Visceral Fat Doctor: The Best Way to Lose Fat in 2026

How much visceral fat do you want to have? Dr. Sean O’Mara answers that with a question of his own: how much cancer do you want to have? I am Zach Armstrong, retired naval commander and F/A team fighter pilot turned performance coach, and I brought on Dr. Sean O’Mara, a retired US Army colonel, former emergency medicine physician, and winner of the 2004 US Army Surgeon General’s Physician Distinction Award who cared for President Clinton, Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice. At 48 he was overweight, on multiple prescriptions, and carrying precancerous lesions in his esophagus while every single lab marker came back normal. I wanted this conversation because I am tired of watching driven men do everything they were told and still feel the floor shifting underneath them. We dismantle the idea that a clean blood panel means you are healthy and expose the invisible disease sitting inside your organs and muscle right now.

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly formatted. Each timestamp links to that moment in the video.

0:00 How much visceral fat do I want to have? And I usually respond, well, how much cancer do you want to have? Fat around their rectum and fat in their butt. I’m like, this is you in diapers. There’s no restriction in my life. I’m 60 years old. I can climb a tree like an 8-year-old. I’m playing soccer at the age of 63. I do all these exceptional things. Here’s what nobody tells you about getting your blood work back. You’re 47. You did the physical. Your doctor says everything’s normal. And you walk out to your car and you know something’s off. The energy is not there. That waistline crept up even though the scale barely moved. You don’t feel like the guy you were at 35. And the paper says you’re fine. Here’s the thing. You’re not crazy. You’re just being measured with the wrong ruler. Normal is just the average of a population that’s overweight, inflamed, and out of shape. Being told you’re normal only means you’re not sick enough for a prescription yet. And that’s not healthcare. They’re playing sick care.

1:01 The goal of that game is to keep you from dying. Your [music] goal is to perform. That’s two different sports. I’m Zach Armstrong, retired naval commander and FA team fighter pilot turned performance coach. And this is no hype, just standards. My guest today has spent his career measuring what standard labs [music] can’t see. The fat packed around your organs, your heart, and inside your muscle. Dr. Shawn Omera is a retired US Army colonel and a former emergency medicine physician who now reverses that damage without a prescription pack. He reached out to come on and I’m glad he did because he’s fighting the same fight I am from a completely [music] different angle. If you get something out of this, hit like and subscribe wherever you’re listening. Let’s get into it. Hey Sean, again, thanks for coming on. Um, so I want to start this off cuz it’s very interesting to me and I’m sure a lot of people ought to know about this about you who know you. So you were undercover narcotics, then you helped prose proh prosecute cases, then became an army ER doctor. That’s a that’s not exactly a trend or you know a line most people go upon. How did how did that go for you? How how did

2:02 That happen? Yeah. So, um, you know what I I really think happened is, uh, I was a a young kid and and, uh, I just love problem shooting and I noticed I liked solving problems and, uh, it provided me a sense of fulfillment, you know, even as as a toddler, self-satisfaction, figuring out solutions on my own. And so I ended up uh using that a lot where I worked it allowed me to have a work ethic uh where I just rose to the top and every kind of work situation that I was in became you know I was intentional to become the best employee um you know best soccer player whatever I whatever organization I had to be in. So when I got into uh college I went into law enforcement. So, I worked as a uniform police officer while I was in college uh to get my college education and um I loved it. It was very it was probably the most fun job I ever had working in law

3:03 Enforcement as a police officer. And then, you know, I I had an opportunity I got interested in becoming a detective and an investigator, drug agent. So, I got to do undercover work at an extremely young age. I I’d actually done some um undercover work in in college at the age of 19. Very interesting that uh you know early opportunity in my life and I enjoyed the the the experience of pretending to be somebody who I wasn’t. It was kind of like acting only my life was at [snorts] stake. A little bit on the table there. Yeah. It’s a big big incentive. So you know I I learned to be a supremely good actor and learn learned a lot about human traits. So I got involved in doing also undercover narcotics work and you know crazy experiences where knives and guns were held up to my head and middle of force and stuff and you have to really think your way out of those kind

4:04 Of solutions and uh those were the kind of challenges I I didn’t enjoy but afterwards I enjoyed how I was able to problem solve that. So from undercover, you know, law enforcement, police work, under undercover narcotics work, working in organized crime, even had a little tour of a arson investigation. I I found that very interesting. Then I evolved going on to law school and became a criminal prosecutor. And I really enjoyed, you know, the public servant aspect to that. Yeah. throwing, you know, prosecuting individuals that really uh worked very selfishly for their their own interests and broke laws, helping society out with criminally prosecuting those those people. But I became challenged by the ethical application of the criminal justice system. I found that people that were connected to people largely through political contributions

