Beyond the Labs: The Metabolic Clues Behind Fatigue, Weight Gain & Thyroid Issues

Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Today’s episode is one you are absolutely going to want to lean into, because we’re talking about something that sets at the root of so many frustrating health issues things like hormone imbalances, weight gain, thyroid dysfunction, low energy, and that overall feeling that your body just is not working the way it should. I recorded with Doctor James Laval at the A Forum Spring Fest conference in West Palm Beach in April. He is an internationally recognized clinical pharmacist, board certified clinical nutritionist, author, and one of the leading voices in integrative and precision health. With more than 40 years of clinical experience, he has helped thousands of patients uncover the deeper metabolic issues that drive illness and keep people from feeling their best. He’s the founder of the Metabolic Code Enterprise, a ground breaking platform designed to help practitioners and patients identify the underlying metabolic roadblocks affecting health resilience and performance. In this conversation, we dive into his metabolic code blueprint and how it helps people better understand what is really driving their symptoms. We talk about why so many people are chasing isolated diagnoses or individual lab markers without ever stepping back to look at the bigger metabolic picture. And one of the most important themes in this episode is this. Sometimes the best place to start is with the gut. Doctor Laval explains how gut health can be one of the key entry points for uncovering deeper hormonal issues, metabolic imbalances, weight struggles, thyroid dysfunction, and persistent fatigue. We talk about how the gut is not just about digestion. It is deeply connected to inflammation, hormone signaling, nutrient absorption, immune balance, and overall metabolic function. When that system is disrupted, it can create a ripple effect throughout the entire body.
What I really love about this conversation is that it brings complexity to medicine in a way that actually makes sense. Instead of looking at symptoms in and isolation. Doctor Laval helps us understand how different systems in the body are connected and why true healing often requires a much more personalized and root cause approach. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing all the right things but still not getting answers. If you’ve struggled with fatigue, thyroid issues, stubborn weight gain, hormonal symptoms, or just a sense that something is off. This episode is going to give you a completely different lens through which to view your health. There’s so much wisdom in this conversation, and Doctor Laval does an incredible job of breaking down complex ideas into practical, understandable insights. So whether you’re a practitioner, a patient, or somebody simply trying to better understand your body, this episode is packed with takeaways. Let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Doctor James Laval. So I have the privilege of being at a forum, and I snagged Doctor Laval literally off stage. He just got off stage and I was like, I want you to talk to my, you know, my listeners, my podcast people, because he’s such a wealth of knowledge about metabolic health. And we talk a lot about metabolic health on my podcast. So yes, I want you to give everyone like a brief, who are you? You tell everyone in in three minutes, what do you do? What do you love to do? What you were just telling me. Sure. And then talk about the metabolic code.
Cool. I have been involved in precision health for the last 41 years. So 65 years old. Been at this a minute. And that really took place first in clinical pharmacy, then boarded in clinical nutrition, started in naturopathic medicine school, got a master’s in theology, diplomat and homeopathic medicine and homeopathic pharmacy. So I was passionate about all these different ways people can heal. Where is there the opportunity, right? I’ve written 26 books, five databases, right? All that kind of good stuff. You know.
Just 26.
Books. Yeah. Well, you know, in 18 ebooks and, you know, a couple hundred pages of literature, who knows? So anyway, but and then really, you know, taught at medical and pharmacy school before. It was cool to talk about natural therapies, but I was reintroducing it at University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Pharmacy, then taught at New York State Chiropractic and Oriental Medicine School, and then currently adjunct faculty at George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and obviously chairing here at a form which is one of my big joys, is helping healthcare providers, especially docs, understand a full thought about what metabolic health is, which is more than what your metabolic rate is. It’s about are you getting people to feel the best they can and look the best they can, and give them guidance as to how do you maintain that health that that person deserves through every stage in life, right? Everybody deserves vitality at every stage in life. So when I was in Cincinnati, I was seeing 3 to 400 people a week every week, three physicians in three rooms, and I’m running in between them as kind of the, I don’t know, a little bit of a savant on biochemistry. And I was doing tai chi and qigong. I kind of tried to be a whole person, right? But I kept seeing patterns. And I think that pattern analysis is really important because, you know, when we isolate organs and we go, oh, and I know you as an endocrinologist because I’ve, I’ve looked at your work. I love it because you’re a whole person endocrinologist, right? Which is what’s missing in endocrinology is that you have to identify the pattern in order to understand the sequence is to how do I unravel the pattern of dysfunction so that I can get someone back on track? So if their stress levels are high, their cortisol curve is flattened.
