Hey, what’s up everyone? Welcome back to the fit to fat to fit experience podcasts. So glad you guys tune in for another episode here with me. Drew Manning from www.fit2fat2fit.com. Uh, it’s always a pleasure to be doing this podcast. You guys, we’ve reached over 50 episodes. We’re on episode 51 and we are well over 500,000, so half a million downloads. You guys, thank you so much to you guys for listening, for sharing, for subscribing and just for being cool and, and supporting me and us through this journey. It’s been incredible. I’m so grateful to be able to do this podcast. Okay. So today’s episode, episode 51 is with dr Murdoch colleg E and I’ll introduce who he is and a little bit, but basically it’s a great episode where we dive into actually my own personal results, uh, from a a blood panel test that I did, um, just recently and he’s going to go over them.
What they mean. So you guys can kind of understand, uh, what’s going on inside of my body, uh, so that you can kind of understand, you know, how a diet and exercise affects that. Because as you know, I’ve been doing a ketogenic diet for a while now and I wanted to finally show you guys from a medical perspective what that does to the inside of your body, right? Physically from an outside perspective. Yes. You know, I’m, I’m still staying lean. My performance is good. I’ve talked about the cognitive benefits, the mental clarity, the focus, the energy that I noticed being on a ketogenic diet. But it’s time to put that to the test, uh, from a medical perspective and show the biomarkers of what’s going on into my inside of my body. So dr Murdock kinda does all that. Um, we kind of also go into talking about, um, you know, getting tested at home through Everly well, which I’ll talk about in a second.
Uh, we talked about, you know, uh, certain, uh, blood panel tests like your, uh, cholesterol, your LDL, your HDL triglycerides, vitamin D, H, S, CRP. We’ll talk about all that stuff in depth, but the cool things that we talk about on a very basic level so you at home can understand what all these numbers mean. So anyways, uh, before we go into the episode, uh, we have a new show sponsor and I’m very, very excited to introduce you guys to Everly well.com now, uh, every well.com let me kind of give you a little bit of history of how I got connected with them. My brother that lives out in Texas met the CEO and he’s like, you got to talk to this company. This is what they do. So basically every Everly well.com is a business that you, that send you specific tests, biomarker tests that you can do at home.
So here’s the thing I’ve done, you know, I’ve worked with doctors in the past and I’ve got my blood tested during certain journeys that I’ve done in the past. And it’s great because I think people need to understand how their diet, how their lifestyle affects themselves at the cellular level, right? What’s going on inside. So that’s why it’s important to do these, these tests, but they can be expensive. It’s time consuming. You got to go to your doctor, you got to make an appointment, you got to sit there for awhile. And it’s sometimes it’s hard to understand what the tests mean. You know, they give you a black and white printout and sometimes they’ll go over the test with you. But sometimes I’ll just be like, well, you need to exercise and exercise more and eat less. Right? That’s kind of the general guidelines. Everybody will and makes it so convenient and affordable for you to do all this at home.
So basically you go to the website, [inaudible] dot com a four slash fit to fat to fit, which by the way, they, they created this specific URL for my followers to receive a 10% discount. Um, and basically you pick which test you want to do. They send you the test and the mail, you prick your finger, you drop some blood in there, you seal it up, you follow the instructions that are very clear and defined and they give you a prepackage ups thing that you put it in there you go drop it off at a ups store. So it’s no cost to you. You do it on your own time, you send it in within a week or so, you get pinged back, you know, an email saying your results are in, you log into your account that you’ve created and boom, your tests are there.
It’s super easy to understand, right? They, they, the way they display it, it’s very easy to interpret, right? Your average person that knows nothing about health can understand what the test means, what the results are, how to improve those results, right? So they give you recommendations specifically of how to re improve those results. Um, so it kind of tells you how to fix the problem versus just, you know, uh, eating less and exercising more. It’s always available to you. So your results are always there. You can go back in and, and log in and it’s shareable with others, you guys and uh, so you can share it with, you know, family, friends, social media if you want to, which is what I plan on doing as well. Um, and like I said, it’s very affordable. It’s very easy. So everything well.com for size fit to fat to fit or use my code fit to fat to fit for a 10% off discount on any of their tests.
And the test that I did you guys, let me kind of tell you which ones I did because I did four different ones. I did, um, a cholesterol and lipids tests, right, which goes over your, your total cholesterol, your HDL, LDL, triglycerides, hemoglobin A1C, um, your, it’s very basic, but it’s very telling of what, how your diet and lifestyle effect that. And then, um, the other test that did is a sleep and stress test, the thyroid and metabolism tests, which tests your cortisol and your testosterone and inflammation and vitamin D test. Um, those are the four tests that I did. Uh, you can, um, I’ll probably share them on social media. You guys can check them out, but we go over those results here in this episode as well. So, uh, once again, very excited to introduce you guys to Everly well it’s gonna make, uh, blood testing so much easier.
Cause here’s the thing, if you’re getting your oil change more than you’re getting your blood tested, there’s, that’s a problem you need to get your blood tested. I would say once every three months, maybe six months max, to kind of see where you’re at and make sure you’re improving. Uh, so anyways, check out everybody, well.com for size fit to vet to fit. Use my discount code Fitbit to fit to get 10% off your first test. And let me know what you guys think of the process and what you guys think of ever the well if you guys like them, I like them, but let me know what you think. All right, you guys, let’s uh, let’s go ahead and jump in to our episode with dr Murdoch. Khaleeji but before we do, let me tell you a little bit about him. He’s an active clinician, writers publish several preventative health and wellness books and has been featured on all the major networks, CNN, uh, numerous radio shows and he focuses on making complex health topics understandable.
So you’re going to love this episode because you’re going to understand, you know, from a scientific perspective what he’s talking about. Um, he is also, um, the chief medical officer for, um, wellness FX and Everly will as well. Uh, he’s earned degrees in engineering and business from UCS, UC Berkeley, Columbia and Columbia, and he’s been a leader in consultant in several health services and technology companies. So he definitely knows what he’s talking about and it was, let’s get to the episode, enjoy it, learn from it, apply it and thank you guys once again for tuning in.
