#032 Part 2: Metabolic Mastery - Dr. Bob Ledda

Discover the inspiring stories  and expert insights from Dr. Bob Ledda, blending health science, outdoor adventures, and spiritual purpose. A key theme in this part 2 episode is Dr. Bob's observations with his son's recent type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and the significant improvements he's made due to the lifestyle prescription Dr. Bob prescribes. Is remission possible? Whether you're interested in longevity strategies, outdoor pursuits, or building meaningful ventures, this episode offers a rich tapestry of wisdom rooted in Alaska's wilderness and life’s deeper purpose.

Key Topics

• Dr. Bob's health journey, key insights from his son's recent Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis, emphasizing metabolic health, diet, and the power of affirmations
• The impact of outdoor activities like fishing, hunting, and wilderness exploration on longevity
• How outdoor experience relates to mental well-being and physical resilience
• The role of faith, purpose, and integrity in achieving personal and professional success
• Use of technology such as continuous glucose monitors for health optimization
• Practical tips on combining exercise and nutrition for disease prevention and health span extension
• The importance of community, mentorship, and sharing knowledge through book projects and storytelling

Resources & Links

• Dr. Bob's Longevity.com
• All Alaska Outdoors Lodge
• Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) | HelloLingo | Libby
• The Outdoor Channel - Dr. Bob's Wild Diaries
• Wild Fly Productions YouTube Channel

Transcript

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Manny (00:25)
one of the coolest experiences, we're gonna go segue right into health now, okay? Thanks for doing the segue for me. The coolest experiences that happened while I was on that boat.

was when my wife called me up from the appointment of Brett's. So as you recall, last year I disclosed the fact that I had a very unfortunate occurrence in the very early January of last year over Christmas holidays. I thought Brett had the flu that was going around except he started looking sicker and sicker and kind of slow on the uptake for an ER doc. I drug him into the ER and...

We'll call it moderate DKA. His pH was 7.19. So he was a new onset diabetic. It was the flu, but it triggered the diabetes cascade. So he killed his pancreas, supposedly. Well, those were some dark nights sitting in the ER. And we talked about that last time. And I prayed a lot about it. And...

You know, conventional medicine got him out of the hole. Mike Blake, who I happened to see last night at ⁓ Addie Camp, one of my favorite restaurants, ⁓ and ⁓ went up and said, hey, Brett, I said, you may not remember Mike, but you need to go say hi to him because he saved your life. And he did. He was on top of it. Don't forget, we need our conventional medicine doctors, but they don't focus on health. They focus on disease.

And I was taken a little aback about the lack of focusing on health in the approach to my son who now has new onset diabetes. There was very little talk about changing the way he ate. It was about how to dose insulin for how he ate. Now they didn't say eat as many candy bars and drink as many cokes as you can, but they sort of implied, but that's okay if he has some candies and cokes, he's a kid. And I was like, ⁓ yeah.

of an expert in metabolic health and I am. I mean I'm just going to tell you I understand a tremendous amount about metabolic health. In fact I took my son down to the ⁓ Seattle Children's Hospital about a month and a half ago to make sure I wasn't missing anything because I thought well if there's some magic bullet out there that's on the research front that's who's going to know so we've seen by the pediatric endocrinology clinic.

And I'm going be honest, I think I understand metabolic health better than them. They understand these diseases. They knew to run all the antibody tests on him. And they said, yeah, he's got type 1 diabetes, ⁓ He's got high levels of antibodies to three of the five tests that we sent. ⁓ But his C-peptide is mid-range normal. So C-peptide is a.

protein that's left when you cleave off of insulin that you've made yourself. So if you have C-peptide, you're making insulin. And I knew he was making insulin because he hasn't had insulin since April. So here was the really cool thing. His A1C in, and I say April, maybe it was May, was tours that we got. He was 14.5 in the ER and four months later, that day that she took him in,

This was how my wife posed this to me over the phone. She said, well, we saw Dr. Sheridan. And she checked the hemoglobin A1C on Brett. Now we were following his sugars with continuous glucose management and slowly having to decline his insulin dosing because he wasn't eating it anymore or nearly as much.

And so we were already down to pretty low dosages of long acting and very little short acting because he had decided to be so compliant with a more or less ketogenic diet. I can go into the nuances of it a little more if you decide you want to. But so when Dr. Sheridan got ready to, you know, check his A1C in her clinic, she positioned my wife and Brett to be, don't expect too much. Now look, if it's less than 10, that's going to be great.

It's probably not going to be at goal, which is seven or less for a type one diabetic. You know, he was a 14 a little over three months ago. I just want to, 5.7. Dang. Okay. Wow. Why? I understand. No, no, I don't want to take all the.

I am sure that part of why he's doing so well is the fact that he has adopted an extremely metabolically healthy nutritional strategy, which granted many 15 year olds will not comply with. But God blessed me with a kid who when I sat down and told him that he just can't eat.

like other kids anymore, he's like, okay. And he does it. And so it turned out that relatively quickly, we had no room for insulin anymore. No more waking up with alarms going off at night because his sugar's low, because he rolled over on his sensor. And now me and my wife are up going down to make sure he just rolled over on his sensor and his blood sugar's not really 40. You ⁓ know, because he gave him insulin. And if you gave him too much, he's getting brain damage.

Not a very happy place. Well, we still do continuous glucose monitoring and I don't know if there's a way to allow your... Yeah, just show it that way. Your guess. That's a 74. is Brett's current continuous glucose monitoring. I don't worry about that low right there. He's been exercising a lot so his muscles are crying for the sugar. By the way, if you want to understand how to maintain insulin sensitivity,

boom and use them okay don't let your muscles go away muscles eat sugar without insulin so he uses he's growing teenage boy he's using insulin i mean he's using his muscles to dispose of sugar therefore he doesn't need a lot of insulin and when he's super active he runs super low sugars now over christmas break this graph was slid up some because he was doing a lot of gaming with his friends and we didn't have baseball practice and he just wasn't moving enough but anyways he had

doesn't have insulin.

at all in over six months. They at the Children's Hospital claim that he's just having a long honeymoon phase. And I said, I thought the honeymoon phase was where you just used less insulin. He's not needing any. Yeah, we can't really explain that, but he'll progress. And I'm like, no, he won't. And I will say that my first affirmation and my faith affirmations is that my faith in Jesus will cure Brett of his.