5:04 I was being pressured to give a more favorable deal to than the lonely poor kid u boy or girl or sometime sometimes it was an older person so it just kind didn’t have any money bothered you too much right yeah so I I was troubled about that and I wanted to just do the right thing professionally to help society. So I lost my my uh GM for criminal prosecution and uh I returned to an interest that I had science and medicine as a child and I realized having gone through law school that uh what I previously felt about myself going to medical school earlier while I was in college taking more science classes and heading towards a curriculum in and medical science that uh I felt like then I wasn’t intelligent enough but having gone through law school and functioned as undercover drug agent. I felt like I could go to medical school. So I did and uh

6:04 and I absolutely I loved my first lecture in medical school to this day. I still remember that very first lecture and I really enjoy now serving humanity in this particular space where I help people become the healthiest versions of themselves and more precisely the best biological versions of themselves because I think health from a conventional standpoint doesn’t really adequately capture what somebody is from a biologically optimized state. I don’t think conventional health can do that. No. Well, you know, we’ve talked about this before we even got on this podcast, like this the standardization that we hold in our medical practice in in today’s society is reactionary, not preventative in any any sense. We’re very good at acute injuries, but preventative medicine, pain management, all this stuff we we lack big time on. And it’s that way, you know, even uh while I was on active duty in the military caring for uh President Clinton, Vice President

7:05 Cheney, Secretary of State Colon Pal, and Conn Lisa Rice that it’s all reactionary. No, there’s not a effort to try to prevent problems much less trying to optimize even the most important people in the world aren’t taking advantage of this capability. Now I think there are have been some steps since my time working in that capacity especially with this current administration that it seems like the convent the medical care that’s around the senior executive service the president vice president and members of the cabinet are much better than where they were before with regard to trying to prevent problems but I I still think that they don’t really have anywhere close to an idea about how you could biologically optimize the most important people and I think you know you know taking just that level of um people a person out of it I believe in our conversation

8:06 You said something about um you know doctors as a whole don’t have the education or the training to even work in that realm when we’re talking about longevity or preventative they don’t look at themselves uh Zach the fact that physicians is remarkable you know to me you wouldn’t go to a dentist to have dental care that had gross, brown, disgusting, horrific dentition. And yet you go to this doctor and he or she, you take advice to them on how they should be healthy. They’re overweight. They have to swing their arms to get out of a chair. They become short of breath walking down a hallway or upstairs. Uh they’re patently unhealthy. And yet we’re taking advice from them about taking medicines and lifestyle. You know, I’ve never I’ve never heard that analogy, but I’m going to use that going forward about the dentist. That that is about as perfect as you can put it. Um and then yeah, it’s amazing. You know, we’ll talk about visceral fat here because that’s a lot of what you work around. But you know, you ask them the

9:07 Simple term like, “Hey doctor, what’s your V2 max? What’s your APO?” Like, you ask them some of these things that, you know, they probably should know from a health perspective and they probably know what you’re talking about. And it’s kind of it’s it’s amazing that um they don’t they’re not even interested, Zach. I think uh they even though they they they should know these things. They they not only not know it, but they they would actively push away it and think of their particular approach and their knowledge base as not only sufficient but superior. and they would dismiss whatever you or others or myself would be doing in the realm to actually optimize a human being would be something that they would think was crazy and likely just woo woo. They they they’re completely blind to the fact that they’re falling apart, too. And that was me before I I became somebody who was intentional about choices that I do on a daily basis to optimize my health. I was that overweight, patently fat ER doctor who had eczema, erectile

10:07 Dysfunction, uh reliant on, you know, basic pharmaceutical drugs to try to have marital relations with my wife. I was a father of five as a miracle that that that even happened. And and I also had restless leg syndrome, sleep apnnea. Uh, I had metoplastic changes within my esophagus with precancerous lesions on biopsies from [clears throat] severe gastroosopial reflux disease. I I was waking up five times a night to pee. I couldn’t sleep. And I I was the 48-year-old guys, 48-year-old who would go to the bathroom every time and hit the the toilet paper roll for a gigantic wand of toilet paper that I would have to strategically place between my body and my underwear to catch the urine that would continue to dribble out. And I was only 48. So yeah, that guy was a doctor and he was just going through the

11:09 Motions. I was taking all the medicines. I was doing everything they were telling me to do. Then I meet a a human being who is a young man, supremely healthy, and I just said to him, you know, I wish I was as as lean as you or as thin as you instead of being a fat guy. And he said, you can’t. and you just got to stop, you know, eating processed foods, do the Paleo diet, and eat fermented foods and sprint. He said those things to me. I think I was the only human being that was fat and diseased and had those things said to them that actually did them. And so I I did it to lose weight. I lost weight. But one year later, this disease catches up to you. chronic disease, you don’t see it. It’s not like, oh, chronic disease hit me today. You’re blind to this insidious development. And I will say to you, Zach, you’re blind to the improvement. It’s slowly happens. And so, you don’t