All right. What’s up, dr Murdock? [inaudible] how are you doing today? I’m great. Thanks for having me, drew. Yeah, welcome to the fit to fat to fit experience podcast. It’s an honor to have you on man. Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here. And so where, where are you, where do you reside? Right now? I reside in new England. Uh, I live in Massachusetts and, but I often grew up there doing various working, uh, preventative health and technology. Yeah. And how did you grow up there? Because I don’t run out here an accent. I did grow up on the East coast. I grew up a little South of me in Delaware, but then I got most of my education in, in California. So now I’m just a mix. Okay. Yeah, no, I totally understand. I grew up half of my life in San Diego and then I moved to Northern Virginia area, uh, for the other half of my life.
So same here. So, uh, before we get started, uh, what, what did you have for breakfast? Can I ask that? Uh, I’m always curious to know. Absolutely. Well, uh, today I had basically a green smoothie today. Uh, yeah, it was a mix of spinach. Kale had a little bit of fruit in it, a little bit of a seaweed based stuff like spirulina and chlorella. Uh, so, so a little bit of a mix. Okay. Is that typical for you or what’s a typical breakfast? I would say I have that most mornings. Um, you know, I just to kind of get a nutrient boost. And while in general I don’t consume a lot of carbohydrates. Uh, you know, in the morning we, we tend to be the most insulin sensitive and our glycogen stores are the lowest. So. So I figured if there was going to be a time I’d have a smoothie, that’s, that’s when I would do it.
That’s awesome man. Yeah, no, I’m a big fan of the green smoothies. Um, so let’s, uh, you know, my audience might not know exactly who you are and, um, what you do. I’d love to, for you to kind of fill us in on how you grew up and where you grew up. And also, you know, I know you studied to be an engineer and how you became a doctor, if you don’t mind.
Uh, absolutely. So I went going through school initially when I was young, I was the child of two engineers. And so I always had that math, science way of thinking in my brain. And when I went to college, I studied biomedical engineering. I actually went to the university of California, San Diego. So I’ve spent a fair amount of time in San Diego as well. And I studied bioengineering for a couple reasons. One where I went to school, UC San Diego was well known for its bioengineering program. But the other reason is though I had this experience in engineering. I just always had a lot of interest in, in the human body and physiology. And I really enjoyed studying the human body from a mechanistic or engineering perspective as bioengineering did. And so I did that through college. I came to learn that I enjoyed what I enjoyed most about, uh, studying the body and looking at it from that engineering perspective was like with a lot of engineering, how can you optimize the machine?
How can you make the system function best? And that’s really what medicine tries to do. So I decided to continue that bio and engineering education in medicine. I actually stayed at the UC San Diego, uh, to study medicine. Um, which was a great experience in that, not only while I was there did I get to study medicine, but I also got to do a lot of research in within medicine specifically. I became very interested in, in health prevention. Uh, I mean there’s one thing about curing a disease, but to me, if you can prevent a disease that’s even better than curing it because not only have you made that disease go away, but it never even was an issue. And so I, I did a lot of research with various, I grants through fellowships and grants through medical school with the American heart association, the Howard Hughes medical Institute, um, the Stein Institute of research on aging, the NIH, uh, really focusing on how can we help prevent certain, um, as people get older, what the most common diseases, especially cardiovascular disease.
And so it was really fascinating research, especially thinking about things like lipids and cholesterol and how to optimize those. Then I went on to train, uh, do a residency after medical school. Specifically. I trained in emergency medicine and though I loved the specialty because one aspect of emergency medicine is basically someone comes to you with a problem and, and you try to figure out how to fix it and try to figure out how to optimize the situation. I found often the problems I was seeing were very late stage. Um, and though I had done all this research about prevention and, and how to make diseases not happen, I was seeing people after they had their heart attacks or strokes, um, when it was, you know, there was a lot less you could do, um, compared to preventing disease. So I decided I wanted to get more involved in trying to help the society at large, uh, in prevention or at least the spreading of health knowledge so that people felt like they were more empowered to make personal health decisions that could help, uh, in their wellness and prevention of disease.
So I started writing and I’ve now written a few books, uh, in the area of what you can do to help optimize your health, uh, some focused on cardiovascular disease and cholesterol, others in overall health. And wellness. But what I really think is a great tool, uh, now to, to try and spread prevention and help empower people in their health. Kind of going back to my engineering roots is, is health technology and using, using modern modern tools that we’ve seen to, um, really transform so many other industries, whether it be, whether it be commerce or communication and using that for health and spreading health information, helping people become more knowledgeable about their health. And I’ve worked with a few companies in that space now I’m fortunate to be the chief medical officer now of company called Everly. Well that that helps people, um, do biomarker testing from the convenience of their own home. And that’s, that’s really what interests me the most because I’ve found biomarker testing to transform my own life and my own health by getting, by actually testing myself and finding what actions improve my health and what, what doesn’t that I’ve been really able to optimize my health in the way that I’ve always wanted ever since I went to college.
That’s, yeah, that’s, that’s great man. I appreciate you sharing your story with that. And that, you know, we’re going to get into Everly well in just a second because I’m a huge fan and I kind of want to go over my results with you. Uh, cause I just did my first test through Everly well and kind of get your thoughts on my results. But, um, do
you, uh, Murdock, do you consider yourself a biohacker then? Or what do you think, uh, you know, would you consider yourself a biohacker when it comes to health? Right. That’s so great question. And I, what I consider myself as someone that’s responsive to feedback and I don’t necessarily need, I have found a ton of information to be able to make better decisions. I’ll, I’ll give you my personal example. Uh, I started testing my biomarkers, uh, I’d say a few years ago and I wasn’t doing it too frequently, once every say six months to a year. I know some people like to do it far more often and there are plenty of other people that do it far less, or if at all. But I’d say every six months to a year I was testing. And what I found was that a certain period of my life shortly after I went through my medical training and I was early in my career when I was just working really hard, I thought I was a pretty healthy guy.