Type one diabetes. So just say that is in my affirmations. read them every morning. I listened to them in my own voice and I think it's a combination of factors. It's a wife who has gone over and above in figuring out strategies to make his nutritional palette such that he's eating.

versions of what we typically think of as very high carbohydrate, low quality foods like lasagna and pizza into versions that feed the microbiome.

are high protein and low carbohydrate. There's no foreign molecules anymore. We have a very RFK compliant diet now. All the bad molecules that are in food ink, you know, all the processed, he doesn't eat processed food. Okay. He, I focus on his microbiome health. I do have him supplementing. But most of the glory goes to Brett because he's compliant.

He's willing to eat like he's supposed to. A lot of it goes to my wife because she's creating a feeding platform that's palatable enough that he doesn't eat his diet. Yeah. He doesn't even complain about it. huge for how old is he? 15. Yeah, huge for a 15 year old. And for the people listening, what was the number? So you're pulling up Brett's continuous glucose reading. Just for the people listening, what was the number that was on that? Right now, what's his blood sugar?

Um, his current blood sugar is 73. With no insulin. No, he hasn't had insulin. Yeah, no insulin. He got up to, you know, he ate breakfast at about six, probably about 6.45. Um, I'm sure it was probably eggs and some nitrate free bacon and probably something that would seem like it's carbohydrate-ish, but.

probably wasn't, you know? And he had a sugar that looked like it got down to about 60 last night and does not look like a compression dip. Those are usually real steep. mean, but you're not going to die of a sugar of 60 while you're sleeping. Okay. Your brain's alive at that. And so, but the problem is when you've given them exogenous insulin, those 60s, that thing's alarming at 70, because you got to go down and make sure he's not tanking.

And that's a, so the change in our life, which I think is a combination of the fact that I have tremendous understanding of metabolic health and I understand the strategies for remaining insulin sensitive. Cause look, whether you're Brett and you're, were injecting insulin.

or you and I, Manny, who are pancreas have to make insulin. We all need insulin to live and to get insulin into many of our cells, but we all want to use as little as possible. Hyperinsulinemia is a really bad situation, which occurs as you become insulin resistant. And quite frankly, the medical 2.0 approach to Brett's type 1 diabetes is, well, you just...

give him enough insulin to account for how much sugar he's eating. Which is like, okay, so what you're telling me is don't worry about even if he becomes insulin insensitive, I can just keep going up on the dose. Well, that's hyperinsulinemia, which many of us in the longevity space think is the root of all evil. leads to cancers. leads to, I mean, insulin is a growth factor. People who have hyperinsulinemia get cancer. Who has hyperinsulinemia?

people who are overweight, people who don't exercise, people who eat too many carbohydrates and remain sedentary. So through this template of getting to watch Brett and how his activity affects his sugars and have this pastel where he paints the picture of the low glycemic diet and what you can do. And right now, remission, honeymoon phase, I don't care what you call it, it's a blessing and I would sure like to pass it on to other people.

And you know, I'm not offering free medical care to anybody except I will absolutely and I'm sure my wife would do this as well. We would be more than happy to talk to any families that are stricken with a new onset type 1 diabetic. Get on it right away. Call me immediately. We will tell you how we've done this. You might as well give your kid a chance. I figured something out during those dark nights in the

in the ER. I was reading about type 1 diabetes and trying to relearn everything that I'd forgotten since medical school. Some of which I was reading and going, I don't ever remember learning that. I didn't remember such a thing as honeymoon phase. I didn't remember that there was remission. Yeah, what is the honeymoon phase? mentioned that. So honeymoon phase is like initially your needs of insulin are not where you're ultimately going to level out. They're less.

So what it is is look, the first time your pancreas gets bashed in the face by this autoimmune disease, which we think is some combination of genetic predisposition, autoimmune over activation through a crap diet and a crap lifestyle, which is 90 % of America. And, and a viral exposure that creates an antibody production that

Matches the pancreas islands of beta cells and you start to attack those individual cells within the pancreas that are responsible for producing insulin So what probably means is it doesn't get the coup de grace in most people the first time So their insulin production is now damaged but not Zero. Hmm, so they don't need as much insulin because they're still making some and then

Because in my opinion, because the standard approach is, don't worry about how much sugar you eat and just dose the insulin, right? You finish the job because you keep spiking their sugar, which is triggering the pancreas. Even though you're trying to time an insulin injection with that known carbohydrate intake, the pancreas is acting in real time. It's like the sugar just spike dump insulin. man, we're beat. We just got our butt kicked by this virus and these antibodies are...

Well, what do we do? We got rid of the stuff that generates autoimmune disease. We focused on the microbiome, which is tremendous impact in autoimmune disease. By the way, I was a little late today because I just sat through an hour and 15 minutes. The The most. Provocative microbiome study panel option I've ever seen, and I'm going to do it all myself here pretty soon. But anyways, the microbiome.

So we focused on all the things to remove autoimmune disease. And then we said, let's put less stress on the pancreas. Now, why might Brett have less stress on the pancreas than say another new onset diabetes, say an infant? Because it turns out in reading through up to date when they talked about remission, which I didn't know was a thing, remission meaning, no, you show up with type one diabetes and then it goes away. That's what remission means. Now, people at...