12:10 Have this day where you wake up and say, “Oh, I was healed of this or I’m even getting better.” A lot of times it’s mass. So, I woke up, I mean, I didn’t wake up. I had this realization one time. still see it in the bathroom peeing. And I realized my urinary stream is no longer dribble. It’s a forceful stream like it used to be when I was a teenager. It was loud. It was It was masculine. It was vital, vigorous. And I realized I wasn’t getting up anymore. And I and I I didn’t need these pills. And all these realizations were happening. And I got mad as as Hades that that had happened to me. And instead of saying like clapping my hands like, “Oh, this is wonderful.” The reason why I was so upset is I was terrified the fact that I as a physician and D, you know, physician, gone to medical school, was completely ignorant of what really mattered. And then I

13:12 Found was profoundly overwhelmed with a sense that well if I can be this overwhelmed and o and misled as a physician who’s going to help the average person ever figure this out. So that’s why I went into research and left my my uh position specialty as an emergency medicine doctor and a concierge physician that I was doing to become a full-time researcher. And I volunteered for seven years, worked part-time for my my family and volunteered full-time 4:00 a.m. in the morning to 7:00 p.m. at night and uh barely making any money part-time. But my passion was to try to get to America what was given to me, understand it, not just make it come off as woo woo medicine. What’s going to come off the same, why did it matter? Right. And for someone who’s in your position who I think we obviously as um a society put doctors, I would say on a

14:14 Pedestal like we trust that most of what they come out of their mouth because they’re trained, you know, they’re supposed to be a caring nature. Um and so when it comes from you too, it’s more powerful. I would I would expect more people to do that. So, when we’re talking about that, you know, if a guy comes, you know, he gets his his blood work back. Um, everything’s in his range, but he’s still feeling bad. He he’s still not feeling like himself. He’s have maybe some of the symptomatic symptoms that you are occurring. What would you say to him? Like, uh, what’s maybe actually going on there? Yeah. So, you know, people the the labs often times uh end up being lagging indicators to disease that’s way upstream of all that. and they may be aware I was that you know urine was dribbling out of me and you know I’d made some adjustments with the toilet paper that’s not a very effectively doesn’t prevent it but it’s reactive uh but what’s happening to these individuals is accumulation of chronic disease and so in the cascade of events I think the very first thing that goes wrong is lifestyle and diet affecting our microbiome our microbiome becomes

15:16 Suboptimal or the technical term we use for this in the research realm is disbiotic and so you have a diseased microbiomes not a good one and it leads to uh disease within the body fat is the probably the single earliest expression of disease things going wrong in your body and this inflammatory fat starts seeding and filling the abdomen of even children and Then it uh includes other areas of ectopic fat, fat around the heart and fat expressed within the muscles. And literally bodybuilders uh included people’s muscles start filling with this inflammatory fat that’s disease destroying their their muscle and it’s delayed in bodybuilders because they have more muscle. So it’s put off a little bit longer. But it’s

16:17 Happening unless you get an MRI to see this expression of this disease. So I would tell that man or woman uh that is experiencing some changes in their labs uh to get out way upstream of just what they think might be happening and look at this these areas of ectopic structural disease. And I use that term now, Zach, because people think of visceral fat, they have a perception that somehow it’s it’s what your body makes. No, your body is making a area of disease. That’s what’s happening. So sometimes people, and I gasp when they say this, how much visceral fat do I want to have? And I usually respond, well, how much cancer do you want to have? [laughter] Well, that’s a that’s a good way to get them uh paying attention. I would say that. Yeah. What about So it’s Go ahead. It’s important how you you understand that it is actually disease and not something like muscle or your heart uh

17:18 Or something that the good Lord has put in your body to serve you. Visceral fat is a consequence of a poor lifestyle from a man or woman that hasn’t yet learned what they should be doing on a daily basis collectively to improve. that and that happens now all the time where people we get stuck in a loop. I talk about it all the time where we get in this loop and whether it’s painful or not we’ll stay in that loop because that’s what we know. We don’t like change. And then when we look at that blood work, you know, we say normal, like that’s usually, hey, your blood work’s normal. But what does that actually mean? Like who decided the normal inness? Like it’s great question. I think you know that’s a problem right from the get-go. You’ve identified just how you term use that term normal. So the the normal really is based on a numeric a numerical mathematical average of a disease population. So those two things is it’s an average number. It’s not an optimal number and it’s also based on large numbers of individuals