Well, of course, their thyroid is probably compromised or maybe their guts permeable, but you can’t work on all of it at once. People get overwhelmed. So we have to think about what tools and when. Diet and lifestyle always important sleep, exercise, what kind of foods are right for me? And then it’s where are you at in this curve of do you need immediate hormone support? Because, you know, a particular hormone is so bad that it’s so low that it needs corrected, or maybe it’s way too high and needs to be brought down. And then the biggest thing for me is really getting, you know, when I developed the metabolic code, I try to make it easy because, you know, we look at a lab test and you give it to someone and we start writing notes on it. Happy face up and down, need b6, carnitine, whatever you’re doing, and you give it to them, they leave and they’re lost. And I noticed that out of our own failure at the institute in its early days. So I developed a method of saying, all of your data flows into five networks that give us a pattern analysis. So adrenal, thyroid, pancreas is a pattern, right? And you know better than most cortisol up insulin resistance up, thyroid performance down, right? Yeah. I’m tired. Gaining weight. Don’t think to clear.
And then the insulin being high drives your estrogen down. And the cortisol being high drives your progesterone down. And then your adrenals are mad. And so women aren’t making as much testosterone. And it all. Yes. That’s why I wrote my book it all.
It all comes together. Right. And it’s like a lot of people don’t realize when your cortisol is up, even for men, your testosterone receptor gets blocked by the cortisol, right? So adrenal, thyroid, pancreas is one thing that all the labs and all the symptoms, they all just fill that up. And then gut immune brain is the second pattern. Cardiopulmonary neurovascular, the third pattern, which is about stamina and gut immune brains, about resiliency. Am I sleeping well? Do I feel stressed? Am I anxious? Do I have food allergies? Do I have irritable bowel things that make you not feel resilient? Right. And you know, my resilience to colds and flu. And then we go to triad four, which is liver. Lymph kidney. Yeah. How am I detoxifying? What’s my iron and ferritin status like? Are my kidneys in trouble? Am I puffy lymph. Right. And then the fifth of course. Testosterone. Estrogen. Progesterone. Yep. And so for me, I created a metaflammation index that scores each one of those patterns. And then it helps you figure out, well, where should I start?
So it scores based on labs.
Labs and symptoms and biometrics and now wearable data as well. So it takes all that data, puts it together and you just explained it. The adrenal bone’s connected to the estrogen bone’s connected to the progesterone bone’s right. When you get that single lab it’s not stuck in isolation. It’s feeding into those others through an algorithm we develop based on the clinical evidence that’s been published. So it’s an algorithm about 4000 decisions that’s giving you relationships between that and the reason I built it was all the fellows here were asking. I don’t know where to start. It’s so, you know, it’s confusing and overwhelming. And before you know it, it takes me five years to get going. If we can show them. Where’s your biggest roadblock? And can I teach you how to fix that? And now what’s the next roadblock? It starts getting easier. So that’s metabolic code and what we’ve been doing. And now obviously it’s been implemented at lifetime. The, you know, the big publicly traded fitness organization. It’s going into a few hospital networks going into different doctor networks.
Yeah, I think that’s amazing. So you have actual something you can give someone, you can input their data, you can put their symptoms together. And then like you said, you can just start working on something because so many people come, I like to nicely call these people metabolic dumpster fires, but like most people in this country are metabolic dumpster fires because they’ve been to doctors and doctors don’t know what to do. Or they’re just like, oh, well, you’re not sick enough. And so they just kind of continue to go through life, and then all of a sudden they get to somebody like you or me, and it’s like, Dear God, everything is wrong because everything is connected.
There are a ton of meds and none of it’s really doing what it’s supposed to be doing, right?
