Body · 21 episodes
Gut Health & Nutrition for entrepreneurs
Every founder eventually treats their body like a piece of equipment they forgot to maintain: run hard, skip meals, chase caffeine, ignore the check engine light until it's a dashboard full of them. The conversations gathered here keep landing on the same root claim from very different angles — algae researchers, functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, cymatics scientists — that gut health and nutrition aren't a wellness side quest, they're the substrate everything else runs on. Brain fog, decision fatigue, mood swings, the 3pm crash: most of it traces back to blood sugar, digestion, and what's actually in the food, not to a lack of willpower.
Where guests disagree is on the mechanism and the fix. Some point to processed food and sugar as the primary driver of insulin resistance and cellular disease. Others point to fat-phobia and decades of low-fat diet culture as the bigger mistake, arguing that fear of butter and cholesterol did more damage than the fat itself ever could. A few push toxin exposure — heavy metals, mold, glyphosate, microplastics — as the hidden variable no blood panel catches until it's serious. None of these claims cancel each other out; they stack. The consistent thread is that food quality, blood sugar stability, and gut function are not separate problems from focus, sleep, and stress tolerance — they're the same problem wearing different symptoms.
The other agreement, quieter but just as firm: most entrepreneurs look healthy and are not. Lean, active, outwardly fine, and still insulin resistant, still inflamed, still running on a stress response that never shuts off. The fix isn't more supplements stacked on top of a bad foundation — it's real food, stable blood sugar, and a gut that can actually absorb what's put into it.
What holds across every conversation
- •Pair protein, fat, and fiber at every meal — especially breakfast — to stabilize blood sugar and eliminate the mid-afternoon crash before reaching for a stimulant.
- •Get a real fasting glucose, testosterone, and lipid panel even if you look and feel fit; outward leanness doesn't rule out insulin resistance or hidden inflammation.
- •Treat digestion as a prerequisite, not a given — a perfect whole-foods diet still fails you if your gut can't absorb it, so pay attention to bowel regularity as a literal biomarker.
- •Don't fear dietary fat by default; the low-fat era pushed people toward processed substitutes that were worse for blood sugar and satiety than the butter they replaced.
- •Before adding supplements or biohacks, remove the obvious harms first — alcohol, ultra-processed food, chronic poor sleep, unmanaged household toxin exposure.
- •If reversing a metabolic condition like type 2 diabetes, focus on root causes (toxins, gut damage, liver/adrenal function) rather than blood sugar numbers alone — the research shows medication-only approaches rarely produce true reversal.
Gut Health as the Root System
Digestion isn't isolated to the stomach — it's upstream of brain function, mood, immunity, and skin, and several guests treat it as the first place to look when something feels off.
“It has been said for a long time ago, Hippocrates, all disease begins in the gut. Conversely, all wellness begins in the gut. So really, our gut health is so critical to the health of our brain, our energy, our vitality, the health of our skin.”
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs · 2:50· listen →
“Every bite we take in can become nutrition for your organs, your tissues, right down to the cell. Or if it's not going to become nutrition because it wasn't nutrient-dense, real food that was properly digested, it will become toxicity. So there isn't really a gray area there.”
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs · 11:16· listen →
“It's not just what you eat, but it's what your body can do with what you eat. So you could be eating this beautiful, by-the-book, whole foods, perfect diet, but if your body can't digest the food, then you're not able to take full advantage of all those nutrients and you might not be absorbing them.”
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health · 0:00· listen →
“You should be pooping, first of all, 1 to 3 times a day. It should be medium brown in color. It should be soft and formed, not too hard, not too loose. On a Bristol stool chart, it should be a 3 to a 4.”
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health · 24:17· listen →
Blood Sugar Is the Real Lever
Multiple guests converge on the same practical point: stabilizing blood sugar, starting with breakfast, does more for sleep, energy, and cravings than almost any other single habit.
“Blood sugar is the number one thing for quality sleep. Blood sugar balance is the number one thing that will affect quality sleep.”
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs · 26:51· listen →
“And I'm like, oh my gosh, butter. If I had just eaten butter, my body would have been so much more nourished and my blood sugar would have been more balanced. I would have been more satisfied. I wouldn't have experienced these extreme cravings and I just wouldn't have experienced what felt like a constant battle with my body. And now that I've changed my whole mindset and my approach to eating, it is so much simpler.”
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health · 8:24· listen →
“The problem with high amounts of insulin into the bloodstream, it's like throwing too much water on a plant. What happens to the plant? Guys, when you throw too much insulin around an insulin receptor, so does the receptor, closes up and can't have the insulin enter. So what's that called? Insulin resistance.”
