Sleep focused, Paleo fed co-hosting:

The key to fitness, health and wellness are sleep. With poor sleep comes poor foundations. With poor foundations, we cannot build. Everything will come crashing down. People through time have worn a lack of sleep, due to hustle and getting stuff done, as a badge of honor. It's time to put to bed that misconception with Episode 44 and our co-host Kevin Cottrell of fitfluentialradio.com and the HealthCast Now Podcast. Kevin found out the hard way. Through poor lifestyle and environmental choices, Kevin developed a Melanoma Cancer. Although he was a fit guy, his fitness was built upon a foundation of poor sleep. Kevin made critical lifestyle choices and is now healthier than ever. This episode is about the importance of sleep and lifestyle choices.

On This Episode You Will Hear:

Kevin left College in the 80's, he went back to where he grew up in the Palo Alto area. Kevin got involved in a number of startups in the 90's, he was the typical Biz Dev Executive working 80-90 hours, traveling excessively, not getting enough sleep but he worked out every day. He thought he was on track. Then came the late 90's into 2001 and the Dot Com crash. He had stock options on a startup that went public. The shares went from $100 a share to $1 a share in 60 days. An inner layer of stress started to form. Kevin was a guy, during that period of his life that thought sleep was overrated. As long as he kept working out things would be OK. Moving forward to the summer of 2006, Kevin had a mole removed, just a straight forward procedure. He gets a calling saying he needs an emergency procedure to remove some skin from his neck as he has a pretty serious Melanoma (Type of Skin Cancer).

One of the things Kevin got really good at as an Executive was when lots of drama and chaos comes up, Leadership and Executives fall into one of two camps, they are either a problem solver or you are part of the problem and chaos. Kevin had developed quite a good reputation as a problem solver so he began systematically asking questions at the Doctors office about the problem. He kept a level head despite the stress surging through his body.

At the point in time Kevin had the Cancer, he had the belief the Cancer was to do with family history but he came to find out since then it was much more to do with his lifestyle that put him at risk than it was any family history.

In 2009 Kevin was known as 'Fat Kevin'. Now he wasn't obese, but he looked obese. He was heavier and started to trend towards type 2 diabetes. This was from following the conventional advice from the Doctors. He was back to working out at four in the morning five times a week. He wasn't getting enough sleep and was starting to move towards a different direction from a lifestyle stand point. He knew something was not right still. After listing to a Podcast about the Paleo Diet, Kevin knew he had to start looking into it. It wasn't about the diet he was interested in, it was the lifestyle concept. A Doctor Friend, Dr. Jack Kruse, challenged him to go look at the incidents of melanoma and look at the further you are from the equator are the incidents. Kevin started to change his lifestyle. He began to focus on sleep and getting a healthy dose of sunlight. What happened was he got really healthy. His blood marker ratings went from a 6 to less than 1. He dramatically reduced the inflammation in his body. All by changing his environment and his lifestyle.

 Key Bio Markers, BUN to Creatinine Ratio, Blood Marker for Inflammation. Vitamin D levels. If you are in an environment where you have way too much blue light, you are indoors way too much, you can take Vitamin D Supplements or even Sun outside and remarkably our bodies do not react.

Kevin takes fewer supplements now. He concentrates on core lifestyle changes. Getting out and getting sunlight. Anchoring his Circadian rhythm.

Sleep is something we do have control over.