And most providers look at that and they’re like, where do I start? That’s it. If you, you know, I used to try when I first started like, okay, these are all the things that are wrong with you. Let’s just fix them all. And people are like overwhelmed. And then when something doesn’t work, you don’t know, well what didn’t work. And, and so you do have to kind of have like a pecking order. Like, where did she start? You know, what are we going to start with? And so I think that that’s important that people realize, you know, this is available.
And, and we’ve taught that here for multiple years, but now it’s becoming more and more relevant because obviously all the everywhere you go now everybody’s talking about pattern analysis. You’re only as strong as your weakest organ. And I love that you brought up. I said, there’s two kinds of people out there. There’s people like me and I think like you, where if I came to you and you worked on me and you said, Jim, I want you to do these three things. I would look at you and go, is that what you gave everybody? Yeah. And you would say, yes. And I would go, well, I want six because I can do three in my sleep walking backwards. I’m a Spartan. Yeah. So like I’m, I’m willing to do whatever it takes.
Are you an Aries?
I’m a Gemini. Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m a Gemini. Yeah. But my but my point is, most people aren’t there. And what we do have to do, though, the other reason that we developed this is to give people an early win. Yeah. Like if you can influence somebody to feel a little better in the first 30 days, like, hey, I’m, you know, my bowel movements are better. I’m not as gassy, I’m not as sleepy. My energy’s a little better. Gee, I just, I feel more positive and I see a change in the way I look and feel that first 30 days dictates success. And that’s what I found in my big institute, is when we were running it for so many years was because we did everything from MRI, CT, functional MRI. We had a 5000 square foot facility, right? Oh, wow. So this was a big facility. And all the images and all that stuff’s cool. But the big thing that motivates people to change is do I feel better? Right.
And so I think that’s really important. And we actually in our clinic, we start every visit with like, the first thing I ask people is, how do you feel? And a lot of them get mad. They’re like, why do you ask me that every time I come in here? Because I want to know, like, do you feel better or worse, the same or the last time you were here? Because that’s important. And I want people, I think people are so stimulated and just so much stuff is going on. I don’t think people even realize how they feel. Like they never send like, do I feel good? Do I not feel good? That’s right. And so I like to bring up. Yes. Are you having a bowel movement every day? And to your point, like my goal with people is in the first 30 days, let’s get you a big win. So my, my second question to people is, what are the three things we can work on that actually will make you feel better? And then we start kind of, you know, and so I have my own agenda in the back end that they don’t know about.
Like, you know, your thyroid is a train wreck, your insulin is high, but I know, but I know they’re saying I’m tired, I want to lose weight and I want to sleep better. And I know that all that translates into what I want to do on the back end, too. That’s right. So then I’m trying to figure out, okay, they’re tired. What hormone are we going to manipulate or what, you know, lifestyle thing are we going to do so that we can make the you know, so it’s kind of interesting you bring that up because that’s how I look at everything with patients. And that’s why I teach my providers is like, okay, we need to listen and validate the symptoms they’re having, but then we understand the back and what’s causing it. And then that’s going to help us drive what we start doing first. And then when they come back, we’re going to say, are you less tired? You know, have you lost a pound? Do you feel less swole? You know, and because then people are like, yes, and they want to keep doing things.
It’s all about validation, right? I mean, when somebody sees a change, they get hope. That’s what’s one of the reasons I think peptides. So being in this now, this is going on my fifth decade of working on people in this way. So I’m 41 years in right now and it’s gotten harder and harder to get people. Well. Yeah. I mean, I’ve always worked in interdisciplinary clinics, so I’ve always had OB gyns, endocrine, internal dietician, physical therapists, acupuncture. I mean, you just got a lot of people have. Right. I always have had a lot and I’ve been fortunate that way. But in the end, it’s been a lot harder to get people well. And I think that’s where this evolution of, you know, now using peptides. Why did GLP one explode? Right? Well, they exploded because nobody was helping a person understand why they’re overweight and forcing the issue with them. So they’re just desperate and they start doing an injection of GLP one, maybe not correctly, maybe too much. Maybe a research grade peptide, which could be dangerous, right? There’s all these negatives about that. And there should be guidance from a physician. Always always, always. And because peptides are not dietary supplements like people think.