Up to date says remission is 3 % across the board. Interestingly, the people at Seattle Children's Hospital said it wasn't a thing. I'm not gonna argue with them. I know what I'm looking at and I think I understand why. In up to date, it talked about what subgroup was most likely to go into remission and the subgroup was teenage boys. So right away you're gonna say, okay, so you got lucky, you got a teenage boy, they have the highest rate of remission.

and you just got lucky, Bob, and you're touting your chest that it's all diet and lifestyle and you got lucky. You might be right. I don't think you are, but you might be. What group has the lowest rate of remission? Infants. Now, let's remember these conventional medical doctors, don't think understand metabolic health to the level that I do. I'm talking about raw metabolic health, not interventional metabolic health. They're very good at what they do. Mike Blake.

jerk him from the jaws of death, okay? I I don't disparage my colleagues for studying a different aspect of the science. They shouldn't disparage me, I'm very evidence-based. I got tons of evidence of what I speak about and I understand it. So I started ruminating on will teenage boys have the highest remission rate? And then you're thinking, well, I understand a lot about insulin sensitivity. And obviously if you're a type one diabetic,

You want to be insulin sensitive, so you use less exogenous insulin. And what do I tell people the most important factor for insulin sensitivity is? Well, I just showed you. It's muscles, baby. It's why you got to resistance train for the rest of your life. weightlifters have less cancer and they have better metabolic outcomes and they don't get frail as quickly. We're all going to get frail.

eventually if something doesn't take you out before. But that's your best defense. So I said, well, which subgroup has the most muscle mass and is using it? Teenage boys, they're in the phase where they're growing muscle and they're the most active. So my hypothesis was developed that night in the dark praying like I do. God led me to the data I needed to know to understand how to cure my son.

or at least significantly improve his health trajectory. Which group has the least muscle mass and activity? The infants. The infants! Geez! Hypothesis! So then I start trying to go, well surely somebody studied this. I mean this is like janitorial level medicine, right? I mean this is common sense. Ain't been studied. So I'm hopeful. I actually had a client at the lodge.

who is personal friends with RFK, he offered to make an introduction. I'm working on a TED Talk on this entire process, my entire experience with Brett. And I said, I don't wanna talk to him now. I wanna talk to him after my TED Talk's done.

And then just want you to have him watch my TED talk. And then if he wants to talk to me, I want to talk to him for as long as he's got. somebody like that could force the NIH to study this. What if we're missing maybe being able to double remission rates? But even that, what if he goes out of remission, but at least I'm not going to be using...

a hundred units of insulin every day to take care of him because I've taught him how to not need very much insulin. So his pancreas is not being asked to produce a ton of insulin because of dietary compliance and activity. And therefore we put it into rest mode immediately after the punch in the face in January of last year. Okay. And here we are in January of the next year.

And you'd go, wow, his pancreas works really good. you know, I see some evidence. If I ain't like him, my A1C would be 4.5. Okay. And his isn't. It's in the five still, you know? But this is a way better place. He's not driving chronic disease. And he, I honestly believe my son, Brett, when he is my age, is going to be healthier than he would have been had he never got this diagnosis. So.

Again, I find the positive in every situation and it's hard to believe that I can tell you right now I am happy that Brett got type 1 diabetes. It's almost preposterous that I could say that except it's true. Yeah, because it was such a transition for him and man, I went from an opinion about him. He's just this goofy little frustrating kid to he's my hero.

It's amazing. You know, what are the, mean, one, I think you're definitely on, onto something just talking to, I mean, I have some experience in the medical field, but I'm basically a layman when it comes to some of the things that you're outlining, but the connections that you're making makes sense. The example that you have in your own son makes sense. The results that you're seeing seems like something is there. ⁓

Just real quick. Okay. I'm supposed to have type 2 diabetes and be fat according to my genome. I did my entire genome and my highest impact on the first page they sent you highest impact metabolic syndrome and obesity metabolic syndrome is high blood pressure dyslipidemia overweight high ⁓ and type 1 type 2 diabetes insulin insensitive. I have no signs of any of that. But I've been following my metabolic health strategy for

12 years. So I've mitigated that obviously. Yeah, think something is the stars are aligning in a certain way, Bob, that I think that this could be something revolutionary. It could be kind of huge. The fact that someone that a type one would enter your life, ⁓ you you making the adjustments that you have in your life, this whole realization ⁓ to health and wellness and the changes that you're making and then, it just happens.

that your son has this condition pop up and now you're able to address it in a way that probably nobody else on this planet would be able to address. Well, there's a lot of people that are smart enough to address it. If Peter Attia had a kid that was type 1 diabetic, I bet he'd be doing the same thing. He's like, son, I got bad news, man. You don't get to be a kid anymore. But how do these people make these great discoveries and are able to communicate with the world in such a specific kind of way because of these

circumstances that happened in their life. Peter T, I think he had a family member, it was his dad, had a heart attack at a young age. Casey Means' mom had this, was it cancer that popped up early for her? People have these- She had metabolic syndrome by the time she finished her residency. She was like, she didn't finish her residency because she was like, I gotta cure myself. I don't need to be an ENT. I'm gonna go into, and she did. I mean, she figured out what I've learned.

studying the same science as both of them and applies the similar strategies and cured herself. Most of what we see in conventional medicine, most of the diseases we're treating in conventional medicine, if caught early on that trajectory are reversible with the lifestyle prescription and a little bit of supplementation and a healthy microbiome approach.

that's responsible for most of all the chronic disease that we're spending billions of dollars and seeing tremendous loss of productivity and quality of life. And the only other alternative if you choose not to learn what I know is to find out what medicines the FDA approves for treating those conditions. And they don't particularly extend longevity a lot. And so that's why the next chapter

is I'm building a dedicated private gym right across from my medical office for my patients that incorporates all of the things that I think are impactful in the longevity spectrum as far as the activity part of the lifestyle prescription. So we all know that it's good to be up when the sun rises and the sun sets. Not too hard to do right now in Alaska unless you're working nights. ⁓ Because it's like if you wake up and you go to sleep and you mostly function

in the day, you can see both of those. was kind of enjoying looking at the sun out the side view as we were driving, as I was driving, because of course I'm looking over the inlet. And we know that physical activity, I would tell you that exercise is the biggest biohack to health and longevity. Number one, food's important, not as important as exercise, movement. And I would say that within that domain,

The most important thing is maintenance of muscle mass. So strength training is actually more important. So all those years of being the egotistical little maniac that I am was a severe, say all the time, I didn't identify it in my genome. Maybe we don't know where this gene is, but I got the vanity gene. I am despondent at 15 % body fat. Okay. I think I'm a pig. Okay. So I got that gene. I'm grateful for it. Okay. So, so, um,

That was a blessing. but all that resistance training is probably why I don't have any sign of type two diabetes. have tremendous insulin sensitivity. My fasting insulin levels are damn near undetectable most of the time.