18:19 Feeding that data interpretation who are themselves diseased. So do you want to be like an average diseased person then you could follow that number. But if you want to get above that and you uh ascribe and want to otherwise pursue a better life that actually is improving, then those numbers are not going to help you out. No, not at all. And I would say when we you were talking about normal, if you put your numbers when you were talking about how you were at 48, I would bet you most of your numbers were normal or within range. They were they were remarkably normal. In fact, I was doing all the things to reduce my cholesterol, my LDL, if you think that’s important back then. I thought it was. And so, my labs were completely normal. From every perspective that you could test, I was normal except I had very profound chronic disease already at the age of

19:19 48. hisytologically you know when they did slides you could see precancerous lesions developing within my esophagus uh with which preludes getting esophal cancer which has one of the highest mortality rates associated with so if you follow the labs you know I was normal uh but disease was progressing so the just a model of following labs is not going to detect particularly the labs that most physicians which are basic or be employed. Basic panels were 18 to 24 markers that are there that very doesn’t go deep at all. Um speaking like let’s go let’s talk about the scans like let’s just start off with what what surprises your fittest guys when they get the that first scan. Yeah. So I’ll I’ll show you what surprises them. It’s this. So here’s one of my most fittest guys, an active duty uh second lieutenant uh US Army. Look, he’s squared away now. He’s he’s Natty

20:19 Guard, National Guard. So, look, he’s out of regs. He’s got a beard, you know, before he goes uh to report to drill. But, um this is him and he looks shredded. So, everybody thinks, ah, this guy’s, you know, going to be super super healthy. Look at all of this white stuff in here. That is structural disease that this 28-year-old is filled with visceral fat when he looks this good. So the the reality is you cannot see disease inside your body. Uh you have to see it uh on the inside. So this guy is obese. He’s just invisibly obese. You can’t see it. So for the average person uh and I’ll say this to every person that’s come to me. Uh the I have this line that I use. The MRI ends the lie. you’re not as healthy as you think. You’ve got this invisible disease inside of you. So, it’s a great tool, a great modality and

21:19 Technology to guide individuals like yourself who use natural um strategies. It gives them ability to practice in a new way. And you know to use the analogy I have uh that I give to my clients that come and work with me executives mostly it’s like key performance indicators in a company or an organization KPIs right so and I think KPI right and so talking about a KPI um what does that visceral fat number tell you against the other ones like cholesterol or your A1C what you know helps make that you know cholesterol you is is first of all Um the big distinguisher is is u visceral fat tells you 100% disease with a 100% signal and zero confounding. Cholesterol on the other hand has the like the lowest signal to uh noise ratio as a metric that you can follow. So you

22:20 Can you can raise cholesterol, lower cholesterol. I mean you can you can lower it just by you know eating ice cream you know. uh so you got all these potential uh impacts on that particular number. Same thing with blood sugar. And I tell people you’d have to be a supercomput to try to capture all the confounding influences and serum level markers that could uh you know change because of the dynamic nature that these serum levels represent within the body. But structural disease are not serum markers. They’re not molecules floating around. The structural disease is static. Uh it only changes slowly over a life over you know a period of time as you apply different strategies. So what free of confounding that means that whatever you do to eliminate that structural disease is beneficial to the human body and whatever you do that increases that

23:21 Disease is harmful to the human body. So it gives 100% clarity, Zach, on what you should be doing and evaluating how you are executing strategies. So right, you know, there’s doing things, but there’s also how you do those things. That’s where a coach comes in. A coach can tell you to do a layup, but a coach can also tell you how well you’re doing that layup or how poorly you’re doing that layup. And so the ma it’s more than just a quantity. It’s also the quality of what we do. Yes. And it’s also not just a quantity of a metric, but also the quality of that metric. So for instance, when it comes to visceral fat, you can actually detect the degree of inflammation in that visceral fat based on the qualitative analysis of it. So I look at fat more than just the amount of fat. I also uh now look at it from the

24:24 Quality of that fat and then also most importantly from the influence of it. So you can have um a lot of visceral fat and have very little disease because you recently put it on and it hasn’t yet influenced the development of chronic disease. And also the opposite, you can you can have a um a lot of uh a lot of disease and having lost a lot of chron a lot of visceral fat, you suddenly lose it. You still have expressions of disease that have to gradually go away. But in my experience, uh humbly humility aside, I have the most experience in the world doing this full time with MRIs, 13 years. And what I see when people get rid of their visceral fat is they begin optimizing their body in extraordinary ways uh that defy their age. So the capacity for a human being is older, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and in

