Episode 6: Mastering Metabolic Health for Athletes (with Jim LaValle)

In this episode of the Evolving Performance Podcast, Kevin is joined by clinical pharmacist, author, and metabolic health expert Jim LaValle to dive deep into the interconnected systems that underpin human health and performance. Jim introduces his “Five Triads” framework—an integrative approach that helps identify root causes of fatigue, poor recovery, gut dysfunction, and hormonal imbalances. They explore how stress, inflammation, and training load affect everything from decision-making and stamina to resilience and hormone production.

Jim outlines actionable strategies for optimizing metabolic function using lifestyle, nutrition, and targeted supplementation—offering practical solutions for athletes, coaches, and anyone striving to improve energy, recovery, and long-term health. This conversation is packed with insight and real-world applications for maximizing both performance and durability.

Topics Include:

• The importance of viewing health through interconnected systems
• How cortisol disrupts multiple systems at once
• Gut-brain-immune dysfunction in athletes
• What your resting heart rate and HRV reveal about your readiness
• Supplements and lifestyle tools to restore balance across the triads
• Nutrition strategies to reduce inflammation and improve sleep
• Why testosterone might be the wrong place to start
• Foundational habits to support resilience and longevity

📲 Connect with Jim: JimLaValle.com | Instagram: @therealjimlavalle

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction to Jim LaValle
01:58 – Why interconnected systems matter more than isolated biomarkers
03:42 – Overview of the Five Triads
03:58 – Triad 1: Adrenal–Thyroid–Pancreas (The Energy Triad)
06:56 – Symptoms and interventions for Triad 1 dysfunction
08:21 – Triad 2: Gut–Immune–Brain (The Resiliency Triad)
11:58 – Brain inflammation, reaction time, and decision-making in sport
14:18 – Triad 3: Cardiopulmonary–Neurovascular (Endurance & Stamina)
17:09 – Blood pressure, microcapillaries, and recovery capacity
20:21 – Triad 4: Liver–Lymph–Kidney (Detoxification)
23:36 – Triad 5: Sex Hormones (Potency and Strength)
26:10 – Where to start if multiple triads are showing dysfunction
30:23 – Why root causes often lie in Triads 1 and 2
32:52 – The bidirectional relationship between gut and brain health
36:06 – Lifestyle strategies to improve immune resilience during a season
39:32 – Foundational sleep, food, and mindset habits for high performers
43:51 – Core supplements for gut, brain, and mitochondrial health
45:59 – Q&A: Interpreting lipid panels and LDL/HDL ratios
47:39 – Q&A: Underrated supplements for performance
50:06 – Q&A: How much time Jim spends reading and studying research
51:06 – Where to connect with Jim LaValle

Supporting High Performance
Metabolic Elite's entire line is designed to specifically support the health, performance, and recovery of high performers. Each product is formulated using research-supported ingredients and dosages using the highest quality ingredients, so you can be confident that every product you take will deliver the maximal benefit and effect.

Check out why Metabolic Elite's Liposomal Tablet delivery system is a game-changer: LPT White Paper

Save 15% using the code 'neeld15' at checkout here: Metabolic

Contact Kevin:

• Follow me and suggest future guests, topics and questions: @KevinNeeld
• Watch the videos: @NeeldPerformance
• Get access to my FREE newsletter: KevinNeeld.com
• Email me: KN@KevinNeeld.com

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Kevin Neeld (00:01)
Jim, thank you so much for doing this. Really excited to have you here.

Jim LaValle (00:05)
That's great. Always good to talk to you, Kevin.

Kevin Neeld (00:09)
I want to start things off here by talking about your metabolic code system. So, you I know people come to you for a wide range of reasons from general health concerns up through high level performance in sport and tactical environments. And the first time we connected, the one thing that really stood out to me was not only how comprehensive your diagnostic process was, all the things you're looking at to identify the root causes of the issues that somebody's encountering, but

how you were processing the blood work and your symptom questionnaire by looking at the values and responses within the different systems of the body, not just based on whether an individual value was out of range. And specifically, you had identified these five triads or these five groups of interconnected systems within the body. And I definitely want to get into those five triads shortly, but.

Just to start here, can you kick things off by talking about why you think it's important to look at health and performance issues in terms of interconnected systems and not just in isolation?

Jim LaValle (01:10)
That's a great question. mean, you looking at thousands and thousands of people over the last 40 years, you know, it's never one thing that's going wrong. It's the relationships in the body that are creating an evolution towards creating a looming problem. Right. So, you know, it's not just, my cortisol is high. It's understanding that when your cortisol is high, it affects your glucose and insulin.

and that when your cortisol is high, it can make your gut more permeable, leading to that term leaky gut, which makes you more apt to develop food intolerances, maybe malabsorb your nutrients. And then of course, when your cortisol is high, it can start to shut down sex hormone production. So things don't work in isolation in our body. They work in a concert.

Every system is signaling other systems. And the better we can understand what's the most disrupted area that's causing all that chaos, the better we can target the right things for someone to do to create the countermeasures that get them feeling better. Right? So, you know, that's the, you know, the real importance of not looking at lab tests and going, ⁓ your vitamin D is off, take vitamin D. your magnesium is off, take magnesium.

You know, you need something for your cortisol. ⁓ you got to do your gut. And while you may need to be aggressive, depending on what issue you've got going on, I've always found that if I can correct the big leavers creating disruption in individuals, that that has a downstream positive effect on the rest of the body. And of course, you know, that's what we're looking for targeted approaches.

that get to the source of the issues. And I love that you said root causes, because most of the time it's always more than one root cause. you know, so that's basically what brought about the metabolic code methodology was, you know, beginning to look at networks and signaling between those networks in the body so that you can start to get a more full thought about, what's going on with this person as a whole.

