Informed dissent, the intersection of health care and politics with Dr.

Jeff Barkey, board certified primary care physician.

And Dr.

Mark McDonald, board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.

All right.

Hey Mark, welcome back.

Another great episode of informed descent.

The intersection of health care and politics.

Hello.

Hey, so you were at a pretty killer event the other night.

And uh you rounded up a great guest who I've known for many years.

Um, I think you've met him for the first time, but tell us about the event and go ahead and introduce the guest.

Yeah, he actually preceded me in meeting Todd Vandehae, who's the founder of Stark Health out in Tuston, Irvine Orange County, for those of our listeners that aren't local.

And I was really impressed by what he had to say about health and fitness.

And I asked him to come on because I think he has a lot of wisdom to share and a lot of experience.

Um, welcome to informed descent, Todd Vandehe.

Thank you.

It's great to be here with you.

You said something, Todd, that really struck me professionally and personally.

Jeff's really interested in all the like health hack stuff.

So he's gonna probably jump in and go over that very quickly.

But before he takes that away from me, I want to ask you about something that was really um powerful.

And it came out of a comment, actually, that you made at your presentation at Stark Health about one of your staff.

She's a young girl, she's in her early 20, she's one of your fitness trainers, and you said, This girl is dating a 30-year-old guy, because she can't find any men in her age group that she's attracted to and that meet her needs as men.

Tell me why you said that and why this poor girl can't find a guy that's under 30 to go out with that she's attracted to.

Well, she's definitely not a poor girl, and and I don't I don't think she feels like she's making any sacrifices either.

Let's just put it that way.

Her her boyfriend, I know is a is an attractive, but really, I mean, he's 10 years older than her.

And I don't know about you.

You got we're about the same age, aren't we?

I'm 57.

You guys about I'm 52, 63.

Okay, so we're all close enough.

I mean, when we were 21, how many 21-year-old female buddies did we have that were dating 31-year-old dudes?

I I didn't have any as I recall, right?

No, not at that, not at that age.

Yeah, and so um, it's it seems very common today, and that's that really strikes me.

It strikes me because I have kids that age, and so I'm constantly and I felt a big staff that age as well in their mid-20s to mid-30s.

So common, Todd, you mean it's common for women to date men that are older than them.

I think it's common for women to date men that are older, and it's common for women to date men that are I think it's common for women to pursue uh men that are quite older than them as well.

So they may not be dating them, but they they're interested in them, and and it's it's it's a startling shift.

It is what do you mean startling?

Well, I think it's startling because the age gap is so big.

I mean, for for her name is Emma, her boyfriend is 50% older than her.

Yeah, you know, she's 21, 50 more.

That's puts her at roughly third, puts them at roughly 31.

It's a giant difference.

A 10 year age difference.

A 10, but but at 21, that's a massive if she were 40 and he and he was 50.

Not a big deal.

If she were 60 and he were 70, nobody would even, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But at that age, it's not common.

It's not common.

Yeah, we have another employee who's uh out of our newport location, and she's 23, and her husband is 33.

Similar set of circumstances.

So I I would assume, Mark, that uh at a younger age, it's probably because the woman, 21, 25 years old, is probably more mature than the average person her age, and wants a man who is uh in the same ballpark of maturity as her.

I think that's a simple not wrong, but I think it's in simplistic explanation for why this is happening because I don't think that girls are necessarily more mature, but there are differences, deficits in the men that go beyond simply maturity.

And you pointed out what those deficits were taught, and I agreed with you, but I this is the first time that I've heard someone outside of my field actually say it publicly and be so precise about it and with such convincing objective evidence.

Deficits in younger men.

Yes, exactly.

And I was hoping, Todd, you could explain why.

Yeah, I can expand on that.

A really good way of explaining.

Professor Van De Gea, please do explain.

I got you guys covered on this.

So this is not uncommon.

We have uh fathers your age, Mark, come in with sons that are Emma's age, 21-year-old sons, and they go through our intake process.

You probably see some of this too, Jeff.

Uh we run a battery of tests on them, uh uh DEXA scans and orthopedic assessments and comprehensive labs.

Sure.

And the most the most fascinating thing that we see, and and sad, is that we run sex hormones on both parties.

We see fathers again that are your age that have higher testosterone levels than their 21-year-old sons.

Huh?

That's bizarre.

That is shocking.

That's not normal.

Like there are things happening that humans haven't faced before to have 21-year-old men that are suffering from low T.

And that's not a maturity.

It's common.

It's very different than that.

Yeah.

Is it is it well?

What do you what do you speculate that that's from?

I have some ideas, but okay.

Uh, well, you know, most people listening to this podcast probably are gonna leap to the idea that it's probably microplastics in their testes.

Like everybody's seen uh um headlines uh about that.

I think that's certainly a a part of it.

But they're also not just that, but that's not just that.

Not just that, that's a component.

Um we all know because we're dudes that when we are faced with difficult times, at least when I was younger.

I think I've hopefully course corrected much of this at this stage of my life, where we have some what we would consider at that age a traumatic event.

Like uh, you're 17, you're 22, whatever it is, you're young, your prefrontal cortex isn't fully you know developed, and your girlfriend breaks up with you, and you're just devastated.

The whole world comes to an end, you think, right?

And so you we in the 80s went into our bedrooms and I don't know, put I played the Beatles and listened to the music, and I drowned my sorrows in music or something like that.

There was nothing else.