25:25 Their 90s. I have clients in their 90s. They continue to improve provided they’re getting rid of visceral fat. Their body starts improving. Remarkable. I want to take it back and kind of sum this up with a, you know, you’re talking about the coach helping to show you how to do the layup correctly. Um, because I I would imagine if we talked to the 48-year-old doctor, um, if somebody came with cholesterol, blood pressure, stuff like that, you’re prescribing statins, you’re doing that. You’re not saying, “Hey, let’s take a look at your nutrition. Let’s talk about your fitness.” Um, that’s stuff that’s missing in today’s world. Like there’s no prescription of, “Hey, I need you to work out a couple times a week. Hey, I need you to walk this many. This, hey, your nutrition needs to be this.” No, here’s a stat and take it. What is your thoughts on that and how we attack it? Because what you’re saying is exactly what you know I believe in but in society we don’t believe in it. Yeah. Well, it’s back to your pedestal u observation about physicians that we have uh put physicians on this pedestal which u gives them sole uh authority and

26:25 Credibility to speak to us about our matters pertaining to our health and our body. And so because that society has developed and instilled inculcated within us since our childhood, pay attention to doctors and not other people, we’re dismissive of people that are coaches. So, I will go so far as to say um and admit online uh that I’m trying to create a different uh professional replacing physicians because I think uh the conventional health care may be gone too far to recover and uh restore uh an ability to do this. They’re too resistant. They’re too arrogant uh to to be able to turn around. And so um I’m trying to develop professionals who are essentially like personal trainers or health coaches and professionalizing them with u uh the necessary skill sets to leverage uh existing technology that uh is available

27:26 Without medical lensure and uh utilize natural strategies and optimize human beings way better than what a physician could do. So the problem remains that people will dismiss working with a health coach even though they may have a credible track record because they still continue to assign too much importance and authority and their physician never mind the fact their teeth are falling out of their mouths and they look patently unhealthy. Yeah, the bad dentist. Um so you heart and muscle and fat, right? Not just the belly fat. the fat you were really talking about um that your belly fat, you know, or your fat that’s accumulating doesn’t say with a versal fat for you. Where do what point do you really want to you like stomp on with, hey, when we’re looking at virtual fat, it’s not something you can detect. This is why it’s important. This is what it does. This is what it shows you because what we’re talking about too is not just living to your 90s in modern medicine is going to help keep us longer living

28:27 Longer, but quality of life to where you can do things you actually want to do. How does visual fat help you get there? Yeah. So, I think it’s a wakeup signal. I’ve noticed for 15 years, uh, 13 years now that I’ve been doing it with an MRI, when I scan somebody, they either get, um, very angry, um, they get very emotional, some, a lot of them will cry. If I say most of them cry. Most of my clients will cry. Um, and if they, and I’ve even had some people um, pass out when they when they see the disease inside of them. They’re confronted with the reality that they they’re that they have fraud. They’ve lived a fraudulent life imagining that everything is okay. And so this is visceral fat that’s elevated in this guy and his muscles are filled with this fat and his oblique muscles and his abdomen. And he has enormous love handles hanging off the above his butt and off the back of his back. And these are his legs that look like Wagu beef. They do. um you know,

29:27 Human wagu versus an Olympic sprinter who doesn’t eat processed foods, who’s incredibly healthy, who has the most big and beautiful muscles I have ever seen. That’s his core about four times bigger than his vertebral body compared to this guy’s vertebral body and his core roughly the same size. And this guy’s a couch potato. Has to swing his arms to get out of a couch. this guy sets you know uh on verge of setting world records for sprinting. So lifestyle goes to the white stuff that you have inside of you. So um you know I get people to get scanned. I show them this. It becomes a very powerful signal to their brains and a primitive area of their brain. And we’ve got to make and this is the difference. We’ve got to make a transition, Zach, where people stop relying on their doctors to interpret signal and they rely on their own brains to interpret signal. Because when you

30:27 Interpret that signal information in front of you correctly, then you can change your life. But you are really at a disadvantage uh trying to apply signal that’s interpreted by another human being like a doctor and ever expect your life. And this is why virtually to every man or woman who goes to conventional health care over 40 or 50 years ends up in a more profoundly diseased state than they ever were when they started. But the man or woman who finds good signal, they actually improve. my clients and myself and I’m sure you’ve had this experience as well that you the more you uh live better the better you be perform the better you look the better you execute uh the better you are but you have to understand reading information that signal and so labs are a start but I think dusting

31:28 Labs far more effective is this fat within the abdomen and also around the heart and the muscles. But I will say this, Zach, and I think you should uh be aware of this. It’s also the the the appearance of faces. So, look at, you know, how this guy’s face improved by eliminating his visceral fat. Uh his wife’s face improved by eliminating her visceral fat. Uh her abdomen improved eliminating her visceral fat. And this guy’s face, huge chunk of fat around his heart. and how much he reduced that and how much his his his face uh improved and and also visceral fat how much his face so faces improved. So here’s the future. Um you can you can actually I think uh improve people’s health way better uh through looking at changes and face the body their performance external markers that we’re just