Kevin Neeld (03:29)
No, that's great. I think you touched on two things that I want to circle back to in a few minutes here. One being, you know, the, opportunity to have some intervention that then has downstream effects. ⁓ and two, just the idea that when you get a typical blood panel back, you might have 15 things that are out of range and the most effective strategy may not be addressing each one of those 15 things all at one time. ⁓ but

Jim LaValle (03:54)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (03:55)
But let's just jump right into the five triads. Can you give us a quick overview of each triad, as far as what systems are included, their primary functions, and then if you can, ⁓ what somebody may experience if one of those triads is off. So from a symptom standpoint, what they may report if they're having issues in one of those.

Jim LaValle (04:19)
Yeah, absolutely. the first, you know, so the first triad triad one is adrenal thyroid pancreas and the relationship between cortisol, insulin and the regulation of glucose and thyroid hormone. And they are absolutely linked. When your cortisol goes up, it causes you to become more insulin resistant because your body is saying, Hey, you're getting ready to fight a white tiger. Cortisol is up. I better keep that blood glucose in the bloodstream so that you're able to fight.

Well, there's downstream consequences to that, right? As your glucose goes up and your insulin goes up, you may feel yourself crash, you know, in between meals, needing food to recharge your energy. You can start to feel more chronic inflammation, even insulin's big for causing inflammatory signaling in your body. But more importantly, when cortisol goes up, it inhibits thyroid hormone production. So your metabolism or your ability to

burn fuel then becomes compromised. And so, you know, I call this the triad of energy, like how you're making energy in your body. And when it's off, you feel fatigued, you get midday crashes in energy. You may even just have problems with disturbed sleep, which kind of bleeds into triad too. But in addition to that, you gain weight. When your insulin goes up, you tell your body to store fat. And if you're

storing fat and your metabolism is slowing down and because of the cortisol you're craving more carbohydrates. I always ask people, you are you stress eating and reaching for comfort food? Now you get home from a hard day of work and it's like you're not looking for broccoli spears. You know, you're looking for the tortilla chip bag. You know, you want something, you know, a chocolate covered pretzel with sea salt and bacon on it, right? That's when you go to the ultimate craving, right?

So when people on triad one, they're going to experience feeling tired, gaining weight, having those kind of periodic ebbs and flows in their energy, and not being able to manage their metabolism. So that's triad one. And you know, a lot of times what I have people do with that is, you know, they take something to manage their cortisol or improve their blood sugar to start managing their cortisol compounds like Rilorra.

Theanine really good for blood sugar. I love berberine. We've actually got a very interesting through metabolic elite have a glute, right? Glute for a reg product, which is berberine, bitter melon, chromium, vanadium, and PQQ. And which are all components that helping you be more efficient at making your insulin signaling more efficient. And so there's some simple things that you can do for that.

⁓ Triad two, gut immune brain, super important. I what I find in most people, triad one and triad two is where the big disruptions occur. Gut immune brain, that's the relationship between how your gut is functioning. Are you gassing? Are you bloated? Are you getting runner's diarrhea, for example, for athletes? So they starting to experience food sensitivities. Hey, I can't tolerate dairy. I can't tolerate gluten. Gee, when I drink coffee,

I seem to feel foggy headed. And that gut piece is so important because it connects to the brain through the enteric nervous system. So goes the brain, so goes the gut, so goes the gut, so goes the brain. They're intimately connected. And what really fuels that is that center piece called the immune system. So when I'm creating inflammatory signaling in my gut,

Maybe it's medication that I'm on. on a proton pump inhibitor. I've been on antibiotics and I've thrown off the microbiome for any number of reasons. Environmental burden can do it, right? Glyphosate exposure, lot in the literature now in terms of affecting the microbiome. So whatever it is, overtraining, right? And I know we love to hear the term, you you don't overtrain, you under recover. Kind of true. The harder you train, the more you have to work at keeping and maintaining your gut.

It's that simple because the net effect of that is when the enteric nervous system signals that inflammatory response coming from the gut, the brain gets triggered to create what's called neuro inflammation. And the problem with that is, is that's when you start feeling like you're pushing a thought through Jell-O, right? You cognitively are not processing as well. You can't focus as well. If you're an athlete, it means your reaction time starts to alter.

Now, for example, if you're ⁓ on the ice and hockey and the player's like, hey, I always got to that puck and had my stick at the right time. And now it just seems like I'm a little off. That's that issue of brain coherence. So when your core body temperature heats up, when you're signaling inflammation in the brain, now your brain cannot process and send signals through the nervous system to tell that neuromuscular signal.

to appropriately adapt and respond. And so the key features of gut immune brain would be, hey, am I getting colds and flus more frequently or getting sick? Do I have chronic inflammation or feeling puffy? You know, I'm creating more of an allergic response in my body. Do I notice that I'm, you know, I am more foggy headed. I'm not focusing as well. I'm unable to process information as quickly. And from a gut perspective, it's the big ones. A lot of people complain, I've got

Yes, I've got bloating, my bowel habiter, irregular constipation, diarrhea. Those are the key things that they experience. And really important to really overcome because the other side to that is if you're under a lot of stress or you're just training really hard and your brain is pumping out more production of the cytokine interleukin-6 IL-6, which is in all over the literature for performance, right?

You know, the issue there is, is, well, now all of sudden that IL-6 is sending a message to your gut layer, which is only one cell layer thick, and it breaks the junctions that protect the integrity of that epithelial cell that lines your intestine. And once that breaks, bacteria can get in.

