90% Healthy

What if you're doing CrossFit, eating clean and wearing an Oura ring, and your body is still sending a signal you keep explaining away?

Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley sit down with Pat and Angie Cherubini, Don's friends of 20 years from Newark, Ohio, recorded weeks before Pat's scheduled open-heart surgery. Angie survived colorectal cancer in 2021; Pat has just learned the artery cardiologists call the widowmaker is 100% blocked.

Angie's story starts with months of morning cramping she blames on food sensitivities, workouts she still finishes, then a night in late August 2021 when her abdomen swells and the pain arrives in waves she compares to labor. At the local ER, a tumor is blocking her colon completely. Pat pushes for a transfer to a hospital with a dedicated colorectal team during COVID-era restrictions, drives her there himself, and waits while surgeons remove most of her large intestine.

Pat's story runs on family history. His father had his first open-heart surgery at 47, and Pat built his life around not following him. An expanded blood panel leads to a coronary calcium score of 1,050, a failed stress test, and a heart cath showing his LAD fully blocked, with collateral arteries carrying the load and no heart damage. He now reads years of struggling through burpees as a signal. Together, they talk through what they'd change, what their glucose monitors revealed, and why "listen to the voice" became a lesson along the way.

In this episode

• The morning cramps Angie blamed on food sensitivities, and the night the pain came in waves
• Why Pat asked the surgeon what he'd do if it were his own wife, and the 20-second pause before the answer
• What a coronary artery calcium score measures, and where 1,050 falls: scores of 400 and above are classed as extensive plaque (Nasir et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2020)
• How collateral arteries grew around Pat's blockage, which his cardiologist believes formed over decades
• The 300-burpee challenge Pat could never get near, and how he sees it now
• Angie's CrossFit PRs, which she says began slipping around 2019, and Don's three personal trendlines: nighttime resting heart rate, nighttime HRV and watts per heartbeat
• One cup of rice, two continuous glucose monitors: Angie's glucose came back down, Pat's stayed elevated for about 12 hours
• Angie on the sugary snacks offered during chemo, and where the evidence stands on sugar and cancer (American Cancer Society)
• Why "dumb luck" was the one answer Angie would not accept
• Current colorectal screening guidance for average-risk adults begins at 45 (USPSTF, 2021)
• Pat and Angie's closing advice: look past standard bloodwork, ask more questions, be your own advocate

Your 1% takeaway

Pick one number you already track (a lift, a run time, nighttime resting heart rate) and look at the last 12 months instead of the last week. If it has been sliding without a reason, bring that trend to your doctor before a symptom gets loud enough to force the visit.

Would you still sit in that IV chair if you knew what was being tested, and what wasn’t?

Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley lead with a safety story moving fast: a third compounding pharmacy has recalled injectable glutathione over bacterial endotoxins, with more than 25 people sickened across at least four states. The ingredient tied to the illnesses was food-grade — fine to swallow, where the body has barriers, and a different proposition once it goes straight into a vein. That’s the spine of the episode, and the questions nobody in line is asking.

Around it, two more headlines complete the hour. Japan becomes the first country to pass 100,000 centenarians, and the habits behind it are ones no clinic can inject: movement woven through the day, nutrient-dense food, eating to 80% full, purpose, community.

Then Eric Topol’s hard look at wearable HRV and readiness scores, which Don traced back to nearly the same sources behind The HRV Book. One thread ties all three together: how much of what you’re sold has actually been proven before it reaches you.

In this episode:

• A third compounding pharmacy recalls injectable glutathione over bacterial endotoxins; 25+ sickened across at least four states [CDC; U.S. FDA, Sept 2026]
• Food-grade vs injectable-grade: why an ingredient made to be swallowed doesn’t belong in a vein
• The exact questions to ask before any IV drip or shot — who compounded it, was it meant for injection, was the lot tested
• The shortcut economy around IV lounges, and why a medical degree isn’t the end of your due diligence
• NAD by IV: Don’s open question on how a molecule that size reaches the cell
• Japan becomes the first country with more than 100,000 centenarians, a national record [Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Sept 2026]
• Hara hachi bu and ikigai: eating to 80% full, waking with a purpose as daily defaults
• Don’s “rocks in the jar”: movement, nutrient-dense food, light and sleep, community
• Eric Topol’s critique of wearable HRV, and how its sources line up with The HRV Book [Eric Topol, Ground Truths, Sept 19 2026]
• HRV vs PRV, the causal study no one will fund, and the thermometer-and-thermostat rule for any readiness score

Your 1% takeaway: Before any drip or shot, ask three things: Who compounded it?