Well, and there should be a guidance from a physician that knows what the peptide is, how it works from a molecular level, a biochemical level, all the side effects, you know how to monitor it. So I completely agree. And from a physician who can actually tell you all the hormones that peptide works on and how they affect those hormones.
Right, right. So I think the biggest thing about GLP one is, you know, doing them correctly, whether I’m teaching it at Evexias and their Ccell solutions or the two day weight loss certification course here at a forum. And what we applied at lifetime and the seven Meera clinics that are at lifetime’s titrate the dose to the minimum needed to get people to
start losing weight. Correct the glucagon mis signaling in light of get them on magnesium, have them on some fiber, look at their other endocrine system. So they should have a lab test beforehand. No pancreatitis. You know, all those things that you should be looking at. But then where are their stress hormones at? That are their gut permeable and
their monocytes, eosinophils and basophils are those elevated. So it’s a great way to look at if their guts immune activated. Right. So you have a full thought towards correcting the person as they’re on that GLP one. So that as you are bringing that dose down, right, to get them off of it, because people shouldn’t need to be on it forever. Right, right, right.
No, I think that’s perfect. And that’s, it’s so important that you get all hormones. So, you know, where’s their thyroid? Where’s their cortisol? Is their gut permeable, where’s their excellent, their sex hormones? And then to your point, the smallest dose that helps start changing those things because then you don’t have as many side effects. That’s right. And as you change one hormone, you know, as you start to lower insulin. So now our insulin is lower, our cortisol is going to be lower. As our cortisol and insulin are lower, our estrogen is going to go up and our progesterone is going to go, we’re going to sleep better. Now our growth hormone is going to be higher. We’re going to be combining our T3 from our gut better. I mean, it all just works together, which is, you know, what I talk about in the book too, it’s just so important that you have somebody looking at these things though, because let’s say you’re just randomly dosing this from an online pharmacy yourself, right? And you’re just going up on the dose because you don’t know what’s going on and you’re not supporting your thyroid and you’re not supporting your, your sex hormones and you’re not, you know, you’re just basically starving yourself because you’re not eating enough because you just keep titrating the dose of that actually backfires because then your cortisol ends up higher, and then you end up on these big doses, and then you have side effects. And then we blame the GOP ones, and then you give yourself pancreatitis and you weren’t even doing this with it. It’s just like this big mess.
Then you go off of it, then you gain more weight. Well, you know, when I, when I first wrote Cracking the Metabolic Code, it was that first thought towards a systems biology approach, you know, and this was 2002, I think I started lecturing on it in 97. Was this thought of like the HPA axis, hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal axis, but then adrenal thyroid gonadal, like it’s all connected. We’re one body. And when we start to think of, you know, even the patterns that I discussed in metabolic code, they’re architecturally, we could make up any number of patterns. These are the ones that are recognized in a lot of literature, but we’re one body. The more we can create synergy and harmony, the easier it is to fix and the lower doses we need and the less meds we need.
Right. And you know, I also tell people as an endocrinologist, like, because I did a lot of research on GLP one and fellowship, GLP one is a hormone your body naturally had and makes. And we teach our body to not make it well by overeating and not listening and being stressed. But like, you know, I explain to people when you’re a kid, like when kids are done eating, they get up, right? Little kids, you put them right on a table. When they’re done, they get up. Now, if you’re a parent and you’re forcing them to continue to eat, that’s not a good thing because kids are I mean, they’re not going to starve when they’re when they’re done eating, they get up because they have really good GLP one. And then as we get older, we make less of it. Same thing with estrogen, same thing with thyroid hormone. So people forget that GLP one is actually a hormone. And so, you know, sometimes people are like, oh, that’s cheating or that, well, we’re giving you back a hormone your body doesn’t make anymore. We live longer than we used to. That’s right. Right. And so like, our body is going to not make things to the best of its ability. That’s right. As it did when we were 20. When we’re 60, 70, 80. And we’re just so stressed, we’re so bombarded. Our cortisol is so high that we just don’t make GLP one the way that we used to. And so I don’t look at it as cheating. I look at it as supporting your hormones. Correct. But also, you don’t always have to stay on it forever.