Food particles basically, know, undigested nor like peptides that can, that end up getting through their exjunctions reacting by the antigen presenting cells. So your immune system then says, a second, this peptide from almond, this doesn't look like it's normal. It's not all the food didn't get all the way broken down. Now I'm going to have to mount a defense against that almond peptide.

And now you got a reaction to a nut, right? And so it's really important to understand that, you know, all these triads stack together, you get under enough stress, triad one cortisol, and it leads to disruption in your immune system and your gut, as well as your brain. And how this fully evolves is well, somebody develops autoimmune thyroid, for example, which is becoming more and more common.

And so triad two is really about resiliency. You know, are you anxious and nervous? Do you feel flat? Are you having trouble sleeping? Sleeping is a real big sign of an issue on triad two, right? Meaning that sleep disturbances or insomnia is a disorder of hyper arousal of the HPA axis, meaning that your brain's turned on. It thinks it's fighting a white tiger. You're sympathetic dominant.

And now your brain can't turn off. And where it really gets progressed is when you flatten your cortisol curve because of that sustained stress. So when you, when you're supposed to make a lot of cortisol in the morning, drop at noon, drop again at 5pm, go to nothing at bedtime. When that gets out of kilter and you flatten that curve, that's when you become more prone to future cardio metabolic issues, neurodegenerative issues, mood disorders.

And these are all things that we see because look, you have a lot of athletes, for example, that play night games. Well, it can't be calm at night. They got to be playing hard at night. So it's even more important that you get them after postgame to reset that rhythm so that they're able to kind of maintain the coherence and the consistent signaling of hormone response through the day, that following day to be prepared for the next event.

or practice or even just be prepared for a great off day. Right. And so what are some key things for that? One of the biggest things innovations. Yeah, there's a compound that we utilize at metabolic elite called synapsin, which helps to really trigger glial cells or the brain's immune system to calm down. And it also has a lot of other mechanisms in it to get you to focus better. So people feel more focused, but it's not a stimulus.

A lot of people use stimulants to try to get them to focus and that has a downward effect over time. Now, obviously from the immune side, one of the biggest things like curcumin is one of my favorite things for the immune system because it really inhibits the signaling of the master switch for inflammation, NF-kappa B. When that gets turned on, the floodgates open on the inflammatory signal. Where does that apply? People that aren't getting over an injury.

Right. You've seen it, Kevin. You've got some people that are right on time for their repair and other people. It's two weeks late and they're still not really recovered. So I'll stop there because I know you always have a question. I just that's kind of like, you know, I get on a roll with these triads and I can't stop. So anyway, that's the first two triads and kind of what they mean. And they're interconnected intimately.

Kevin Neeld (14:48)
Well, you know what? I'm, ⁓ you probably see me taking notes as you go here. I'm going to keep pushing the ball down the hill here. Let's, let's keep rolling with triad three.

Jim LaValle (14:56)
Let's go. Triad three is cardiopulmonary neurovascular. And what this is about is it's not just about, are your lipids bad or good? Although that's important because when you're making bad actor lipids like more oxidized LDL or apolipoprotein B or lipoprotein little way, yes, that shows that you've got more cardiovascular risk in the future. But in the short term, what that means is that you're triggering metaflamation.

Metabolic inflammation leads to inflammation aging. Metaflamation is that global phenomena that your body's just operating too hot. There's no homeostasis and repair and your lipids are at the middle of that. So really understanding what's going on. Now, in addition to that, you have to think of things like blood pressure. Where's your blood pressure at? Is it too high? Is it too low? What's your blood pressure in the morning and what's your blood pressure at night? Because you're

you should have a dip in your blood pressure because at night you're supposed to have less stress hormones coursing through your body, right? So blood pressure is important. And then things like resting heart rate, you know, where is your resting heart rate at? Where is your two minute heart rate recovery at? You know, what is your heart rate variability like? Those are key aspects of cardiopulmonary neurovascular. Cause what that's doing, it's dictating

where your microcapillaries health are at, the better you perfuse blood into your organs and tissues, the better you can get rid of the lactate and reduce the ischemia that occurs after exercise. And so what they find is that people that train really hard and they gain a lot of lean mass, you can start to compress some of those microcapillaries. So you got to work at continually expanding those microcapillaries.

And then in addition to that, people that get really sick have a disruption in their micro capillaries. So, you know, that micro capillary status super important. then you realize if you're resting heart rate for people listening, you know, for every four points over 62, it starts to confer an increased risk of, you know, cardiac issues over the long haul. Right. So there's a, there's an ideal space that you want to be in.

And that two minute heart rate recovery time is really important because it's showing flexibility of your vagus nervous system, your parasympathetic tone to allow those arteries to expand and contract where appropriate. So it's all about, well, am I setting up placking through those advanced lipid markers? Where is my neurovascular network at? know, do I have good peripheral blood flow?

That's why everybody's using Normatech boots now, right? Part of their recovery to get that blood flow back in the lower limbs. And then, you know, I think the other piece is when you get under stress and your cortisol is high and you're sympathetic dominant, that diaphragm comes up and now you're shallow breathing and that's going to alter your carbon dioxide, right? Which is going to end up creating problems for you, not just for performance, but just also in general, you end up loading up more lactic acid and

and you don't get good deep oxygenation. So we call triad three, the triad of endurance and stamina, right? Because with oxygen, you can create stamina. Now there's a couple of really cool things related to that. Piolic is an aged garlic extract with over 900 publications, well over 200 studies that showed that it works on

blood vessel health and microcapillary health. There was actually a recent study in middle Asian endurance athletes that showed it improved their lactate threshold, improved their recovery, improved their general capacity to perform. And that's because it was doing something very simple, improving oxygen delivery and reducing ischemia in the microcapillaries. Another product that's really interesting for that is a compound called Rivaska, which they've actually studied this. They take a camera