Um, I was eating what I thought was, uh, was an okay diet. I try to, you know, not eat too much fat and I’ll, I’ll get more into that in a sec. What I thought was the right way to eat and, and I was a runner and, and I thought I was taking good care of myself based on really the only data I had at the time, which was sort of the macro data of my, my weight. My weight wasn’t too bad, so, so I figured it out. I’m, I must be okay. But then as I started to check my numbers, I became concerned. My cholesterol progressively creeped up and my blood sugar progressively was creeping up. My inflammatory markers weren’t ideal and that made me say, huh, maybe I’m not working hard enough. So checking my biomarkers was a real wake up call. I find a lot of people, including myself, who should know better than anybody, look at themselves and maybe just think they’re doing okay, but when they check their biomarkers and actually see what’s going on inside, they realize, okay, there may be, there may be some more issues.
So it was, it was a huge wake up call to me, really started, motivated me, motivating me even even more than I thought I was. So I took what I thought was the right way and then took it to an extreme level. I, I said, okay, now I’m going to eat a really, really low fat diet. Uh, and now I’m going to start. I was running eight miles a day at that point. I mean, I was doing all the things that I thought was classically correct and just pursuing it to an extreme. And I kept testing to get that feedback again. Uh, maybe about six months later. And what I found, which was surprised, which surprised me is not only were a lot of my markers not getting better, but a lot of them were getting worse. And, and so as I, as we became more, this was right around the time that we were starting to become more aware in the last few years, that maybe it’s not about the length that you train, but about the quality of your training and maybe trading some of that long, uh, long distance running.
I was doing with some shorter high intensity workouts and muscle building workouts might optimize my biomarkers and health further. We also were starting to learn that maybe it’s not about strict low fat diets, but instead about eating healthy fats and not substituting, you know, a lot of people when they eat low fat diets tend to eat a lot more carbohydrates. Now we’ve, we’re learning that having an excess amount of carbohydrates in the diet comes with their own problems. So maybe instead of being low fat, high carb being healthier fats and a lesser amount of healthier carbohydrates, uh, and, and my point is not to get too caught up in the specific, um, methodology or science of, Oh, this is how you should work out and this is how you should eat. My, my point is through getting the feedback, I learned to make adjustments. And so when I made those adjustments in my exercise regime and in my diet, not all the, I’ll tell you drew, the impact was huge.
My triglycerides dropped by more than half. Um, my HDL cholesterol significantly increased. My blood sugar dropped dramatically. One of my favorite measures, the triglycerides to HDL ratio, which basically looks at a balance of the fats in the blood that can deposit in your arteries and cause contribute to cardiovascular disease versus HDL cholesterol, which can help take away some of those deposits. My triglycerides to HDL ratio dropped by two thirds, not to two thirds of what it was, but by two thirds, uh, through making some of these, these changes in here, I was pretty knowledgeable. Um, and what I thought motivated guys. So, so if it could have that sort of impact on me, I think that that testing can have a tremendous impact for others.
Yeah. Wow. That is so powerful. Honestly, that really is because I remember when I was doing my fit to fat to fit journey, that was really the first time I was doing consistent, you know, biomarker testing with my doctor just to make sure I wasn’t going to die, right. As I was getting, you know, gaining all this weight and no exercise for six months, which was scary. But, um, I remember going on the dr Oz show for the first time and I was like his little Guinea pig because he was so intrigued by what I was doing. And, and here I was, you know, um, you know, 31 years old at the time, you know, I’ve been healthy and fit my entire life, 30 plus years, you know, healthy fit. I played sports growing up and then in just six months time, it was crazy to see how quickly my health declined.
Right. From, uh, a medical perspective. I’m not talking about my weight. Yes, I had man boobs and a big gut and, and felt that weight, but I didn’t feel like I was dying. Right? Like I would drink mountain Dew, I would have cinnamon toast crunch. It tastes good. I didn’t feel my liver, my kidneys hurting as I was doing that. Right? Or I didn’t feel the cholesterol building up. I felt, you know, I’m like, you know, I’m still alive. I can walk upstairs like I’m good. I think a lot of Americans think that way. They think, you know what, I’m still, you know, I’ll look. They look in the mirror, they get on the scale. They’re like, yeah, I’m not too bad. Right? I’m not morbidly obese, but it’s really about what’s going on in the inside of your body and until you know that, you know, until you know what’s going on the inside of your body, you don’t really know what changes to make.
And that’s what the wake up call from. Even for me as a personal trainer, I was working in the medical field at the time with a lot of doctors and nurses. So I understood the risks going into this journey. But it wasn’t until I was on the dr Oz show and I realized I had a development, nonalcoholic fatty liver in six months time and you know, my blood pressure was, you know, through the, you know, through the roof and everything. All my biomarkers were really unhealthy. That’s when it gets scary, right? Cause people don’t realize it sneaks up on them and like you were saying, working in the hospital, emergency rooms, like they, you know, it’s over time and all of a sudden boom, something happens. Then they go for help. Right. Instead of preventing it. So I can totally relate to what you’re talking about.
And I think it’s very important for people to understand that they, it’s up to them really honestly to start tracking instead of just their weight. You know, these biomarkers. And that’s why I love companies like every well and you know, wellness FX that make it so much easier and more convenient for people because, and I’ll ask your opinion on this, but I think people’s perception of it is like, Oh, it’s too inconvenient. I got to take off work, I go make an appointment with a doctor, wait around for an hour, do the test, and then six weeks later or whatever, you know, then I get the results. And you know, the doctors just says to, you know, you need to eat less and exercise more. So what’s your opinion on why PE, why you think people don’t take the time to test themselves on these biomarkers from what you’ve seen?
Well, I think you’re absolutely right that it is for most people. Uh, it has been very inconvenient. I mean, the classic system to understand your health, uh, for prevention is you take time off work, you go see your doctor however long for a very brief visit, uh, who they order the blood tests, uh, and it varies by physician and, uh, what, what tests might be ordered. And then you have to then go to a lab, get blood drawn, and then wait a certain amount of time, go back to see your doctor, your results get communicated to you, usually in a black and white printout that you don’t really understand, like you said, the recommendations because you have that limited amount of time or pretty general, uh, in terms of, yeah, eat better, exercise more. And, and so that is absolutely not an ideal system. And what companies like Everly try to do is completely change that paradigm by making it all con as convenient as possible for you so you don’t have to lose that time that you had to lose before and then you can then focus that time on really understanding your markers and getting into the kind of details that I think a lot of people want or need to try to really optimize those biomarkers.