I didn't have porn.

Uh, I had Pong on my Atari.

I would not play Pong for more than 12 minutes at a time without driving myself crazy.

So that wasn't an outlet.

I just had to like, I don't know, stare at the wall and and try to process this stuff, shed some tears in private, and then come out of the bedroom victorious somehow, or maybe have several episodes like that, and then eventually uh get over it.

But what young men do today, because that's their still their predisposition to go and be alone and try to come out as strong as they want to be, or think they should be.

Yeah, is that they never really need to leave the bedroom.

They can have you know, DoorDash delivered and have it brought to their bedroom.

They can uh they can play Xbox for six hours straight, no problem, because it's so good.

Yeah, and and a 100% of the world's porn in their pocket.

Oh yeah, if I had access to that when I was at 17-year-old or 21, I mean, you guys uh maybe or maybe not because I don't know if you look at these things, the impact of porn on their labs.

Yeah, you know, you have very destructive.

Yeah, yeah, very destructive.

So you have this suppression of sex hormones just through that process.

Then you have you have Xbox at two o'clock in the morning where you're your heart is racing, you're not moving at all, but it's sort of like you're playing, I don't know, basketball or soccer or something.

Uh mentally speaking, you're really fully engaged.

And if you guys have ever played modern um video games, it's so intense that you I don't think you blink.

I mean, I I did this for like six months until I slapped myself in the face and said, don't do that again.

This is this is such a waste of your life.

Yeah.

And I remember shuffling to the bedroom at two o'clock in the morning.

My eyes were like swollen and bloodshot, and my heart was racing.

And and so, as I understand the human body better today than back then.

You have the the cortisol sex hormone uh opposition happening, and and if you do you string a bunch of months together like that because you don't want to face the world, you can sort of get a sense of why that 21-year-old dude arriving at Stark with their 50-year-old father, why their testosterone levels are so low and why they're shaped like a pair, and why they're 32% body fat, and um won't look anywhere else but the floor.

There's another ingredient, too.

They have access to drugs, and in California, it's legal.

They they have powerful THC that numbs them and also suppresses the adrenal cortical steroid pathway, and you end up increasing estrogen, decreasing testosterone as a result of the chronic use.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's that.

I mean, I I'm thinking of a 17 year old, maybe they don't have access to it.

Maybe they do.

Uh, but the 21 year old, the 22 year old, the 25 year old, the 28 year old.

I don't think it's limited to young men in their early 20s.

We have we have young men in our ecosystem in their early 30s.

That are just like those 17-year-olds.

They're just they're just not masculine.

And I don't know the answers to this.

And Mark, maybe you do, but uh, as the prefrontal cortex develops through, you know, the generally they're the age of 25.

Well, what happens when somebody's using cannabis that's a uh 24-year-old heavily and they're depressed and they're anxious and they're eating uh I don't know what they quiz nose delivered by the little robot and they're looking at porn and they're playing Xbox and they don't have any social engagement and they don't even develop those skills, right?

They can't even they're fearful of meeting someone like Emma.

I mean, how horrible is all that's that's the disaster that I see.

Yeah, well, this is why when Jeff says they're they're men are not as mature as women.

Yes, it's true, but it's not what you think.

It's not like they're just like silly and oh they're making fart jokes, and you know, that's that's what the way we used to say maturity.

And that's true, men and women mature differently, like socially.

Hang on a second.

Are you saying making fart jokes is a sign of immaturity?

Jeff never actually grew up.

He's still doing that.

He puts he puts four units under his staff's chairs.

I don't know if you've been in a Tesla, but the Tesla has a setting that every time you turn on the this the uh turn indicator, et cetera, that it will make a nice fart for you.

So I didn't actually know that.

I have a Tesla.

I didn't you do, you should check it out.

Maybe it's an Elon Musk maturity thing.

I don't know.

Yeah, but you're you're right, Mark.

That is that's us when we were 25 and 20 and 18.

And so we had pot, you know, back then as well, but it was like four to six percent THC.

Now it's close to 20%.

So it's insane.

It's it's it's not like you know, people are always saying, oh, you know, grandparents always said that uh the next generation is worse off than there, and then that generation said they're worse off.

That's all true, but there is there is something fundamentally different that is not just a quantitative difference.

There's a qualitative change in the generation now that are teenagers and 20s than people in their 40s, 50s, 60s now.

I don't think it's just slightly different.

I think that there's an enormous, enormous change that's occurred.

As you mentioned, the testosterone levels, the estrogen levels, the adipose tissue, uh, the growth of the brain, um, the immersion of obsessional behaviors through porn video games for for men specifically.

For girls, it would be social media, particularly Instagram.

Although we're we're not talking about boys right now, because we're you know we're all men and you you you train most well, you train men and women both, but you had to, I think, a really nice perspective on the male, because those are the that's the species, that's the sex that's being ignored right now, in my view, and that's the one that I want to fight for.

I don't think that it's just a slight difference.

I I think that we're seeing a fundamental catastrophic uh uh ripping of the fabric of masculinity that has never occurred in the history of this country.

And if we don't address it and we don't correct it, I I'm really concerned, very seriously concerned that we're gonna see a kind of breakdown of our social fabric in the next generation that is irreparable, where we're we're fundamentally altered and we'll never actually get back to where we were before.

Not just a rebellion phase, but but almost like the the rebels just went off and like decided to live on another island um and just die out and not reproduce.

