Why to be sceptical of reference ranges and look deeper?

When a lab is setting up a new blood test, they can use the manufacturer’s range based on..

1) Reagents provided (pre-made solutions)

2) Published reference ranges

3) Locally established reference ranges as the baseline. 

They then confirm these reference ranges using a minimum sample population of 20-25 patient samples to confirm that these reference ranges correspond to the local population that the testing laboratory will be conducting this blood test on. 

Limitation #1: We live in a very heterogeneous society, particularly in major Australian cities, thus the ranges can be skewed to a demographic that you may not be (minority populations and mixed ethnicity)

Limitation #2: Unhealthy user bias. This is where unhealthy people are typically biased to perform a certain behaviour (e.g. go to the Doctor and get their blood tested).

This attracts sicker more unhealthy people to get their blood tested, thus the sample that confirms these ranges can be confounded.

There are comparatively very few healthy patients who are just curious to check their bloods and will be a part of this sample.

This skews the data towards a reference range that represents poorer health.

If there are no published reference ranges, a population of ~120 patient samples are required from the local ‘healthy’ population. 

Basic statistics are then applied and the 95% percentile is then used to establish the normal population.

Limitation #3: It is important to note that this means that 5% of the population will fall outside of this normal reference range.

Strength #1: This is good because they will control for major risk factors such as smoking, obesity and disease.

However, we all observe that the average ‘healthy’ population can often be unhealthy in many ways (overfat, GI issues, micronutrient deficiencies, poor mental health, low exercise frequency).

This again skews the data in a way that you may not like to be compared against.

The Ideal World

In an ideal world, reference ranges would be sub-categorised based on different levels of health status, lean body mass, strength levels and overall wellbeing. This would allow the patient and Doctor to negotiate on who they should be compared against.

An overweight 50 year old with diabetes probably doesn’t need to be compared to a 25 year old athlete.

Yet the reference ranges are based on both these people.

An alternative solution would be comparing the 50-year-old to a healthier standard deviation. Then you would aim to slowly move him to the ideal health status one standard deviation at a time.

On the other hand, the athlete who wants to improve and maintain would be compared to his respective cohort, not to the average ‘healthy’ population which is not who he aspires to be.

The Solution

Now, this obviously doesn’t exist in traditional medicine, but it does exist!

Where?

In the hands of health professionals who…

1. Spends time reading modern literature to stay up to date on what is ideal and optimal.
2. They align with the value that being average is not ideal.
3. They have the value and skillset to maximise the health, wellness and performance of their clients.
4. Publically and privately admit when they’re wrong and have learnt something new.
5. Is not emotional or dogmatic about views towards certain health behaviours.
6. Can argue the opposite perspective to their own belief.

These are traits of a coach, health professional or Doctor you want to look for if you want to be more than average.

Have healthy scepticism and look deeper into your health with someone who understands that you need to comprehensively look at the entire human.

Diving Deeper Into Reference Ranges

Location

The way that reference ranges are determined also needs to be kept in mind when travelling around different hospitals or clinics that use different pathology providers – reference ranges might be similar amongst testing laboratories but there will be some subtle differences. There are also different testing methods used which may affect the reference ranges.

Example: Mean Cell Volume (MCV)

The mean cell volume, or MCV, is a red blood cell indices that measures the average volume of a red blood cell.

Values obtained outside the normal range can be indicative of thalassemia, anaemia, vitamin deficiency, or alcoholism. Depending on the testing lab, the reference range may be:

• 79 – 93 fL (http://perinatology.com/Reference/Reference%20Ranges/Mean%20corpuscular%20volume.htm)
• 80 – 96 fL (https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/2085770-overview)
• 80 – 100 fL (https://www.mydr.com.au/tests-investigations/full-blood-count-fbc)

If you’re moving areas be considerate that your reference range may be different to your new location. 

Practical Examples: TSH & PSA

In practice, there are no rigid limits demarcating the diseased population from the healthy.

The normal reference range for TSH is 0.4 – 4.0 mU/L.

However, if a patient presents with a result of 4.05, you wouldn’t immediately scream ‘hypothyroidism’.

You would take the result in light of the clinical picture you have developed by looking at all the other symptoms a patient presents with and then make an informed decision.

Furthermore, you would acknowledge that most clinical symptoms, modern data and clinicians will generally agree that TSH >2.0 is often problematic, particularly for females trying to conceive.

In practice, there is quite a bit of overlap in values between normal and diseased pathology results.

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is an example of this:

This is the scenario that we are frequently left with. If we have a cutoff at E, we pick up everyone with the disease – everyone is a true positive. But we’re also missing a lot of patients whose results may be lower and fall into the normal reference range. 

Move it to C, we get more true positives, but we’re also getting a number of false positives.

If we move the cutoff to A, we pick up everyone with prostate cancer. We also pick up nodular hyperplasia and prostatitis and those patients have to undergo a biopsy, but it’s better to pick up all patients with cancer than miss a few and have to provide palliative care later when the disease is too advanced.

This is wonderfully objective and contextual. I don’t know if Doctors < the 2010s were taught this type of mentality, but modern Doctors coming up now I am excited about.

Practical Example: Creatinine

Creatinine is a waste product produced by muscle and it is produced at a fairly constant level.

It is not absorbed or secreted and must be excreted by the kidney.

A high level in the blood could indicate kidney dysfunction.

I often see this along with Urea high in my clients because almost all of them consistently weight train 3-5x p/w and consume a high protein diet.

The context of this lends itself to a different interpretation.

Creatinine Reference Ranges

Male: 60 – 120 umol/L

Female: 45 – 90 umol/L

7 – 11-year-olds: 29 – 65 umol/L

If an asymptomatic young female patient presents with a creatinine of 130 umol/L, this could mean she has renal disease…BUT…there are clear issues with this assumption. 

Morjorie started bodybuilding at the age of 72. This picture was taken when she was 86.

If she turned up to your clinic in a T-shirt or jumper, your assumption would be that she is your typical geriatric patient.

A creatinine result of 130 umol/L would start you organising immediate treatment for kidney dysfunction.

However, because she works out frequently, this would be a normal result for her.

While she is an outlier, this result would be normal for many females who weight train consistently (they are not outliers).

Blood Test Confounding Factors

The Mistake Of Looking At One Blood Test

Reference ranges are only a guide and you need to compare these results to previous results.

Thus we want to look at TRENDS over time not solely rely on snapshots of moments in time.

If a result does not fit with the clinical picture you have come up with based on symptoms and the clinical picture, repeat the test with a fresh sample.