32:30 Learning about that AI will help to collate put together and analyze but right now visceral fat MRIs and that’s what you’re talking about too is it’s when you when I talk to you know uh clients usually they come in something like you know have better apps or something but what you talked about earlier is very rarely do they ever talk about that they always talk about how much better they feel the the return that they get on the professional side as well as what they get as at home and how they improve their life quality of life overall by doing these steps that you’re talking about and improving their health. Um I assume you know you see the same with your clients and um very much so and it’s amazing to see I here here’s what I will say as somebody who’s probably seen that more than anybody else in my experience as a health optimizing physician in this space and doing MRIs and actually studying it that uh the greatest hope I have Zach for society

33:31 Um doesn’t reside within conventional health uh or government uh or professional sports, it resides within corporate America. Why? Because here’s my prediction. The minute corporate America as a as a an entity, a practice, a profession understands that they uh have this enormous exploitable advantage that they’re not exploiting in the form of human performance optimization that’s readily achievable and available. um not being used and they simply help their employees become more healthy and start exploiting that that their bottom line dramatically goes up then they will embrace and endorse this. They will save our species but right now corporate America doesn’t know anything about this. I want to go out to, you know, corporate, uh, shows, uh, leadership

34:32 Programs, getting in front of corporate leadership, uh, and let them know. But I’ve taken care of numerous corporate exe executives. They are blown away when they realize how much better they perform. Oh, yeah. And now they want it for their employees. I talk about it all the time with them. You know, there’s a diminishing returns at some point when your health gets to a point. How many times are you just so overly tired you read an email like oh man I don’t remember what I just read and you have to reread it again like it sounds simple but you continue to do that over day-to-day functionality and if you can improve that 25% that bottom dollar that approves for the company expeditional right and that that’s that’s a a key point you make there’s cost to a self-insured company which is usually a company around uh 4,000 employees or more the largest cost is healthcare and the largest cost for even smaller other companies um outside of salaries and wages and benefits is uh is uh again healthcare. So it’s it’s an incredible

35:34 Expense that they just kind of pay along but um I I have a an ability and theory that uh that’s going to dramatically improve. um confident as soon as corporate America understands and we begin uh influence you and I are working in this space with uh collect you know just individually working on uh executives on an individual onetoone basis but the future Zach is going to be taking effective strategies tracking them against correct KPI which I call in this space key biological indicators instead of a corporate KPI I and uh leveraging that impact it’s going to have on corporate KPI, you’re going to move the bottom line dial way more effectively than any change of machinery or distribution or product enhancement could continue at least until AI takes

36:34 Over and replaces our workforce. um it’s going to be pretty if you’re looking at from that perspective, you need less people if you have people performing better. So, it’s a bottom dollar increase there as well. Um 100%. So, as we’re going to close out here, I like to do rapid fire. It’s um short questions, first answer that comes to your mind. Uh don’t try to overthink it. Uh are you ready? Sure. All right, let’s do it. All right. Number one, if a man could only measure one thing about his body, how would you have him measure his visceral fat? Uh, I would do an MRI for them to visually see it without exposure to radiation in a safe environment just using magnetic fields and they can repeat that as frequently as they like. We did it for the National Science F once a day. So, MRI visceral fat and heart fat, fat around the heart. Okay. Um, skinny fat. What’s the biggest myth about being thin and healthy at the same time? Um the biggest myth is that you’re failing to appreciate the invisible

37:35 Disease and you’re simply not capturing it. So an MRI helps you overcome that lie. You’re not as healthy as you think. And um while leanness uh is often times associated with health, it’s a ratio of healthy tissue to disease. And without the MRI, you don’t know what that ratio is, right? Um what about the scale and one line? Why is a bathroom scale lying to a 45 45year-old man right now? Because they’re tracking numbers. There’s an adage in medicine, treat the patient, not the number. But when you just simply use a bathroom scale, even something that is what’s called a smart scale, correct? Like a bio impedance where you step on it, does electrical mild electrical current through your body. um it it really doesn’t give you an ability to tell the difference between healthy tissue and disease. So you know the the [snorts] subcut there’s superficial subcutaneous fat and there’s deep subcutaneous [clears throat] fat and one is is super healthy and protects

38:36 You the other one is disease and a biopedan scale is just a number and doesn’t allow you to uh interpret uh health from disease and so it’s it’s almost completely meaningless it is uh archaic you want to spend I tell people spend money be luxurious when its comes to your health, Zach, and be frugal when it comes to everything else. Well, you time is a finite for all of us, right? So, if you if you don’t try to take care of that time, it’s going to get you in the end. All right. This one, um I’m interested in hearing you sprint or lift. If a client can only do one of those a year, which one would you recommend? I would say sprint because um the interesting I I will tell you this as somebody who’s a professional in this space the level of physical exertion that I get my clients to is profound respiratory distress disna so I want them gasping for air why because when we study this for the National Science