That’s exactly.
Right. As long as you do everything that you need to do to lower your stress, lower your inflammation, fix your gut, fix your sleep, you know, lifestyle, all the sexy stuff nobody wants to talk about, right? Like the sleep and the, you know, your nutrition and how stressed you are. I mean, if you fix those things, some of this comes back.
So yeah, you know, I’ve, I think that’s the magic. I think over the last, like I said, four decades of working with people. I went from trying to give them a pile of things, to fix it all at once, to educating them on what they can do for themselves. That ain’t going to cost them any money. He better make better choices out of your food. Create a 12 hour fast window, right? 1212 is pretty much what most cultures do that are long lived. And then, you know, manage your stress as a box breathing. What is it that’s going to give you joy? And then there’s, of course, you know, there’s things that you can’t control. There’s environmental burden and, you know, like issues of stress in the family divorce or, you know, family loss or moving. Right. But those are things that are temporary things that you can overcome. But the more you move away from that and kind of embrace. I eat too much. I eat too late, I eat too often.
I don’t sleep enough.
I pick the wrong foods, I don’t sleep enough, and I don’t exercise. When you do that, before we start blaming any environmental things, you’re going to be down the wrong track, right? So I really appreciate that. And don’t take it the wrong way as an endocrinologist because I’ve been around quite a few over my last 40 years. I’m so happy you’re the next gen endocrinologist that’s really going to lead the way on how to help hormonal health for people as all hormones matter, right? So really fantastic.
Thank you. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully our society will start realizing this, but as an endocrine society, but I think people are realizing this because of things like this, social media, podcasts. And so not everyone is there yet. But you know, what’s interesting is I was telling my husband, when you live in this space, you don’t realize how uneducated the normal society is. And I don’t mean that like badly. It’s just that like, we’ll be at dinner at a very, you know, nice place. And these very educated looking people will be sitting next to you and we’ll start talking. And then when you start talking to them about hormone replacement and just just light therapy and, you know, sleeping, they’re clueless, like completely.
Absolutely.
So it’s like, I think what we really need to focus on as a society is like, how do we get this information to more and more people so that they start demanding it. So then our health care system has to eventually fix itself.
Consumers drive it right? Consumers drive. Wellcare health care providers have always driven through classical medicine, disease care, and you need both people that kind of criticize traditional medicine. I know from, like I said, teaching in medical school, 18 years, pharmacy school, that kind of medicine saved my brother’s life, saved my father’s life. Yeah. I’m not going to sit here and, you know, be disruptive or bash that. It’s just that what we’ve missed is we never had the prevention side bolted on to that. And now that’s where our big evolution is at now finally, which is fantastic.
Yep. No. And I just wish that preventative medicine was more what people want. I feel like unfortunately in America, if you’ve got a line of preventative and a line of, you know, just give me the drug to keep me going. Everyone’s going to be in the keep me going in the drug line. Right? And so I’m hoping that that culture starts to shift. I feel like younger people, it’s starting to be they’re being less drinking.
More interest in good sleep. Yep. Measuring, measuring all their stuff. Right.
So I’m hoping that that changes. But that’s what we need. We just have to have educated people who understand. Because the frustrating thing for me is people, you know, I take care of, of pretty sick people sometimes not as much anymore, but I did as an endocrinologist. I took care of diabetics forever.
Right?
People will tell you, like my patients used to come in and say, oh, I have a million problems, right? I’m trying to run my business and I’m stressed and my daughter’s sick, you know, whatever. My my dog, I got a dog. And then they, they get a serious health problem and they have one problem and it’s their health problem, but it’s usually too late. Right. And so, and I would try to tell them, hey, we need to work on this. And we need, you know, we work on your diet, we work on your stress. And they never had time for it because they had a hundred problems. And then when
they get really sick, they develop heart failure. They then it’s like all those problems they used to have just completely vanished. So they have one problem. And it’s frustrating because it’s like, but we’ve been trying to tell you this for ten years, you know?