There can be several reasons for an unexplained result. This could be because of:

• Pre-analytical, occurring outside the laboratory, e.g. the wrong specimen being collected, mislabelling, incorrect preservation, etc.
• Analytical, occurring within the laboratory, e.g. human or instrumental error: precision/accuracy; lipaemia; haemolysis.
• Post-analytical, whereby a correct result is generated but is incorrectly recorded in the patient’s record, e.g. because of a transcription error.

Most Doctors coming up in the last 5-10 years are taught that just because the patient’s result falls into the acceptable reference range, this may be an abnormal result for them.

But there are many old school traditionally minded Doctors who unfortunately haven’t stayed up to date on the changes and advances in thinking and science.

Please be patient and empathetic with them, some people are just stuck in the mud and don’t even know it.

For more education on maximising health, wellness and performance follow me on Instagram, Facebook & YouTube or see my coaching services here to get into the best health of your life.

P.S. Please note this is how Australian health practitioners are taught this may not representative of other countries.

The post The Dangers of “Normal” Blood Test Ranges: Optimal vs Normal & How Blood Test Ranges Are Made appeared first on Strength of Saad.

“My RICE guidelines have been used for decades, but new research shows rest and ice actually delay healing and recovery,” says Mirkin, now 84.

“If your muscles are sore, you can relieve that pain with ice. But the inflammation causing that soreness is actually bringing healing to the body; by icing, you “dampen that immune response,” he says. “You think you’re recovering faster, but science has shown you’re not.”

When Mirkin wrote his book, he was simply reporting the anecdotal evidence of doctors who saw a temporary decrease in swelling and pain from immobilization, ice and compression.

“In 1978, inflammation wasn’t even in researched literature, but everyone was resting, putting people in casts, wrapping things tightly with ice,” Mirkin says.

“I didn’t recommend anything on the basis of extended research. I recommended what everyone was doing at the time.”

“And because “RIC” just wasn’t that catchy, and a gravitational assist can help blood and fluid be reabsorbed by the body, Mirkin added an “E” at the end for “elevation.” It made for a nice slogan: “RICE is Nice.”

Yet it is still taught in medical and physical therapy schools today and is listed on the National Institute of Health website as the top treatment for acute and chronic sports injuries.

How Icing Adversely Affects Injury Repair & Healing

The first question is why are we icing?

Our goal with injury is to prevent further loss and facilitate the repair and healing of tissue that’s been damaged.

Question: how does ice help that process? It most likely doesn’t and may even make it worse. Here’s why.

When tissue is damaged, the immune system initiates that inflammatory response, which a 2010 study published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal showed is necessary to heal damaged tissue and repair muscle.

The body deploys its repair and cleanup crew in the form of macrophages, white blood cells that engulf and digest cellular debris. They produce the protein insulin-like growth factor 1, which is required for muscle repair and regeneration. The same study showed that blocking inflammation delays healing by preventing the release of IGF-1.

This figure doesn’t represent perfectly what is happening during a musculoskeletal injury but is an example of a typical wound healing response you might see in response to an ACL surgery for example.

The theory about why icing may be detrimental to managing injuries is because ice delays the above healing process by constricting blood vessels and allowing less fluid to reach the injured area, as demonstrated in a 2013 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

This research showed that topical cooling delays recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage. Additionally, a 2015 article published in Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy showed that the narrowing of blood vessels caused by icing persists after cooling ends and the resulting restriction of blood flow can damage otherwise healthy tissue; implying icing may cause more damage on top of the existing injury.

As far back as 1986, a study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine showed that when ice is applied for a prolonged period, lymphatic vessels become more permeable, causing a backflow of fluid into the interstitial space. That means local swelling at an injury site may increase, not decrease, with the use of ice.

Fluid & Swelling

Inflammation and swelling have been deemed the enemy, but maybe they’re not.

Inflammation is a process the body uses to heal tissue, while swelling is a byproduct of that process,” says Dr Joshua Appel, an Air Force flight surgeon for the 306th Pararescue Squadron and Chief of Emergency medicine at Southern Arizona VA Healthcare System.

“When you recruit inflammatory markers to an acutely injured area, with that comes fluid. The body knows how to heal itself, so you’re not getting too much fluid. But you can have not enough evacuation.”

Swelling maybe not be a good or bad thing. Swelling may be merely an accumulation of waste at the end of the inflammatory cycle you have not yet evacuated. So how are you going to evacuate it? Activate the muscles in and around the damaged site, restore circulation and the lymphatic system will move the waste through.

The theory is, icing traps the waste in and around the damaged site and prevents the natural flow of oxygen supply to the tissue. This could cause additional damage and swelling (by causing a backflow from the lymphatic vessels into the interstitial space AKA a congestion of fluid).

While that’s happening the icing has dulled your ability to sense pain. So now you can enter potentially harmful ranges of movement your body would ordinarily tell you are painful. How could that possibly be a good plan to rehabilitation?

Summary

Is the body’s healing response of swelling and inflammation a mistake and should be blunted? At this point, probably not.

Why do we ice? Because we have pain that may be coming from swelling. Icing will numb the area but how is this helping the repair response?

Is your goal to take away the pain or take away THE REASON AND CAUSE its pain?

“Analogous to are you using drugs and alcohol to numb pain or getting to the root of why you want to numb the pain in the first place?”— Gary Reinl

Grains Of Truth

There are exceptions to every rule. Icing has a very useful role in reducing pain and exerting a temporary analgesic (pain reduction) effect. This should not be understated because we can use this tactfully to our advantage.

If someone is in a lot of pain that is severely affecting daily function and quality of life then icing and medication could easily be justified.

If an athlete is in the middle of a finals game and has had a patellofemoral or tendinopathy flare-up. Then icing a player and getting them temporarily out of pain and feeling better could be the difference between winning and losing.

We shouldn’t be so dogmatic in either direction to not see the grains of truth behind an argument. I hope that’s added some clarity on the efficacy of icing.

Better Alternatives To Ice / Cold Exposure:

Lymphatic System

While we need to protect the tissue from being over-stressed we use movement to facilitate repair.

How does the body clear swelling?

Most of the particles are too large to move through the vessels of the circulatory system, so they must instead be evacuated through the vessels of the lymphatic system. The lymphatics, though, are a mostly passive system, reliant on muscle activation; movement/muscle activation is necessary to propel fluid through the vessels. Sitting still with an ice pack creates the exact opposite effect.