I mean, I think it's that concerning.

Yeah, or I mean, or or we're gonna we're gonna all just jump in and reproduce all over again.

Maybe we maybe we need to start having some babies, guys.

I'm all volunteer for we I think I think we'll have the opportunities if we were looking for them.

Yeah, because uh the young men aren't doing it, you know.

I mean, I'll I'll tell you it's it's rare that I see a man of our age that has a normal testosterone level.

They're usually below normal or low normal, and then we work to increase it.

And sometimes that takes actually the delivery of testosterone to them to get them up to a normal level.

And there's all the reasons that we've talked about why it's low, including the over-prescription of statin medications to lower cholesterol.

Sure, yeah, that then makes it difficult for a guy to increase testosterone.

Yes, microplastics and toxins and fluoride and aluminum and vaccinations and just what the world throws at us that is just incredibly unhealthy.

And the end result is these men with below normal testosterones.

Now we haven't really talked about this, but in part what you do, Todd at Stark helps to reverse some of this.

So tell tell what what is Stark?

I mean, our listeners, I don't know that they know.

What is Stark?

You created this a long time ago.

I have patients that go to you to your facility with excellent results.

Tell us about it.

Okay, well, I'll start with the name.

Stark is German for strong, and it originated um as I was contemplating what part of the world was was the most exceptional at designing strength training protocols that led to greater strength.

And it doesn't exist any longer, but the eastern block countries is where it all happened.

Um, and exercises and training protocols like German body composition, German volume training, uh uh Russian step-ups and so on and so forth, they all originated from that from that world.

So I was in trying to develop a brand, I just I just searched through the languages, and they all sounded terrible, except when I bumped into Stark in the German language, I was like, damn, that's really good.

Uh so that's that's where the company brand originated.

Uh and the the original theory, and the theory that still continues is that uh we we need to be in the healthcare space to enable our team to prescribe and do the things that are necessary to lead people out of sort of like the dark ages of health and into a state of optimal health, which is where they should be.

Um in order to do that, we we have to become uh sort of like what you guys have become, which is a management services organization and and uh operate a multidisciplinary approach.

And and so if I were to define what we are, we talked earlier about a little bit about functional medicine.

We are a functional medicine practice, but on the far end of health optimization, and that's why when you walk into a Stark facility, it looks like a gym because you're not walking into doctor's offices, those also exist.

Uh, but I don't think you can get to a state of optimal health without a tremendous amount of care being put into whether or not you are exercising and if you are what forms of exercise, and that they're done in the right doses, and so we we do all of that stuff.

Does every patient or customer at Stark uh do they work out with a trainer?

Uh not every one of them.

We have we have virtual patients, we call our patient students, and uh, but most of them are actually in our building between three and five days a week, sometimes three and six days a week.

What do you think's optimal to work out?

Um, I think it depends on where you are and what your goals are.

And I'm not trying to be vague, it's just that some people tell us that they want to be a greater, a better triathlete.

And so that's very different, you know, maybe two days a week of strength training and a bunch more VO2 max training and and zone two cardio, which they would do on their own.

But for someone like me at the in the beginning stages where I wanted to be in an optimal state of health and wasn't done for a sport, uh about three days a week of strength training all around the calendar year is a really healthy target for most people.

Um, and some of the days of the week need to be dedicated to improving mobility, especially if you're 57 like me, because those things start to rapidly decline after spending four or five years behind a desk or in an airplane or you know, in a car driving a lot on a sofa, like those poor young young boys.

Um what is mobility training look like?

Mobility training is is using uh specific modalities to temporarily improve range of motion.

Let's say it's your your hips, common issue for us because of sitting at a desk.

Uh and so what that looks like in it's inside of our ecosystem is we warm up the tissues with electromagnetic therapy.

Sometimes we use something called shockwave therapy, which is uh set their sound waves, sounds like a jackhammer.

It kind of feels like one a little bit, actually.

It's not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it essentially loosens up the tissue.

We apply heat to the area, we do active release techniques, which you may be familiar with.

Is that Bell?

Sure.

So it's soft tissue work.

Um, and that means all that stuff is wonderful for like 15 minutes to two hours of reduced pain and improved mobility.

So our theory originally was that well, if we uh neurologically connect the um that particular joint to the new range of motion that's temporary, but we do it with some strength training, that that new range of motion can become permanent.

And so typically a mobility session is made up of 30 minutes of soft tissue work and electromagnetic therapy and shockwave therapy on a table, and then the patient is brought into the into the gym where they do range of motion training to make those changes permanent, and just inch by inch they become more and more mobile over a period of time.

And then who does that work uh inside of our facilities today?

There are those are licensed chiropractors.

Chiropractors that do it.

Do they also do chiropractic manipulation like a traditional?

Yeah, yeah.

That whole appointment is an hour.

Sure.

Uh, and so there might be two minutes of adjustments, sure, and 58 minutes of things that really.

Move the needle.

The things that really move the needle are that that training for improved range of motion at the end.

It's a 30 minute, it's like a workout without any weights or anything.

It's very, very hard.

You know, kind of shaking and painful.

Yeah, it's not the most pleasant thing in the world.

Um, but what is pleasant is at 57 being able to stand upright without back pain and being able to move, I wouldn't say like a cat, but but much better than when I was like 30.

Um, so effectively reversing the age-related mobility restrictions that you kind of collect along the way through our modern lifestyles, which is very common.

Yes.