Most people have never had a fasting insulin level checked because it's not part of the medicine 1 2.0 algorithm. They're just waiting to see when your A1c bumps up high enough or your fasting blood sugar is high enough. like, we might have to look into this. Looks like you could have a little diabetes here. then your urine has got some trace sugar in it.

geez, that's great. Catch it after the, now you can still reverse it. So it's not terrible if you find the right person that can teach you how to do that. But if their strategy is going to be, well, you're going on conventional medicine and they don't teach you how to change the way you eat and create conviction that you have to lose weight, get rid of visceral fat, reduce the inflammatory state, lift weights so that you have more muscle to consume glucose, learn to pair sugar intake.

carbohydrate intake with activity so that instead of storing those carbs as fat

your carbohydrate intake to your high levels of energy expenditure throughout the day. These are all the strategies I teach people and I give them enough science and help them to understand it through the lens of what I've done in my own life in protecting myself from the genetic diseases I'm pretty much position to. Now I got the killer template of a diabetic kid who apparently, I don't know, he got diabetes or not? He's got the antibodies for it. ⁓

I've got this template that I hope to create conviction, but what else? Well, you need a place to train. So I've got, I'm gonna have...

Full set of different stationary equipment with my view being look This is where you find out which one you hate the least and you buy it and put it in your house So you don't have to drive all the way to my gym every day to do your cardio for 30 or 40 minutes, you know Yeah, but then a set of machines circuitry for doing resistance training for people Maybe they're a little older never was in athletics and it's gonna be a little bit of a hard lift No pun intended to go. All right, we're gonna make you

Like learn how to lift free weights. No, you know, you get the 60 year old woman who's never lifted weights, wasn't an athlete. I just want to teach her a machine circuit that she can come in and do two days a week to start addressing strength training. So grip strength is maintained, which is a great.

functional measurement of overall musculoskeletal integrity and you know and and I can show them that they're improving in these domains and then of course Thus those of us that are iron heads want to have plenty of weights there's gonna be plenty of dumbbells and plates and squat racks and and and so that's gonna be a really cool footprint and then I'm having two rooms that are recovery rooms that have a sauna and a cold plunge in each yeah with a bathroom

So you can go in there after your workout block it 30 minute time limit do a 20 minute sauna Clearly reduces mortality. I mean the finished data. It's all observational Yeah, you can't really create the double blind trial, but it's so powerful in the evidence that saunay with frequency reduces risk of cardiovascular disease cancer and all-cause mortality that it's not even something you can argue about and then the cold plunge I think is something that we're seeing more

evidence now and it leads to recovery and reductions in inflammation and improvements in metabolic health, energy and all kinds of stuff. So I wanted to have those opportunities available for my patient population. ⁓ then my daughter who had recently finished massage school, I set her up in my medical clinic with a one room setup, but now she's going to have a dedicated space for massage.

And she'll basically, Elysium Massage is her business and she's doing massage now out of my medical clinic. But she will basically have a massage therapy opportunity where you can come in and do, know, massage and hot rocks or she's got, you know, cupping, all the different nuances. But hey, and you can also do a sauna and a cold plunge either before or after your choice. And I don't think anybody else can offer that. So she's got a little bit of a a little upper hand there.

And about the only other people you're gonna see, you know, training in there, because you won't be able to get into the gym by signing, joining the gym. You got to join the practice. Gotcha. ⁓

You would be able to get in the gym if you're an all Alaska outdoors client for probably like a weekly co-pay. know, make, I got to, they're two separate businesses and I got to get some return on investment because I spent a lot of money on this gym. It's beautiful. So 50 by 70 foot footprint right across from my medical office built into the hillside juxtaposed to the whole fishing lodge complex. And, ⁓ so that's kind of where the future's headed for, once that gym's done, which I'm anticipating in June.

the ⁓ the ⁓

the radio ads will come out. That's when I'll start advertising locally, you know, because at that point I'll feel like I've got such a turnkey package that it's time to really start to hunt for the people on the Kenai Peninsula that want a real live health coach that understands their metabolic health in great detail, can investigate them with a significantly increased set of data compared to what medicine 2.0 is following, ⁓ help them to understand their

a strategy to mitigate it and then provide them the tools necessary to implement that strategy from.

nutritional counseling to the place they can actually work out and a place where they can actually execute saunas and cold plunges. We were talking about in the beginning of the segment, the first segment, the outdoors and why is it so beneficial? Well, because we're freezing our ass off or we're hot and sweaty. You know, we were not designed to sit in 68 to 72 degrees and have no vascular reactivity. That's not good for our physiology. Well, we

the cold plunge in the sauna, all you're trying to do is imitate like it was 10,000 years ago when you're stuck in the concrete jungle. Yeah. I think the other part of it with the cold plunge specifically, I cold plunge not as frequently as my wife. My wife loves the cold plunge. Do you have a plunge? I have. So I have that tub that's in the bathroom there. In the wintertime, I want one day out here out my back door, I'm going to have the most amazing Nordic spa looking set up that you've ever seen. ⁓

You've got a vision. Someday. Don't forget to put it in your vision. I know, my affirmations. Hearing you talk about affirmations, I'm like, do I need to do that? Because I'm obviously seeing the fruit of you keeping that in the forefront every day. Most impactful thing that ever happened to me was, well, the coach five years ago changed the trajectory of my life and I still pay him a fair amount of money every year to coach me.

because we've become that close. like, no, I'm not changing anything. It's working too good. I'm still paying you. But ⁓ once he set up that platform and I did it and I was diligent, I got through the entire 17 webinars and did all the setup in about a month. ⁓ And I started using it. like, so here's an example of how...

So, you know, the platform's a little bit built on Napoleon Hill's ⁓ book, Thinking Grow Rich. Meaning, keep this stuff in your subconscious all the time, it just evolves. In that book, he talks about it as the infinite intelligence of the universe. Well, I have my ideas what that is, And I'm pretty convicted in that because I'm being impacted by it all the time. ⁓

The interesting thing is how everything falls into place. I'll give you an example. So it's July and my, my contractor's digging the hill out. So it's obviously there's some construction going on in the lodge, Ledda community health and wellness complex, which is a four acre space, five acres. And I've got some clients out.