Yeah, exactly. And that’s, uh, it’s, it’s, I think that’s where we’re moving towards, right? Making it more convenient. I think people are understanding, you know, uh, the importance of, or the convenience of becoming a biohacker in a way where it’s like, okay, I want these results. I want to find out what’s going on inside of me, but I want it to be done quickly, conveniently to where I don’t have to take time out of my day. And sometimes the costs, I’ve done some of these tests in the past end, they can be expensive. I remember, you know, for a very extensive blood panel, it was like 8,000, $9,000. Right? I mean, it’s extremely expensive for some people. Right. And that’s depends on insurance and things like that. But I, that’s why I think, uh, you know, everybody well does, you know, makes it more convenient for people to just do it from home so they don’t have to make any doctor appointments.
Um, but speaking of that, I would love if you’re okay with it going over my results. So just to update my audience, I, you know, I ordered some tests from everybody. Well, you do them, you know, they send you the tests to your house, right? And you, there’s, you know, very detailed instructions on how to do the tests. Um, basically prick your finger and you drop the blood in there and you send it off and it’s, it’s super convenient, super easy. Um, so I did my tests, I did, you know, um, let’s see, let me pull it up, which tests had did and um, and then I’ll have a Murdock if you don’t mind, kind of going over those test results. So he has them. And that’s what’s great about it is, you know, we can go over them to understand exactly what they’re going through or to understand exactly what these tests mean. So I did a cholesterol and lipids test, um, and uh, uh, sleep and stress tests, thyroid and metabolism and inflammation and vitamin D test. So I did those four tests. So let’s maybe just start out with the cholesterol and lipids if that’s okay.
Absolutely. So yes, I’ve had a chance to review your results and I’ll get into some of the details overall. I mean, they’re really fantastic. I looking at your cholesterol, you know, we tend to look deeper than total cholesterol, but specifically different components of, there’s the LDL cholesterol or low density lipoprotein. That’s the type of cholesterol particle that tends to deposit in our arteries causing clogging a process known as atherosclerosis, which can contribute to cardiovascular disease. So the less of that LDL cholesterol you have that’s been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, your LDL levels were fantastic. They were 78, eight, 77.9 specifically. Um, well less than, than the recommended levels. I mean, very significantly highs considered one 60. Yours is less than half of that. Some people who have health problems, uh, like say their diabetics, they recommend to get LDL levels even lower than that, say under a hundred years are already under a hundred.
So your, your levels are outstanding. Then another component of cholesterol is your HDL or high density lipoprotein. This is actually a healthier type of cholesterol and not, not everyone realizes that some types of cholesterol are actually good for you. This high density lipoprotein helps carry, um, lipids away from the blood vessels. It’s actually acts like an artery clearing device. You can actually clean your blood vessels and this HDL helps us do it. Um, it’s recommended that your HDL be over 40. If your HDL gets under 40, then that’s considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease because you don’t have as much of these, these particles clearing your blood vessels. Yours is over 50. It’s 52.6, which is, which is good. Uh, and I think there, there’s, you know, some people like even higher levels I’ll get into in a minute while why I think your levels are, are pretty great.
And, uh, before that I just want to talk about your triglycerides. Now triglycerides are basically fats, so fats in the blood, uh, and your, so the more fats you have in the blood, the more they can deposit in blood vessels contributing to this atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Um, there are different guidelines for levels of fats in the blood. Um, most recommend having it under one 50. Um, some people who are really, really aggressive like to see triglycerides under a hundred years are 71.6, uh, which is outstanding. I, it’s definitely a great triglycerides level. So you know I mentioned your HDL before. What a lot of people really care about is the balance between HDL and triglycerides because you have triglycerides that deposit in blood vessels and HDL that helps clear those fats from your blood vessels. So it’s the balance of the two. That’s really key.
So a very popular marker and probably the lipid marker that’s most closely associated with cardiovascular disease is your triglycerides to HDL ratio. So basically the level of your triglycerides over the level of your HDL cholesterol and it’s considered high risk if you’re over say four to five on this ratio. So if your amount of triglycerides is four to five times your amount of HDL, um, most want to see you under two a is as really an optimal threshold. Your ratio is 1.3599999999999999 which is fantastic. And so the really the balance is, is pretty great between your triglycerides and HDL and that that speaks highly to your, what you’re doing fitness wise and what you’re doing diet wise. I think one thing I’ve noticed diet wise that maybe a contributed to this is we checked some other markers in the cholesterol and lipid panel. We checked some markers of inflammation, which we can talk to in a bit when, uh, when we review some of your other tests.
But another, another marker we check in the cholesterol and lipid panel is your hemoglobin a one C, which represents your average blood sugar over the preceding few months. And we checked this because a lot of people will check a single fasting blood sugar level. And while that’s definitely a good test, it’s, it’s prone to some air. Like if you’ve say had some activity that morning or you haven’t slept well the night before, or if you have some sudden stress that can acutely increase your blood sugar. And so that can create some, some variants in the test that day. The nice thing about your hemoglobin A1C is you remove some of that variance. And the way that test works is blood sugar actually deposits on your red blood cells, uh, and uh, on your hemoglobin particles. The oxygen carrying component of red blood cells. And the more sugar you have in your blood, the more of those deposits we see.
So what we can do is measure, uh, the amount of those deposits. Now your red blood cells they recycle are constantly, they break down and new ones are made to a point where all of your blood is recycled roughly every four months, roughly every 120 days. So when we check your hemoglobin a one C that’s w that represents your average blood sugar over the last 120 days over the last four months. And it gives us a good idea of where you’ve been at blood sugar wise, looking at your hemoglobin A1C. So generally it’s recommended you want to be under six or the low six is that starts to get into concern for diabetes. Um, prediabetes in the high fives. Uh, yours is, um, not, not just below that, but well under five. It’s 4.6%, which is an outstanding hemoglobin A1C. Um, I’ve looked at a lot of these and this is definitely in the probably top 5% of hemoglobin a one C’s that I see.
Uh, not many people get it this low. And what that tells me is you probably, uh, in addition to generally having an insulin sensitive body where you, where you have a lot of muscle that makes you insulin sensitive and not a lot of fat, which can make you insulin resistance so that being resistant to insulin, um, can, can raise your blood sugar. Being sensitive to insulin can lower your blood sugar. So that tells me that you have a lot of muscle compared to your fat, but it also tells me you probably don’t have a lot of carbohydrates in your diet. Uh, is that suspicion? Right?