Was the ingredient meant for injection?

Was this lot tested for sterility and endotoxins?

A good provider answers without flinching. If they flinch, you walk.

The rest of longevity? Japan shows it’s food, movement, and purpose, and not something you can buy in a chair.

Sources:

• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — injectable glutathione adverse events
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration — compounding pharmacy recalls; Aug 27 safety alert
• Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare — centenarian figures, September 2026
• Eric Topol, “The Big Holes in Wearable Heart Rate Variability and Readiness Scores,” Ground Truths, Sept 19 2026

Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley break down Apple's move into longevity: the new Health Age metric, the $119 Quest blood panel built into the Health app, and the company's own 1,000-plus-participant study claiming its watch is the most accurate on the market. Don, who wrote the book on HRV, read the fine print and found the study measured daytime heart rate, not the nighttime HRV that readiness scores actually run on.

They dig into why Apple is always the "second mouse," what a hundred million new wrists means for health agency, and the question nobody's answered yet: if your watch flags something, who's on the other end to interpret it? The answer, increasingly, is AI, and the American Medical Association isn't sure that's clinically valid.

In this episode:

• Why Apple's study crowned its watch on heart rate accuracy but stayed quiet on HRV — and the SDNN vs RMSSD gap that makes cross-device comparison meaningless (Don Moxley, The HRV Book)
• How readiness scores can be gamed by editing your own workout data, per HRV researcher Marco Altini
• The Quest Diagnostics partnership: a $119, 50-biomarker panel and what it means that ~100 million wrists can now order labs without a doctor
• Dr. John Whyte (AMA CEO) on patients reading these numbers as clinically valid "and I'm not sure it is"
• The 6% problem: how few US physicians integrate wearable data into clinical workflows — and why the EHR isn't ready
• Biological vs chronological age, methylation clocks, and where Apple's Health Age fits
• Why Don still recommends Oura first, Garmin or Polar for athletes — and took his own Apple Watch off
• Data ownership, the surveillance question, and building your own AI health coach instead of renting one

Your 1% takeaway: Don't make a decision on the number — make it on the trend. The device is a thermometer; you're the thermostat. A wearable is an excellent start, but it works only in service of a purpose you've already defined.

A note on accuracy: Apple's accuracy study is its own internal research, not independent or peer-reviewed. Apple Watch user counts cited on air are estimates; Apple has never published an official figure. Health claims here are the hosts' informed analysis, not medical advice. Talk to a clinician before acting on your own data.

LINKS:
Klaudia → longevityjournalist.comDon → trainrecoverwin.com | modemethod.com
The HRV Book → thehrvbook.com

Subscribe and send this to someone about to buy a wearable.

In this episode of the 90% Healthy Podcast, co-hosts Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley sit down with Jordan Dunin — founder and CEO of HatchPath and author of The Regulated Leader — whose recovery began with a dock dive that compression-fractured his spine and tore muscle off the back of his skull at twenty years old.

Jordan traces a decade that ran from traumatic brain injury through chronic Lyme disease, a ruptured artery on his 21st birthday, and five years he describes as stuck in a victim mentality. He's candid that the turn didn't come from grit, but from meeting his wife, Lauren, and finally having a reason to get well. The conversation moves from the mechanics of true rest after a head injury into why he now builds his whole day backward from sleep, and closes on the business he built to give employees the kind of support he never had.

In this episode:

• Why Jordan says recovery started the night before, not the morning of — phone away at 5 PM, no meetings after 3 PM, last meal at 4 PM
• The difference between "taking a beat" and true down-regulation after a TBI
• Don on a proactive head-injury toolkit — lowering inflammation, creatine, ketone esters, vagal nerve stimulation — as an alternative to sitting in a dark room
• Why Jordan stopped wearing his Oura ring: the data stopped adding value and started driving a stress response
• Don's thermometer analogy for wearables — the number confirms the feeling; the behavior is the point
• How HatchPath operates survey-free, with 5,000+ hours of coach sessions the company itself can't access
• The line between coaching and therapy, and why HatchPath sits firmly on the coaching side
• Don's "rocks in the jar" — movement, food, sleep, light, community — and why purpose is the jar that holds them

Connect with the hosts and guest:

Jordan / HatchPath — hatchpath.io

Klaudia — http://longevityjournalist.com

Don — trainrecoverwin.com

Your 1% takeaway: Set tomorrow up tonight. Write down anything unfinished so it's out of your head, and put the phone away before the wind-down starts- the single change Jordan credits most for regulating his nervous system.

Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for?

It’s for you who want to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. Simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. And feel darn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run.

Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

You're not an Olympian, so why should you care about a number built for elite athletes?

In Episode 68, co-hosts Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley make the case that heart rate variability was never really an athlete's tool, as they unpack Don's new release, The HRV Book, written for everyone who bought the wearable and didn't know what to do with it.

Don spent years wiring up Olympians and Division I wrestlers. But his argument is that the physiology underneath is the same across the spectrum: the parent walking into a hard conversation at work, the grandparent watching the doctor's office light up their phone, and the athlete stepping onto the mat are all running the same stress response. HRV isn't a performance scorecard, but rather a fuel gauge for regular life, telling you when your resources are running low so you can decide whether to fill the tank or just hang on.

They walk through the three "thirds" of life — achieving, earning and serving, and the third that's finally yours — and why the levers that build resilience, recovery, and resources don't care which one you're in.

In this episode:

• Why half a college roster already owns the hardware, and what's missing is knowing how to read them
• The thermometer vs. thermostat distinction at the center of the book: your wearable reads your state, but you decide what to do about it
• HRV as a range, not a high score, and why comparing your number to anyone else's is a mistake
• Why a hard conversation at work reads on a wearable the same as a training interval (per Don)
• Sleep as the first lever, including the separate-duvet "sleep divorce" setup the Moxleys use
• Breath as the free lever anyone can use
• The family-stress finding: the worst HRV scores of a wrestling season came the day athletes got home from holiday break
• Eustress vs. distress, and why steady beats ever-rising (per Marco Altini)
• Why the book starts with purpose, not data

Your 1% takeaway: Don't wake up, read your number, and let it decide your day. Read it against your trend — uptrend or downtrend, where you sit in your own range — then choose whether today is for filling the tank or just hanging on.

LINKS
The HRV Book → thehrvbook.com

Don → trainrecoverwin.com

Klaudia → longevityjournalist.com

Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for?

It’s for you who want to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. And feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run.

Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

What happens to your nervous system when stress stops being a moment and starts being a mark you carry?

In this episode of the 90% Healthy Podcast, co-hosts Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley get into cannabis.

Don Moxley worked inside the licensed cannabis industry before HRV and longevity, and in this episode he and Klaudia walk through what rescheduling means, why the endocannabinoid system was hiding in plain sight until the 1990s, and how a plant went from the U.S. Pharmacopeia to a federal ban and most of the way back. Not a pitch to use it, but rather to offer a map of where the science, the law, and the stigma stand. Klaudia holds the skeptic's line the whole way through, which is the point: this one's for the curious and the wary in equal measure.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Cold open: stress, trauma, and a nervous system out of balance
• 01:43 — Welcome back + Klaudia's Terry Crews cover story
• 03:18 — Why cannabis, why now: 17 days of hearings just wrapped
• 05:30 — From Ohio State HRV work to "the deep end of the pot pool"
• 07:00 — The endocannabinoid system we didn't know we had
• 09:30 — CB1, CB2, and the fear-to-love switch
• 12:28 — Stress vs. trauma: the anandamide drop
• 14:00 — Schedule I, interstate commerce, and the banking problem
• 17:06 — Hemp vs. cannabis: the Granny Smith / Fuji apple
• 19:00 — How we got here: 1937 Tax Act, 1970 CSA, the racial history
• 25:00 — Has the culture actually shifted?
• 30:00 — Kids, cigarettes, alcohol: putting the risk in order
• 39:00 — What's next, and the timeline nobody can pin down
• 46:33 — The 1% takeaway: plant medicine vs. the pharmacy
• 53:00 — Judgment, compassion, and set and setting

Connect with the hosts:

• Don: https://trainrecoverwin.com
• Mode & Method (HRV+): https://modemethod.com
• Klaudia: https://longevityjournalist.com

Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for?

It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run.

Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

In episode 66 of the 90% Healthy Podcast, co-hosts Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley unpack why the billionaire longevity race may be pointing everyone back toward the same affordable basics: sleep, breath, movement, nutrient-dense food, light, and community

They dig into what the ultra-wealthy are really buying when they pour money into experimental longevity science, and why the fear-driven lifestyle that money builds (private security, constant vigilance) may quietly work against the healthspan they're chasing. From reverse-engineering the leading causes of death by decade to the difference between a million and a billion seconds, this conversation reframes longevity as something you already have agency over.

In this episode:

• Why the ultra-wealthy have reportedly poured billions into longevity research, and what that money keeps circling back to
• The "million vs. billion vs. trillion seconds" reframe that puts wealth and time in perspective
• How stress, environment, and evolutionary mismatch drive aging more than most supplements
• Leading causes of death by decade, and why reverse-engineering them is the real longevity strategy
• Why falls become the threat after 70, and how strength and balance protect you= Intentional recovery: why sleep is a practice, not perfection (via Dr. Ron Garbo)
• Breath as your free "superpower"! Five seconds in, five seconds out for parasympathetic impact
• The Guardian's "anti-aging is anti-life" argument and longevity as comparison culture
• Why cannabis rescheduling (Schedule I to III) and psychedelics are the next frontier.... stay tuned for an upcoming episode
• Purpose and service as longevity tools, from Jimmy Carter to building your own community

Your 1% takeaway: You don't need billions to have agency over your health. The most redundant, ordinary, affordable practices, including sleep, breath, movement, food, light, and community, move the needle the most, and they compound.

LINKS:

Klaudia — longevityjournalist.com

Don — trainrecoverwin.com

Guardian article: ‘Anti-ageing is anti-life’: why longevity culture is just ageism in a lab coat

If this reframed longevity for you, leave a comment, drop a rating, and share it with someone who thinks healthy aging is only for the rich.

You lose 30 pounds on a GLP-1. How much of it is muscle? On Episode 65, Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley take on the objection nearly everyone lands on — "it eats muscle" — and find that it's wrong, but not entirely wrong.

Don calls this class of drugs one of the most important developments in medicine, arguably more important to the human race than AI. He also takes them himself, watches his HRV drop when he does, and has decided not to stay on them forever.

Both of those things can be true at once. In this episode, Klaudia and Don work through what's real about lean mass loss, what the pipeline looks like now, and the story that reframes the whole conversation: elementary schoolers being prescribed Wegovy.

In this episode:

• Why "GLP-1s eat muscle" is the wrong framing, and what's happening instead. You cannot lose weight without losing some lean mass, whether that's from a GLP-1, from fasting, or from bariatric surgery
• Roughly a quarter of the total weight lost on GLP-1 receptor agonists is lean mass, comparable to other weight-loss methods but significant for anyone already vulnerable to sarcopenia.
• The highest-risk profile for muscle loss: older adults, rapid or large absolute weight loss, low dietary protein, sedentary patterns, chronic kidney disease, or long-standing diabetes

• Why GLP-1 use and the fasting literature overlap more than either camp acknowledges, and what that means for training in a deficit
• Don's case that GLP-1s will matter more to the human race than AI, and why he thinks the risk-to-benefit profile is better than almost anything else in the medicine cabinet

• Reported findings that people move less after starting a GLP-1 — not dramatically less, but in a direction worth watching• Myostatin inhibition and the uncomfortable question of what happens when the muscle problem also gets a pharmaceutical answer
• Doctors are prescribing Wegovy to elementary-school-age children, well below the FDA's approved floor of 12. Off-label use in an age group where the safety data isn't established. Source: "When Diets Don't Work, Parents Turn to Wegovy for Elementary School Kids," The Wall Street Journal
• Where Klaudia and Don disagree on mic: he extends the benefit of the doubt to prescribing physicians, she keeps asking who's responsible for the education that has to come with the prescription.

Your 1% takeaway: if you're on a GLP-1 or considering one, two resistance sessions a week and protein-forward eating are the smallest evidence-backed hedge against the lean-mass tradeoff. And pick the movement you'd do anyway, because adherence is the whole game.

More from Klaudia: https://longevityjournalist.comMore from Don: https://trainrecoverwin.comActa Diabetologica review on muscle loss and GLP-1R agonists: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41201615/

Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for?

It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run.

Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Nothing here replaces care from a qualified healthcare professional. Talk to your doctor before starting, stopping, or changing any medication, supplement, or exercise program. Hosts and guests share personal experience and opinion, and some discussion may involve off-label medication use. In an emergency, contact your local emergency services.