And they put it under your tongue and they measure your micro capillaries in three minutes. And this is, I mean, this is this type of, you know, research has been done over a hundred universities. mean, I know the, you know, the, the, PhD that developed it. And if what they found out is that you have a glycocalyx, you have an inner lining of your artery that's kind of got hairs on it. It's not like this smooth lining. It's kind of hairy. And, and when that glycocalyx gets damaged,

That's when the microcapillaries get stressed, get stiff, or you lose some of those smaller microcapillaries. So Ravaska specific to rebuild that glycocalyx and get that blood flow going. So real important to understand that you really need to focus on getting that blood flow going, not just in exercise, but that's a part of the recovery process.

and it's a part of your general health. Now triad four, I think a lot of times it gets blown by, but it's liver, lymph and kidney. And so we call this the triad of detoxification because the lymph, the liver and the kidneys are intimately involved in getting rid of waste products of your metabolism as well as environmental exposure. But in the end, it also picks up things like anemia. So we've all heard

And understand now that when your iron's high or normal and your ferritin is low, well, that's a process that's signaled by metabolic inflammation. We need to keep our ferritin pull up because that helps with heart rate. helps with oxygenation. It helps with energy production. And so it's a key thing that you measure ⁓ with athletes because under metabolic stress,

you start to up-regulate something called hepcidin, which then down-regulates a compound called ferroportin, which then makes ferritin. So you'll see this commonly in individuals where they have normal iron, really low ferritin, even though they're eating red meat, no, it's not happening for them. And the other piece to this that's important is looking at kidney function. So kidney function shows you important things like hydration.

But the other thing that's important is, are you under high oxidative stress? Where is your redox potential at? The more oxidative stress you're under, you'll start to see the kidneys not having as good of a filtration rate called a GFR, glomerular filtration rate. And so when you look at triad four, you're looking at, well, hey, is I putting fat in my liver or my liver enzymes elevated?

What's my iron like? What's my ferritin like? Do I have B12 anemia or my red blood cells too big? Where are my kidneys functioning at? What is the status of you know, immune function as it relates to the lymph? And so this is a key component of actually being able to perform at your best because if you're under high oxidative stress, you're damaging your tissues. One of the simplest things you could do to show that is just get a urine dipstick. You can get a

you know, hydrion pH paper, look at your first morning urine. If that pH is down in the fives or even the low sixes, that indicates an excess of hydrogen ions, which means you're under oxidative stress. So, you know, what's one of the key areas you can fix that with? Well, taking magnesium is important. From a diet perspective, getting more greens in, super important to get those greens in. And then that combines, of course, well, what

creates those problems. Well, guess what? When you're insulin resistant, you start to create more vascular stress, the intima gets stiffer. And so once again, these triads are working together. When the microbiome is off and you're triggering inflammation, you actually can start to cause problems with liver detoxification. So it all works together. Now the fifth triad is ⁓

It's all about your sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. And we call this the triad of potency. And the way I explain it is, do you feel desirable? You know, you know, do you, do you have that feeling of self-esteem? Because when you start to lose your sex hormones, that desirability goes down. Right. And more importantly, it's obvious. Look, when your cortisol testosterone ratio, which everybody's talking about now, cortisol free testosterone.

is an indicator of overtraining. That's because when cortisol levels are high, you inhibit something called gonadotropin releasing hormone. And when you don't make gonadotropin releasing hormone, what happens is you stop making testosterone. So what's everybody run out and think they could do? Well, I just need to take testosterone. It's going to be better. Well, not if you don't correct the cortisol curve, right? They're all related.

So what are you gonna feel like when your testosterone's low? If you're a man or a woman, look, your strength is gonna be off, sex drive is off, mood will change, you increase your cardiovascular risk if you're a male, if you have low testosterone. So it's real important. Bone density, incredibly important with the sex hormones and healing those joint ligament structures that are damaged.

You need sex hormones for those. You have estrogen receptors down in that, that bony joint and connective tissue, ⁓ in, in interspace. So the balance of these hormones is what creates, you know, the feeling of, Hey, I can be vibrant and I can feel well. The issue that I think we have right now is people are overdoing it. They're going and doing massive amounts, super physiologic dosing of testosterone. And when you look at the studies, it's clear, whether you look at Baylor university or university of Michigan, you have

You know, who have focus in these areas, you know, for men, there's sweet spots between like basically 550 or 600 and 900. It's not, let's get you up to 1500 so you can get a few extra muscles on you. That starts to create potential problems. So the real beauty when you have these five triads is the more you can harmonize them, the more you can get them to align and signal with each other appropriately.

That's where you maintain homeostasis or your ability to create the rest in your body, i.e. exercise or maybe it's emotional stress or work a two jobs, right? Whatever it is. And your ability of your body to recover from that. And that's the key is to stay in that homeostatic spot. And the more you exercise, the more you got to work at maintaining that homeostatic spot.

Kevin Neeld (26:25)
So that's actually a ⁓ perfect segue into my next question. So if you have somebody that's reporting low energy, maybe they're experiencing increased fatigue, they're suffering some gas and bloating and some digestive issues, reporting that their endurance is lower and there's some stamina issues. ⁓

their strength is plateauing or they don't feel as strong as they normally do. So you start to have some of these observable symptoms across the five different triads. How do you go about starting to address those? So, you know, this circles back to the downstream consequences comment that you made earlier here, but where do you start?