Um, you know, reversing that stuff is what is what we do.

It's a pretty I think it's the most from my through the eyes of a 57-year-old, it's the most exciting thing that we do.

I don't think that the people inside of our ecosystem, our students and our staff think of it like that.

Uh, but they haven't gone as far as I've gone in that process.

For sure.

So, in addition to that, mobility training, strength training, working out with a trainer in person or virtually.

You also do lab testing through your office as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, we do substantial and frequent lab tests.

Uh they're generally once a quarter.

Uh uh because I'm sort of like the the crash dummy, I've done them as frequently as a week every week to see what's happening, what the trend line looks like.

Uh, and they vary depending on what the lab markers are.

So, like the Boston Heart test, for example, we generally run that twice a year because it's kind of pointless to run that more frequently.

Um, whereas things like sex hormones for a patient that's getting on to TRT, for example, we may do that uh on a monthly basis, sometimes more frequently or less frequently as they start to get stabilized.

So it really depends on the on the patient, but um on a quarterly basis is our general rule of thumb.

And then you can prescribe you have um a natural natural path that works with you that can actually prescribe treatment modalities based on the blood tests.

Yeah, we have well, we have two MDs, we have a team of NMDs, and of course, the supporting staff, which would be MAs, and we have a um an LVN as well to assist in things like um IV therapy and such, blood draws.

And you you've seen lives transformed as a result of this.

Yeah, we've seen, yeah, we've seen everything from um early stage prostate cancer that that is theoretically only up to 90 days long.

Um and and quickly, you know, taken care of a couple weeks later, the dude's back in the in the gym, um moving along with his life, uh to reversing type two diabetes that happens all the time.

Sure.

Um, and you know, a lot of common disease states that are sort of like a wait and see approach in the traditional medical system.

Uh, we we you know as you know, you you apply you start applying better sleep and and good nutrition and foundational type supplements, like nothing fancy, but making sure that people have the nutrients to operate at a high level, and and a lot of things just start to clean themselves up.

Things that people don't even tell us about, like, oh, my left Achilles used to really bug me, and I just realized it doesn't hurt anymore.

You know, think just things are you know, they they your body starts to repair itself.

It's like it's like you're full of roadblocks, and I'm sure you've experienced the same thing with your patients.

You just start lifting out the roadblocks, things that just don't make sense, like stop eating Cheetos and start drinking more water with electrolytes and and and optimize someone's hormones either through lifestyle changes like cut off the Xbox, uh start sleeping eight hours a night, um, you know, and and and just and don't ever watch porn anymore, um, and then meditate and get into a healthy relationship with somebody, and then all of a sudden, you know, all the problems start to kind of fade away.

Sometimes all of them don't, but many of them start too.

We're gonna take a real quick break, and we when we come back, I'm gonna talk to Todd about testosterone use and uh risk benefits.

Uh, and I also want some information from him about what he thinks about peptides specifically, weight loss peptides and some of the peptides that are being used for recovery and injury and so forth.

We'll be back in just a minute.

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Well, it's high time.

Americans refuse to be punched in the human chest.

Under the name of diversity, politicians divide the people in their quest for pump.

Well, diversity of opinion and expression is as American as Apple Pond.

Now is our time, my fellow American.

America Outloud Doc News.

Liberty and Justice for all.

All right, welcome back.

We are having a nice conversation with Todd Bandehe.

He is the owner, founder of Stark, which is here in uh Newport Beach.

It's a all-encompass functional health product that mixes training, testing, mobility, uh, and uh helps men and women um be more youthful and healthy.

Uh, and who doesn't want that?

So you do blood testing, uh, you help patients feel better, both from a fitness standpoint and mobility training.

And then we started the conversation off talking about men and specifically how so many men at whatever age have very low testosterone levels for a variety of reasons, from pornography and drug use and microplastics and toxins and on and on and on.

What what's your approach for men and for that matter women that have low testosterone, Todd?

Um, well we we try to start with lifestyle changes, uh no matter what the age, you know, getting people to clean up their diet and sleep better and cut the all the porn out in the Xbox and and things that may be in interrupting that.

And and generally speaking, a large percentage just thrive, and then some don't quite get there.

And and so uh our medical team starts with things like enclomophene or clomaphine, um uh HCG, you know, some of the things that are would be pretty common, uh, that are not hormone replacement.

And and then if and when at some point they stop working or they never did, we move to TRT.

Um, and we've we've tried all the approaches, you know, all the delivery systems from the creams to the uh the pellets to whatever.

And um, and I think we have some interesting experiences with it because we've been doing it for so long.

Like when I first started, and I've gone on and off and aggressively come off to see what happens, and that's a really interesting topic, actually.

I mean, I would I would argue with you that I have I know what it feels like to be 90 because I just like stopped cold turkey just to see what would happen.

When'd you feel?

Well, uh, first of all, I um I asked Alice to uh prescribe me Prozac.

I was severely impressed.

It was two weeks in, uh maybe three weeks in.

And it was this is the conversation inside of my head.

It went from this is so exciting.

I love my life, and you know, let's just really go after this.

And I can accomplish anything I want if I put my mind to it too.

I'm I out of my mind.

I started this business, and I it's so preposterous that I think I can actually lead this organization of 70 people effectively.

Like, how obscene is that?

And I just got remarried.

What was I I said this to Alice?

What was I thinking?