Your HRV dropped 15 points overnight. Does that ruin your day? On Episode 64, Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley dig into the line between health agency and health obsession, and why "orthosomnia" (losing sleep over your sleep score) is a real and growing problem.

We are the first generation that can walk into a doctor's office with months of our own health data, and that agency is genuinely powerful. But for a growing number of people, tracking has tipped into obsession. In this episode, Klaudia and Don talk through where that line sits, why it matters, and how to build real resilience instead of just chasing a better score.

In this episode:

• Why orthosomnia is becoming an actual clinical concern among wearable users

• The Pareto principle applied to health: the last 20% of optimization costs roughly four times the effort of the first 80%

• Don's "speedometer" rule for reading his own HRV data without letting it dictate his day

• The controversy around a newly funded Stanford wearable claiming to track female hormones

• Why the Global Wellness Summit named "over-optimization backlash" one of its defining 2026 wellness trends, and how the $7 trillion wellness industry is trying to solve a soon-approaching $7 trillion healthcare problem

Source: US health spending to surpass $7T by 2031, and even $9 trillion by 2035, according to estimates from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office

• The data behind wearable abandonment: roughly a third of users quit within six months

• How devices like the Oura Ring and Whoop are helping some users cut back on alcohol

• Don's own experiment coming off metformin and blood pressure medication, and what he and his wife are noticing about GLP-1s and HRV

• The Five Rocks: purpose, community, movement, nutrient-dense food, and sleep & light. The small, sustainable levers that build real resilience.

LINKS

More from Klaudia: https://longevityjournalist.com

More from Don: https://trainrecoverwin.com

Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for?

It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run.

Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Dr. Marco Altini joins Klaudia and Don for the deepest heart rate variability conversation the show has done yet.

Marco holds a PhD cum laude in applied machine learning, an M.Sc. in human movement sciences and high-performance coaching, has published more than 50 papers and patents at the intersection of physiology and technology, co-founded HRV4Training, advises Oura, guest-lectures at VU Amsterdam, edits for IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine, and just released his first book, Heart Rate Variability: Science and Strategies for Peak Performance (Human Kinetics, May 2026).

This conversation covers the full arc of HRV, from the foundational science, to how to measure it correctly, to what actually moves the number, to how elite athletes and coaches use it to train smarter, to the surprising links between HRV, the brain, and burnout.

A quick note on this episode: shortly after we started recording, Marco had to turn his video off to make sure we could give you the clearest possible audio. He was joining us from Italy, and the connection wasn't cooperating on the video side, but the conversation was too good not to bring to you, so we prioritized the story over the picture. Thanks for understanding!

In this episode:

• Marco's path from machine learning to human movement science to HRV
• The most dangerous hype in wearables and biometrics right now
• The biggest HRV myths even serious athletes and coaches still believe
• Marco's validity findings on Garmin's Health Snapshot feature
• The minimum viable daily HRV measurement routine
• Vagally mediated HRV and the Vagal Tank Theory, explained simply
• Chest strap vs. wristband vs. finger sensor vs. phone camera — an honest accuracy ranking
• Whether continuous HRV monitoring is useful or just noise
• What the newest habit-and-HRV research actually shows
• Metabolic flexibility, fueling, and how it shows up in endurance athletes' data
• How altitude, heat, and travel affect HRV — and what to do about it
• What HRV-guided training looks like day-to-day
• Tapering, race-day HRV, and team-sport applications
• HRV, cognitive function, mental fatigue, and burnout
• The Normal Range concept from HRV4Training Pro
• Where wearable and HRV monitoring is headed in the next 5 years
• The 30-Day HRV Challenge from Marco's new book

Guest: Dr. Marco Altini — Co-founder, HRV4Training | Advisor, Oura | Guest Lecturer, VU Amsterdam | Editor, IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine | Co-Author, Heart Rate Variability: Science and Strategies for Peak Performance (Human Kinetics, 2026)

Hosts: Klaudia Balogh (Longevity Journalist, longevityjournalist.com) & Don Moxley (Sports Scientist, trainrecoverwin.com)

🔗 Marco's Substack: hrv4training.substack.com📖 The book is available now through Human Kinetics and Amazon

🎧 New episodes of the 90% Healthy Podcast drop weekly. Subscribe, comment your HRV questions, and let us know who needs to hear this one.