The Athlete Mentality and the Microbiome
This week’s Podcast Notes are derived from The Bikini and the Brain episode 242 and The Doctor’s Farmacy episode 941. The Bikini and the Brain discuss the athlete mentality and The Doctor’s Farmacy gets heavy into the healthcare system and the microbiome and its correlations in chronic diseases.
The Athlete Mentality on Bikini and the Brain is something much grander than pushing yourself to new PRs, it’s centered on belief and acknowledgement. After a major athletic performance there is a sharp increase in mental depression for almost half of all professional athletes. Even Olympians who competed in the Olympics, weeks after the games, will suffer from mental depression. One of these depressive states was identified as the feeling of, “It’s over now what?” The inability to appreciate the process is a huge mental barrier even for professional athletes and Olympians. Michael Phelps recently had an Interview with NBC that discusses this “Now what?” state of mind. Host Adam Bonilla and guest host Celeste Rains-Turk, go into great detail about steps to overcome these psychological downers.
One of the first steps is to acknowledge the level at which you perform. There are many NFL players that will never get an NFL ring, however, to say they have failed is short sited because they have reached a level of skill that less than 1% of all football players get to experience. Appreciating competing at a professional level and valuing the level of work put into the professional sport or skill is important. This mental focus of the process is critical in buffering the ups and downs of wins and losses to the brain’s reward system. In addition to focusing on the process you should also name your challenge or period of growth. For example this is my rebuild or trimming year or name a skill set like bow hunting or fishing. If we don’t name the thing we are after then it becomes much harder for our brains to calculate its steps to accomplishing the goal. Furthermore, we should be mindful as we transform our bodies so that we become as disciplined mentally as we are physically. Just because you can’t see the brain doesn’t mean it’s not developing resilience just like muscles.
Adam and Celeste afterwards talk about the unrealistic images we compare ourselves with. Adam is the head fitness coach at Team Elite Physique and has over two decades of training fitness models for on stage shows in the IFBB arena. He mentions that we live in a world of perfect Instagram and “on-stage” moments where we see people at their best and at their best angles. This isn’t real life! So don’t get stuck in the trap of thinking everyone looks like the photos they are posting. Believe in yourself and try to capture your best moments and improve each time. You will build both physical and mental stamina.
Next up we have Dr. Marty Makary who was a guest on Mark Hyman’s the The Doctor’s Pharmacy. Dr. Marty, has a new book called: Blind Spots, which presents some observations and solutions to our broken trust in the healthcare system. He also wrote a book called, The Price We Pay which outlines fears people have with seeking medical treatment simply for the amount of debt they will incur to get that treatment. However, some of the best nuggets in this interview really happen when Mark and Marty go over some of their experiences with the medical dogma surrounding the microbiome. Not many people correlate the microbiome as part of the human body and that the body operates as one system not separate specialties. So when you have metabolic disfunctions like sugar dysregulation it may not all rest on the pancreas or the brain. Diet and Nutrition are powerful mediators for regulating metabolic abnormalities, however, its used as tool in the medical system to treat gut dysbiosis. Doctors are not trained very well with diet interventions nor with diagnosing anything that isn’t a part of the patient’s history. They note that there are many markers for identifying chronic gut illness, but not many solutions revolving around the microbiome or nutrition. Mark and Marty discuss the potential impact the overuse of antibiotics have on gut dysbiosis and add their own frustrations with the lack of testing. I’m sure we have all used antibiotics at some point and those antibiotics can save lives, but when the war is over on harmful bacteria there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interventions to restore the “healthy” gut in a way that restores wellness. They mentioned briefly Martin Blaser’s work on the association of gut disposes and various diseases associated with The Human Microbiome (I suggest not just reading the abstract on this one).
Later they discuss the great GLP 1 agonist drugs, which may be one of the greatest drug interventions of our time in dealing with weight loss. Mark and Marty discuss some of the ways this is beneficial and how we should use caution for long term effects. This drug initially helped treat type 2 diabeties (T2D) and is now being used for weight loss in healthy individuals. The “Blind Spot” in this discussion is not whether the drug is good or bad, but what are the long term consequences of using this drug or its derivatives. The healthcare system is unlikely to reverse statement recommendation or admit that’s its approval was wrong in the first place.
In summary, you should have a clear goal that your mind and body can get behind. Don’t focus on the event but focus on the process. In addition, you should start paying attention to the development and the understanding of our microbiome and how it impacts your body as a whole.