39:39 Foundation that’s what we see animals in the wild doing the chase to catch an analopee or an analopee uh the sprint to get away uh the fight in the end uh and between animals conflict prey and predator they’re gasping for air and it optimizes the human being way more bodybuilders have done a huge service to help out our country and our our species but they just they don’t get short of breath enough and they work out too much increase the intensity big guys and don’t do it so much we had a conversation u when we were linking up for the podcast and we’re both big believers in sprints so I wanted to ask that um the 2004 award that you got what were you doing in the army that where they named you the top u physician that year so I at the time I was chief of emergency medicine and the largest army hospital in Asia and uh I’d invented a lot of medical devices patents that were very clever and uh did a lot of

40:40 Initiatives they called me a white tornado and so they gave me the the US Army Surgeon General’s uh physician distinction award. So I be I was the most it was the best doctor that year in the US Army. So it was quite an honor to to achieve to get that. I was the first ER doctor. Normally it’s like surgeons, you know, that get that kind of award that do all these really innovative things. But I did it within the realm of emergency medicine without having to operate uh on people. And uh it was a it was quite an honor to receive. Very impressive as well. Undercover to ER. Was there anything that still serves you today that you picked up in your narcotics uh endeavor? Yeah, I think you know a great question. I I learned a lot about humanity reading people uh in extreme situations was really important. So I found uh that it was a a useful skill set to to work in undercover work uh understand a humanity to be able to function in a high

41:40 Stressful situation like emergency medicine where we’re making critical life and death decisions in uh and acute situations. So a lot of analogy and it was very useful training. Yeah, that that emotional IQ we often don’t um give it what it what it deserves and I imagine the emotional IQ you needed in those situations was quite high. Right. Well, I’m sure you do it too, Zach, and and take care for your clients. So, you your ability to have that impact if you cannot reach people and effectively influence them, then you fail in getting them to to achieve the better life that’s available to them. So, u it’s available it’s available to you and I’m sure you use it based on your your experiences uh in the past that you’ve collectively brought together in your life. I try to I would definitely say that um when you can come from a place of humility too it definitely helps and that’s kind of what you were talking about earlier being that 48-year-old who needed to change once you change the humility inside you gave you a different passion. That’s kind of where I lie as

42:40 Well. Uh the heart fat surprise. What’s the most dangerous scan you’ve ever seen a person who looked fine? Uh I would say the most dangerous scan is a large amount of fat around their heart that shows up and uh like this uh individual here that had such a huge individuals that come in like that because it’s probably the uh the most acutely deadly fat that you can have because heart attacks and strokes uh you know are probably your most uh experienced level of lethality that you’re going to get from a disease standpoint. point it kills more human beings and then uh collectively over the years over a lifetime it’s going to be visceral fat. So the first thing I pretend like I’m back taking care of you know President Clinton um or you know Vice President Cheney is to threat mitigate. So I work I show them that. And the other interesting thing, Zach, is what I show people uh in addition to that, believe it or not, is this one

43:40 Marker that really gets people uh to pay attention and to to grow up and and and make changes in their life is uh this fat that people have around their rectum. And so in in MRI scans, you can also see this fat in people’s uh rectum because it it looks it shows up. So this is the rectum. These are the femoral heads. And look at all this inflammatory fat around their rectum and fat in their butt. I’m SL. This is you in diapers. If you do not get rid of this fat around your rectum, it’s just going to slide right. It’s not just gonna be passing gas flattus a yoga yoga fart if you’re some a soccer mom you doing a yoga class. It’s going to go way past that. But wake up. This is what’s going on. Okay. That’s that’s that’s an approach that I don’t think most people would even consider. But what what the the

44:40 Return on value there is something that no one wants to be in that position being. No bright person. I mean, imagine what the life of a human being that says, “Oh, I don’t care. I’ll just uh I’ll just wear diapers when that comes to it.” But most people are shocked. They they get the fat around their heart and the fat around the rectum get them um to leave uh that day with me. Uh and also the fat in their glutes. I mean, can you imagine seeing that kind of disease in your glutes and you know how important those are, right? But then I show it to somebody. Um, even the average person possesses the requisite knowledge that hey, my my butt is important to me to get me out of a chair and out of cars and to be able to walk. Yes. Uh, speaking of Cheney or Clinton, um, without breaking confidence, what did caring for someone at that level teach you um, about health? So I think uh just spending time with these individuals that function whether they both you know were different political parties Democrat Republican

