Chapter Content
Okay, so, let's talk about this. I want to talk about how everything is connected. Like, *really* connected when it comes to your health.
So, I was a big baby, like, HUGE. Eleven pounds, nine ounces! My mom's doctors were, you know, congratulating her, saying she had one of the biggest babies the hospital had ever seen. But, you know, she had trouble losing the baby weight afterwards, like, for years. Her doctor just told her it was normal, you know? She'd just had a baby, she was getting older, the usual stuff. They told her to "eat healthier," which, like, what does that even mean?
Then, in her forties, her cardiologist diagnosed her with high blood pressure. Again, the doctor said, "Oh, it's so common for women your age." And prescribed her an ACE inhibitor, you know, to relax her arteries. Okay, fine.
Then, in her fifties, her internal medicine doctor told her she had high cholesterol, or, well, technically, high triglycerides, low HDL, high LDL. More statins. She was told that this was just part of getting older, like a rite of passage, basically. Apparently, statins are one of the most prescribed drugs EVER.
And then, in her sixties, her endocrinologist said she had prediabetes. The doctor said it was *also* super common, no big deal, just a "pre-disease," you know? And gave her metformin. Another pill.
Then, when she was seventy-one, my mom was hiking with my dad, you know, near their home. And she felt this really deep pain in her belly, plus she was, like, unusually tired. Went to her doctor. They did a CT scan, blood work... The next day, she got a text message. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
And...thirteen days later, she was gone.
Her oncologists at Stanford called it "unlucky." And my mom, who was already seeing, like, five different specialists and taking five different medications, she was *constantly* being told by her doctors that she was "healthy" compared to other women her age. Which, statistically, she was, I guess. The average American over sixty-five sees a *ton* of doctors, and, wow, they give out a lot of prescriptions.
But obviously, *something* is not right when we look at the trends in our kids' health, our parents' health, our own health. I mean, think about it.
So many teens have fatty liver disease. A huge percentage are prediabetic. Most are overweight or obese. And like, fifty years ago, pediatricians might have *never* seen these conditions in their entire careers. And now? Young adults are just living in a culture where obesity, acne, fatigue, depression, infertility, high cholesterol, prediabetes... they're all just, like, totally common!
Six out of ten adults have a chronic illness. Half of Americans will deal with mental illness at some point. The majority are overweight or obese. And the rates of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, upper respiratory infections, autoimmune conditions... they're *all* going up, and at the same time, we're spending *more* and *more* on treating them. And life expectancy? It's actually been *decreasing*!
So, we're convinced that all these increasing rates of conditions are just part of being human, you know? And we're told that we can treat them with "innovations" from modern medicine. My mom was told that her rising cholesterol, waistline, blood sugar, blood pressure... she could just "manage" them for life with a pill.
But you know what? They weren't isolated conditions. All of those symptoms were warning signs of the *same thing*: that her cells weren't producing and using energy correctly. Even my massive size at birth... that was a sign of energy dysfunction and probably undiagnosed gestational diabetes.
But for decades, my mom, and basically everyone else, was just prescribed pills. No one ever bothered to find out how these conditions were connected, or how to reverse the root cause.
But there's a better way, okay? And it starts with realizing that the biggest lie in healthcare is that *the* reason we're getting sicker, heavier, more depressed, more infertile is complicated.
It sounds radical, I know, but think about it. Animals in the wild *don't* have these chronic diseases. Lions and giraffes aren't getting obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes. Preventable lifestyle conditions are responsible for most of modern human deaths.
Depression, anxiety, acne, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer... they're all rooted in the same thing! And you *can* prevent and reverse them, and feel amazing, and it's under your control and *simpler* than you think.
So I want to share something with you. It's a big and bold vision of health. It's based on something so simple, so powerful, so fundamental. It's called "Good Energy". And it can change *everything* about how you feel and function.
Good Energy governs the very essence of what makes you tick, literally. It's whether your cells have the energy to do their jobs to keep you healthy, clear-minded, hormonally balanced, immune-protected, heart-healthy, all of that. Good Energy is the core physiological function that determines whether you're healthy or not.