Jim LaValle (27:09)
Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, obviously where I start on everyone is they fill out about 150 question questionnaire. They get labs. It all combines. put in their biometrics and it all combines and creates accelerated modeling. Right. So that, you know, it's not just a one for one piece. It's more like a, hey, if your cortisol is off and your glucose is off and your blood pressure is off a little and you're losing electrolytes.

and your lipids are off, we have to work on your stress response and your blood sugar. So the first step when somebody is having all those kind of symptoms is kind of looking at, where are the labs really off? That helps. And then when you just, when the triad system scores it, you know, you look to, where's the biggest score? Whenever somebody says, I got gas and bloating and I'm having issues there, we always think about, well, you have to work on that. You know, you're going to

maybe take out the big food allergens that typically bother people. You know, think of soy, dairy, you know, gluten containing grains. if you really want to take it farther, corn is a biggie, even egg. ⁓ and if you can take those big offenders out and then what do you do to support your gut? Well, the first thing is get a good probiotic. And one of the big things I support her DNA verified probiotics and have human studies behind them and

They're verified to have all of the strains that are in the bottle all the way to the date of the expiration. A lot of people don't realize you put probiotics in a bottle, they're crypts and bloods, they want to fight each other. So you got to have compatibility of the strains. The other one is, is taking fiber. Fiber is super important for actually managing the detoxification process to help with the processing of hormones. All of those things.

important. So I really like it. I'm a big fan of guar gum or some fiber. think it's fantastic. And then typically, I like to make sure somebody's taking something that's going to kind of knock off the bad bugs. All right, so we change their diet more modified, what we do initially a lot of times a modified low carb. If you're doing something where you're an athlete, you may need to add a carb like a you know, you can something that will give you the energy that you need, but won't affect your gut.

and the work that you're doing on it. So that's a core foundational thing that you could do. In terms of endurance going down, you know, if it's somebody that's got a train and they're working out the compound Lankind, which is a 98 % solidricide, we utilize that in the product called Enduro 2. But Lankind is interesting because it improves VO2 max, improves blood perfusion into the muscle.

⁓ you know, because it's a, a solid recite, which is from rhodiola, you get a little bit of that adaptogen effect and that can help people right away to feel like, I've got better endurance. got better stamina right after the first dose. Now, the only thing that makes this even more complicated is if you're tired and fatigued, a lot of times getting rid of those food intolerant reactions will take care of that. You may need to build your adrenal performance back.

So are you have trouble sleeping? Yes. All right. ⁓ are you stressed out during the course of the day? If you're feeling stressed out, I prefer to get people started on things that will help to calm their nervous system down and then see how their sleep is at night. Right? I mean, you Hey, we've calmed you down. If you reset that button. And so, you know, that piece is important. If you're someone that, you know, you're training hard.

You know, you're getting after it. You don't have symptoms yet. Uh, that's where compounds like Navitas pro, which is a, you know, it's, you know, it's cordyceps, which is great for oxygenation. Um, it has rhodiola in it, which is great for controlling the peripheral adrenergic nervous system. Uh, it's just Zandra's in it. Uh, you know, you want to look to an adaptogen to keep you resilient, even though you're pushing yourself hard.

Once you've done that though, there may be some adrenal rebuilding that needs to occur. I've been a big fan of using the gland extracts, which now it's very in vogue. Everybody's talking about bioregulators. Well, bioregulators just come from gland extracts. It's just a bunch of peptides that are in the glands. And if they're processed correctly, you get to take them and you're getting a whole bunch of peptides. When you say, for example, take an adrenal gland extract that would help support getting your cortisol back up.

If it's really low, you've already crashed it. And so, you know, that's how I would start on that person. It's kind of fatigued and they're having gut symptoms is clean up the gut, shore up that cortisol axis, change the diet to be ⁓ low inflammatory anti-allergen and then see where they improve. Because a lot of times, I mean, I got to tell you, I do that as a first step on an awful lot of people and they start feeling better. Now I may have to think of

you know, using nicotinamide riboside, get the mitochondria flowing, right? Because when you take nicotinamide riboside, you end up triggering increased production of NAD in your cell, which helps with mitochondrial vigilance. And when I get the mitochondria moving, I'm going to make energy. So that's kind of be how I look at it to start. Obviously there could be other things, but you know, that's what I see a lot of times in the bell curve of people.

Kevin Neeld (32:53)
Yeah. And I, and I think this, ⁓ this may be obvious just based on the numbering of the triads, but in general, you're, you would, you know, if somebody has similar scores across multiple triads, you would start with triads one and two and address those before, you know, I, because you brought up the idea of, somebody having low testosterone, which was in triad five. And I think that that's one that that's a message that probably resonates with a lot of the people listening that

You know, you get a blood panel, you see that marker down. It's one that is discussed ⁓ fairly openly. You know, there's commercials on TV and on the radio constantly about getting your T levels up. ⁓ but that may not be the most appropriate place to start depending on, know, how some of these other things are factoring in.

Jim LaValle (33:39)
Well, I'll give you another example. There's something called the gelding theory and in the gelding theory. And I mean, there's papers written on this that they've done studies in humans. It turns out when your microbiome starts breaking down because of all the inflammation going on in the gut, you release something called lipopolysaccharide or otherwise known as endotoxin. Lipopolysaccharide binds to the lating cells of your testicles. If you're a man and shuts down testosterone. So.

Just because you take testosterone, and I can tell you, I believe in testosterone replacement. The clinics that I've been involved with, I'm teaching at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine this week. We teach more people hormone replacement than anyone in the world. But if you don't address these root causes while you're thinking about replacing hormones, a lot of times people don't feel, it's not the answer for them. They don't go, my God, ⁓ the world's now bright again because I took it.