Muscle Stimulation

If an injury is too painful or the area is too fragile for any type of voluntary movement, consider using a neuromuscular electrical stimulation device

Such devices create non-fatiguing muscle contractions, allowing waste and congestion to be removed by your lymphatic system, which is driven by muscle contraction. It’s movement without painful motion.

Activating muscles in and around the damaged site facilitates angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) which helps to recapilirise and re-build that network of vessels around the damaged site. It will also help mitgate muscular tissue atrophy which is common in healing injuries.

METH, PEACE & LOVE

In 2011, Canadian exercise physiologist John Paul Catanzaro coined the term METH — Movement, Elevation, Traction, Heat — as an alternative to RICE.

In April 2019, two British physical therapists proposed another acronym in the British Journal of Sports Medicine: PEACE — Protect, Elevate, Avoid anti-inflammatory modalities Compress, Educate

LOVE — Load, Optimism, Vascularization, Exercise.

All these ideas bias prioritising movement over decreasing inflammation.

For more education on maximising health, wellness and performance follow me on Instagram, Facebook & YouTube or see my coaching services here.

The post Icing Your Injuries Is Dumb appeared first on Strength of Saad.

Serum B12 blood test is pretty at detecting deficiency. Be skeptical if your Doctor sais ‘your B12 is in range you’re normal’, yet you’re experiencing adverse symptoms (fatigue, memory problems, weakness, dizziness, infertility) or just want to be proactive with your health.

Who Should Be Concerned? B12 Deficiency High-Risk Groups:

• Plant-based eaters.
• Elderly (less intrinsic factor produced as you age which absorbs B12).
• Gut issues (e.g. chrons, IBD.)
• Binge alcohol drinkers.
• Diabetics or athletes taking metformin.

Should all ideally get holo-transcobalamin (active B12) and/or methylmalonic acid and homocysteine testing.

“Serum B12 levels are wrong; the lower limit of the normal range should be 300 pg/ml and not 170 pg/ml or 200 pg/ml. Further, it has been concluded that the serum B12 is too non-specific to be a reliable guide of B12 status; instead, we should look to the serum MMA level.”

‘I take supplements so I’m fine…’

1. Not necessarily, malabsorption occurs frequently in the elderly, those with gut bacterial overgrowths, low stomach acid, and nutrient deficiencies. Just because you get enough dietarily doesn’t mean you’re meaningfully improving your B12 status.
2. “Supplements, fortified food, and beverages normally contain the less efficient cyanocobalamin form of vitamin B12, which when it enters the bloodstream must be converted to methylcobalamin, the only form of vitamin B12 that has a methyl donor that is required to neutralise homocysteine. It takes 4–9 weeks for this conversion to take place assuming there are no disruptions by genetic factors, age-related problems, and metabolic obstacles that may be present.”
3. “Furthermore, research suggests that vitamin B12 that is not dissolved in the mouth will not (up to 88 %) be absorbed, due to the lack of R-binder mostly obtained from saliva, which is required to start the absorption process. The aforementioned study indicates that supplementation with cyanocobalamin can be poorly absorbed, which will have little or no effect on raising vitamin B12 levels.”

Methylcobalamin lozenge supplements dissolved in the mouth are an ideal replacement.

“Measurement of homocysteine and/or methylmalonic acid should be used to confirm deficiency in asymptomatic high-risk patients with low normal levels of vitamin B(12).”

“ The usual dietary source of vitamin B₁₂ is animal products and those who choose to omit or restrict these products are destined to become vitamin B₁₂ deficient.”

Conclusion

Let’s be very careful about removing foods/food groups from our diet. Most health professionals struggle to understand the complex biochemistry of nutrition and supplementation let alone the average person.

You can severely fuck yourself by naively supplementing and removing food groups. A google search and conversation with your pharmacist are not sufficient. You should be studying in the area and/or work with someone who is and does understand this to minimise the eventual risks of nutrient deficiencies.

For more education on optimising health, wellness and performance follow me on Instagram, Facebook & YouTube or see my coaching services here.

References

• Diagnosis of cobalamin deficiency: the old and the new – PubMed
• Update on vitamin B12 deficiency – PubMedVitamin B(12) (cobalamin) deficiency is a common cause of megaloblastic anemia, a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms…pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Vitamin B12 DeficiencyVitamin B12 (cobalamin) is a water-soluble vitamin that is derived from animal products such as red meat, dairy, and
• Plasma total homocysteine status of vegetarians compared with omnivores: a systematic review and…Edit descriptioncore.ac.uk

The post How To Detect A B12 Deficiency appeared first on Strength of Saad.

IF I HEAR ANOTHER DOC SAY YOUR BLOOD TEST IS NORMAL

Read until the end if you want to know how to identify iron deficiency anaemia even though your bloods are in normal ranges.

I’ve heard this story too many times…

Client does blood tests I ask for… 

Everything is in range and ‘normal’ according to the Doc. 

Yet the client is suffering from a litany of symptoms. 

Antipsychotic, antidepressant or steroid creams may be prescribed with minimal if any effort to get to the underlying issue.

Worst case, this is malpractice. Best case, this is ignorance and indifference.

Here’s how I could tell this iron panel wasn’t normal in 10 seconds…

Transferrin is like a boat that transports iron throughout the body. Elevation of transferrin is an indication the liver is signalling to make more transferrin. Above is 3.3 nearly out of the range (optimal: low-mid 2.0’s).

We can see here the body is trying to make more of these transferrin boats. 

Why is it doing that? 

High probability: because it doesn’t have enough iron.

We’re more confident in this theory once we see transferrin saturation is 13%. It looks ‘in range’ but it’s actually quite low. These boats are almost empty (not much iron in them). Transferrin saturation is an indication of how loaded the transferrin boats are WITH IRON. We want this in the mid-high 20’s%.

This show’s us the client has iron and/or copper deficiency which is consistent with symptoms of low energy levels and fatigue.

Why did I mention copper? 

Ceruloplasmin is a protein/ferroxidase enzyme made in the liver that loads iron into the boat (transferrin) to be transported through the body. Ceruloplasmin stores and carries the majority of the bodies serum copper stores. So if you have a copper deficiency you can’t load iron for transport efficiently. Low copper → low ceruloplasmin → iron transport is screwed.

By copper and ceruloplasmin testing, we can determine if the client has a copper and/or iron deficiency and implement an appropriate nutrition strategy instead of indiscriminately giving IRON SUPPLEMENTATION!! (which many health professionals do).

Ceruloplasmin

Most doctors won’t get this tested. But it is important and helps complete the picture of what intervention we should prescribe to the client. The cuproenzymes, superoxide dismutase and ceruloplasmin, are known to have antioxidant properties.