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Functional Medicine Approach · 10:58· listen →
“But the research is very clear. There's a lot of research in PubMed that you can identify reversing type 2 diabetes by doing the right steps. Because when we look at diabetes from a blood sugar perspective, yeah, you're right, you cannot reverse it. You'll rarely, if any, ever get the person off medications if you just focus on their sugars alone. But if you focus it from a cell perspective and the cell disease, now we're talking because now we're getting to the root issue that's going on.”
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Functional Medicine Approach · 28:27· listen →
Unlearning Fear-Based Diet Culture
Decades of low-fat messaging left people avoiding butter and cholesterol while eating heavily processed 'healthy' substitutes — several guests describe walking that back.
“And I'm like, oh my gosh, butter. If I had just eaten butter, my body would have been so much more nourished and my blood sugar would have been more balanced. I would have been more satisfied. I wouldn't have experienced these extreme cravings and I just wouldn't have experienced what felt like a constant battle with my body. And now that I've changed my whole mindset and my approach to eating, it is so much simpler.”
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health · 8:24· listen →
“Pasture-raised eggs have 30% more vitamin A, They have double the vitamin E, 2.5 times the omega-3 fatty acids, and 3 to 6 times the vitamin D. And the reason that they're so much more nutrient dense is because they're exposed to sunlight.”
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health · 31:07· listen →
“Today, we have many, many, many, many options for what we eat, and perhaps 80% of our beautiful large grocery stores, that is not best fuel for any of us. So it's maybe only 20% of that big, beautiful store So what we're eating is most critical.”
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs · 6:01· listen →
Hidden Toxins and the Detox Question
Heavy metals, mold, microplastics, and everyday household chemicals come up repeatedly as slow, invisible drains on health — with real disagreement on how aggressively to intervene.
“The way I describe it is it's like giving your body a shower from the inside. You take a shower on the outside every morning. Chlorella will pull all the garbage that you've interacted with in the air, your food, your cosmetics, and pull it out.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 25:21· listen →
“If someone's stolen your parking spot anywhere, you can't get into your parking spot. It doesn't matter how many signs you put up, but they're there. You gotta get the tow truck or the police to get them out so that you can park in. So, chlorella is the tow truck.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 43:39· listen →
“Well, the first thing is you've got to stop putting it in the body. Yeah. The body will do it. With enough time, the body will just do it. You don't have to do anything. If you get out of the moldy environment, you don't have to do a thing.”
The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin · 19:58· listen →
“I do not encourage anyone to do any real detoxification without being guided by a professional who knows what they're doing. Because again, we all could have in heavy metals or other things, and if we're not properly set up to prepare for detoxification, we can actually be creating more harm for ourselves.”
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs · 17:24· listen →
Functional Root-Cause Medicine
Functional and integrative practitioners argue that treating disease markers after the fact misses the point — the goal is catching dysfunction while it's still reversible.
“Imagine you're driving down the road and your car check engine light comes on. That's an indication that something's broken, something's not right, but your car can still drive. It's still doing its job. But so your choice is take the fuse out so you don't see the check engine light anymore, or you take it to your mechanic to get evaluated. That's functional medicine. Functional medicine is looking for the check engine lights that are going on inside your body.”
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Functional Medicine Approach · 0:00· listen →
“And literally, there were 6 months prior where the tests showed no issues. 6 months later, she was in basically 12 GFR and so the kidneys were basically done. And she was then going 3 times a week for 3 hours at a time for dialysis. 8 months later, she had a stroke and she passed.”
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Functional Medicine Approach · 1:24· listen →
“I felt like I was just putting a bandaid on a cancer basically.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 2:14· listen →
“That's a great way to put it because sickness usually isn't one thing. Sickness is you're not sleeping well, you're not eating well, and then you're exposed to something. So if you eat well, you exercise, you can improve your sleep even gently, there is going to be a tipping point where it's really magnified. I'll say even, it's not even an additive effect, it's a multiplied effect.”
Integrative Medicine for Entrepreneurs with Carolyn McAuliffe · 22:22· listen →
Nutrition as a Daily Performance Tool
Beyond long-term disease prevention, what you eat shapes same-day cognition, mood regulation, and decision quality — treated here as an ROI question, not a virtue one.
“If there was a drug that you could take to make you better at all those things... We have that drug. We have that with fitness. We have that with exercise. We have that with nutrition.”