Or you have a honeymoon phase where the testosterone in the male feels much better for a period of four or five months, but then it starts to wane. And I think that that's the point is that triad one and two, it all starts with your brain. So gut immune brain and adrenal thyroid pancreas, the stressors that you're under, whether it's mechanical, physiologic, psychogenic stress.

That's what starts to alter all these signals and downstream effects, right? And, obviously what we've seen over the last several years is, people that had weakened immune systems were chronically metabolically inflamed, got in real trouble during the pandemic, right? They were more prone to creating a negative effect. And so I absolutely love when people start to think more holistically about their body and how it's functioning.

Yeah, triad one and triad two, usually at the top of the heat.

Kevin Neeld (35:38)
⁓ I'd love to spend a little bit more time on this triad too. I know, ⁓ you circled back to it and provided a lot of great recommendations on, ⁓ strategies that people can use to address issues that they might be having. But, you know, this is one that I think about a lot in our environment. Obviously all contact sports brain health is a priority. ⁓ you know, you have these concussion events throughout the season or, you know, even just trauma that doesn't maybe reach the threshold of a concussion diagnosis.

but then even more just from a cognitive processing standpoint and decision-making, know, the higher level of sport, the faster the decision-making process and the more crucial it is to make the right decisions. And, you know, for us, we're playing three to four games each week. We're traveling across the country. We're changing time zones. There's, ⁓ some of the circadian shifts that you had referenced earlier. There's a lot that, that, ⁓ professional athletes and really I would argue.

anybody competing in a schedule that they're competing at night, there's a lot that they have to manage that is working against them in terms of consistent, ⁓ high quality decision making. ⁓ and that, you know, that's on the brain standpoint. And I don't know if this is, ⁓ just a Massachusetts thing, but it feels like the last few years that flu season is basically a year round issue now. you know, maybe something I'm experiencing more having two young kids in school as well, but you know, between the flu,

Jim LaValle (36:50)
That's right.

Kevin Neeld (37:08)
COVID, RSV, ⁓ you know, there's all of these illnesses that are a constant struggle for people to maintain their health and their energy throughout the season. then, you know, lastly, from a gut standpoint, you you've referenced the gut microbiome. I think that's gotten a lot of press over the last few years. you know, everybody, we're constantly bombarded with conflicting information on, you know, what foods or diets are good or bad. ⁓ you know, then

the reality of all of our lives is that we're faced with situations where we don't have a hundred percent control over the ingredient quality or how the foods were prepared in certain cases. If we're, you know, eating out at restaurants and, ⁓ you know, in our case on planes and hotels and that sort of thing. ⁓ you know, I think about this gut immune brain triad quite a bit and in the different strategies and struggles that, ⁓ that our players face. So.

You know, you had alluded to this earlier on, but just to circle back, know, would you, do you, with these issues, is it more top down driven or bottom up? Meaning, you know, if somebody has some disturbance to their brain health, is that what is driving the gut health? Or is it more, you know, issues in the gut can, ⁓ can circle upstream and create issues with ⁓ cognitive processes and brain health.

Jim LaValle (38:31)
I would say it's either or it's bi-directional and it can start either way or both at the same time. So for example, if you hit your head, you have a TBI, your gut's permeable within two hours. So just an event, an acute event like a head trauma could cause the gut to become permeable. And then you could have a situation of a lifetime of making poor selections of food, maybe being on a lot of antibiotics. For women, oral contraceptives disrupt the gut microbiome quite a bit.

so it's, it's a, it's a bi-directional system. Now, one thing's for sure. When one system goes out of, out of sync, meaning I hit my head or I've been under a lot of stress. It will always end up sending a signal eventually to the gut through that enteric nervous system and then create an inflammation or immunologic response.

One of the things that happens when my immune system is chronically being low grade assaulted is I lose my resiliency to fight bugs off. Right. Because you're always have your immune system is creating a little bit of inflammatory cytokine activity to begin with. Now all of a sudden you get hit with a bug, like a flu bug or a cold bug, whatever it is. And you don't have the, you don't have the capacity to fight it off like you should. So.

That's the, you know, I think the piece that's most important to understand is that it's not just that. I mean, I could give you a complete example of environmental burden, like triad four, detox, triggering the problems, you know, give you real acute issues. Parkinson's, for example, is related to environmental burden. I mean, they've pretty much disproven that it's like a big genetic thing. It's environmental, you know, disease.

I mean, it's because of what you get exposed to. Now, there's also your genetic propensity. if you're, you know, one of the big things that has happened over the last few years, and now this goes like, if you're a tested athlete, you may not be able to use these kinds of things, but using compounds like BPC 157, BPC 157 heals the mucosal barrier of the gut. It's very powerful.

Another peptide called KPV, it actually reduces the TNF alpha signaling or the inflammatory signaling in the gut. Now a lot of these compounds, because they're small molecules, cross the blood-brain barrier and help have an obviously positive effect as well. you know, I wish I could be, I'll give you my example. I lived on antibiotics when I was a kid. I was one of those sick kids, blue baby, had allergy shots.

You know, I thought that, you know, bubble gum flavored, a box of Ceylon was a part of my meal plan. took it so much, man. It's like getting my bubble gum now and then dimetapp, which was for the decongestant, right? I was getting my grape flavored stuff at bedtime. Right. And, and so for me, it was antibiotics that threw off the gut. ⁓ and then obviously created, I remember at points of time where I really had cognitive, just fogginess. ⁓ and, and so.

For me, that was the instance. I have athletes that get quote, runner's diarrhea, for example, endurance athletes, and they have that term. Well, that's being driven because of the disruption of excessive cortisol production, then causing a change in the permeability of the gut, leading to a change in the microbiome, leading to a change in inflammatory signaling, right? So I think it's important. Like I always tell people, hey, look, you can test for food allergies.