It should also be noted that if you see low ceruloplasmin (0.01–0.2 g/L) there could be other nutrient co-factor deficiencies at play. Ceruloplasmin depends on magnesium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and which has the capacity to oxidize ferrous iron (Fe2+) to ferric iron (Fe3+), which can be loaded onto the iron-transport protein, transferrin (see Morley Robbins for more).

Identifying an iron deficiency is nuanced and not as simple as observing if an iron panel is ‘in range’. It is dependent on other tests to verify a pathology, help people out of debilitating symptoms and improve their quality of life.

I don’t think coaches like me should know more about the nuances of biochemistry, bloodwork and nutrition than a GP. 

But we force ourselves to because we see the flaw’s in the medical system and want to help people avoid being sick and proactively improve quality of life, health and wellbeing.

If you need guidance through optimising your health, wellness and performance contact me here or on my Instagram.

The post Your Blood Test Is Not Normal Part 1 – Iron | How You Could Be Anemic & Not Know It appeared first on Strength of Saad.

This is from a client who lost 10kg and got very lean (<40mm 9 site skinfolds and <8% body fat).

Lower T with very low body fat is one reason we see:

• Infertility (lower semen production + amenorrhea).
• Depression.
• Almost no libido.
• Sleep quality problems.
• Low energy, apathy and fatigue.

It is normal and expected to see testosterone plummet in response to a prolonged energy deficit with very low body fat levels. As you can see after 6 months of returning back to maintenance, gaining muscle and some fat, total and free T levels normalise. 

Testosterone, free testosterone and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) are different forms of T in the bloodstream.

Bound Testosterone

T is bound to SHBG and albumin. These are proteins that bind and transport T through the body in a mostly inactive state (it can’t exert much, if any effect upon the body).

Unbound Testosterone 

~1–3% of the T in the body is ‘free’ which refers to its unbound state not attached to any proteins. In this unbound state it is biologically active and can bind to receptors.

Free T is arguably the most important number, not total T, because free T is what’s bioavailable and what going to bind to the AR receptor to exert its androgenic effects of the synthesis of tissue, energy levels, libido etc.

Total testosterone on a blood test is the sum of all the testosterone in your blood (bound and unbound).

A 40% energy deficit (30% dietary restriction + 10% increase in physical activity above energy requirements) resulted in significant decreases in circulating T despite a high percentage of caloric intake being from protein.

Luteinizing Hormone

If you’re concerned about your T levels you also want to get your luteinizing hormone (LH) checked. LH is known for causing the ovaries to release an egg. So male’s don’t typically care about it and Doctors don’t typically look at it in males. But LH is the signal for the testes to make more T.

Caloric deficits have been shown to significantly reduce LH pulse frequency and amplitude during waking hours and increase at night in women. Another study showed LH pulsatility is harmed during an energy deficit in women.

Nutritional Co-Factors 

Co-factors needed for testosterone metabolism include zinc and calcium to help bind SHBG.

A zinc ion is used on the conformation of the SHBG peptide chain and a calcium ion is needed to link what’s called a dimer (two identical molecules linked) together, keep it stable and improve steroid-binding activity. 

Often missing from the conversation of biochemistry is nutritional co-factors. So I wanted to highlight how deficiencies have the mechanistic probability to exert negative effects on testosterone. We now begin to see evidence of micronutrients like magnesium improving testosterone.

Final Thoughts & Practical Takeaway’s

• Manging nutritional deficiencies becomes paramount during an energy deficit.
• There is probably evidence that intaking optimal micronutrients (zinc, calcium, magnesium) before embarking on an energy deficit may improve one’s physiological response to the deficit.
• Low energy availability clearly has detrimental effects on physiology and the endocrine system. Though these effects are largely transient.

The post How Testosterone Plummets During A Caloric Deficit appeared first on Strength of Saad.

S-Adenosyl Methionine (SAM) is a compound found in nearly all tissues in the body that plays a critical role in breaking down catecholamines (neurotransmitters/stress hormones).

You need B-vitamins and magnesium to generate enough SAM. Thus if we are deficient in any of these we undermine our ability to degrade stress hormones that can keep us jacked up for longer.

If you’ve noticed over the years you’re more sensitive to anxiety and respond poorly to stress by taking a long time to calm down, it may be because of a B-vitamin/magnesium deficiency.

As you can see in the diagram ‘MAO’ and ‘COMT’ are enzymes involved in dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine metabolism. When we experience acute or chronic stress COMT and MAO break down these hormones so they don’t build up for too long. But these enzymes need nutrients we get from our food like meat (clams, liver) and green leafy vegetables/pumpkin seeds. Let’s be honest, most people don’t get enough and are nutrient deficient.

• NAD needs B3.
• FAD needs B2.
• SAM needs B12, zinc, magnesium.

If you can’t make SAM due to not having enough of its nutritional cofactors you will put pressure on other pathways like MAO and COMT and use a lot of B-vitamins in the process to compensate.

When there is a nutrient deficiency it’s like a road that becomes blocked, the traffic has to be distributed elsewhere. This causes traffic to build up (other nutritional resources get depleted) and car accidents are more likely to happen (adverse symptom, stress and illness).

Some people are naturally NOT good under high-stress situations and take a long time to calm down into a parasympathetic state. This is one probable common nutritional biochemical explanation why.

But let’s discuss and summarise some additional explanations…

#1 Sufficient Nutrient Cofactor Support To Support COMT/MAO Pathways

• There are physiological reasons why some people may be predisposed to being able to handle stress and manage the surge of catecholamines like adrenalin. 
• When we have excess dopamine, noradrenaline or adrenaline COMT is the enzyme that degrades catecholamines. But COMT is depdendent on SAM and Mg. We need B3, B2, B9 and B12 to make SAM. If we are deficient in these B-vitamins and Mg we’re gonna have a really bad time at managing stress and getting into a parasympathetic state.
• If you do not have adequate SAM resources you won’t be able to offload and metabolise the build of these catecholamines during high-stress situations.

#2 Fast Running COMT/MAO 

• Whether you’re a fighter or emergency responder you need to be able to stay calm under high sympathetic activity and stress.
• Some people have fast MAO/COMPT which means they will metabolise these neurotransmitters like dopamine and catecholamines really quickly.
• They may have a lower mood/temperament.
• Thus giving them the co-factors the COMPT/MAO may be accelerating the offload of these neurotransmitters even further.
• This explains how giving someone magnesium and B-vitamins can make people feel worse as it lowers mood, anxiety and even depression.
• It may result in dopamine being metabolised really quickly thus they may struggle more than others to seek things out (reward and motivation)
• Fast COMT/MAO metabolisers by default may have lower mood/temperament.
• So giving these people more co-factors like B-vitamins and Mg may be the last thing you want to do because it could worsen mood and trigger apathy and lower motivation through enhancing the breakdown of dopamine, adrenalin etc. 