Yeah, I know I’ve been, yeah, very low carbs. I’ve been, you know, not as strict keto diet, but fairly, you know, fairly strict where, you know, most of the time I’m doing a ketogenic diet. So like 70% fat, um, no. Yeah, 70% fat, 20% protein, maybe 10% carbs, sometimes less.
So the interesting thing about that is not only do I think that’s influencing your hemoglobin A1C percentage and you’re relatively low blood sugar, but I also think that’s a big influence of your triglycerides. The fats in the blood. Now for a long time people assumed because triglycerides are fats in the blood, they’re primarily influenced by dietary fat. So the more fat you eat, the higher your triglycerides. That’s not what we’ve, we’ve found over the last few years we’ve actually found that carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates like sugar, are a much bigger influence of the triglycerides in your blood. So I believe it’s that diet that’s causing your low triglycerides as well and why you have both a low triglycerides and a low hemoglobin a one C.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s funny cause I get that all the time too. And I think it’s still, I mean it makes people so nervous. You’re like, you know, they’re, they’re asking me what I eat. I’m like, look, I eat a lot of fat now they’re healthier fats, but it’s without the presence of, you know, refined sugars and processed carbohydrates. But it still scares people. When I tell them I eat butter and coconut oil and avocados and whole eggs and you know, sometimes bacon, but fattier cuts of meat, um, you know, and they’re like, ah, I’m scared to do that because we’ve been so, you know, taught, like ingrained in our heads that fat is the enemy. So it’s interesting, but that’s why I wanted to go over these results with you is to show people, look, fat is not the enemy. It’s the processed carbs. Like I ate when I was doing my fit to fat to fit journey, cinnamon toast crunch twice a day, you know, two or three mountain Dews, uh, you know, white pasta, a white bread, you know, granola bars, chips, cookies, crackers, even if they’re low fat, even if they’re all natural or gluten-free or fortified with vitamin a and vitamin D, it doesn’t mean that they’re healthy for you. And it’s just, we’re slowly starting to get people to understand that. But it’s, you know, I think it’s an uphill battle still.
Absolutely. Fats can, uh, are becoming not only not the enemy, but many types of fats are becoming our friend, especially unsaturated fats. Um, like the avocados, like in nuts, seeds, certain oils because they can not just help it overall by reducing carbohydrates. But fats directly, like unsaturated fats can help increase your HDL cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol, especially unsaturated fats helping increase your HDL, which can offer you more protection and more advantage from cardiovascular disease.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, so cool. So my hemoglobin a one CC, um, you know, I don’t think we’ve talked about my HSC or P yet, but um, I’m assuming we’ll get there, but, uh, I think it’s awesome to look at these results and to have them in front of you. And here’s the thing that I like about every, well I’m not going to pitch it a ton, but basically it tells you exactly, it’s so easy to read. Like the, the most uneducated person when it comes to health can understand what these results mean. You know what you can do about it to improve those numbers. And uh, there’s even a community you can join and it’s, you can even consult with a physician, which is awesome cause it makes it, it makes it a little bit more personable. If you can talk with someone about these results, but for the most part your average person’s going to be able to get these results online, you know, and understand exactly what’s going on inside their body. Exactly. That’s why I’m getting tested. Exactly. Um, okay, let’s go over some of the other tests if you want to. Um, so we did the cholesterol and lipids, so I’m pretty much good there. I mean, I definitely, I’ve had my HDL over 60 at certain points in time and um, I know I can get it back there, but I’m not too concerned about it. Like you said, cause my triglycerides to HDL ratio is pretty good.
Exactly. There, you know, the more, uh, focusing on unsaturated fats, the more you can potentially, uh, improve that HDL. But because the, you have such a nice balance of your triglyceride stage GL is just, it’s just not that emergent in issue.
Yeah. Let’s talk about inflammation and vitamin D, if that’s okay.
Uh, absolutely. Uh, so this is one of my favorite tests because not a lot of people know about inflammation and what inflammation is, is we, all our bodies all have an inflammatory response to various offenders. The way, the simplest, um, example I give is if you think about it, if you twist your ankle, you sprain your ankle, your ankle gets swollen and red and hot, and what that is, is your body senses an injury and it sends certain, uh, chemicals to that site of injury to start to facilitate healing. The, you also get that when you say come down with a virus in your glands get swollen, that’s really an inflammatory response, uh, of your body to respond to the initial infection. And that’s a healthy response. Um, that does good things for us when it becomes unhealthy is when there’s persistent chronic inflammation. Uh, and that’s unhealthy for a couple of reasons.
One, uh, it can tell us that, Hey, maybe there’s something bad going in going on in our body. So an elevated level of inflammation can act as a, a red flag. Like there’s something, there’s something going on that my body’s responding to. Uh, but then it also can actually cause damage itself. For example, when blood vessels get damaged, uh, through, you know, this progressive atherosclerosis and uh, uh, cardiovascular disease from deposits in our blood vessels, that’ll increase inflammation. And so, uh, measures of inflammation are associated with risks of diseases like cardiovascular disease, but then also when the body senses that damage to blood vessels, it sends those chemicals, those inflammatory mediators to try to help. But, but what that can do is that can actually cause more clogging in our blood vessels and increase the risks and potential damage. So it can be both a sign of issues but also cause issue.
So if you’re able to optimize inflammation, you can reduce your risk of many types of diseases. In fact, inflammation has been associated with a whole host of diseases, not limited to, um, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia, even even many types of cancers. So inflammation is becoming increasingly important, uh, in terms of medicine and, and understanding what risks exist. Now the measure of inflammation, that’s one of the most popular and very commonly tested is the HS CRP, which stands for high sensitivity C reactive protein. It’s a really good measure of short term inflammation. You got, uh, an inflammation kit done, which examines HS, CRP, that that marker is actually in the cholesterol and lipid panel as well. Uh, so you actually had it checked a couple times and both times it was the same number. It was, uh, so is where you want to be, is that what’s considered elevated risk is once you start getting into over a level of one and, and high-risk over a level of three, and I’ve seen people with levels in the 20, 30, 40, in fact, in my clinical practice and even in the emergency room, we check CRPS.