I just, you know, I was four or five years out of a 22-year-old, 22 uh year relationship, and then I got remarried because I was in this state of you know, abundance and optimism, and was suddenly in the opposite state, and I thought it was all just lunacy.

And she looked at me and she said, Well, you know, I'm not gonna prescribe you that.

Um good for her.

I think uh you're a Christian, you should pray.

And I'm like you're right.

So I tried, and here's one of the most interesting things.

Happed in my car and I Driving and I don't know, it was probably a 35 mile hour speed limit.

And so I'd go 40.

Like I'm not super dangerous, whatever, but I never drive 35 unless I'm not paying attention.

And I was probably going 25 miles an hour and I'd pass through a green light, like I should, and I'm looking to both sides, wondering, afraid that I was going to get T-boned or rear-ended.

And I and I'm like, my face is up by the steering wheel, like my mother's, who's 80.

You turned into a 90-year-old woman.

It was crazy.

Like all of the things that you see old people do that are physically struggling and mentally struggling, I was experiencing.

Wow.

Um, it was it was very helpful for me to feel that.

And from an empathy standpoint, and and it was fascinating because I was sharing that with our staff too.

How I was feeling, what was going through my head, the thoughts I was having, my outlook was all it was 180 degrees from where it was just uh probably three weeks earlier.

And this was all from going cold turkey off testosterone.

Yeah, yeah.

We wanted to see uh what my fertility would look like.

So, you know, is theoretically when you're on TRT and I've been on it for a couple of years, you become infertile theoretically.

Um I say theoretically, which is another story get to that in a little while because it didn't work.

Um you become in infertile, and and so we wanted to see if I we can get my fertility back up and how we would do that and and what we would do with patients.

And I just said to Alice, well, I let's see what happens if I we just stop and to have no um no system in place to wean me off.

I just want to you know see what it's like so we can I can have this conversation with you guys, you know, like four or five years later.

And so we did it, and then I suffered, and then we started tinkering with things to bring my tea up to moderate levels like HCG and Enclomaphine and Clomaphine and you know how it felt and and all the various, you know, the subtle differences between one medication to another, and um got my fertility back.

We tested that, of course.

So sent my sperm to a sperm testing uh clinic or bank or whatever, and uh did that a couple of times, and and so that worked, and then as soon as that was all done, we're like, okay, we know the system works, and we think we can replicate this.

I was like, okay, put me back on T now because it's not optimal.

Yeah, hurry up, it's not optimal, and I want to be back to that state because I had the mental acuity of a 30-year-old back then, and the wisdom and the experience of a 50, you know, whatever I was at at that stage, which is a great combination to be young and vibrant and healthy on the inside, and and have wisdom and experience and patience that you only get by getting bitch slapped by life, right?

And and so you get to keep all those things.

So it's a in my experience, it's a wonderful experience if you're really doing the right things necessary for your body, and and when I say the right things, it doesn't it merely takes you back to where you could have been when you were 30, but if you were unhealthy as a 30 year old and you're not eating well, you're not sleeping well, and you're looking at porn and you're you know doing all the things that young people do today, you're not gonna feel the benefits of your higher testosterone levels.

It's not like uh panacea, it merely gives you the potential, but uh the potential is is what we exercise, no pun intended at Stark, you know, by by optimizing food and sleep and management of stress, which which uh as an aside, I think is one of the most interesting features of being uh optimally healthy, you become more aware of the things happening around you all around the world or in your backyard or whatever, and as a result, it's because I I think that cognitively as a healthier 57-year-old than I was, let's say at 25, uh my my brain works way better, and so my awareness is greater, and I also have more experience under my belt, and and what that leads to inevitably is a greater degree of anxiety, unless you practice uh putting those anxious thoughts and feelings into their right space, and so I've had to become really good at breath work and meditation and um like I've got this heart math thing that I clip to my ear and try to keep my HRV high.

Uh uh, I think those things need to be in place because there's a lot of things to be much more scared about today than in the 80s when I was you know a 19-year-old or you know, or early 20s, for sure.

I think so, with technology and everything that we talked about the plastics and food quality and you know, the craziness of young people, it's all there's a lot more.

Todd, I was and I was at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach last week with my family at a mall, and it was a beautiful restaurant, it was very expensive for lunch, and there were champagne and wine glasses on the tables.

It's clearly one of these two to three hour ladies who lunch type of place, uh, and a few men that were retired and uh wealthy enough to just spend their their Monday having a three-hour conversation with their buddy over some 75 dollars worth of food, and I noticed my anxiety level just just spike within minutes of walking in and sitting down at the booth.

The noise level was unbelievable because of the acoustics.

I could hear the bartender shaking his shaker, his cocktail shaker 30 feet away, like it was in my ear, like right next to my ear.

The service door to the kitchen kept opening and closing and opening and closing about seven feet away from me out of my right eye, my peripheral vision, so I couldn't concentrate visually or or auditorily to the conversation that I was having with my family, and then there was piped in music that was insistent, just this booming music with this kind of car alarm repeat boom.

And it was just I could feel my heart rate increasing, I was getting irritable, I couldn't hear anything.

I finally just got up and I walked to the manager and I said, Move us far away from here.

I can't take this anymore.

That kind of of sensitivity to stress, environmental stress.

I don't remember having 15 or 20 years ago.

I could just kind of tolerate anything, but now I'm so focused on my environment and peace and nutrition, and I mean nutrition both with food and also metaphorically and calmness and the energy of the people around me that when I get out of that environment, which I curate to a great degree of effort, as much as I can do a place, just fall into a place like this.