#3 Slow Running COMT/MAO

• This is the opposite of the above. 
• It’s analogous to choking the funnel for catecholamines and neurotransmitters to be metabolised. 
• The COMT/MAO enzymes are just running too slow.
• In these cases giving these types of people, more of the co-factors for SAM (B-Vitamins & Mg) may help that sluggish enzyme normalise.
• These people usually respond the most favourably to supplementation.

As you can see, indiscriminate supplementation without considerations of biochemistry can make some people worse.

Plant-based eaters are probable to be deficient in B-vitamins. Meat only eaters are probable to be deficient in magnesium with 50% of the US population not meeting adequate intake levels.

Magnesium and B-vitamins have radical effects on transforming someone’s ability to manage stress. It’s a good idea to pay attention to them.

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The post Reducing Stress & Anxiety with B-Vitamins & Magnesium appeared first on Strength of Saad.

By increasing our maximal outputs we can increase our average sub-maximal outputs.

Therefore the exact same intensity of running speed POST speed adaptation will feel easier than it did previously = you can tolerate performing the old speed (pre-improvement) for longer. Now you have developed a larger speed reserve to tap into it.

It’s analogous in some ways to gaining muscle mass.

If you have more contractile tissue you will have a larger motor unit pool to recruit from to produce force, thus the same weights you once did POST muscular adaptation will now feel lighter.

Speed & Power Is Not Just For Athletes

One way to recruit fast-twitch (type IIb/x) muscle fibres is to contract a muscle rapidly and forcefully. Fast-twitch motor units have larger cross-sections and generate greater force per single motor unit than small twitch fibres. Also, the muscle shortening velocity of fast-twitch motor units is ~4x larger than slow-twitch muscle fibres.

So we can generate more force to facilitate maximal strength adaptations by moving rapidly and explosively. Doing this with a combination of sub-maximal, bodyweight and heavy loads is the combination that tends to work best.

Think INTENT TO MOVE THE BAR/WEIGHT (I’ve heard Christian Woodford say this about 100x working with him).

If you care about being powerful and quick and not just strong and big then the rate of force development and speed matters and can be concurrently trained in the weight training program.

Speed and power adaptations are very quickly and easily lost after a few weeks (strength and muscle size are typically much slower to lose in comparison).

All it takes to maintain some of these adaptations and even build them is a couple of sets at the beginning of your training session or in between rest periods (look up contrast/complex training for more).

This is a big component many traditional bodybuilders don’t do. This is fine if you don’t care about being explosive or athletic. But I do. This is why you see me doing ‘dynamic effort’ training above which is used in conjugate programming systems.

I commonly use this with my in-season athletes. I apply it to myself and encourage my clients to do it during warm-up sets to:

1. Potentiate the nervous system for forthcoming heavier movements. This means we’re creating a temporary enhanced window to facilitate neuromuscular output.
2. Promote an increased motor unit firing rate which is highest in maximal effort fast contractions.
3. Retain fast-twitch fibre make-up and possibly shift a small amount of hybrid intermediate muscle fibres towards being more fast twitch.

We know a bigger muscle with a larger cross-sectional area certainly has more POTENTIAL to be strong and powerful. But only if you impose the demands necessary to elicit those power and speed adaptations.

Train slow – get slow.

Train quick – get quick.

The post Get Strong & Fast: The Speed Reserve Transfer Effect appeared first on Strength of Saad.

Here are two interesting studies from the 1990s.

12-30mmol/kg wet weight/hr of glycogen storage within 1h post-exercise.

Key Points To Post-Exercise Carbohydrate Timing:

Exercise provides a strong stimulant for carbohydrate absorption. Glycogen synthase activity is increased post-exercise which increases the permeability of the muscle cell membrane to glucose facilitating a more efficient faster absorption of glycogen within the first 1h post-exercise. Interestingly this process is insulin-independent, meaning we actually don’t require insulin to help us get the glucose into the muscle.

It seems like glycogen synthase enzyme does most of the work here in that short period post-exercise. Whereas the longer we go post-exercise before refeeding (particularly after ~1h) the more insulin-dependent we become to help shuttle glucose to muscle/live stores. 1h+ post-exercise re-feeding sees a much slower rate of glycogen restoration at 5-10mmol/kg /hr compared to 12-30 within an hour.

“This slower rate of glycogen storage occurred despite significantly elevated plasma glucose and insulin levels. The results suggest that delaying the ingestion of a carbohydrate supplement post-exercise will result in a reduced rate of muscle glycogen storage.”

This gives some justification for the importance of meal timing post-exercise if you want to prioritise refilling glycogen as quickly as possible.

But in another study, we noticed that carbohydrate timing had no significant difference to muscle glycogen storage at the 8 and 24h mark. “Following exercise, subjects were fed five high glycemic index (HGI) meals over a 24-h period, with the first three being fed either at 0-4 h (IT) or 2-6 h (DT) at 2-h intervals. Muscle biopsies were taken immediately after exercise and at 8 and 24 h post-exercise and analyzed for glycogen and glucose-6-phosphate.”

Practical Implications: Exercising ≥ 2 Times Per Day

If you’re an individual/athlete who performs multiple bouts of exercise in one day then carbohydrate timing post-exercise appears to be practically important to support rapid glycogen restoration for forthcoming bouts of activity.

This particularly appears to apply for exercise bouts that are within 4~ hours of each other (i.e. run at 9 AM and weight train at 1 PM).

If you only train once per day the differences in carbohydrate timing post-exercise for glycogen storage appear to make no difference over a 8-24h period, meaning carbohydrate timing post-exercise probably doesn’t matter much.

There are certainly other perspectives to consider, such as carbohydrates providing an anabolic stimulus for growth and the simple time efficiency to fit in a certain amount of calories in a day.

But from a rate of glycogen synthesis perspective if you are exercising more than once a day then it seems practically relevant, but if you are only exercising once a day it doesn’t seem so based on this research.

The post Does Carbohydrate Timing Post Exercise Matter? appeared first on Strength of Saad.