And if they’re really high, that often tells us something not only is something bad on, but something really bad might happen really quickly. That’s a often tells us about the urgency of the illness. Um, specifically with you, your inflammation levels, your HS, CRP levels were under one. There were 0.7, which is, which are great levels. Um, that’s where you want to be and, and so that’s fantastic. Uh, looking at the rest of your panel, we, you also had checked in the inflammation panel, your vitamin D. The reason those two are checked in the inflammation panel is it’s become increasingly aware that vitamin D deficiency is associated with inflammation more, more globally. We’ve become aware over the last decade or so that vitamin D deficiency has become a risk for a whole host of diseases. Uh, the reason, part of the reason that is, is vitamin D deficiency or vitamin D is considered the sunshine vitamin.
We, our primary source of vitamin D historically has been from the sun. And when the sun hits our skin, it causes a chemical reaction creating the production of vitamin D within ourselves. We don’t get nearly as much sun as we used to historically. We spend a lot more time indoors. And so vitamin D levels for society overall have gone progressively down. And now it’s estimated that a huge majority of society is vitamin D insufficient or deficient. And that’s really unfortunate because vitamin D serves a whole host of functions in our body. Specifically in how many genes are expressed or how genes are expressed, uh, including genes that govern our immune functioning genes that influence inflammation. And so vitamin D deficiency has been associated with increased inflammation as well as a host of other diseases, including all those diseases I mentioned that are associated with inflammation.
So vitamin D deficiency has been associated with cardiovascular disease, uh, diabetes, um, dementia, many types of cancers, depression, uh, and, and the list goes on and on. When I look at your vitamin D levels, it’s recommended that vitamin D levels be over 30. Uh, and when you get less than 30, they be considered insufficient. When you get less than 20 a really be, uh, considered deficient, your slightly over 2020 1.5. So they’re not in that major deficiency in that I’ve seen a lot of people with vitamin D levels in the single digits and, and you’re, you’re definitely not there, but I don’t think it’s optimal as well. And part of the reason for that might be for a lot of people. Uh, vitamin D is a fat soluble, uh, vitamin and a lot of people store, uh, vitamin D in their fat. You’re a guy with just not a lot of body fat, so you’re not going to store as much vitamin D as some people.
And so it’s going to be valuable to, it can continue to get vitamin D from various sources, whether that be getting some outdoor exposure, especially during those peak hours in the early afternoon. Uh, but, but we know sun exposure can have certain risks as well. So other sources of vitamin D can be helpful as well, whether it be vitamin D containing foods, like a lot of meats, poultry, a D dairy tends to be fortified with vitamin D. Fish has a lot of vitamin D, but more and more we’re seeing a supplementation. I take a vitamin D supplement every single day. And the, the powerful thing about improving vitamin D levels is you start to see improvements in other markers as well. Um, for example, with your HS CRP though it’s, it is that great levels being under one 0.7 there’s still further room for improvement. And I am fairly confident that if you can get your vitamin D levels a little bit higher, you’re going to see your HS, CRP levels, your inflammation levels go down even further. Yeah.
So that’s a quick question. I’m sorry to interrupt you because I think this is great for people to understand that um, if they see themselves deficient vitamin D, it’s like, okay, more is better, but it’s only with vitamin D it’s a U shaped curve. So it’s only to a certain extent, right? It’s not like, okay, I need to stay out in the sun for hours and take 20,000 IUs of vitamin D to get that number up. You don’t want to have it too high because it then that’s where you need to check your HS CRP at the same time to kind of see what’s the optimal range. And I’m assuming you’ve seen that in your practice where you’ve seen people maybe overdo it and then their inflammation, you know, is it tends to go up as well if they have too much, so they gotta find their optimal range. Is that right?
Yeah. You know, it was kind of funny, we became increasingly aware of all of the risks of vitamin D deficiency that a lot of practitioners started pushing more vitamin D, more vitamin D, more vitamin D, and you’re right, some people would get to really high levels. And there’s actually now been some research over the last few years from institutions like Johns Hopkins and others that have shown excessively high vitamin D levels. Um, once you start approaching triple digits, um, or at least the high double digits can actually come with more health risks and increase inflammation. So like you described, it’s that it’s that U shaped curve of there’s a certain vitamin D range that’s ideal. And that range might vary a little bit by person, especially because if you think about historically, if we come from different ethnic backgrounds, certain cultures may have come from places that, uh, there was a lot of sun exposure, uh, evolutionarily, while sir other places, you know, there may be not as much sun in their climate. So every individual is a little bit different here. So what I recommend and I see a lot of people do is retest. You know, a lot of people don’t know how much vitamin D should, should I take. I said, and I suggest we’ll start at a certain level and retest both your vitamin D and your inflammation levels and see where you’re at. For most people, that ideal range tends to be in that 40 to 50 a zone. And that’s where I tend to see the lowest HS CRPS.
Okay, that’s awesome. So that’s what I was going to ask you is, you know, how often should people be testing, um, maybe not just this test, but in general, I mean, is it every 30 days, every 60 days, once every six months? What’s what’s optimal for people or what would you recommend from your perspective?
Absolutely. I think the more abnormal or the more high risk your markers are, the more often you should test a. If you find that you know you have absolutely no abnormalities, nothing, you’re looking to uh, uh, adjust well that suggests you’re probably doing things pretty well and can maintain that. And then I’d say annually is a pretty good interval of time to make sure that your maintenance is, is doing well for people with significant abnormalities. Um, and they’re really looking to make some major changes. What you want to know and you want to know pretty quickly is if those changes are actually having their intended effect. And that’s where that feedback is so important. And I’d say roughly every three months, cause after about 90 days you should start to see changes in your lip, bids in blood sugar and inflammation levels and vitamin D. And so three months is a pretty good interval if you’re making significant changes.