And I'm taking him grayling fishing, really good grayling fishing. We're dry fly fishing and we're having a heck of a day. He's got his son. He's an older teenage boy. They're, they're having the time of their life. I don't know that this happens every time, but most of the time I probably get around to, but not always. Hey, so what do do for a living? Never ask. He's like,

I work for a company called Matrix. We make fitness equipment. I'm like, yeah, I'm familiar with Matrix. I see that sometimes. I work out on that sometimes when I'm traveling and it be what's in the motel room. I go, well, what do you do for him? He goes, well, I design gyms. I'm like, no, you don't. He's like, no, that's what I do. I'm like, you know that hole in the, have you seen that hill across from my little medical office is getting dug? He goes, yeah, I saw you were building something there. I said, that's a gym. I said,

You're on this trip for more than just catching grayling, I'm pretty sure. And then God put you in my life, feeding into my affirmations, you know, because my fourth picture on my vision board is community health and wellness, complete health gym. And it's a picture of some gym I downloaded off the internet to keep me focused on making that happen. And I was actually starting to get a little nervous about, hadn't even thought about the equipment. He's like, oh, you're lucky you found me. He goes,

I'll cut out the middle man. goes, I'll come in. goes, can, you tell me. So anyways, long story short, he got home. I sent him my plans.

I told him I'd be in touch with him as soon as the season was over. got in touch with him when the season was over. I made he and my performance health coach, Mark McKenna, and I sat down and talked about our vision for the space. We had the layout. He had computer programs. He could like put the pieces of equipment he had. He did a whole layout. And so we're going through what we've picked a few days later. And he's like, here's what I've got for your vision. Here's your... And I'm like, I'm going...

can't wait to hear how much this is going to cost. And I'm expecting 200,000. And he gets done 60,000. I'm like, wow. Like that's for everything. mean, we're talking, I mean, I could list it all off, but a ton of stuff, And he's like, yeah, well, that doesn't include setup and shipping, which

Ultimately will be another 20 but so what but you know what the retail I was getting the I mean so then you see the quote basically he was selling it all at 40 % of retail and then at the end of the event it said and preferred customer discount another third 3000 so I mean God just takes care of you when you follow him and affirm your desire

to be led to do his will to help others. And that's kind of my mantra in life. And you know what? He leads me through some pretty fun pathways. I mean, going to Costa Rica, flying people out. It's kind of interesting on the health spectrum, but tying back into the fish and lodge spectrum. And you sort of mentioned something that alluded to it a little while ago too. So one of the producers, ⁓

at ⁓ Rare TV told me when we were doing the voiceovers. He's like, hey, Dr. Bob, I just want to let you know I'm down 12 pounds. He's like, I'm the poor bastard that had to listen to all eight hours of content from all 20 episodes. So we would take off. And for the first hour that we had a 360 GoPro and then GoPro shooting like this and that, everybody's head said it and we're recording.

So a lot of times they, I get pumped for.

clinical knowledge during the flight, which of course, you know me, I love to talk health, right? I I love to talk about the disparity of the mistakes, the poor approach by conventional medicine and how the enlightened approach that I offer people. I love, so I'm preaching diet and nutritional strategy and some of the things that I've shared just with the audience today, and there's a lot of time. So that happened 20 times. He's like, yeah, I've just kind of been listening.

listening

to what you said. So I started doing everything. He's like, I'm down 12 pounds. He's like, yeah, this is easy. And so, you that's awesome. It's like, but you got to teach people. Yeah. You know what the word doctor actually means? mean, I'm, you know.

You look it up. Whatever language it came from, I'm bad. Like I can't quote biblical studies at all. I'm no minister, but I think I found a way to, pathway to spirituality in Jesus Christ pretty well. And I'd love to share how I do that, you know, but same token. I can't quote biblical script, but it's like, look, the word doctor in whatever language it's derived from means teacher. It's not healer, it's teacher. You teach people.

You know, and Hippocrates, who's my idol, who's on my billboard in my lodge, I mean, in my office, you know, he's I've got Hippocrates signs scattered around my medical clinic. It's like, let medicine be thy food and let food be thy medicine, you know, or I believe the best pathway to health is if we all ate just the right amount, not too much and not too little and exercise just the right amount. That's a good one. know, 90 years old.

observationally watched people.

and understood what the right decisions were. I do a lot of that kind of medicine. You know, I don't need a double-blind clinical controlled trial to teach me things that I can see with my own two eyes that are obvious. And if somebody wants to say I'm not evidence-based because of that, fine. Somebody who wants to follow somebody who has integrity, who's not stupid and trusts in the Lord to help lead me in my pathways to health, come follow me. I'll help you understand how to take care of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's watching

the way that you go through life, the things that you learn, the opportunities that seem to just fall out of the sky or appear out of thin air. I don't think that's by any mistake. I think it's because you are being aware of what God is doing in your life and the opportunities that He puts before you, the evidence that comes across your desk or your computer or whatever. And because you're looking for it, you're able to make those connections. And I think that's really cool. And I think that's why a lot of people that have

joined your practice are really happy because they know that one, you might be leading them in the physical sense of health and wellness and looking at all the biomarkers and the lab results and all of that stuff, but you're kind of keyed into some greater purpose of just helping people live their lives to the fullest because of what you believe we are put on this earth to do, which is to glorify God and to love one another and do it for as long as we can.

think that's really awesome. that's it. mean, you know, in my book, which is going to be kind of, the... Yeah, so talk about, we mentioned it before, before, maybe even before I hit play is that, or maybe not, I don't know, is that you're writing this, you're writing this book and you have the unique opportunity to have that spiritual sense of it, but then incorporating everything that we talked about with the outdoors and that perspective. But yeah, talk about, talk about the book a little bit more.

You know, it's funny, it's one of the things that I noticed when I was going through an affirmation and not an affirmation actually, because it didn't make it into the AI conversion of my visions and whys, but in my vision, I had said the book, because in my mind, so many people have told me, you should really write a book, Doc. And it's like, and I was gonna.