• One thing that sauna use has repeatedly been shown to do in observational studies and intervention trials is to induce protective responses against the deleterious biological processes that drive cardiovascular disease and related disability.
• In fact, more studies are showing that some of these responses recapitulate those experienced during exercise. For example, heart rate may increase up to 100 beats per minute during moderate-temperature sauna bathing sessions and up to 150 beats per minute during hotter sessions, similar to the increases observed during moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical exercise. Recently, a single 25-minute sauna session was comparable to moderate physical exercise with respect to cardiovascular measures. Like exercise, long-term sauna use generally improves blood pressure, endothelial function, and left ventricular function, and reduces inflammation.
• Studies out of Finland have shown using the Sauna 4-7x p/w (174F / 78C x20min) is associated with a 40% decrease all-cause mortality, 50%~ lower cardiovascular, 66% lower Alzheimer’s and a 60% lower dementia risk, 60% lower risk for sudden cardiac death, 51% lower risk for stroke, and 46% lower risk for hypertension. This there seems to be a dose dependent effect on sauna use and reduction in disease and ailment.
  • 2-3x didn’t show as robust effects but it had 24% decrease in cardiovascular risk.
  • Sauna: 180F x 20min where many of the improvements occur 
• Just a single sauna session has been shown to lower blood pressure, improve heart rate variability, and improve arterial compliance.
• For example, there is a 50-70% redistribution of blood flow away from the core to the skin to facilitate sweating. You start to sweat. Heart rate increases up to 150 beats per minute which corresponds to moderate-intensity physical exercise.
• The sauna mimics cardiovascular exercise in a lot of respects helping to improve blood vessel pliability/function, improving the hearts efficiency (doesn’t have to do as much work) because there’s increased plasma volume and producing heat shock proteins which have longevity implications. Human studies have shown people with polymorphisms that make them have more heat shock proteins are more likely to be a centenarian.
• Sitting in a 163F (72C) sauna for 30min can increase heat shock proteins by about 50% which lasts for 2 days.
• “20 minutes at 174º F (or 79º C) 2-3 times per week. However, those that used the sauna for 4-7 times a week, had an even more robust effect. This is based on the research of Dr. Jari Laukkanen who found in a pretty large trial of over 2,000 participants that men that used the sauna 2-3 times per week had a 27% lower cardiovascular disease risk, 24% lower all-cause mortality, and a 20% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to men that only used the sauna one time per week. Men that used the sauna 4-7 times per week had an even larger impact: 50% lower cardiovascular disease risk, 40% lower all-cause mortality, and a 66% lower risk of dementia and a 65% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to men that used the sauna once a week. 
• I have also talked quite a bit about the benefits of heat shock proteins including the prevention of protein aggregates in the brain that lead to Alzheimer’s disease, the growth of new neurons, preservation of muscle mass and more. 
• Longevity: Four weeks of using the sauna increased resting anti-inflammatory biomarkers (IL-10) and this adaptation happened faster in the already physically active. [Study]
• Purging Toxincs Including: Cadmium/Mercury/BPA/Hydrophobic toxins
• Sauna mimics moderate submaximal aerobic physical activity from a heart rate, cardiac output and blood pressure response. 
• Sauna increases heart rate variability: A 30min Finish sauna session post sauna, lowered HR and increased HRV and PNS activity. 
• Three weeks of post-exercise sauna bathing increased run time to exhaustion by 32% in six male distance runners

Sauna Use & Immune Function 

• Robust evidence suggests that sauna use promotes mild hyperthermia, which, in turn, induces a wide array of beneficial physiological responses. These responses reduce oxidative stress and inflammation and activate cellular defense systems such as heat shock proteins, which provide protection against many diseases. Data from a 2017 study suggest that sauna use reduces the risk of developing certain chronic or acute respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia, by up to 40 percent. 
• Sauna bathing was also shown to reduce the incidence of common colds in 25 participants who used the sauna one to two times per week for six months compared to 25 controls who did not. It is noteworthy that it took three months before sauna use had a protective effect, however. The mechanism by which frequent sauna use reduces the incidence of pneumonia and colds is unknown but might be related to modulation of the immune system. Levels of white blood cells (especially lymphocytes, neutrophils, and basophils) are increased in both trained and non-athletes after sauna use. While these findings are interesting, they are still preliminary and larger studies are needed to confirm. 
• Increasing evidence suggests that certain heat shock proteins play a role in both innate and adaptive immunity. Heat shock proteins can directly stimulate innate immune responses, such as the maturation and activation of dendritic cells and the activation of natural killer cells. This indicates there may be a direct role for heat shock proteins in regulating the innate immune response, which plays an important role in the body’s ability to fight off a disease that it has never been exposed to before.
• What If You Don’t Have Access To A Sauna? However, other modalities of heat stress such as hot baths and exercise have been shown to increase heat shock proteins. One study found that participants that either sat in a hot bath from their waist down for one hour or engaged in 60 minutes of moderate cycling on a stationary bike experienced a ~23 percent increase in hsp70 levels compared to baseline.

Mechanics for Lifespan Extension: Heat Shock Proteins (HSP)

• HSP are important for mainlining the proper 3-dimensional structure of proteins which is important for maintaining functions of proteins. 
• HSP play a pivital role in preventing and mitigating protein aggregation. Protein aggregation can damage the 3D structure of proteins (which get worse as we age) and form plaques (e.g. beta amaloyid plaques) which have been shown to play a causal role in many neurodegenerative diseases. 
• heat shock proteins and heat stress itself can boost longevity. Heat shock proteins have also been shown to prevent and slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, slow human muscle atrophy, and are associated with human longevity in genetic studies.
• have been shown to be increased by ~50% after 30 minutes in a 163 F (73 C) sauna in healthy young men and women.” – RP

B-Endorphins

Part of the endorphin response as a result of exercise and heat stress is: beta endorphin

B-endorphins are endogenous opioid neuropeptides used as an analgesic in the body to numb or dull pains that has also bee implicated in thermoregulatory mechanisms, increasing significantly in response to heat stress.

Endorphin is a contraction of “endogenous” and “morphine.” On a molar basis, the analgesic potency of its effects are up to 33-times more potent than morphine. Both morphine and ß-Endorphin act on the u-opioid receptor. Interestingly, the hormonal milieu involved in the bodily response to hyperthermic stress is impaired to varying degrees in a variety of substance abuse conditions, including alcoholism, heroin, and cocaine addiction.