The ROI of Health and Fitness for Entrepreneurs · 2:36· listen →
“I would see these blips throughout the day in the glucose monitor that were in the normal range, but that it wasn't associated with food... there are cortisol pops to increase glucose... So it wasn't that I am super chill... I was completely unaware of the physical impact that was happening on my body.”
The ROI of Health and Fitness for Entrepreneurs · 12:40· listen →
“Diet's one of those things where it's exceptionally important now... I think people care more about what octane fuel they put in their car than what they're actually eating for a day-to-day basis. And that is just insane.”
Debt Strategy for Entrepreneurs: Leverage Without Crushing · 36:00· listen →
“You wouldn't expect your car to perform optimally if you put water in the gas tank or sugar in the gas tank, or you never change the oil... But you're asking the same things of your body, but you'll put anything in your body and expect it to work well.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 3:30· listen →
The companion guide
Reading about gut health & nutrition is one thing. Changing it is another.
John’s companion guide turns what these conversations cover into something you can actually work through.
More moments worth hearing
Everything else these conversations turned up on this subject.
“You the entrepreneur, you keep putting the pieces together all by yourself. Maybe you get a third of the way and now you say, hey, how about come and help me now? They still look at the mess. They can see a little bit but nope, they're too busy. Nope.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 15:13
“It is the most nutrient-dense food in the world. NASA feeds it to the astronauts. We have a quote from them saying 1 gram of algae has the same nutrition as 1,000 grams of fruits and vegetables. So 1 to 1,000.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 18:40
“In a cancer cell or a senescent cell, the blue pigment, when it's absorbed into the mitochondria, sees that it's in a cancer cell and goes, I'm onto you. And instead of the Ferrari helping move that, move the electrons across, it ejects this thing called cytochrome c, which triggers something called caspases, which triggers something called apoptosis, which is healthy cell death.”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 36:28
“You can get rid of almost all your other supplements. Not all. But your multivitamin, you don't need that. Please stop taking fish oil. Where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from?”
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition · 46:50
“I always look for what I call the 4 Horsemen of executive burnout. So the first one is sleep latency extending beyond 25 minutes... The second one is cortisol staying elevated after 10... There's also how your fasting glucose is going to vary during the day... The last thing is your heart rate variability when you sleep.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 16:23
“There was a study that showed that only 12% of Americans are actually metabolically healthy on all measures.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 20:22
“It's the Sleep Foundation that has a study that says that every single night of poor sleep can reduce cognitive performance the next day by 25%. And it's the equivalent of a blood alcohol level of 0.05%.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 34:38
“Alcohol is the worst... it's still a poison, you know. It's terrible for your liver. It's just a poison for your arteries as well. And more than that, you know, it also really messes up your sleep.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 28:12
“70% of chronic diseases are lifestyle-related and therefore preventable today.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 42:50
“McKinsey conducted a study with leaders and they showed that the leaders who prioritize their own wellbeing inspired 90% higher employee satisfaction and 70% lower burnout rates in their teams.”
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs · 45:34
“Imagine how much more successful you could be if you were well-rested and you weren't suffering from decision fatigue and you actually ate lunch and fed yourself and had some energy.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 1:56
“Wellness shouldn't be a program, it should be the way that you do work.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 17:13
“There's just going to be days you can't. And you really just have to learn how to make it flow together and integrate your life and not try to separate it into these two very discrete things.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 24:25
“I've learned that no is a full sentence and it's okay. And the world still spins when I say no.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 29:08
“I decided years ago, my S was peeling holes in the cape. I can't do it anymore. Because I wasn't well. I wasn't healthy. And it looked really good on paper.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 39:12
“If I die tomorrow, they're going to be like, God, that Lanise, she was really great. Have we posted her position yet? And they're going to keep moving.”
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness · 39:12
“I was driving to work a couple of days ago and I saw a bald eagle and it was sitting at the very top of this very tall tree. And the wind was howling that day. It was just blowing and the snow was blowing and it was just this storm. And this eagle had its face up facing the wind on this, and it was just sitting there letting the storm beat it to death, just perfectly content.”
From Survival to Strength: Breathwork & Resilience · 13:09
“Fight or flight is for we're in danger. Like, fight or flight is tiger chasing me and I'm gonna die. Like, that's what fight or flight is for. Fight or flight is not for everyday living. And that's why we're seeing the high amounts of anxiety.”
From Survival to Strength: Breathwork & Resilience · 16:46
“So somebody honks their horn at you in traffic, you have a test at school that you're stressing out about, you're fighting with your spouse, right? It takes nothing to make that fight-or-flight response go.”
