Category Archives: Special Guests

Episode #38: Ask the Primal Doctor – Q&A with Dr. Cate Shanahan

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Description: Dr. Cate Shanahan hits the Q&A hard, offering interesting commentary on a variety of topics, especially those relating to hormones and longevity markers. Cate explains how one’s level of elastin is a major predictor of lifespan. Elastin is typically considered an important component of healthy skin. Losing elastin and collagen (a form of elastin that is also a major element of healthy skin) cause wrinkles, an obvious sign of aging. Elastin, however, is present in other cells such as those in joints and arteries. Losing elastin accelerates aging (arteries become stiffer and less resilient; joints become creakier and less fluid) and hastens demise. Across species, the typical half-life of elastin is a lifespan predictor. For example, the half-life of elastin in a dog is 10 years whereas it’s 75 years in humans.

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Episode #35: Interview with Elle Russ, Primal Blueprint Certified Expert and Personal Coach

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Description: Elle joins host Brad Kearns to discuss her journey from chronic cardio sugar addict to primal success story, her completion of the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification as a critical beta tester, and her personal coaching services.

Elle was one of the first five graduates of the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification program and made a tremendous contribution to the beta-testing program by scrutinizing and challenging assorted elements of the text and examinations. This helped clarify the official Primal Blueprint position and ensured that the examinations were a fair and relevant test of knowledge for students.

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Episode #34: Interview with Dr. Cate Shanahan of The Primal Advantage

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Description: Dr. Cate talks about her experiences with Primal Advantage clients after the launch of the program in July. In particular, she discusses how traditional medical care is not structured to allow for the discussion of how diet and lifestyle elements affect disease patterns. Most family practice physicians are obliged to spend only 10 minutes with patients. This usually constrains doctors to only enough time to treat symptoms (rather than the cause of those symptoms) with prescription drugs that generate adverse side effects. Regarding blood tests, Cate mentions the recent disturbing headline about the UCLA meta-analysis that 75% of heart attack victims have LDL cholesterol readings in the “safe” or “normal” zone, and furthermore have no symptoms of heart disease until the actual heart attack.

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Episode #33: Introducing Mike Dilandro, Our First Primal Blueprint Certified Expert!

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Description: Host Brad Kearns talks with Mike DiLandro of New Jersey, a Primal Blueprint success story and presenter of the Primal Transformation Seminar and at PrimalCon. Mike was also the very first graduate of the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification program. Mike discusses how he came to try out the Primal Blueprint after becoming frustrated that his chronic cardio approach (10 gym workouts each week!) didn’t improve his body composition. After switching to a primal eating pattern and backing off the chronic cardio in favor of more intense workouts and more rest and recovery between intense workouts, Mike lost 25 pounds of excess body fat, ditched his statin medication and resolved his ongoing knee pain.

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Episode #31: Mark Sisson Talks to Jimmy Moore About Keto Clarity

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Description: Mark turns the tables on Jimmy Moore (host of the popular Livin’ La Vida Low Carb podcast, where he has interviewed nearly 1,000 guests!) as Jimmy discusses his new book, Keto Clarity. Jimmy reveals how eating to promote a state of nutritional ketosis can have therapeutic effects on mood, energy levels, and brain function, as well as powerful fat reduction benefits. This is particularly true for people who have been eating primal/Paleo/low-carb and become stalled out on their progress. Jimmy himself lost some 180 pounds through low carb eating, then started to explore the world of nutritional ketosis to make further progress and experience incidental benefits with great success.

Keto Clarity, which Jimmy wrote along with Dr. Eric Westman, details Jimmy’s intensive self-experimentation, including blood testing several times per day for a year, to identify the dietary patterns that allow him to remain in a prolonged ketone-burning and fat-burning state. In the discussion, Jimmy mentions the confusion around “low carb” diets, which can often take the shape of a high protein diet.

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Episode #27: Liz and Farhad Mostaedi Talk Work and Life at Primal HQ

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Description: Host Brad Kearns talks with Primal Blueprint employees Farhad and Liz, who experience the Primal movement from its epicenter at the Malibu, CA company headquarters. Farhad and Liz discuss how working at Primal Blueprint has helped transform their personal health and fitness, and how they support and motivate each other accordingly—successfully managing the frequently problematic task of integrating one’s significant other into Primal living (as Farhad said, “She said, ‘We can’t have bagels in the house anymore’…and I said, ‘Uh, okay’).