It's almost like you've been eating really good food, and then someone shoves like a you know, a McDonald's plasticized burger in you, and you just feel absolutely sick to your stomach.

And I used to eat those things, you know, 30 years ago, and I was fine.

I can't tolerate that.

And I think this is my experience, I think is an example of what you're describing that when you become really aware of how all of these pieces of your life, the people you're with, your environment, the food, your sleep, your breathing.

That when you become aware of how to optimize those things, when one of those is broken, it really affects you very, very quickly.

I I find it's incredibly um unnerving, and I want to get away and I want to reset the balance as soon as I can.

Yeah, I would agree with all of that.

It's sort of when you're eating really, really clean, and then suddenly you eat some garbage, it has a very profound effect on you versus your body just gets accustomed to eating garbage all the time, and you don't really notice a difference.

The cleaner I eat, the more sensitive I am to garbage food.

Yeah, me too.

That's kind of Todd.

You mentioned a little while ago, and just want I'd like you to expand on it a little bit that you're a Christian.

What role does that play in your life and in how you run stark?

Oh that's a curveball.

That's a good question.

Uh well, uh, it's a my Christianity is the umbrella under which you know my entire life exists.

So it affects my relationship with Alice, it affects my relationship with my kids.

Uh, it affects um my relationship with my body.

Um, it's a it's the way in which I attempt to keep things in proper context.

You know, if there are uh pressures at work or stresses or at home.

Um I'm I think about it through the lens of a Christian, which means that going through times of strife, it's an opportunity to become closer to God.

And and so I I my perspective on on stress and difficult times is changed.

And and I think that has a profound impact on I I can't A B test myself, so I'm just assuming that I come through difficulties faster and in a healthier state than I previously would have.

Um, it just doesn't affect me in the same way because the importance is minimized.

Does that make sense?

It does a thing.

Is it new for you?

Is this belief system new for you?

Uh it's I mean, uh yeah, I it's it's roughly 10 years old.

I think that's new.

Yeah.

Um, I well, I've I was raised a Catholic, and it went to Catholic grade school and high school and university and um was married in the Catholic church and uh it was you know my my kids are baptized when they were they were when they were babies, but it didn't really all the things I was supposed to do, but I I just didn't really understand it and didn't it didn't have an I wasn't applying it to my day-to-day life, um like I like I do now is very very very different.

Now now I feel as though I've got a direct relationship with with God and and uh it's uh something that I put time into on a daily basis and I try to connect to all day long.

It's different.

Yeah.

Awesome.

That's good stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it's been great.

I the the route that I got there.

I mean, I don't know if we have time to get into that.

It's such a weird story.

Well, you can you can share whatever you want on this public platform for sure.

Okay, all right.

Well, so I I was invited to go to a Tony Robbins event for entrepreneurs.

It was like a three-day thing in Vegas, and and in advance, the team reached out to me and and offered some educational packages, like there were there were literally CDs at that maybe 13 or 14 years ago.

And so I picked one, it was called the RPM method or something.

It was a time management thing, which is I felt like I needed to up my game there.

Uh and I I went through the whole process, and there was a workbook that went with it.

And there's this thing called a wheel of life that you guys may be familiar with.

Does that ring a bell?

Uh, you know, there's eight spokes or whatever, and there's you know, your your marriage and or your relationships with a significant other, and uh health was one spoke and financial health was another spoke.

And it was your life in its entirety, and the the theory is that if you if one collapses, the whole thing collapses around that one thing.

Like if you get divorced, your whole life collapses around that.

And so you have to you have to slowly rebuild it.

And so the idea is to think through your days and weeks and months and years and try to be strategic in how you're spending your time so that it expands the whole wheel together.

And and one of my one of the spokes was spiritual beliefs.

And so I was contemplating and you plot it.

Like I gave myself like a two, even though as a lifelong Catholic, it just didn't really resonate with me.

So I just plotted that.

I'm like, and then so that's a divot in your wheel.

So the wheel doesn't spin, it just goes cla clunk, clunk, k clunk.

My wheel did anyway, because of that one area of my life that was so screwed up, or just not really a part of my life.

And so I was contemplating this thing, and and then somebody recommended I read a book, the uh Steve Jobs biography, and it's Steve Jobs biography in the first one or two chapters.

He talked about how he wouldn't hire anybody in Apple in the 70s unless they did acid or LSD.

And I'm like, what the heck?

Okay, and that's kind of stuck in my head.

I'm like, well, that's I mean, I'm kind of in a uncomfortable new Stark was new circumstance and it sprung out of me losing everything.

So it was very uh psychologically emotionally delicate time, I would say in my life.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever gone through.

And so I, you know, I read that thing.

I'm like, well, that sounds like a great idea, but scary.

And uh, I don't have LSD in my back pocket or anything.

So we kind of went out the other year in one year and out the other year.

And then I had a uh uh a CEO group uh uh retreat in Arizona, and this new guy to our group of eight was sitting next to me for dinner, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, I brought LSD.

Do you guys there's four for four of us if you want to do it?

And I'm like, my eyes were wide, my heart's pounding, and I'm like, I'll do it.

I read about it, and and and uh uh a guy named Rolandis Mensacovis, who's been writing our training programs for almost 15 years, about two weeks earlier sent me a video of this lady with a psychiatrist in the probably the 50s, based on what they were dressed like, and and he was interviewing her while she was uh in a clinical setting tripping on LSD, and she was just describing the environment.

