#006 Jim Kean Talks Biomarkers, Building a Spectator Sport
FoundMyFitness
Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.
4.8 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2015
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jim Kean
Jim Kean is the CEO of National Pro Grid League (NPGL) and founder of WellnessFX.
In this podcast Rhonda and Jim discuss the quantified self movement and the importance of measuring biomarkers more than once, the gut's role in cholesterol and serotonin in the gut versus in the brain, about the role of exercise in preventing neuroinflammation and the effects of overtraining on sex hormones.
We also chat a bit about the psychology of constructing a new, non-gender segregated, team spectator sport and bringing it to market, the factors that separate a professional spectator sport from any other form of entertainment: including patriotism, justice, and vicariousness, the mathematical nature of the sport and the floor coach's role in monitoring athletes before they start "redlining," how NPGL teams may find new ways to tune their gameplay and find an edge on the competition in the future by stepping up the use of more advanced athlete-level analytics.
In this episode, we discuss...
- (00:00) Introduction
- (01:11) Optimizing performance and health has become more accessible
- (07:18) Frequent blood tests helped Jim find his optimal level of Vitamin D
- (09:45) Jim's habits for optimizing insulin sensitivity and lean body mass
- (11:06) Exercise reduces inflammation caused by kynurenine
- (12:16) Exercise increases BCAA uptake by muscle, increasing serotonin in the brain
- (13:33) Jim Kean introduces the book, Grain Brain
- (14:32) Dysfunctional insulin receptors are found in Alzheimer's disease
- (16:11) Endotoxin reacts with LDL cholesterol to form heart disease-promoting foam cells
- (19:09) How you make a successful sport
- (29:13) What is overtraining in cross-fit and what are the consequences?
If you're interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Dr. Ronda Patrick here. Today I'm in San Jose at the fitness expo where the |
| 0:06.1 | national pro grid lead games are taking place and I'm sitting here with my friend |
| 0:11.5 | Jim Kean who happens to be CEO of the national pro grid league or the MPGL. I'm |
| 0:19.0 | really excited to have a conversation with Jim because he's all around a |
| 0:21.8 | really interesting dude. He's a... Thank you Ronda. You're a serial entrepreneur |
| 0:27.8 | Jim. You founded a company called Wellness FX and for those of you listening |
| 0:31.7 | Wellness FX is a company that allows consumers to directly order blood tests |
| 0:37.1 | without needing a doctor's prescription and to track that data over time. You |
| 0:42.5 | also founded a company called Sapien Health Network which went on to become |
| 0:46.7 | WebMD's consumer health business. Yes, that's correct. In addition to that you've |
| 0:51.0 | got a pretty dynamic athletic history. You played college football, track, you did |
| 0:56.2 | ballet dancing, you partake it in the CrossFit games, you height the Nash of |
| 1:01.6 | the Pacific Crest Trail. It's all 2700 miles. Crazy. So really really interesting |
| 1:08.0 | background and lots of perspective but I think where you and I have the most |
| 1:12.8 | overlap is that we're both self-experimenters. Yes. And so maybe we could start |
| 1:18.2 | there by talking a little bit about the quantified self-movement, what you think |
| 1:22.6 | about the movement and what where you think it's going. Sure. Well you know |
| 1:28.4 | it's interesting to me is we look at the where we are in history and you think |
| 1:33.2 | even 15 years ago the tools that we had back then were fairly primitive right? |
| 1:39.0 | We're still kind of back in the days of the LDL tells you all about heart |
| 1:43.5 | health that you'd ever want to know. And here we are 15 years later and a lot of |
| 1:47.7 | people actually and then 10 years later after that. So 2010 when I found it |
... |
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