#185 | GLP-1: Microdosing? | Vyvyane Loh MD
Two years after her last appearance, Dr. Vyvyane Loh returns to tackle the drugs everyone's asking about — the GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide). Joe comes in tempted, like a lot of listeners: not a hundred pounds to lose, just a stubborn ten and the promise that these drugs are also good for your heart, kidneys, liver, and longevity. Dr. Loh's job in this episode is to separate what's real from...
#184 | Aging Athlete Heart Health | Guido Claessen PhD
Sports cardiologist Guido Claessen — principal investigator on the Pro@Heart and Master@Heart studies out of KU Leuven and Hasselt — joins Joe to untangle one of the most uncomfortable questions in masters endurance sport: can you exercise too much for your heart?
#183 | VO2Max or What? | Mike T Nelson, PhD
There's a fight on the internet about VO2Max. One camp treats it as the single number that rules your healthspan — get it as high as humanly possible, no matter the cost. Another camp says it's overhyped, mismeasured, and not worth your attention at all. As usual, the loudest voices are the least useful. So I brought the question to someone I actually trust: Dr. Mike T. Nelson, back on the...
#182 | Leveraging Energy Stress | Jose Areta, PhD
Most of us treat an energy deficit as a problem to be corrected — a state where you've fallen below a known requirement, risking lost muscle and blunted performance. Areta's reframe: think of it as energy stress. Like exercise stress, it's a signal the body is built to adapt to, and — at least as a working hypothesis — one you may get better at handling with repeated, progressive exposure....
#181 | No Time for Pain | Rick Olderman MSPT
This episode focuses on addressing chronic pain in older athletes using a comprehensive "systems thinking" approach to physical therapy. Rather than treating pain as an isolated symptom with a checklist of generic exercises, the discussion highlights the importance of diagnosing the underlying root causes through a simplified series of diagnostic tests. The conversation digs into how systemic bodily compensations hide underlying structural issues, how dysfunctional walking patterns directly trigger chronic...
#180 | The Art of Avoiding Injury | Jeremy Bettle, PhD
The skill of training hard while avoiding injury Bruce Lee once said: "Patience is not passive — it is concentrated strength." For most of his athletic career, Joe had no idea what that meant. Now he does. The older athlete's greatest asset isn't strength or fitness. It's consistency. And consistency is pulled in two directions at once — the drive to push harder, and the need to stay intact. Push too hard, and injury...
#179 | TRT: Less is More | Nayan Patel PharmD
Hormone health influences everything from energy and sleep to mood, metabolism, and libido—yet mainstream treatments are often driven by generic protocols and limited lab interpretations. To truly reclaim your youthful edge, you must recognize that TRT is the "finishing touch" rather than the foundation, representing only 10% of the total vitality equation. The hard truth is that you cannot inject your way out of a broken lifestyle; true optimization follows...
#178 | Athletic Longevity isn’t Easy | Brendan Egan, PhD
We lose muscle and strength (and vo2max, coordination, response time, power, and more) as we age: a use-it-or-lose-it issue only or something more? … “use it or lose it” is certainly a thing. It applies to everything and always has, but we lose function faster now and its harder to get back now...so we have to be more mindful of maintaining everything we want to keep. But how to...