You can do a gut protocol, do the man, you're doing glutamine, you're doing cat's claw, you're doing zinc, carnosine, you're doing all these things that heal the gut. But if you're somebody that isn't sleeping much, right? You've disrupted your circadian rhythm and you're under a lot of stress and you're anxious and nervous. If you don't do anything to correct that trend in your nervous system, you'll be forever working on your gut.

Kevin Neeld (42:46)
So, and actually I think ⁓ that's a good segue. As you're talking, I'm thinking, what are some of the big rock strategies from a nutrition and lifestyle standpoint that people can start to implement to really create a foundation to minimize their risk of having issues across these triads?

Jim LaValle (43:07)
Yeah, before we get into talking about the supplements, I think there's some key things that you need to do. One is you've got to improve your sleep hygiene. You know, and I'm not talking about, my God, you got to wear Faraday glasses and every day you got to do a cold plunge and you got to get into sauna and then you got to, mean, you got to be careful that you start creating too many strategies, then become stressful in your life. Right. ⁓ But there are key things. You can do box breathing to reset your vagal tone three or four minutes, two or three times a day.

super easy, right? The simple four, four second in, hold four second, exhale on the exhale, you're letting go of the stress that you've accumulated. You're visually saying, I'm letting this go. And then you hold four seconds. You do that treatment for four minutes, right? Four minutes. And, ⁓ just be grateful at the end of it for something. And, that can help reset the nervous system. That's super important. I think that eating is

is super important. You know, the more times you eat during the day, the more you stimulate a little bit of cortisol with every time you're releasing that insulin to respond. The single biggest inflammatory aspect to what you do with your eating is how much you spike your glucose and then have the insulin response. Post-perandial hyperglycemia. The people that say, I exercise a lot. I can eat a bowl of Skittles. Wrong.

That's going to come back to bite you because you're triggering too much glucose oscillation. So understanding what foods are right for me, which foods help me feel good. What are my protein targets? So I don't become catabolic. That's important. I like people eating on 12, 12 schedules. I mean, they don't have to intermittent fast. And in fact, a lot of the intermittent fast, I always laugh when I have athletes tell me they're intermittent fasting. It's like, how do you get enough fuel in the day to do what you're doing?

You know, that's tough. If you do it one or two days a week, I get it. But that 1212 schedule of food intake and you should be sleeping seven to nine hours. That means you're only going about four hours during the course of your day without eating food. You know, it's not that, you know, not that tough. Quality of food super important. I find most people still struggle with eating enough vegetables. And even if you do, there's a dramatic difference.

and the amount of minerals you get in your vegetables, batch to batch, city to city, it almost requires that you're taking some minerals. know, Kevin, I'm a huge fan of magnesium, have been forever. And I think it requires people take minerals given today's world and the fact that they're probably not eating as well as they could. So I think those strategies are really important. I like people doing sauna.

I think 20 minutes of sauna, four days a week, really good for your nervous system and your cardiovascular system. Your heart rate goes up a little bit, your little vascular expansion, you're detoxifying, getting rid of some of that environmental burden by doing sauna. So I think that's a really cool lifestyle piece. And the big one, I really, over the years, I'm getting to be an old goat now, right? mean, 65 in a month, I've really started to...

to really just truly at the most basic level, just, you know what? We're meant to enjoy what's going on during the course of the day. know, there's opportunities for us in our life, right? So you wanna kind of get yourself in that joy mindset. I think when you harbor stress and harbor the negative side, it has a dramatic impact on your nervous system. And then it gets into, well, what are key things you should consider taking?

⁓ I think, you know, you know, without a doubt, you know, yeah, take a multi. That's fine. I think probiotics are essential for people and fiber is there. just essential things for people. Probably take a probiotic every other day, unless you're having problems and you got to do it daily, but you could get by maintenance every other day is fine. Especially if you're getting fiber in your diet and feeding those bugs. I think that's core.

And I think really like mitochondrial protection, know, are you taking CoQ10? Are you doing something like a curcumin that's well absorbed? ⁓ That's important. Taking, you know, another one, glutathione, you your most powerful antioxidant in your body. People run out of it when they train hard. It's just that simple, right? And so getting that on is really important. And I'm big on supporting people's brain health.

I mean, I can't tell you, you know, when I developed first developed a ginsengicide RR3 or RG3, I did it for Corvette race team. And, you know, we basically gave it to them because what we were finding is that they were racing around a track, their core body temperature went up and that's when their brain coherence went down. So when you, when we found out you use ginsengicide RR3, which quiets that neuroinflammation response, so you create a healthy.

neuroinflammatory glial cell, right? It's like normal. ⁓ wow. Their core body temperature didn't go up. The reaction time improved and went in one Lamont, you know? ⁓ and so I'm a big fan and I know I've personally been taking it for 15 years now and I'm pretty sure that my mind's just as quick as it was 15 years ago. Yeah. I don't feel like I've lapsed. ⁓ and you know, by evidence I'll be lecturing 21 hours in three days.

starting Thursday. So I better be sharp because I got a lot of people on stage. It'll be staring at me. ⁓ So anyway, I think these are key things ⁓ that people need to think about sleep hygiene. mean, honestly, you got to jump in, get, you know, if it's melatonin, it helps you go down at night. Combination with magnesium, maybe taking theanine, things that calm your brain. If you're a night performer,

or you're even training at night, right? You're exercising in the evening, because you know, your work day is your work day and the evening's when you can do it. Even more important, get that breathing exercise in, take something to calm your nervous system down. So those are some key things that I think are important.