From Survival to Strength: Breathwork & Resilience · 18:26
“My favorite regimen because it's very easy and simple, I have 2 of them that I use in my practice, is the 5-5-7 breathing. And, that's in for 5, hold for 5, out for 7, 3 times, 3 times a day is how I usually start people.”
From Survival to Strength: Breathwork & Resilience · 24:30
Every episode on gut health & nutrition
22 conversations, oldest to newest.
Spirulina & Chlorella: The Science of Algae Nutrition
Spirulina delivers complete amino-acid protein and B vitamins that feed mitochondria, producing steady energy without the crash of stimulants.
Dr. Emilie Laplagne: Functional Medicine for Entrepreneurs
Traditional Western medicine is siloed and reactive, treating symptoms after disease develops, while functional medicine looks at the whole body and root causes.
From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness
Deferring self-care until after success is achieved is unsustainable, and prioritizing wellness actually improves performance and decision-making.
From Survival to Strength: Breathwork & Resilience
Chronic fight-or-flight activation undermines decision-making, creativity, and healing, and simple breathing techniques can reliably interrupt it.
From NFL to Entrepreneurship: Justin Pugh's Playbook
Justin Pugh built NFL Biz Week to teach players financial literacy and deal-vetting skills because most athletes retire with no plan and high bankruptcy rates.
Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: The Functional Medicine Approach
Type 2 diabetes is fundamentally a cell disease, not just a sugar disease, driven by insulin resistance and multiple underlying dysfunctions.
Integrative Medicine for Entrepreneurs with Carolyn McAuliffe
Integrative medicine combines conventional evidence-based care with alternative approaches like acupuncture, massage, and nutrition, while functional medicine seeks root causes rather than just treating symptoms.
Biomarkers, Biological Age & the Science of Healthspan
Longevity should be measured by healthspan, the years lived in good health, not just raw lifespan.
Longevity As a Competitive Edge: Jesse Levey on Health Strategy
Most longevity advice is overly individualized or dogmatic, but reducing alcohol and optimizing sleep benefit almost everyone.
Dr. Mihir Patel: Muscle Strength, Longevity & Joint Health
Muscle strength, mobility, and flexibility are the most important factors in preventing orthopedic injuries and staying out of the OR as we age.
Dr. Lynn Anderson: Proactive Aging & Naturopathic Health
Health rests on three pillars—sleep, nutrition, and movement—and it takes roughly 120 days to replace an old habit with a new one, both cellularly and mentally.
Reverse Biological Age: Dr. Kara Fitzgerald on Diet & Sleep
Fitzgerald's randomized controlled study showed men reduced biological age by over 3 years compared to controls in just 8 weeks using a diet and lifestyle intervention.
Sound Therapy & Cymatics for Entrepreneur Health
Cymatics is the science of making sound visible through mediums like water, sand, or powder, where pleasing sounds form organized geometric patterns and dissonant sounds create chaotic ones.
Debt Strategy for Entrepreneurs: Leverage Without Crushing
Debt is leverage that helps a business grow when used within its cash-flow cushion, but becomes the primary cause of business failure when it exceeds what the business can safely service.
The Doctor of the Future Is You with Sachin Patel
The healthcare system only measures disease markers, not the circadian rhythm, nervous system state, and rest/recovery patterns that actually determine health.
The EDGE Framework for Longevity With Sandy Martin
Toxic mold exposure can cause severe brain dysfunction that mimics other conditions and is often misdiagnosed by conventional doctors.
Gut Health, Real Food & Detox Truths for Entrepreneurs
Gut health underlies nearly every system in the body, from brain function and mood to skin, lungs, and joints, so poor digestion can manifest as brain fog, fatigue, or anxiety.
Jeff Knauss: AI Employees, Bootstrapping & Exit Lessons
AI-powered 'digital employees' can absorb administrative work so humans focus on relationships, decisions, and creative high-value tasks.
The ROI of Health and Fitness for Entrepreneurs
Exercise and nutrition act like a natural 'smart drug,' boosting decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility for leaders.
Cymatics & Sound Healing: John Stuart Reid Explains
Sound is not actually a wave but a spherical, pulsating bubble of energy, and cymatics makes this energy visible by imprinting it onto membranes like water.
Unlearning Diet Culture: Fats, Blood Sugar & Gut Health
Health depends not just on what you eat but on whether your body can properly digest and absorb it.
Why Seed Oils Are Bad & What to Eat Instead | Cherie Calbom
Industrial seed oils are processed with extreme heat and chemicals like hexane, creating toxic byproducts that drive oxidative stress and inflammation.