Good Energy is also known as metabolic health. Metabolism is the set of mechanisms that transform food into energy to power every cell in your body. You might not have thought about it much before, but when cellular energy production is working well, you don't even have to *think* about it. It just *is*.
When you have Good Energy, you can be an outlier. You can feel vital, enlivened, clear-minded. Balanced weight, pain-free body, healthy skin, stable mood. If you're trying to have kids, you can enjoy natural fertility. If you're getting older, you don't have to worry about decline or developing a disease that runs in the family.
But when you *lose* Good Energy, everything starts to go wrong. Organs, tissues, glands are just collections of cells. So, if you lose the ability to properly power those cells, then, no surprise, the organs start to fail. And that means that almost any disease can arise.
The problem? It's a mismatch. Our metabolic processes evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in sync with the environment. But the environment around our cells has changed so rapidly. Our diet, movement patterns, sleep patterns, stress levels, exposure to chemicals... things are not as they once were.
The environment for the cells is now radically different from what they expect and need. And this evolutionary mismatch is causing normal metabolic function to turn into *dysfunction*, into Bad Energy.
Small cellular disturbances happen in every cell, at every moment, and they ripple up into tissues, organs, and systems. This affects how you feel, think, function, look, age, and even how well you fight off pathogens and avoid chronic disease. Almost every chronic health symptom that Western medicine addresses is the result of our cells being beleaguered by how we live. Bad Energy leads to broken cells, broken organs, broken bodies, and pain.
We have two hundred different types of cells. And when Bad Energy shows up in different cell types, different symptoms arise. In an ovarian cell, it looks like infertility. In a blood vessel lining cell, it can look like erectile dysfunction, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease. In a liver cell, it can look like fatty liver disease. In the brain, it can look like depression, stroke, dementia, migraine, chronic pain. Research has shown us that all these conditions are directly linked to metabolic issues, to a problem with how our cells make energy, to Bad Energy.
But we still "treat" the organ-specific results of the Bad Energy, not the Bad Energy itself. So, we will *never* improve the failing health of our population if we don't address the correct issue: metabolic dysfunction. That's why the more we spend on healthcare, the worse the outcomes get.
Compared to a century ago, we are consuming astronomically more sugar, we're working more sedentary jobs, we're sleeping way less. We're exposed to countless synthetic chemicals. And our cells have stopped being able to make energy the way they should. So, cellular dysfunction is exploding throughout our bodies, showing up as all these chronic symptoms and diseases.
Our body *does* have simple ways to show us whether we have brewing metabolic dysfunction. Increasing waist size, suboptimal cholesterol, high fasting glucose, elevated blood pressure. That's what my mom experienced.
And aside from some belly fat, my mom appeared healthy on the outside. She was vibrant, happy, energetic. Metabolic dysfunction doesn't necessarily show up everywhere all at once, and it can look different in different people.
Her case is just one example of something that is happening to millions of people. If you're battling annoying and seemingly non-lethal health issues, like fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, arthritis, infertility, erectile dysfunction, chronic pain... an underlying contributor is generally the same thing that will lead to a bigger illness later in life if you don't change how you care for your body. So, if you ignore the minor issues as signs of Bad Energy brewing inside you today, you're going to get much louder signals down the line.
For most of my adult life, I was a huge advocate for the modern healthcare system. I collected credentials, I did a research internship at the National Institutes of Health, was president of my class at Stanford, got the best thesis award, top of my class at Stanford Medical School. I was a surgical resident in ear, nose, and throat surgery. I won research awards. I published in medical journals, presented at conferences, spent countless nights studying. It was my entire identity.
Then I met Sophia. She had recurrent sinus infections, she couldn't breathe, she'd missed work and lost sleep. She was overweight, she had prediabetes, high blood pressure, back pain, and depression. She saw a different doctor for *every* issue.
None of her sinus medications were working, so she came to me for surgery. I was a young doctor, and I did the surgery, broke up the bones and swollen tissue, vacuumed them out of her sinus passages. The anesthesiologists struggled to control her blood sugar and blood pressure afterwards.