Oh, I wish you could see what I see.

It's just so beautiful, and now it makes sense what we are and how we're all connected and blah, blah, blah.

Like all the things that you hear about or read about when it comes to psychedelics.

So I tentatively raised my hand and three other guys, and the other four were going to chaperone us, and I was scared to death.

I'm like, is this gonna kill me?

Am I never gonna come out of this?

Am I gonna be seeing things coming out of the walls, you know, five years from now?

Or I just didn't know.

And he said, Oh no, no, he's very successful, like a guy that would that has a lot to lose, uh business person.

And so there's an element of trust there.

So I just jumped into it.

And in that, it was a uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable, like massive headache and heart pounding and um but profound moment because I you probably probably understand what happens with psychedelics.

You sort of uh uh remove your ego uh for a period of time, and you can kind of see yourself like a like a another person would see you.

And it was a fascinating and uncomfortable journey, and in that process, I was living like laying on my back with my head pounding all alone in the desert, looking up at the stars and just contemplating God and Jesus and my Catholicism and how you know my deficiencies and forgiving myself and all these like things are flashing through my head, and I'm like, Oh, I I kind of have a sense of what this all means a little bit.

And so this is in the back of my mind two weeks later, I'm getting the Tony Robbins stuff, and I'm plotting my life out, and I'm seeing that there's this deficiency uh in my spiritual beliefs, and and then we hired a new chiropractor who is a Christian, and he's he invited me over over to his home with my family, and they have this perfect little nuclear family Christian environment, and they're all praying before dinner, and I I and his parents were there too.

They wanted to all meet me to see if it was a safe move for him to jump onto the Stark ship.

And I was so startled by that because it was in my household and my love, I love my family.

They're they're amazing people really.

We'd all hold hands and we'd say the the prayer before supper that every Catholic says, and I didn't really know it at all.

Man, we just like said it like a over and it was a ritual, but in their environment, they were thinking about what they were saying, and they were really contemplating their existence and connection with God, and and and it affected their day-to-day lives in a profound way.

And and so I his name's John.

I I asked John, well, how do you had all that how'd all that happen?

And he and he goes, Well, it's not a religion, it's a relationship.

And I was like, what?

Uh, how do you do that?

How do you have a relationship with God?

I mean, that sounds ridiculous.

And he said, Well, you just read the the Bible, and so I'm like, you just you read the Bible, like you start at the beginning, or it doesn't make much sense.

He goes, just start and we'll spend a half an hour a week together, and I'll just tell you what I know about the part of the Bible that you're reading.

Just spend five minutes a night.

I'm like, that's easy.

I just add it to my list of my checklist that night when I meditate and you know, pray and do all the things I do.

And so I I integrated that and I became a Christian.

Here I am, and it's a it's a real part of my my life.

So LSD, Tony Robbins, Christianity.

That's bizarre.

It's just I might I imagine for the average person, they don't need the LSD trip to get I don't think they need LSD.

I don't think they need Tony Robbins either.

Uh it's just what you know was in place to slap me upside the face.

Mark and I were hoping that maybe you would uh take some LSD and come back on the podcast.

Uh no, thank you.

Yeah, that would be quite an experience.

Mark, you've had you've had patients that have taken LSD before.

What's been your experience?

Most of my patients actually don't use LSD.

It was a lot more common and popular years ago.

What's more common and popular now would I would say would be um more of the DMT derivatives, uh like uh Kombu and ayahuasca and um actually also unrelated pharmacologically, but just as popular, it would be ketamine, which is used uh clinically and has been uh approved now for uh depression.

Um it shows a lot of strong research potential for PTSD for brain injuries, especially veterans who are suffering from concussive disorders.

And there does seem to be a lot of actual medicinal benefit uh and psychological benefit for all those drugs.

The the main problem with a lot of these uh tribal drugs is is that they have such a strong physical nasty reaction, you know, hours or days if it's you know, ayahuasca of just chronic vomiting and uh and dehydration.

So you have to really be monitored and um be part of a group of people who uh are being supervised properly, or it could actually go really south and and you could actually uh be physically or psychologically harmed by it.

So I I don't recommend that anybody uh pursue the uh um party party drug hallucinatory experience uh because there just aren't enough safeguards in place.

But but when the drugs are used with someone who knows what they're doing and you do have proper supervision, they they can be.

Very helpful.

That's what my patients have uh have reported to me.

A lot of people are using psilocybin as well.

Psilocybin is a is is challenging right now because it's not really available for use outside of mushrooms, which you can't dose repeatedly.

You can't get the same dosing from a mushroom because there's no way to know what the concentration is in any particular mushroom plant.

I I was hoping that psilocybin, which it's been available for decades through research purposes, um purified psilocybin where you can actually dose it exactly.

It's not available right now uh clinically for treatment.

It's only available in research settings, but I think it will be very soon because there's been so much uh recent publication from contemporary research on psilocybin and its uh benefits for mood disorders, that it may actually be like ketamine, it may actually come out as uh as an actual pharmacologic therapeutic.

And I think that would be a lot better and probably safer than people just going out and and taking mushrooms and not really knowing how much they're getting.

And then the microdosing, which a lot of people do.

I I'm I'm kind of neutral on that.

I I think that some people say there's benefits, a lot of people use it with no benefit.