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s, it honestly is that thing of nothing motivates people more than their mortality, than death. Yeah. Right. Than the fear of death. And, and I think the other context is, is and why I’m so comfortable with coming here and teaching the last 25 years is it’s more than just a magic potion to. Yeah. Right. It’s like instead of us. Because, look, the new world of stem cells, the new world of exosomes, the new world of signaling factors called cell factors. Right? All of that promise of rejuvenating our immune system, getting rid of senescent cells, signaling. Very cool. In the end, you know, the Sardinians don’t do a lot of this. Yeah. And they live to 100 and they live to 100 because they have proper social community. They eat fresh food, they move and they they sleep. They’re exposed to less. I think there’s wisdom in both, right? I love that we’ve got this, you know, lightning rocket ship that’s taking off with all these advancements that’ll help people in our culture that wait until the that they’re at that, what I call the Grand Canyon, right? They’re coming to the end of the Grand Canyon when you’re five steps away from the Grand Canyon. Not a big deal when you’re at the edge of the Grand Canyon, that one step is a big deal. Big deal. And so I love that we can get people pushed back from that. With all the modern therapies, still comes down to you got to empower yourself by changing what’s happening in your lifestyle. If you can’t do that, you’re always going to be dependent on taking something, whether it’s a peptide, a hormone, a biologic, or a drug, something is going to be there to, you know, that you’ve got to do. And maybe if you’re there just because you want to optimize yourself, which is all good.
Yeah, no, I agree. I tell people all the time, if you’re going to spend all this money on seeing me in peptides and hormones, you got to make sure that your terrain is good to take it in, right? So like some people still come to me, It’s it’s wild. And they say, I want to drink a bottle of wine and I don’t want to exercise, and I’m gonna eat out with my friends, and I’m gonna not sleep and I’m in trouble. But I want you to fix me. And I’m like, well, you probably should just go somewhere else, because I can’t. You can’t fix that if you’re not going to participate. Right.
Here’s your Adderall. Oh, you’re already on it.
Yeah. Here’s your, here’s your Adderall to keep you awake. And then here’s your trazadone to put you to sleep. And then here’s your GLP one to make you not eat as much. But, but it just, you know, it’s like, it’s kind of like trying to plant seeds on concrete. Like if you’re going to plant a plant.
That’s a.
Really and you throw seeds on concrete and then the plant doesn’t grow and you’re mad. It’s like, well, because you didn’t have the right environment or culture to cultivate the plant. Our body is the same. And I think people forget that. And, and I think a lot of it is because so many people are so chronically stressed and they feel so bad, they don’t even realize they feel so bad. I know this because I talk to people, right. And they’ll, they’ll tell you like, oh, I’m constipated, but that’s normal. I have acid reflux, but that’s normal, I. My back has hurt for years, but that’s normal, you know. It’s all normal then like. No, none of that is normal.
Yeah. Maybe it’s normal for you because you’ve adopted it. It’s not caramel. And you know, and I love that you talk about terrain because I think it’s clearly more of a European thought. Like when I first got trained and my teachers in Medicine Week in Baden-Baden, you know, you go to Europe and you talk to docs.
They talk about terrain.
They talk about how the body is signaling and creating more dysfunction and creating more illness over time so that there’s this thought process of, you know, what? You have the power to reverse it, but you have to understand how quickly you’re going down that, that funnel. Right. And that’s why there’s a need for doctors getting trained here at a forum. There’s going to be no shortage of people that need this work over the next 20 years, because for.
The next 100 years.
Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah. But it’s the whole thing of like, I even think right now we’re at the beginning of GLP ones. We have to have a GLP one rebound from how many people have done it incorrectly and lost resting energy expenditure, lost muscle mass, and they did it incorrectly, and now they’ve got mitochondriopathies. They can’t make energy in their cells. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s going to be needing repair.