Yeah. And I think that’s what’s great for, for other people to learn. And I kind of preach this is to become, you know, I tell people to become your own self experimentation, right? Experiment on yourself and, and see what works best for you. Because what works best for you might not be the best for everybody else. So just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for you and vice versa. Um, so that’s what I tell people. You know, if you’re going to, let’s say for example, try the keto diet, right? That’s kind of been a hot topic recently. If you’re going to try it, then, you know, you got to do it more than just three or four days. You gotta stick to it for, I would say at least four to six weeks, you know, get your blood tested as well to see if that’s optimal for you.
If not, then you know, you tried it, but you gotta at least, you know, give it at least I would say four weeks. But I think 90 days would be optimal for people to try any kind of new lifestyle. You know, whether it’s, you know, they start a new workout program or they start a new diet, um, and kinda just do your own self experimentation to find what works best for you. Because I think so many times we kind of just go by the seat of our pants and say, okay, well I see this celebrities doing this day, so I’m going to try that. Oh, I feel horrible, you know, after few days. So, you know, let me go back to my, my cinnamon toast crunch and mountain Dew diet. You know, that’s what I, uh, used to eat as well. But anyways, um, I think that’s a great advice and hopefully people that are listening can kinda take hold of that and apply it in their lives and start to become, um, more responsible when it comes to testing their own, their own, uh, biomarkers.
And you know, you can’t always, I mean, and I hate to say this, and you’re, you probably see this all the time, but you can’t always just rely on your doctor to tell you exactly what to do. Sometimes you have to, you have to know what works best for you because your doctor is seeing X amount of people per day, X amount of people per week and you know, they don’t always have the best advice when it comes to nutrition sometimes or lifestyle changes. Um, is that, do you think that’s correct? Do you think, you know, that’s from your perspective as a doctor? You know, it’s funny how, how’s that too hard? Sorry if that’s offensive.
It’s interesting how I went through all these years of education, you know, after college, then four years of medical school, then another three years of training and how little education I got in nutrition or physical fitness. Um, I can’t, in fact I don’t recall a class, um, that I had in either topic. Maybe some stuff would get mentioned at some point, but it wasn’t enough that I really, I got a lot from that in terms of recommendations I could make to patients. And that’s why I was still in that classic just sort of general thinking of, of low fat and more exercise rather than thinking about really the quality of what you eat, that it’s not just fats bad and carbohydrates instead, that it’s not just more exercises better. That was stuff I had to figure out on my own based on the most recent research and testing myself. Uh, so I definitely agree that a lot of the nutrition information that we’re, that’s cutting edge, that we’re learning through research, we’re learning through this. Um, personalized feedback hasn’t necessarily yet diffused out to a general medicine yet.
Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s super interesting because you as a doctor, you know, you’re having to find what works best for you and experiment on yourself. Um, and that’s kind of what I was going to ask you, um, since we’re coming up on time here, a few last questions that I have for you is, is what self experimentation have you done on yourself and what have you found that works optimally for you based on your biomarkers that you’ve tested? Um, and specifically, you know, nutrition and exercise, what, what routine have you found is optimal for you?
So for me, I have found that, uh, so I, you know, I used to do a lot of long distance running, uh, and I don’t do as much of that. I do instead, um, more shorter, high intensity interval training, uh, with some weights as well. Really focusing then on trying to build more muscle because I find that building more muscle has improved my metabolism, which has improved my, my burning of fat in terms of my diet, I have focused more on, rather than from a macro perspective trying to go really low fat, I instead try to eat more healthful foods, more pro nutrient foods. So, uh, I eat more healthy fats. I eat a lot of unsaturated fats, so nuts, avocados, oil, seeds. Um, I still get some carbohydrates, but definitely a lot less than I was when I was eating a low fat diet.
And again, I really focus on it being the most helpful type. So most carbohydrates that I tend to get, uh, tend to be from produce. Uh, whether it be a little bit from vegetables and I have some fruit, um, like some, some berries, uh, which, you know, come with a lot of other nutrients. And I, and then finally I supplement. Um, I take a vitamin D supplement almost daily, just cause I don’t get a ton of sun exposure, especially living here in new England. And I also, I take, um, I take a probiotic every day and doing that just cause I’m, the other evolutionary changes were a lot cleaner as a society and that’s, that’s a good thing. Uh, but we don’t get exposed to the necessarily the same bacterial mill you that we used to be. And so, you know, we have a lot of, um, good bacteria that live in our gut and I just try to help maintain that good bacteria with the daily probiotic.
And so those, those are my basics way. I live now and I continue to test and get feedback to make sure that’s an, uh, an optimal way of living in terms of my biomarkers. And I would say it’s definitely paid off for my biomarkers. I feel healthy. I feel well, I’m very active, I have a lot of energy. I don’t get sick often. Um, I’ve, I’ve even seen positive influences in terms of my mood and stress. And so I think, I think really optimizing a lot of these markers, vitamin D, inflammation, um, lipids, et cetera, can, can impact many aspects of your life. Most, most centrally, your, your, your health.
Yeah. Yeah. I tell people all the time, you know, uh, no matter what diet protocol they’re following, whether it’s vegan or paleo or keto, no matter what, there’s two things they need to consider. Consider. One is nutrient density, in my opinion, right? Making sure that whichever day they’re following is, is, uh, very nutrient dense, uh, so a lot of micronutrients in their diet. Um, and then also their glycemic load, right? A low glycemic load tends to be better for most people, um, in our society, in my opinion. So that’s kinda the two things I tell people to consider is like, just because you’re eating vegan or just because you’re eating paleo doesn’t automatically mean that you’re healthy, right? There’s there, I think those two things, if they look at those two things, nutrient density and low glycemic load, they can kind of say, okay, I’m on the right path no matter what diet protocol, because I’m sure you’ve seen it.
Uh, you know, there’s, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do almost every fad diet out there, right? Whether it’s a paleo or vegan or keto, it doesn’t matter. There’s, there’s an unhealthy way of doing it and there’s a healthier version of doing it. And I kinda try and teach people that. Um, and it kind of showed both sides of like, uh, you know, even gluten-free. Like there’s a very unhealthy way to do a gluten free diet. You know, just go to the grocery store and you’ll see all these gluten-free cereals and breads and pastas and pizzas and all these processed foods. But that doesn’t mean that you’re becoming healthier just because it’s gluten free. But anyways, I’m kind of getting back to your supplements. You said you take a vitamin D three and a probiotic. Any specific brands? I’m just curious which, which ones you recommend?