Kevin Neeld (49:37)
No, that's really helpful. ⁓ I mentioned before we started recording here that I want to get you back on soon to do almost a hot topic Q &A and melatonin will certainly be on the list for that one. But for now, we'll just take that recommendation and ⁓ table it. But ⁓ maybe as a quick teaser for that one, just to wrap up here, Jim, we got a few questions online that I wanted to run by you in real quick for.

The listeners, when I bring guests on, I'll post requests for questions on my Instagram account. So if you aren't already, give me a follow there. ⁓ Name's just at Kevin Neald. So you can submit your questions and then we'll do our best to run them by the guests and get them answered. first question that came in is when you're reviewing lipid panels, are you more concerned with LDL levels falling below a threshold or the LDL to HDL ratio and why?

Jim LaValle (50:31)
So I mean, for me, you know, it's interesting, a big study just came out showing that, you know, people with total cholesterol of 220 to 240 actually live the longest. Now that wouldn't be inclusive of people that have coronary artery plaque. Then you got to be more aggressive with your lipid lowering. The LDL HDL ratio is important. You you really want to have that. Actually, the triglyceride to HDL ratio is even more important.

Ideally you would have a trig to HDL ratio of one to one, but if it's two to one, pretty darn good. If it gets past three to one, not so good. So that's important. An absolute LDL number. Look, I've never been one to say, ⁓ because I've had people sit in front of me, their lipids are crazy bad and yet they just had a coronary artery scan and it's completely clean, you know? But in general, I think it's safe to say that, you know, keep those LDLs below 130, ideally down around a hundred.

And you want to find out the particle size of those LDLs. Are they big and fluffy LDLs? Because if they are, they're good for you. You need LDL cholesterol to repair your brain. That's what helps keep the integrity of your cell membranes intact, right? So particle size is really important. The smaller the LDL, the more the opportunity to bore into the interlining of your arteries and trigger an inflammatory response. So that's kind of a roundabout way of saying

You know, yeah, have him make sure you look at your LDL and try to build good HDLs and you need to look at fluffy HDLs too. Sometimes they're small and they're not really helpful for you.

Kevin Neeld (52:08)
Great. So question two, ⁓ one supplement that could impact an athlete's performance that people may not be familiar with. I have a feeling you've dropped about 20 of these already, but does anything else come to mind there?

Jim LaValle (52:19)
Well, think, look, I'll tell you what, I started using Lankind, you know, the Enduro 2 pre my workouts, because I still try to get after it like an old guy would get after it. But I try to still get after it. And I think that is the next hot thing. It just improves stamina, improves endurance, improves your capacity.

And so think a lot of people aren't familiar with Lankind, which is that 98 % salindracide. It just came on the market. A lot of people were sprinkling it into their products. The clinical dose on that is 60 milligrams. It was in the studies. That's why I like Enduro 2. It's the full clinical dose in a liposome. So it enhances the absorption of that full clinical dose. And then the other one that people aren't that familiar with, know, synapsin, ginsengicide R3 and ginsengicide RB1. You've got to remember the

better you keep your brain coherence, the better you're going to perform. And I don't care whether you're doing a snatch or a deadlift, we've all went to the bar, grabbed it and you knew it before you even tugged on it, you weren't going to get it. Or this is easy, right? And that's that brain coherence and understanding that load. And I think that's a, I know people have experienced that. I know I sure have.

Kevin Neeld (53:40)
No, the Enduro two is an interesting one. for sure. think, you know, that's one that I've done a couple of conditioning sessions where I'm tracking some, some measure of the output. And I've gone through a couple kind of, ⁓ AB tests where I, you know, I do it same conditions, no Enduro two do it again with the Enduro two in the difference in the outputs, remarkable to me. And, know, obviously having the research support that, ⁓ you know, there's a, there's a lot of supplements that you can take that.

Maybe have a longer term benefit that, you know, over time you start to increase your levels of something and there's, you know, significantly less that have a profound acute effect where you can take something and then immediately have a performance benefit. And I've certainly found that that that's the case with Enduro too. So, I'm not surprised that's on the list.

Jim LaValle (54:20)
That's right.

Yeah, well, our buddy Cal Dietz is

showing that crazy HRV changes on it, right? You Cal just, you know, he's measuring that stuff like a banshee, right? And he was blown away, I think, by his HRV changes that he saw on his athletes.

Kevin Neeld (54:43)
All right, last one here, more of a personal development question for you, but you know, obviously you've, you've ⁓ cited research studies now across a bunch of different areas just throughout this conversation. So, ⁓ you know, this question is how many hours a week are you reading or studying?

Jim LaValle (55:02)
Oh my God. You know what? I I probably look at research. It's daily. I'm reading all the time. So I have to say between reading research and application of the reading and research, it's probably a 30 hour week. Just, you know, a third of my week is, but it's about 30 hours worth of time looking at things.

Kevin Neeld (55:28)
Yeah, that's that standard 100 hour work week ⁓ that we've all grown accustomed to here. Well, Jim, this has been awesome. Can't thank you enough for ⁓ your time and all the great information you've shared. If people want to learn more about you or connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jim LaValle (55:48)
They probably, they go to JimLavelle.com. They can go to the real Jim Lavelle on Instagram. I got a lot of information posted on that. Obviously I'm chief science officer at Lifetime. So there's information through Lifetime and the two and a half million members that I have to oversee on their programs. But that's probably the best. And if they're interested in metabolic code, metaboliccode.com, real simple.

Kevin Neeld (56:10)
Cool, well thanks so much. We look forward to having you back on soon.

Jim LaValle (56:13)
Yeah, great. Thanks, Kevin.