Free metabolic capacity assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/

Waitlist to work with me: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/

Why do we get tired? The afternoon crash usually isn't sleep, age, or laziness. It comes down to your metabolic capacity: your body's ability to produce energy, manage it, and recover from the demands placed on you. In this video, I break down the real biology of fatigue, from mitochondria and metabolic flexibility to insulin and why caffeine stops working, and how you can actually change it.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why your mitochondria set your energy ceiling, not your willpower
• How you can carry thousands of calories of fuel and still crash
• Insulin, Randle's glucose-fatty acid cycle, and afternoon brain fog
• The adenosine mechanism behind caffeine, and why the 3rd coffee fails
• How recovery, HRV, and mitochondrial biogenesis rebuild capacity

My name is Andrew Reid, and I'm the founder of Medgeeks. For 15 years, I've worked on two sides of the same problem: caring for patients and clients directly, and teaching the science of metabolism to the clinicians who treat them. I've had 100,000+ patient/client encounters, and 50,000+ people read my emails daily to get a handle on their metabolic health. Welcome to the Medgeeks community!

Training:

• Physician Assistant, UC Davis
• MS in Personalized Nutrition, University of Connecticut
• Precision Nutrition, University of Connecticut
• Dietetics, Cal State LA

My cardiologist ran a full cardiac workup (MRI, stress test, ambulatory ECG, labs) and told me I was perfectly healthy. I was 40 lbs overweight, insulin-resistant, nutritionally deficient, and running on 2–4 hours of sleep. Everything was "normal." Nothing was fine.

▶ FREE email course: the exact steps I used to go from dysfunction toward resilient health (no cost, straight to your inbox):

https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/

If you're a clinician, this one's for you. You read labs all day, but nobody is reading yours. And "normal" labs can hide a metabolism that's quietly drifting years before any diagnosis shows up.

In this video, I break down the gap between what your bloodwork flags and what your body is actually doing; why conventional medicine is built to catch disease but not dysfunction, why the reference range fails you, and what it actually takes to move toward what I call resilient health.

We cover insulin resistance, the reference range problem, cellular metabolism, an autoimmune marker (ANA) that turned negative once I fixed the underlying environment, and the full spectrum from dysfunction to disease-free to resilient health.

I tested ProLon, the fasting-mimicking diet, against a 5-day sardine fast, ran my own bloodwork, and got the opposite result I expected. ProLon is the best-known version of the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), a 5-day, low-calorie, plant-based protocol developed from Dr. Valter Longo's research at USC. The sardine fast is the cheap, unbranded version people keep hyping online.

Free course (resilient health): https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/

I ran both on myself about a month apart, kept calories low on each, and tracked the same markers throughout: IGF-1, fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and glucose ketone index.

I was sure the premium protocol would win. I had spent years studying these pathways and expected the plant-based, low-protein design to be the real driver. A few cans of fish gave me the opposite answer. What you'll see in this podcast:

• The exact lab data that flipped my prediction
• IGF-1 side by side: the FMD dropped mine 55 points, the sardine fast dropped it 88
• How the sardine fast drove me into a deeper ketotic state than the $200 kit
• Where my fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and GKI landed on each protocol
• A clearer way to understand mTOR and autophagy
• Why autophagy is not the on-off switch the internet claims
• Why a little of the right protein may help protect lean muscle during a deficit
• What this means for clinicians who want metabolic interventions patients can actually afford

About: I'm Andrew Reid. I founded Medgeeks in 2013, and for the last five years, I've been rebuilding how I think about chronic disease from the cell up. My goal is to treat nutrition as a real therapeutic intervention, held to the same standard of rigor we expect from pharmaceuticals.

Subscribe for nutrition held to a higher standard, with real data and honest answers even when they're inconvenient.

Disclaimer: This is an N of 1 experiment on my own physiology, shared for educational purposes only. It is not medical advice. A protocol like this is not right for everyone, especially if you are lean, managing a chronic condition, or taking medication. Talk with your healthcare provider before attempting any form of fasting or significant dietary change.

When my daughter was six months old, her platelet count dropped to 2,000. Over the next two years she was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease (MELAS), lupus, and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), and was seen by nine different specialists. Not one of them connected those findings to each other.

Free course (resilient health): https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/

This is the story of what almost losing her taught me about chronic disease, why our current model of medicine keeps failing complex and chronically ill clients, and why I am back on the podcast after almost a decade away.

I am Andrew Reid, founder of Medgeeks. I trained as a Physician Assistant, spent five years in primary care, and have spent over a decade since educating clinicians. None of it prepared me for my own daughter. To help her, I had to go back and learn the biology underneath chronic disease: mitochondrial medicine, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, metabolomics, and clinical nutrition. What I found changed how I think about every client I see.

Going forward, this show is about that biology and the clinical reasoning that follows from it. Mitochondrial function, the cell danger response, metabolic health, autoimmune disease, insulin resistance, and the systems-based, root-cause approach to chronic disease that conventional training leaves out. We also get into the other side of that same continuum: building muscle, exercise as medicine, sleep, nutrition, and the levers that move someone toward genuinely optimal health.

The goal is simple: better health, with better science.

Whether you are a clinician reasoning through complex clients, someone facing chronic illness in your own life or your family's, or you are already healthy and want to understand how to optimize and protect that health for the long run, this is the work I want to do in front of you.

If this resonated, the best thing you can do is follow the show wherever you listen and leave a review. It genuinely helps more clinicians and more families find this work. Thank you for being here.

In this episode, we will dive into the chilling world of historical medical treatments. From Belladonna eye drops used to dilate pupils to mercury being used to remove reckles or skin blemishes. These treatments, while now unimaginable, were once believed to be benificial.

Join Dr. Niket Sonpal for some spine-chilling journey through the past of medicine.

In the next podcast episode, we will continue our talk on hemophilia. Specifically the treatment of hemophilia. We'll discuss the different types of therapy available, from traditional factor replacement to emerging gene-techniques.

Join Dr. Niket Sonpal as he helps us manage hemophilia patients.

Have you ever wondered about the history hemophilia? In this episode, we will dive into the world of hemophilia, a hereditary bleeding disorder that affects millions worldwide. We'll explore the basics of this condition, including genetic causes and how it impacts individuals.

Join Dr. Niket Sonpal for another genetic blood disorder.

Hereditary elliptocytosis, a blood disorder marked by abnormally shaped red blood cells, can significantly impact quality of life. In this episode, we delve into the world of elliptocytosis, exploring its causes, symptoms, and the challenges faced by those living with this condition.

Common symptoms include fatigue, anemia, jaundice, and abdominal or splenic pain. Diagnosis typically involves a blood test examining red blood cell shape and size. Treatment may include medications, blood transfusions, and potentially splenectomy.

Join Dr. Niket Sonpal as we discuss this rare, genetic blood conditon.

In this episode, we delve into the world of Gilbert's Syndrome, a common genetic condition affecting the liver's bilirubin processing.

We'll discuss symptoms, diagnosis, treatment options, and dispels common misconceptions. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal and discover how to navigate the challenges of Gilbert's Syndrome.

In this next episode, it might leave you feeling red in the face. We will dive into the world of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. A condition that can lead to hemolytic anemia, a condition where the red blood cells break down prematurely.

We'll discuss the genetic condition and its causes, the signs and symptoms your patient might present with, the diagnosis and treatments such as avoiding triggers, regular blood tests and possibly blood transfusions.

Join Dr. Niket Sonpal on this often overlooked condition.

September 16, 2024