I, you know, I specifically take, uh, thorn brand supplement, um, just cause Thorne, uh, research throne research has a great reputation for having high quality, uh, supplements. Um,
that’s T. H. O. R. N. Okay. Okay. That’s specifically what I take. Okay. Gotcha. Any other supplements that you take? Do you take any protein powders or multivitamins or is it just those two?
Um, I, I take a daily multivitamin as well, uh, with a lot of B vitamins and, uh, cause like you said, you know, you want to try and pack your diet with micronutrients, uh, but sometimes you know, it’s, you don’t necessarily know that on certain days you’re getting all the micronutrients that you like. And I, I guess I, I err on the side of caution by him by taking him.
Gotcha. Okay. No, I’m always curious to know what other people are taken and, and you know, how often and things like that. But, um, uh, okay, we’re coming up on time here, Murdoch, but I appreciate you coming on really quick before we sign off though. Uh, where can people get ahold of you if they want to ask you questions or social media, your website, all your books. We’ll put all that in the show notes.
Oh, absolutely. So I think the easiest way to get hold of me is through Everly, well, uh, you know, w w people, I get questions all the time through the company because, you know, I’m really here to support, um, anyone I work with. Um, and, and so when it Everly well, customers ask medical questions, they get sent to me and I offer answers. And so, uh, uh, through, through our really, well it’s probably going to be the easiest way.
Okay. So Everly will.com okay. And they can, there’s a contact button I’m assuming somewhere on there. Okay. Gotcha. Okay, one last question before we go and then I’ll let you go and we’re not gonna promise. Um, so obviously, you know, I do, I did, you know, fit to fat to fit years ago and now there’s a TV show where other trainers are doing what I did for four months. So it’s not a long period of time and they’re monitored by a doctor throughout. Um, but the whole purpose of it is for them to gain some empathy, some understanding, some respect. Now you as a doctor, would you ever consider doing something like this to better understand your patients?
Hey, it definitely sounds interesting. I’d be delighted to explore it further.
Okay. So you’re saying you would do about the fishery? No, I’m just, I’m just, I’m not, I’m not being serious, but I dunno. Do you think you could do it? Like, you know, maybe just theoretically, do you think you could do that for four, six months, no. Exercise, eat a standard American diet and then lose the weight? Do you think you can
you do something like that? So do I think I have the capability? I think I have the capability. Do I desire to make myself more unhealthy for a extended period of time? Um, honestly, I, I don’t,
c’mon, there’s gotta be at least one food out there that’s like your attempt Taishan that’s that you would love to just, you know, indulgent. If so, what is that food?
Oh, yeah. Well, there’s so many temptations out there. I mean, I’m a, I’m a big fan of Buffalo chicken. Um, yeah. What would I do that exclusively for four to six months? I think that’d be challenging for me, but, but yes, I, I definitely, uh, have temptations as well.
Some, some, uh, some wings. Huh? That’s what’s so interesting is the trainers on the show. So we’re filming season two right now and we’re about six weeks into it. It’s funny to see these trainers and I, I went through the same thing of these trainers. They, they’re so excited for, you know, the first week or two they’re like, Oh my gosh, I can eat whatever I want to like it’s food freedom and they just kind of go after it and the food tastes really good and they still feel somewhat healthy. But man, it’s so quickly. Within two to four weeks I would say they start to realize, Oh my gosh, like this is way harder than I thought, that it feels so unhealthy. And then they’re like, man, I still have three more months of this. And it’s, that’s where it gets really hard because their eyes are kind of bigger than their stomach and they’re like, Oh, this is going to be fun.
And I went through that too. It’s fun for a minute, but when you, when your health, it goes away and it goes away so quickly, right? You don’t realize how quickly it can go away. It goes away so quickly. You start to realize, man, this is way harder than I thought. And it kind of, you know, you’re not, I’m not saying people that trainers don’t show, or me and myself understand exactly what their clients are going through, but at least they can come out of it and have a better understanding from a mental, emotional, uh, and physical perspective versus before, cause I grew up my entire life in shape. I’ve never been overweight. And so same thing with the trainers on the show is they, they’ve never seen what it’s like on the other side. And so anyways, don’t worry, I’m not gonna hold you to that. Uh, I asked dr Oz the same, I was like, would you ever
do this? He’s like, no way. So yeah. But anyways, I’m Murdock. Thank you so much for coming on. I learned a ton from this and I know, and my hope is that my, you know, people listening learned a ton from this as well, but thank you once again for coming on and I might have to have you back on in the future. Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Okay, we’ll talk to you soon. Alright, thanks drew.
[inaudible].
Thank you guys so much for tuning into another great episode on the fit fat to fit experience podcast. I hope you enjoy this episode with dr Murdock [inaudible]. You can get ahold of him through Everly well.com uh, with all your, uh, you know, medical questions. If you have questions about the testing or, or your results, you can contact them through there. Once again, definitely check out Everly well.com forward slash fit Tibet to fit or use my code fit to fit for 10% off your testing. Become your own self experimentation. You guys, it’s very important that you understand what’s going on on the inside of your body, right? The scale can’t tell you if you’re becoming healthier from a medical perspective, but getting these, uh, biomarkers tested through a company like [inaudible] dot com or you can go to your doctor as well, but I just recommend you become your own self experimentation.
Find what’s out more for you, right? It’s the keto diet, the vegan diet, the paleo diet. Best for you is, is uh, Zumba is CrossFit, is endurance running is high intensity interval training. Best for you. The only way to find out is by getting these biomarkers right. You can’t just go off of weight and body composition. There’s way more to it than that. So, uh, check overly well that calm force has fit to at fit or use my discount code fit to add to fit. Um, follow me on social media, you guys, if you guys want to reach out to me with suggestions for the show, um, or just want to say what’s up, all my social media handles are at fit to vet fit. My website is@fittofattofit.com. Sign up for my newsletter. You guys, you can stay in the know of what’s going on in my life and upcoming events. And once again, I appreciate you, I appreciate you coming here listening to this podcast, sharing it with others. Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes to the podcast, leave a comment if you will. That helps with my rankings and share it with friends and family and I appreciate you guys. We’ll see you guys back here next week.