And I was actually thinking I would write a book and was in that. And when a Tia's book came out, I'm like, yeah, God beat, beat me to the punch. mean, he did. He wrote all the stuff I would write about. he, it's not like I can do a better job than him. So not on the raw net, you know, the raw material or the science. mean, he's at an echelon, you know, he's amazing. Right. And so I'm like, so I got beat and then, you know, Casey Means.

kind of followed up and I'm like, and now she did it a little bit more digestible for the lay person. I kind of liked her book a little bit better for like, Hey, if you want to read a book, but you're not really science oriented, I'd say read Casey's not Peters. Good energy was the name of her book. Outlive was the name of Peter T.

So I'd kind of given up on the book idea, but there it was still buried in those visions, which I would read periodically. And so it turned out that a guy that I interfaced with over a Zoom meeting, who I'm connected to through Syngenics now, ⁓ a little while after the Zoom meeting, he called me up and he said, he said, Bob, I noticed in the Zoom meeting, he noticed my WWJD bracelet. don't know, maybe he didn't notice the cross bracelet on the other hand. What I always tell people is,

I wear this on the right wrist to ask the question. I wear this on the left wrist to remember the answer. Everything. What would he do? Everything. Right? He'd have died for just you. He didn't need to save... He would have died just for you. would have let somebody stab him with spears and nail him to a cross, right? In our humble human form. Going through all the pain that that must have experienced, right? So, but anyways, he said, I noticed your wristband.

And he goes, I kind of want to pitch you something if that's okay. I'm like, I'm open to anything. How can I help? He's like, have you ever thought about writing a book? I said, yeah, I have. said, Atiya wrote, you know, the longevity book. It's going to be hard to beat that one. I said, Casey Means wrote another good one. I said, you know, the one thing about those two is, you know,

When you start getting into the mindset spirituality part, it's all kind of, know, kumbaya, mother earth, you know, I mean, I get the sense that they're secular, that their view of our existence on this planet is, he's like, a hundred percent. He said, I've read them both. He said, I agree with you. They don't state it implicitly, but I think you're probably right. Like, yeah, I think I am. I don't know that, you know, I'm not drunk, don't want to get any hate mail. ⁓

And I said, I am humbled by the amount of information that I'm going to have to try to digest and I know that I'm not smart enough to do it on my own. It's like, so I plead with my relationship with God to direct me to avoid the stuff that's going to confuse me. Definitely avoid the stuff that's going to deceive me.

and help put the right people in front of me to help me reach as many people as possible to help as many people to understand what I understand about health and longevity so that they can have what I consider to be. I mean, I'm 61 years old and that next 30 years, I am like chomping at the bit. I do not. I don't feel old. I have capacity.

I mean, I just packed a damn hundred pound pack across Kodiak Island for four hours, half in the dark after packing the whole day at, you know, it's like, have tremendous capabilities still. My life is not even close to deteriorating and it's not by accident. And I can show you genomically. It's not like, yeah, I just got the lottery. Okay. I didn't just get like, Hey, look at that.

first deal and you got a royal flush. No, I'm not that guy. I probably got some no face cards and four of the five different suits and they're all low and none of them are in succession. Your car short. I mean, so it's like, want people to have this. And all of a sudden he's like, well, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I,

I self-published a book, a science fiction novel, and it sold 30,000 copies, which is unheard of. And that got me discovered by a publisher who wanted to redo it, make some changes, but publish it. And that's coming to pass right now. And he said, I have an agent. And he said, I'd like to meet the three of us with the agent. So I met with the agent and...

my ghostwriter and the ghostwriter is not, he's not ghostwriting it. He's interviewing me and then he's going to put it in words. So it's going to do the hard work. I don't have the bandwidth for it. I got a couple of sticks in the fire. You might've heard. So, so I feel like here again, it's like, I almost, my job out hit the ground, you know? And so what did I do? I took a picture of a, of a book open.

with the sun shining behind it. And I put in there and I just said, Dr. Bob, longevity against the odds guided by the ultimate wisdom. ⁓ Now, I don't think that's gonna be the title. We haven't just... It captures the... But it makes me think about what the overall, that might be the thing on the front, the inside, because that's kind of what it is.

And I kind of wonder, mean, my son Brett's pretty charismatic. He's still a 15 year old goofball, but if he can hold the line on this diabetes thing and maintain the template that I'm observing now, if he holds that, he could be so impactful to young people, you know, and I'll have to build that platform. And I ain't got a lot of bandwidth left. So I need somebody to drop out of this guy and go, man, I heard your story. what if somebody calls me

and goes, I heard the podcast and you know, I think I'd like to help you on the IT side because it's obvious that's not your skill set. that's the understatement. mean, ⁓ you know, yeah. So it just, when you really, really decide in my opinion or what I'm observing in my own life, when I focus, which is what my,

platform that I use for my coach and I'll share that with you and you people want to go look at it they can sign up and find out you can do a test five-day thing for like nothing I mean it doesn't cost anything just check it out but ⁓ what I find is I've been is what that platform creates is focus on really what the most important aspect of our existence is which is helping others

with the direction of God helping you to understand what your own personal best use is. Or your purpose is. Your purpose. And you know, that's the other thing when you look at the longevity stuff and there was a longevity book written and the guy interviewed a hundred centenarians and the one...

