how it supports the gut microbiome
  • How you can narrow in on what probiotic strains you need and what foods benefit their colonization based on Viome results
  • How in the future Viome and Heads Up Health can be linked to provide greater data integration for you to implement
  • A YouTube (coming soon) screen share of what the Viome app looks like
  • Learn about specific probiotic strains identified in your sample

References

Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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Episode 11 – Keto on the Road: Long Haul Driver Ginny Shelby’s Health Transformation

Episode 11 – Keto on the Road: Long Haul Driver Ginny Shelby’s Health Transformation

Ginny Shelby is now a retired long-haul truck driver who experienced a complete health transformation after teaching herself to eat keto on the road, from the cab of her semi-truck!

Listen as Dave Korsunsky talks with Ginny about how she was able to manage keto on the road and track her statistics with Heads Up Health while she lost 85 pounds and reversed her symptoms of pre-diabetes, diabetic neuropathy and plantar fibromatosis in the process!

Starting the keto diet in Feb of 2016 she has been able to attain and maintain her goal of lowering her A1C, and daily blood glucose readings in addition to her incredible weight loss.

Initially motivated by a genetic predisposition to diabetes and heart disease, her health transformation extends further than just disease avoidance.

Now, both she and her husband are retired from driving and living on the Oregon coast. They continue to eat a ketogenic diet and track their health status with the Heads Up Health tracking app.  

If you’ve considered trying a ketogenic diet and felt like you just couldn’t manage it with your busy life, then you need to hear Ginny’s story about how she had a Keto Lifestyle Transformation while on the road.

Ginny is a great example of the saying “when there is a will, there is a way”.

Listen in iTunes!

This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • How she successfully lost 85 pounds and kept it off after years of yo-yo dieting
  • That she improved her A1C from 6.2-5.4 without drugs
  • Why she isn’t someone who can let up on strict keto due to carb cravings to be successful
  • About her Facebook group LongHaulKeto Cooks
  • How while eating keto food on the go she eliminated food thought and cravings 
  • Why she realized that eating keto is different for each person and tracking is the best way to find out what works for you
  • Why she had to find a new doctor after implementing the keto diet
  • How she saw foot pain resolve that she had been suffering with for years in just two weeks on the keto diet
  • Why Ginny thinks continuing to listen to podcasts and info on keto is helpful in the long-term
  • What items she kept in the truck to prepare food
  • How she was able to shop and prepare when at home for a week on the road
  • The health metrics she chose to track were blood glucose, fasting, blood ketones, breath ketones, glucose-ketone index, weight and blood pressure
  • Why she chose to avoid statins and other meds and change her diet instead
  • How she incorporates daily fasting now
  • Why podcasts and current books can keep you more informed on new science than your medical doctor
  • That walking into your doctor’s office with your data in the Heads Up Health app can help you to prove to them that diet modification works

References

Ginny’s Facebook group LongHaulKeto Cooks

More on Ginny’s story here

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Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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