Well, I’m also concerned of the amount of women who are going to end up with osteoporosis now, because they have killed their muscle. And so they have the skinny fat issue. So their metabolic dumpster fires. So even though they’re skinny, they’re insulin resistant. And now they’ve ruined their bones, they’ve ruined their metabolism, they’ve ruined their hormones, they’ve ruined their thyroid. And it’s like, yeah, you might look pretty, but you’re going to have a problem, right? And so I think that’s the other thing is like when you’re looking for, I want to feel better and I want to look a certain way. You need to be thinking about what do I want to be able to do when I’m 80? Right? Like I want to be able to put my suitcase in the overhead bin so I can go wherever I want. I want to have the mobility to wipe my own butt so nobody else has to. I mean, it’s just like. Right. Like, these are life goals I want. I want to get out of this chair on my own. I want to put my bag in the overhead bin. I don’t want anybody wiping my butt. I want to be able to think clearly. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn’t matter if you’re this big when you’re 20, 30, 40. If you can’t enjoy your life when you’re 60, 70, 80.
Well, I think it’s our biggest failure is people understanding muscle is the currency of longevity. And you have to maintain that lean mass and you have to work towards that independence because unfortunately, getting to 80 is a success. Yeah. Right. And, and that’s the other, you know, for me, one of the biggest things like, I don’t know whether we’re going to get people to like a lot of the social media people live the 120, live the 180. Can we get people to 80 with less than five meds? Yeah, just now. Right. Can we just get them under five meds? 280 feeling good, able to get that bag up? Yeah. Able to get up out of a chair on their own because we’re still losing that. We’re still losing that battle for all the all the things that we believe in. I still believe is we just have to keep pushing that message to get people to understand.
And you told me when we were getting ready to record this, to tell your story about the person on the GLP, one of how much weight they lost versus muscle mass, because a lot of people say, well, when you get on GLP one, you’re just going to lose all your muscle. And I get fired up about that because I’m like, if you do it correctly, that’s not the case.
Yeah, 100%. So I mean, we track it. I mean, obviously, because, you know, whether it’s through on the auras or wherever. So a case I’m presenting today, 2 pounds of lean mass loss, 31 pounds fat loss over the course of a year by small doses. I don’t like using the term microdose because then, you know, I it’s a minimum effective dose. There isn’t a physician who doesn’t understand minimum effective dose of a medication. They dose things up. They dose things down. Hypertensive meds, any kind of med. It’s altered. No different on a GLP one, but it’s also all the other things that you do to go with that. And you will maintain your lean mass. Gotta get enough protein in. Sometimes that’s a struggle. So can you give somebody essential amino acids? Can you give them some creatine. In addition to eating enough protein. And they’re not going to lose when in fact all the research on GLP one say that it helps maintain lean mass. Well, everything published.
As long as you talk to them about protein, you talk to them about hydration. You talk. I mean, I’ve had tons of people. I’m telling you, I had somebody to lose, lose over 50 pounds, lost less than 4 pounds of muscle. I had somebody lose almost 100 pounds less, less than 10 pounds of muscle. So you’re talking about you can do it. It just has to be done correctly. We tell our people you have to eat protein. You have to drink water. That’s right. We don’t give them massive amounts. And to your point, they’re maintaining muscle. They’re losing all this fat mass. And the other thing is adipose tissue is actually, I think fat should be an endocrine organ. It’s such a harmful endocrine organ. And so when you start to remove adipose tissue from people, you’re going to get less cytokines that are inflammatory. You’re going to get lower insulin just from that, you’re going to get, you know, lower cortisol.
Lower resistance, or angiotensinogen.
Is why I tell people when you come off of the GLP one, after you’ve lost all the fat mass, you don’t always need it because all that adipose tissue was what was driving some of this inflammation. Now you don’t have insulin and you don’t have that, so you’re not going to gain the weight back as long as you’re not being an idiot, right? As long as you’re sleeping and as long as you’re, you know, drinking water and eating protein, etc.. So I think that’s important that people know that.
Yeah. And that’s my next book, which is soon to be coming out. It’s all about metabolic inflammation leads to inflammation. How do we take control of our metabolic health with, from that standpoint of signaling and looking at patterns?
I love that. So I want to wrap up with, I have three questions I ask every guest. I don’t want you to overthink it. It’s the first thing that comes to your head. People love this. What is one food that’s most beneficial and why?