And when he asked him, what do you attribute your longevity to? was lots of answers that ran the gamut. The one that was in every single person's was they maintained a purposeful life. quite frankly, before my coach, five years ago,

I was looking at my retirement that I had put away from the hospital. I was looking at the fishing lodge going, you know, this is about paid off. It's going to start actually cash flowing as a lodge and not just through me paying myself to fly and leasing my Beaver from myself, which is part of the infrastructure of how I get paid for giving up medicine for four months and playing like a kid, you know. ⁓

And it was kind of like, yeah, you know, we can probably keep our lifestyle up, still go on vacations, stay out of the nest egg.

and just let that keep growing and have enough cash flow between the medical practice and the lodge and flying that I can give up conventional medicine in its entirety. And I still work at the urgent care more to be there for the community in case they need an extra ER doc because of illness or something or an injury, because I can always go replace an ER doc at the urgent care. So I try to keep my toe in there a little bit, even though I do struggle a

little bit with, you know, where such a high percentage of it is viral illness. And I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people to not force me to harm them by giving them antibiotics when they don't need them. You know, because I'm so focused on microbiome health that I end up with, it takes me a long time to see a cold because I got to talk to them for a long time to convince them that I haven't shorted them by not sending them out with a Z-Pak. You know, but anyways, so that's it's.

it when you if you really focus on following that pathway, I guarantee you, you'll start getting signals that that nobody's talking to me. I said, Bob, you know, but it's like he kind of has, you know, stuff just keeps happening. You're like, this is not even is beyond. Yeah, it's beyond chance. It's like these things are happening in my life.

that feed into this stuff I've been focusing on. And so it's no way I can approach health without talking about the spirituality and the mindset. And my mindset is so centered around that that I can't really get through it without covering that portion of it. I think it's really cool that instead of things chilling out in your 60s, it's it's...

It's pedal to the metal, baby. We got stuff to do, places to go, dreams to make reality. It ain't making life easy. I mean, my life's harder than it was. I had a way easier life when I was working 12 shifts in the yard, you know, and goofing off all winter because I didn't have anything else to do in the winter besides the 12 shifts. And the summer I was running, you know, nose to the grindstone. Yeah, that was a much easier life than now.

⁓ But no, but so anyways, his approach to me when we sat down and what he pitched me was he goes, yeah, there's some good books out there on longevity. But he said, I think there's half the population out there that is being, that's leery of this longevity science that's concerned that it's going to be, you know, that it's going to have.

nefarious intent, which is all profit driven. And it is. mean, there's going to be all kinds of people trying to capitalize on the profit. I mean, it's already so, so baked into the integrative space. I mean, look at the peptide stuff that's coming out, you know. ⁓ And and he said, they're looking for somebody.

that's a Christian that they can feel has integrity that will tell them that this science is okay and help them decipher what's high level trustworthy. You know, that's a maybe and avoid that. And that's what my book's going to be about. You know, it's going to be, it's going to start with my life and how I got to where I am. And it's got to obviously have stuff about the lodge. It's going to have a chapter on my son, Brett, and what I learned from

one of the most devastating diagnoses that a kid could have. I remember I was in church one day and a friend of mine went up to the microphone and asked for prayers because his son had just got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

and I started crying, you know, because I understand the gravity of that. Well, now I'm looking at it in my son. Yeah. You know, and I think God equipped me and, you know, I hope that this was not a punch in the face. This was an opportunity and it's an opportunity for he and I to help a lot of people. And it's definitely increased my understanding of metabolic health and physiology.

It's exciting. I can't wait for it to come out. You'll have to keep me posted on when that happens, how it develops. If it happens, right? mean, this is like a... If you're in early stages. We did two interviews. He's working on the two introductory chapters, a table of contents. We're to take that to the publisher. The agent will see if the publisher will fund us writing the rest of the book. That's awesome. Yeah. So that would be awesome. Well, one of the last things I want to talk about is in the first episode, we talked a lot about the lifestyle prescription.

and really broke down a lot of the pathway to discovering health, wellness, longevity, or living a full life, healthy life. Has there been anything since that conversation, any new tool in your toolkit that you've added, anything that has maybe taken a more prominent place in your life in the last year? Yeah, 100%. All derived by Brett

You know, Casey, when I finished Casey's book, Peter talked a little bit about continuous glucose monitoring, of laid a little crate with it. You know, you got to be careful. People get over focused. Casey sort of really pushed it out there as man, this is something that you should do. You'll learn a lot. And I was like, ⁓ electronics.

more bandwidth used up by apps and how to sign in. And I was sort of like, I didn't do it. Well, all of sudden it's like, no, you're doing it. And so when Brett got that, I got it too. said, okay, we'll both follow our sugars together. I'll do everything you'll do. I'll not eat, I'll eat.

almost like you, not quite as much saturated fat as he does with his more meat and eggs. eat more. He doesn't like fish, so I eat a lot more fish than he does. and I eat more fruits because I make insulin really well, I think, and I don't eat a lot. So we continuous glucose monitored and it really transformed.

my approach to nutrition and movement. When you get the minute to minute feedback of a CGM and by the way, any of y'all can continuous glucose monitor by going to either Stello.com or HelloLingo.com. Stello is made by Dexcom. Hello Lingo is made by ⁓

Libby, it's the same company that makes Libre, which is the one that my son uses. But these are non-medical. They're not approved for diabetic management, but they're approved for personal health and wellness following. No prescription required? No prescription required. For 99 bucks on Amazon, you can get two of them. That'll follow you for a month. Put that thing on the app. Even an idiot like me can download the app. You take it out of the box. It tells you to download the app. The app then tells you how

to do everything from there and even how to interpret the data. And then what you see is you learn what foods make your sugar go high. So like I used to eat a rotating breakfast. Okay. would eat eggs, vegetables, sauteed in avocado oil with half an avocado and salsa over the top.

My pro meal, was steel cut oats, chia seeds, flax seed, a scoop of vegetable protein powder, and some berries and some walnuts, yogurt, Greek yogurt, which I now have added a little kefir to, but Greek yogurt, non-fat, with berries, walnuts, chia seeds, and a scoop of whey protein These are breakfast on different Those are my three, and I used to just rotate, going, hey, it's good to mix up your protein, until I saw what

that pro meal was doing to my sugar, I sat, my sugar went to 190. Is this the steel cut oats? The steel cut oatmeal, which is the highest glycemic of the three breakfasts. So I'm like, hmm. All right. So the next time steel cut oatmeal day came up, instead of sitting, I ate it and did phone work. I just walked around and instead of going to 189, I lied. was 1809.

eat close enough. It went to like 132. So I learned right there, okay if I'm gonna eat high... So now I only eat that breakfast on a day when I expect to have high energy expenditure. since you got a shovel that driveway, yeah I feel good day for that. if I know I'm sitting like my wife knew I was gonna be sitting here for three hours, she made me eggs and vegetables this morning. So I ate that right before I had it over. And the yogurt...

is in the intermediate range. So now I tailor what I eat to what my expected energy output is going to be. That would be the biggest cutting edge thing and it's easily doable by anybody. You don't need to be a genius. The apps teach you a lot of what you need to know. You need the data. You need to see for yourself. Wow, pizza did that.