She said I saved her. But looking into her eyes, I didn't feel proud. I felt defeated.
At best, I'd relieved the symptoms, but I did nothing to cure the underlying cause of her inflammation. Or her other health conditions. She was going to keep going through this, seeing multiple specialists for everything. Was she *healthy* after I permanently altered her nasal anatomy? I mean, what were the chances that the factors driving her prediabetes, excess fat, depression, and high blood pressure had *nothing* to do with the recurrent inflammation in her nose?
Sophia was just one of *many* patients. I'd performed hundreds of sinus operations. But so many patients kept coming back for more procedures and treatments for other diseases: diabetes, depression, anxiety, cancer, heart disease, dementia, hypertension, obesity.
I was surgically treating inflamed tissues, but *never* was I taught what causes inflammation in the human body, or about its connection to chronic diseases. Not *once* was I prompted to ask, "Huh, why all the inflammation?" My gut told me that all of Sophia's conditions were related, but instead of being curious, I just stayed in my lane, followed the guidelines, reached for my prescription pad and scalpel.
Soon after Sophia, I couldn't cut into another patient until I understood *why*, despite our massive healthcare system, people were sick in the first place.
I wanted to understand why so many conditions were rising exponentially, and whether I could do anything to keep my patients *out* of the operating room. I had become a doctor to generate vibrant health, not to drug, cut, and bill as many bodies as possible.
It was becoming clear that even though the practitioners around me wanted to help patients, the reality is that medical schools, insurance companies, hospitals, pharma companies... they all make money on "managing" disease, not curing patients.
So, striving to reach the top of the medical field had been my focus. If I stopped operating, I had no backup plan, and I'd spent half a million dollars on my education. But those things seemed insignificant compared to the fact that patients weren't getting better.
So I did something radical.
I quit.
I walked into the chairman's office and quit. I walked out of the hospital and embarked on a journey to understand why people get sick and how to help them restore their health.
The insights I learned couldn't save my mom. But millions of people *can* improve and extend their lives right now with simple principles that doctors aren't taught in medical school.
I'm also convinced that our lack of understanding about the root cause of disease represents a larger spiritual crisis. We've become disconnected from our bodies and life, separated from the production of our food, made more sedentary, detached from our biological needs. This has put our bodies into a state of confusion and fear. Our cells are dysregulated, which impacts our brains and bodies, which determines our perception of the world. The medical system has capitalized on this fear and offers "solutions" to the symptoms of this dysfunction. That's why it's the biggest industry in the United States.
We're locked into a fragmented view of the body that breaks us into separate parts. This view doesn't foster human flourishing. In reality, the body is an interconnected entity that's constantly regenerating and exchanging energy and matter with the environment.
There's no question the American medical system has produced miracles. But we've lost our way when it comes to preventing and reversing metabolic conditions.
The situation is dire, but I want you to know that this is about optimism and practicality. And the fact that we can vigorously criticize and reform our healthcare system is one of its strengths.
The next revolution in health will come from understanding how the root of almost every disease relates to energy. We'll see that our ailments are connected rather than siloed. And we will shift our framework to this energy-centric paradigm.
Fortunately, improving Good Energy is easier and simpler than it seems. You can take steps to prioritize it in your life.
Good Energy is the goal, and the state of mind, and what it can create, is incredible. A world where we're eating beautiful food, moving our bodies, interacting with nature, taking pleasure in the world, feeling fulfilled, vibrant, and alive. It's good food, happy people, real connections, expanding into the most beautiful expression of our lives.
It's true that the challenges are enormous. Yet I've seen that this can change right now. It starts when you simply ask one question: What would it feel like to have Good Energy?
What would it feel like to have your body functioning optimally, for your body to just be at ease enjoying this human experience, for your mind to be working clearly and creatively, and to feel that your life is established on a steady and strong source of inner power? Imagine a powerful life force from within that allows you to take on each day with pleasure, energy, gratitude, and joy.
Take a moment. Really feel it. Imagine it. Let yourself.
My hope is to enable you to feel better today and prevent disease tomorrow. It all begins by understanding and acting upon the science of Good Energy.