Something that contains resistant starch because it keeps the microbiome healthy and it keeps your mucosal barrier good. So I make like making sure. So we’ll call it avocados.
Avocados. Okay.
Yeah. Or artichokes. Yeah.
Or artichokes. Okay. What is one thing anyone listening to this podcast right now could do that’s 100% free? That would make their health better.
Box. Breathe for three minutes before lunch and download your stress. Think about what you’re getting rid of. Dinner and bedtime.
So lunch, dinner and bedtime.
Three minutes box breathing.
And when you say box breathe, you mean breathe in for four. Hold it for four, out for four, hold it for four.
And when you’re breathing out, you’re getting rid of the stress hormone. You’re thinking of the stress and you’re going, I’m letting that go and you’re grateful at the end of that three minutes for something doesn’t cost you a dime.
Doesn’t cost you anything. It only takes nine minutes.
Nine minutes out of the day. It’s going to reprogram your nervous system.
So get off social media for nine minutes and do that.
Dad, quit that desk scrolling.
I like it. And the last question is, what is one thing you wish you would have known about your health, let’s say 40 years ago that you would have done differently 40 years ago.
Probably wouldn’t have trained so hard. I would have balanced my exercise program out a little more. I trained pretty hard at a pretty elite level and didn’t need to, wasn’t being paid as a professional, and I think I would have balanced that out better. I did a little more flexibility, had to do a lot of work to regain that. Right. And I did a lot of myofascial release work, which was very painful from too much weightlifting. And so I think that was probably the, the one thing is I, you know, learn how to balance out exercise, diet, sleep.
So more of like yoga.
More of Pilates, but I mean, it’s strength training you need. Yeah, just more, just more balance to it. That’s all. Just, just get that stretching in. Make sure you maintain mobility with strength.
Okay, I like it. Well, we’ll make sure and put all your stuff in the show notes so people can get your book books. Multiple books. And we’ll have to do this again.
That’d be great. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
What a powerful conversation with Doctor James Laval. I hope this episode helped you see your health through a completely different lens. One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is that so many of the symptoms people struggle with every day, things like fatigue, weight gain, thyroid dysfunction, hormone imbalance, brain fog, and feeling inflamed or stuck are often connected by deeper metabolic patterns that are easy to miss when we only look at the body one symptom at a time. What I loved about this discussion is how Doctor Laval broke down the idea that illness doesn’t just happen randomly. There are often underlying metabolic roadblocks, and when you take the time to understand those patterns, you can begin to uncover what is really driving the way someone feels. And as we talked about in this episode, one of the most important places to start is often the gut. The gut impacts so much more than digestion. It influences inflammation, nutrient absorption, hormones, metabolism, immune balance, energy, and so many of the symptoms that have been working well for you to truly feel your best. And when the gut is disrupted, it can unmask or even contribute to issues that show up as hormone symptoms, thyroid symptoms, stubborn weight struggles, and overall fatigue. This episode is such a good reminder that healing usually requires a deeper, more personalized approach. It’s not always about chasing the next lab, the next supplement, or the next quick fix. It’s about stepping back, looking at the whole picture, and understanding the foundations that support real healing.
If this episode resonated with you, I want to invite you to take the next step. If you’re interested in becoming a patient at Modern Endocrine, visit our website at www.endocrine.com and book a discovery call. This information is in the show notes. It’s the best place to start. If you’re ready for a more root cause, personalized approach to your health. We have a license to practice telehealth in 46 states. I also want to invite you to join us for our monthly Gut Health Live webinar, where we explain how many of the symptoms you may be experiencing could actually be related to your gut. We also teach you how to identify your gut health type, so you can better understand what may be going on in your body and where to begin. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please make sure to follow the show and leave a review. It truly helps more people find the conversation so they can get the information and support they may be missing. And finally, if you want to go even deeper into this topic, please consider getting a copy of my book on Amazon. Fix Your Gut, Fix Your Hormones by Doctor Kasey Smith. It’s a great resource to help you understand the powerful connection between gut health and hormone health, and to give you practical next steps on your healing journey. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you on the next episode.