_{Jeiovå, Daniela, et al. “Rise in plasma a-endorphin and ACTH in response to hyperthermia in sauna.” Hormone and Metabolic Research 17.12 (1985):693-694. (21}

_{Loh, Horace’H., et al. “Beta-endorphin is a potent analgesic agent.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 73.8 ( 1976): 2895-2898.}

_{Vescovi, P. P.. et al. “Hyperthermia in sauna is unable to increase the plasma levels of ACTH/cortisol. ß-endorphin angvprolactin in cocaine addicts.” Journal of endocrinological investigation 15.9 (1 992): 671-675.}

Dynorphin

Is upregulated when your exposed to heat because it cools your body down (another explanation to why we feel good post exercise/heat exposure)

An extremely potent endogenous opioid peptide that acts on the kappa-opioid receptor and is associated with a transient feeling Of dysphoria.

Dynorphin has many different physiological actions, depending upon its site of production. It is involved in addiction, temperature regulation, appetite, circadian rhythm, pain, stress and depression.

This opioid may also be involved in the body’s thermoregulatory response to hyperthermia

_{Nyberg F. Hallberg M in Research. 162: 277—93, SBN 978-0-444-51926-9. 1764924.}

Sauna Decreases Alzheimers Risk

Muscle Hypertrophy Benefits

• Muscle hypertrophy is ultimately the difference between protein degradation and new protein synthesis. When we train for muscle hypertrophy we often put a lot of thought into how to increase muscle protein synthesis… but if we reduce protein degradation, which is an effect heat shock proteins have, we are still increasing our net protein synthesis by increasing the difference between the amount of new synthesis of muscle protein versus the amount of degradation that is happening. This type of effect has been shown in rats where it was shown that a 30-minute heat treatment at a temperature of 106°F (41°C ) given every 48 hours over a 7 day period caused a sustained increase in heat shock proteins during that time frame… big surprise… but more importantly, this actually correlated with a whopping 30% more muscle regrowth than a control group during the seven days after immobilization. 
• The other way that hyperthermic conditioning through using the sauna could plausibly affect hypertrophy is by robustly increasing growth hormone. For example, two 20-minute sauna sessions at 176°F (80°C) separated by a 30-minute cooling period elevated growth hormone levels two-fold over baseline. An even more robust effect was found with men using higher sauna temperatures. For example, two 15-minute sauna sessions at 212°F (100°C) separated by a 30-minute cooling period resulted in a five-fold increase in growth hormone. The boost in growth hormone levels is transient and only lasts a couple of hours.
• Summary: Many of the effects of growth hormone are mediated through another hormone known as IGF-1 or insulin-like growth factor-1. IGF-1 activates another pathway in skeletal muscle known as mTOR, which is responsible for new protein synthesis. Muscle cells require amino acids for both growth and repair so if we can also plausibly activate mTOR we’re now sort of completing the circle. With heat shock protein induction we reduce protein degradation and through these endocrine effects, actually increasing protein synthesis… by increasing net protein synthesis, we effectively increase hypertrophy.

Acclimatizing to Heat Stress Exercise & Performing in Dehydrated States in Heat – Dr. Stacy Sims

• Using dehydration and heat stress to increase total blood volume so you can carry and deliver more O2 to tissues (akin to training at altitude) so it can start performing vital responses such as earlier onset of sweating.
• Practical: Take athletes that have been passively dehydrated post session where they’ve been drinking ad libitum and the put them in a sauna for 15-30min.

Heat Stress Effect On Athletes & Performance

Studies on heat stress on athletes show almost a erythropoietin (EPO – key role in production of RBCs) ‘blood doping’ effect from dry sauna exposure when done post workout.

Energy Expenditure During Sauna

Correlations between Repeated Use of Dry Sauna for 4 x 10 Minutes, Physiological Parameters, Anthropometric Features, and Body Composition in Young Sedentary and Overweight Men: Health ImplicationsThis study demonstrated that individuals with higher body mass, body area, body fat mass and muscle mass expend relatively more calories during sauna bathing. The presented results also confirmed previous findings that energy expenditure is influenced by the duration of sauna bathing. During the first 10 minutes, the evaluated males expended around 73 calories on average, but their energy expenditure increased significantly (p<0.001) to more than 134 calories during the last 10-minute session. In participants with the highest values of anthropometric features and body composition parameters, maximal energy expenditure reached 153 calories during 10 minutes of sauna use.

Infrared Sauna vs. Traditional Dry Sauna

• Dry and wet saunas heat the ambient air so heat is transferred from the ambient air to your body whereas the far inared rays use thermal radiation to heat the body directly.
• The air in an infrared sauna is generally cooler but the photons of light that are being released by the infrared panels are said to penetrate more deeply into tissue. Plus as a result, because it’s not as a hot you can stay in there longer. 
• The downside to the infrared sauna is your HR takes much longer (around double the time) to reach the same temperature levels in a dry sauna. 
• But most of the studies were done that purport positive effects are done with traditional dry saunas. 

Finish Dry Sauna Parameteres:

• 79C
• >19min
• 4-7x p/w was most robust (2-3x had positive effects)

Waon Therapy Far Infared Ray Dry Sauna

• 60C
• 45min
• Once a day for 2-3w

Whole-body hyperthermia as a treatment for major depression.

• In Dr. Raison’s randomized, double-blind study published in JAMA in 2016, it was shown that a single session of whole-body hyperthermia (core body temperature was elevated to 38.5 C) produced a significant antidepressant effect in people with major depressive disorder compared to those who received a sham control. The improvements were apparent within a week of treatment and persisted for six weeks after treatment.
• But what is responsible for this antidepressant effect? In a previous episode of the podcast, we learned that sauna use seems to share many qualities of exercise, including improvements in arterial compliance, elevations in heart rate that reach levels you might see in aerobic exercise. Moreover, sauna use has been shown to be associated with reductions in heart-related mortality, dementia and more. The impact of heat stress on the behavior of our immune system through transient alterations in the cytokines expressed by our tissues may be one more area where we can see some overlap.

Association Between Sauna Bathing and Fatal Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality Events

Contrast Therapy

 One of the main reasons I like to expose myself to the cold are the effects it seems to have on the brain, mood and possibly attention. One of the most likely candidates for eliciting an effect is norepinephrine, which is also the catecholamine that is actually responsible for triggering the browning of fat, making our fat more metabolically active. In fact, in terms of pathways or physiological responses to cold, the release of norepinephrine into the bloodstream, as well as in the locus coeruleus region of the brain, is one of the more profound. Guess what else increases norepinephrine release? Heat as from sauna use. So this is a second way in which both hot and cold, instead of having opposing effects where one cancels out the other, at the molecular level are nudging some of the same pathways in the same direction.
Contraindications:There’s clearly a cultural history in some places of going from a hot sauna right into an icy lake, but there is at least one case study reported in the literature of a heavy smoker having a heart attack, possibly as a result of a plaque rupture caused by coronary artery spasm after doing many, many rounds of contrast immersion over several hours.