Maybe I got to rethink pizza twice a week. know, or if I'm going to eat pizza, it's going to be right before I go to the gym from now on. You learned to pair movement with carbohydrate intake because you can mitigate the rises, meaning you won't have to dump as much insulin. We all want to remain insulin sensitive. If you want to be sensitive to something, don't expose yourself to a lot of it.

Yeah. So somebody you know, we both know, you know him really well through a story. Mr. Ray Southwell. Absolutely. He's my neighbor just down the road. He got a continuous glucose monitor. He was one of the ones that was just like, I love the episode with Dr. Letta. ⁓ And he went out and he got a continuous glucose monitor. You mentioned it briefly. We talked about it briefly there. briefly there, right? So he went out and got it. He was surprised to find out that just normal apples from the store.

would spike his sugar like way higher than he expected. And he was like, maybe I need to figuring out like different kinds of apples that I should be eating. ⁓ And so he experimented with that. Then he was like, found one that, know, wasn't jacked up, wouldn't jack up his sugar as high. And ⁓ there was immediate practical application for it. I remember you sharing that same story just more briefly.

Previously and I took that in with me to work. So we go to the to the urgent care our lovely Teresa brings in snacks for us in the morning and She's she's like I want to make sure my babies are gonna eat and be full all day. Right? Well, I Because I love her I'll still eat them I could turn them down, but you know what I started doing I'll start walking around knowing that at least

At least I'm doing some good if I'm going to eat this. I'm going to keep my sugar a little bit lower than what it would have been. My record, according to my iPhone, for mileage in the urgent care is 8.9 miles. Still holding strong. And that's walking that little figure eight that we can walk. But I do the same thing. And perfect is the enemy of good. But you can mitigate when you're not perfect. Like you go to somebody's house and you're like, hey, you know, that was a pretty high carbohydrate meal. I normally don't eat that stuff.

Alright, well when you get home, go deal with it. Make your muscles fry some of that sugar. Don't just let it sit and just have to be all consumed by the insulin pathway. Okay. So for new listeners listening, is DrBob'sLongevity.com still the best way to get to Yeah, and you can reach my, you can get my cell phone if you go to that. Okay. You can call me, text me.

from there. can ask for information from there. I haven't done a lot of update to the longevity site. I'm waiting for the big lift when the gym's done and I can do the video footage of it. And then eventually... ⁓

maybe with some bandwidth help, I'd love to start doing some more like webinar stuff where I cover topics which we've touched on briefly, like dig into continuous glucose monitoring, show you the things I'm looking at, show you how some of Brett's labs are reflected by, look happened to him here where he sat around for several days over Christmas break and look how his sugars climbed up at night. Well, he wasn't even getting below 100 on that night, you know? And then look, we did three days of like activities day after.

day after day and all of sudden he's dropping down into the 60s at night, you know? And that's just because his muscles now have upregulated insulin receptors and are just sugar hungry because he keeps emptying the glycogen storage in them over and over again. Yeah, it would be cool to have that as a resource. You're obviously really, really busy doing other stuff. You got a lot of sticks in the fire, like you said, but I could see that being really cool. People would be into that. It'll be on it, especially for the people that maybe aren't

you know, within driving distance to you, you know, that could, that want to get to tap into that knowledge, but not be able to physically go to where you're at. And the book will do a little bit But it's not going to be as good as what I could do in a webinar fashion and kind of picking the major topics. And so I hope that that's in my future.

This winter is probably a little too busy to think I'm going to make it happen this winter. I'm hoping maybe next winter, you know, if I could get a little financial relief, you know, various, which could happen through various avenues, which I think is all on the.

and where I could afford to spend a little less time in the clinical work to focus on this, you platform of like scalable information to be able to give to people because otherwise you can only get this through interfacing with me directly right now. ⁓ That's my long-range goal is to have that website where it's...

available information for understanding these major pillars of health and some of the strategies ⁓ to ⁓ mitigate the risk and improve the outcome. Okay. It'll be cool see how that develops. One of the things that I started doing, I wasn't even, this question wasn't even on the table when we first met because you were episode number one, but as I've done this and talked to more people, one of the things I close out each show with is just asking,

my guests, who are other Alaskans that you can think of that have a cool experience, some special area of expertise that for you this could be someone related in the healthcare world, it could be someone in the outdoors world, somebody that you think would be a cool story or ⁓ person to have on the podcast. I'm gonna put you on the spot here if there's anyone that comes to mind that you wouldn't mind sharing. ⁓

I tell you, being that you're Alaska based and we're on the Kenai Peninsula and the heart of the Kenai Peninsula is dissected by the Kenai River and we all have watched it evolve. And if you ever wanted to have a meaningful conversation about how...

Kenai River has evolved over the last 35 years. My partner and our main river guide, Monty Roberts, who has been on the board of fish as an advisor for many, at least a decade, and he's very high up in the Kenai River's guides association. He has so much insight into fisheries stuff that it might be interesting to talk to him about, you know, the king salmon and the sockeye salmon and the silver fisheries and where do you think they're going and

And talk about the challenges that we face to maybe ever be able to fish king salmon again in that river. I mean, I imagine a lot of people would like to have his understanding of that and he does have a lot of insight into that. That might be a good one. I'd happy to share his contact with you. He's pretty articulate. I appreciate that. And very knowledgeable. Cool. That sounds like right up my alley. Well...

Bob, thanks for coming out. was great, man. I'm really glad to have done it. And what a recap. And I felt like everything we got to cover some cool stuff.

Well, Dr. Bob, All Alaska Outdoors Lodge, Community Health and Wellness, Dr. Bob's Longevity.com. Check out all those things and ⁓ there will be a next time. And I'm excited what that next time is going to be, what we'll talk about then. So thanks for coming out. All right. Great to see you.

Manny (1:06:32)
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Manny (1:07:14)
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