45:40 They both were high performers and function they just had different political perspectives but what I saw in in them that they did really important things. They served our country and an awareness of their importance allowed me to appreciate that I want to do a better job in providing medical care to them. Now, honestly, at that time, I really was in a reactive model ready for a heart attack for Dick Cheney, gunshot, something like that, and and President Clinton, but uh the the the importance of trying to improve them was lost on me. Today I look back at those people and now I’m caring for like members of the president’s cabinet uh heads of state people I can’t talk about that that uh uh I I pine I yearn uh to to optimize their biology to better serve humanity to better serve people and corporations uh leaders to to be more

46:41 Effective to help grow commerce and in the service to humanity. So that’s my motivation having worked at these people that are high performers is trying to get other people uh to be high performing and better influencers. If I was to reduce it, I put it this way. It’s to help people that are doing great things um be able to uh be better influencers to get other people to do great things. That’s the easiest way to do it because people will follow. Um, so your book title, Growing Better Not Older, what’s one line that captures what you mean by that? Um, I would say it’s the notion that to challenge somebody to think that as they get more birthday candles on their their birthday cake that they actually could improve. And an example that is my fervent belief is the very best professional athletes, Zach, in the future in the NFL playing soccer uh

47:41 Tennis are not going to be um athletes in their 20s and 30s. Uh it’s going to be uh men and women in their 60s and 70s. And the reason is when they find out about these biomarkers that really matter, visceral fats, they will eliminate the accumulation of chronic disease, they will have a level of health that not only is on equal part to a 20-year-old, but better. Why? Because you teach men and women who come to you, Zach, how to get healthier. And you could take a 20-year-old and get them even more healthy with that kind of insight. And we’re going to eliminate disease and we’re going to give them 50 30 40 50 more years experience playing that sport on a healthy body. That’s the future. And we can see better not older. We can see it now, right, with certain athletes. We have athletes that are pushing into their 40s now where that was a thing of the past.

48:42 Y Messi is about to hit 40, right? Um they’re all in LeBron James and you talk about Tom Brady obviously some outliers there but we see the trend. Um we too often good observation it’s coming. Yeah. Too often we go oh that’s just part of getting older. Right. That’s just that’s not this is that’s an inaccurate statement. That’s yeah that’s why I wrote that. Right. Um all right and let’s end it on this. Your own body. What’s the one thing you do every single day for your own visceral fat? I never put anything in here that I don’t know optimizes my body that I think even may harm myself. You might think that’s a restricted diet. Dude, you have no idea the freedom I have. There’s no restriction in my life. I’m 60 years old. I can climb a tree like an like an eight-year-old. I’m playing soccer at the age of 63. I do all these exceptional things. I can jump

49:44 Up and do 20 pull-ups at the age of 63. It’s extraordinary what I’m able to achieve. Do not tell me I have a restricted diet. I have a diet guided by an intentionality where I know what I eat, how I live influences the circumstances and how much I get to enjoy life. So, I have a very strong and passionate response to that. I love that because I, you know, in our original conversation, I I have something with myself that I’m telling, I tell my kids, I said, “Hey, I’m going to I’m going to beat you and grandkids in a deadass sprint at 70 years old.” And I I mean it. I mean it with all my heart. It’s going to happen. Um yeah, I can still sprint out sprint my 16-year-old. And he says, “Dad, never tell.” And he’s a skinny soccer player for his high school. He says, “Dad, never tell my friends that you can sprint outsprint me.” [laughter] That’s amazing. Um, I do the same with my 17-year-old, so I understand that. Well, hey, this was amazing. Like, everything you’re putting out there is

50:46 Something I 100% agree with, and I think you can put a change in the actual world. So, again, thank you for coming on the show, and we really appreciate it. Well, Zach, thank you for um the opportunity to come and share these concepts with you. Keep doing awesome things. I I love seeing professionals like yourself and you know you’re supplanting you’re you’re outperforming medical professionals that continue just the status quo and people falling apart. So we need more people doing exactly what you’re doing Zach. So thank you for the opportunity to come here and be on your show. Thanks. Appreciate it. Dr. Shaomero, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. This was a conversation that I wanted to have and here’s what I want you to take from this. The number on your scale and the word normal on your lab report are not the same thing as being healthy. And they are nowhere close to the same thing as performing. There’s fat around you cannot see around your organs, around your heart, inside your muscle, and it’s telling a truer story about your future than your cholesterol is. You can measure it and

51:46 You can shrink it without a prescription with work you’re fully capable of doing. This one’s for the man who’s over 40, who’s driven, who’s done everything he was told and still feels the floor shifting underneath him. You’re not broken. You’re not just aging. You’ve been measured with the wrong ruler by a system that’s playing a different sport than you are. Go get the right measurement. Then do the work. If this hits home, rate and review the show. Five stars if we earn it on Apple Podcast or Spotify and subscribe on YouTube so the next one finds you. It’s the best way to help another guy stop settling for normal. I’m Zach Armstrong. No hype, just standards.