It's such a subtherapeutic dose that I don't know if it's actually very helpful.

And like Todd, you know, your experience was kind of transformative.

You don't get transformative experiences with microdosing.

Uh, you you would if you were to have a hallucinatory experience, but then you have to go and you know find someone to sell you mushrooms, and you don't really know how much to take.

And it's it's I I don't like this kind of street approach to drugs because um it's it's not it's not controlled and there isn't um you know, there isn't any way to know what the purity is.

Uh but psilocybin, I think would be a great pharmaceutical if it were available just like uh another drug uh or any other drug.

I would I would I would be happier to prescribe psilocybin to patients, certain patients, than some of the the psychiatric drugs that we have that cause known metabolic problems and uh kidney failure and thyroid disease and psilocybin if it's used properly shouldn't cause any of those problems.

So you could argue even that it's in a lot of ways, it's a lot safer than depict.

Yeah.

You know, uh Todd, before the break, I kind of teased that I was gonna ask you about peptides.

Do you have thoughts on peptides and do you guys use those or recommend them at Stark?

Yeah, um, yeah, we lose you we use all a broad range of them.

Um because I'm not a clinician, I can speak to um the experience as a patient.

And uh we we use things like BP BPC 157 for for joint pain and things of that nature, and it's very effective.

The oral version is very effective too, so it's really easy to access.

Um, we use uh semiglutides periodically, but we use them in very small doses, and and it's to it's we've had a lot of success with that because it's so small of a dose that it merely removes the food chatter.

You heard that term?

Yeah, noise.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's that you know, at night when you're like, I gotta eat those cookies, that thing goes away.

And you can make you can make good choices because you don't have that battle that so many people, it's it's a battle for me.

Uh everybody, most people have a battle like that at the end of the day when they're uh discipline is down.

Yeah, um, and that sort of gets removed.

And then when they're integrating that therapy with the foundational tools necessary to be really healthy, like sleeping better and eating better and exercising.

Um, it's it's a very helpful tool.

For sure.

But we don't we don't use a broad range of them uh in this of it's kind of like the wild west, as you know.

Yes, right now, I mean, consumers are just ordering stuff and they're they're there there are there have been shortages on hyper hypodermic needles.

It's so weird.

And they're they're they're just in, I can't believe that they have the guts to just take uh uh to to inject themselves without any uh medical oversight.

Right.

Um that's that's happening, and we're you know, we're not selling those things.

They're very um narrowly focused and prescribed.

Yeah, we are almost out of time.

Uh Todd, if people want to follow you and learn more about Stark and what you're doing, how do they do that?

Best place is our website, it's Stark.health.

That's Stark.health.

And what's next for Stark?

What do you what do you see yourself doing in the next five or 10 years?

Um we are cleaning up our operational processes, including tech.

That's a big a big challenge that we have is lack of great people.

Um needing to yes, I know, I know.

It's just really difficult.

And and enabling our clinicians to be and our our non-licensed practitioners as well to be more effective with larger groups, groups of people.

And we have because we do so much testing on a patient like me, for example, we have thousands and thousands of data points that you can't we want trend lines.

It's hard to plot those things.

And so in the near future, we'll be able to see am I getting better in X category?

Um, and when that happens, our clinicians will be able to more effectively treat and and we'll be able to expand through the use of technology.

Um, so there's a lot of work that's been we actually shrunk the business.

We shut our less our Los Angeles location down so we can refocus, redevelop our operational processes, and then we'll be able to leverage those for for growth.

That's what's it love it.

Awesome.

Mark, any closing thoughts.

I wish there was a Stark in Los Angeles, I would go.

That's where I'm located.

Well, you know, let's listen uh to our public audience.

Mark has been contemplating the move to come across the orange curtain down to uh Southern California.

One of my first trips down to Orange County for uh uh research purposes in that area was actually the uh the Stark, the Stark Health dinner and presentation where I met you, Todd.

And that's actually for selfish reasons.

That's actually why I went down there.

Um I didn't know anything about Stark, although I I said, Jeff, you heard of this guy, Todd?

He's related to Stark.

He's like, Yeah, yeah, I know Todd, he's a really good guy.

I'm like, okay, then I'll go.

So I went down there and uh tried to get some information.

We have patients in common.

I have several patients that train with you.

I have one uh famous patient that you put on a billboard with a cowboy hat and without a shirt on who won your contest.

Okay, yeah, I know who that is.

Yeah, that narrows it down to one.

So you have a contest.

What's it called?

Naked Stark or something.

Uh you used to be called Stark naked, which is a whole story behind that.

But now it's the Stark Health competition.

It's literally a competition to see who is the healthiest.

Yeah.

And so it's a broad base of metrics that determines the outcome.

It used to be like who got the most votes on Facebook or whatever, and and the panel of judges and such, and and an image that was captured.

That's still captured, but it's really just for the fun of it.

Yeah, cool.

I love it.

Well, Todd, thank you for joining us on Informed Descent.

And uh, thank you for bringing us the information about Stark.

And I look forward to having another conversation about your next LSD trip.

Probably never.

Next next time we'll bring Alice on to hear her perspective.

Okay.

Awesome.

Thanks, Todd.

You've been listening to Informed Descent with Dr.

Jeff Barkey, board certified primary care physician, and Dr.

Mark McDonald.

Board certified child adolescent and adult psychiatrist.

Informed dissent, the intersection of health care and politics.