To use during Sauna

Halotherapy: breathing salty air during sauna use

The post Heat Stress & Sauna appeared first on Strength of Saad.

I realised that many of us (no matter your field) dedicate our lives to unlocking the maximum potential of others all while neglecting our own potential. People like me were trying to change others when they hadn’t sufficiently changed themselves. I needed to ‘get my own house in order’ by going down a path I had never gone down and tap into a version of myself I had never unlocked. This was the ‘right of passage’ I created for myself in order to come back and speak to the world again…it took nearly 2 years, thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, litres of sweat and an abyss full of voluntarily pain and suffering.

I realised what really moves and inspires one’s soul is who you’re being. Your body is your mind – if you look and act weak, you’re reflecting a weakness of character. If you’re unhealthy internally – you’re weak. Bodily vigor, health, vitality and strength is a reflection of one’s character. So much so that “what you are speaks so loud that the world can’t hear a word your saying”. Now that I’ve killed my old self and emerged from the abyss I can re-enter the world standing tall and feeling worthy for embodying a standard of excellence I have never reached before.

You Have To BE The Product – Appearances Mattes

People say looks and appearances don’t matter? Well ask yourself this, which coach out of these two would you rather work with? The left was the end of 2017 and my state of health was un-fucking acceptable. And guess what, no one was telling me that truth. When I looked in the mirror I had to face the truth of my insignificance myself!

Internally I was unhealthy. My gut health was a mess and my GI symptoms were aggravating and affecting me mentally on a daily basis. You can see patches eczema on my face which was rooted in a cascade of underlying gut dysbiosis/SIBO which built up over the years and then hit me like a ton of bricks.

Then you see my lack of physical stature which for the average person may be acceptable. But for a COACH who literally dedicates his profession/life to understanding how to optimise human health/performance to help others achieve that for themselves, who I was being was UNACCEPTABLE. I can’t respect myself as a professional/person if I don’t embody the integrity and excellence within my physical and mental health that I preach and revere so highly.

I relied on my lean skinny athletic build and athleticism to justify my insecurities and weaknesses about myself. The quote, “what you are speaks so loud that the world can’t hear a word your saying” forced me to self reflect on who I was and do what was necessary to break myself and change myself.

If you look weak, you are reflecting a weakness of character. If you’re unhealthy internally – you’re weak. I was weak, I don’t mean literally weak I mean my physical presence and internal health represented a deep internal weakness and insecurity within me. I realise people do not want to say this about themselves. They don’t want to admit thing’s like they’re fat, lazy and cowardly. Well I used to be a weak, insecure, timid scrawny kid who hid from his weaknesses so he could avoid feeling bad about himself. I accepted mediocrity and my weaknesses as I lent on my strengths allowing them to hide me from the truth of my insignificance…until…I didn’t. Until, I forced myself to face myself and do something about it all, break myself down and kill my old self.

Who Could You Be? ‘WHAT IF?’ & ‘WHY NOT?’

Some people can be great at the technical skills of their craft and getting results but below average in practising what they preach. Instead,they focus on building others and refining their craft. There’s benefit in that, but to me, it represents a contradiction of professional and personal competency like an overweight Doctor. You may be one of the smartest GP’s but I just don’t trust you as much to give me advice if you’re living in-congruently with your professional expertise. This used to be me for years (see my last post). Then I said to myself, I should and can do BOTH – I can help others find their own excellence AND I can find it for myself. I dare you to hold yourself to that standard if you are a coach and hold your coach to that standard if you are a client.

Training – Nutrition – Mental Health – Habits – Sleep – Stress – Gut. We preach the importance of these foundational pillars of health yet contradict them. Then we do all types of ‘mental gymnastics’ to justify our own mediocrity so we can avoid facing ourselves and our insignificance. I’m not saying you have to be as athletic, big, strong or lean as your best athletes/clients. That’s okay, that’s literally they’re job and main mission in life. Phil Jackson wasn’t as good as half the players he coached, but he was still an NBA player, he still understood the game to their level. So why shouldn’t we understand the game of optimising total human health and performance onto ourselves?

Who could you be if you really tried to push your body and mind to levels of excellence you’ve never felt? What if you can look the part, be the part, be a great practitioner who is educated and get’s great results? Why not? Why accept the bare minimum of ourselves? Why accept comfort? Why not hold ourselves to a high standard of excellence? Who could you be if you just asked ‘WHAT IF?’ and ‘WHY NOT?’

I’d be doing everyone I worked with a disservice if I didn’t change myself. I needed to be better for them and me. So if you were like me and sick of who you were/are, this is your opportunity to break yourself down, put yourself together and actualise your potential.

Investing In Yourself & Paying It Forward

There is no way I would’ve made the dramatic changes that I made to my internal/external health to now feel amazing inside and out without these three men I invested in: Ben Cant @bennylifts , Dave O’Brien @dave.o.brien and Aaron Scarborough @aaronstrongaz

Collectively over the last 2 years they have all played A MAJOR role in forging and untapping my potential and I could not be here embodying the person I am without their guidance and wisdom they passed onto me.

But I was only able to get here once I pushed past the self-limiting belief of thinking I could do it on my own. Men especially tend to pride themselves on thinking they don’t need others or shouldn’t be reliant on anyone. I think I did this to protect my self-worth, capability and independence. This ultimately set me back and slowed my progress. People need people. I had to realise my self-worth was not undermined by admitting ignorance and asking for help and guidance.

To address this insecurity all I did was simply look around me at more successful people who were doing what I admired and represented characteristics I wanted to embody and I asked myself:

‘How am I limiting my potential in a way that these people I admire have addressed?’
and
”What traits do the most successful people I admire have in common?’

One of the biggest commonalities that I saw in the most ‘successful’, fulfilled and free is that they all invested large amounts of money, time and energy into others who knew something they didn’t and possessed something they desired.

Once I recognised that and invested in others the wind was in my back, momentum was on my side and I started running downhill instead of uphill. Then the rate of my growth and development dramatically increased. All because I was willing to take a short term hit of discomfort and pain for a long-term gain. This is the power of investing in yourself. You move faster and go further. I owe tremendous gratitude and thanks to Ben, Dave and Aaron because I am not me, without them.

The post The Return of Strength of Saad (Death & Rebirth) appeared first on Strength of Saad.