Farhad and Liz also provide a touching and romantic account of how they seamlessly evolved from respectful co-workers to becoming engaged in a short time period….thanks to Liz being the solo attendee (out of a dozen invited co-workers) to Farhad’s art show, and a riot and a rainstorm one crazy night in downtown Los Angeles.

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Episode #26: Introducing Dr. Cate Shanahan and The Primal Advantage

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Description: Mark Sisson interviews Dr. Cate Shanahan to discuss the launch of the exciting new Primal Advantage metabolic consulting program. In this podcast, Dr. Cate discusses her work with elite athletes, such as Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers; how your dietary choices affect your metabolic function (especially how adding oft-ignored food categories like bone broth can help improve joint function); how mainstream medical care essentially ignores the role of diet in promoting health and preventing disease; how the Primal Advantage can help everyone, from athletes stuck in a performance rut, to people who have sustained significant metabolic damage from years or decades of poor food choices, or even people with serious medical issues taking Rx drugs.

To be clear, while Cate is a practicing family physician in California, the Primal Advantage is a metabolic consulting service that cannot be construed as a formal doctor’s appointment (due to the remote nature of the interaction). However, the Primal Advantage allows Dr. Cate to work 1:1 with clients interested in improving their health, increasing energy, and minimizing disease risk factors through personalized metabolic consulting—while honoring the Primal/paleo/evolutionary health principles. This is a unique opportunity to engage with a Primal-friendly doctor instead of feeling the disconnection that is common when visiting mainstream practitioners.

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Episode #25: Internal Medicine Physician Dr. Ron Sinha Talks Fat, Cholesterol, and Stress

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Description: In this episode, Mark interviews Dr. Sinha about his battle on the front lines trying to convince the mainstream medical community that fat and cholesterol are not your enemy, and that the true risk factors for heart disease lay in overly stressful lifestyles, poor exercise habits, and a high insulin producing diet. Dr. Ron is an internal medicine physician who specializes in cardiovascular prevention. He is the medical director of employer services, serving major employee groups like Google, Oracle, and Yahoo. For these large employers, he designs health education lectures and wellness programs. Ron describes how mainstream physicians are seeing actual results with his alternative methods and hence embracing the principles of primal/paleo eating slowly but surely.

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Episode #23: Meet “Paleo Girl” Author Leslie Klenke

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Description: Host Brad Kearns has a lively discussion with Leslie Klenke, who has just released her long awaited book, Paleo Girl. This truly is the first book in the Primal/paleo/evolutionary health space to target teenage girls, and Leslie does a masterful job speaking directly and emphatically to teens on issues that matter most to them.

The foundation of Leslie’s approach is to encourage teens to reject the superficial and judgmental elements of modern culture, and pursue happiness as the primary goal and motivator for healthy lifestyle behaviors and dietary changes. Leslie shares some of her own experiences struggling with yo-yo dieting and fatigue from poor lifestyle habits in college, and how she pursued a more sensible and balanced approach to healthy living; a journey that sent her west from her home in Ohio to Los Angeles, and eventually into the inner circle of the Primal Blueprint movement.

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Episode #21: Chris Adams & Tina Leaman Talk PrimalCon & The Primal Blueprint Certification

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Description: Chris and Tina, the Primal power couple from Phoenix, AZ, have a lively discussion about their long history as PrimalCon group leaders. Chris and Tina have attended all seven PrimalCons held, and list some of their highlights and humorous memories. Included are the Oxnard ocean plunge/jacuzzi sprint, where the resort jacuzzi (a 2 minute sprint from the chilly ocean) overflows beyond capacity; an impromptu Oxnard beach house party where 100 people danced the night away; the beautiful hike to Angora Lakes above Lake Tahoe; the amazing connections formed where strangers traveling from across the world become close friends and vacation together beyond PrimalCon; and the great work of presenter Angelo Dela Cruz, another 7 for 7 PrimalCon attendee, who starts each day off with his VitaMoves session and does 1:1 bodywork with guests to promote natural healing.

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