Everyone goes from New York City to go up 9W and there's a couple bike shops there.

And we plopped a power bar tent right there and we were handing out and sampling gels to people as they were coming in.

And then at 4 or 5 o' clock, we packed the whole thing up and we shipped everything over to Randall's island where we were sponsoring a track event, was there till probably 11 o' clock at night, packed everything up and we're back at the bike shop at seven in the morning the next day.

I looked at him and I said, eric, this is what I want to be when I grow up.

Like, we're doing it.

I was like, this is it.

And he's me too.

Hello, my name is Jeff Sankoff.

I am the Tridoc and I am the host of the Tridoc podcast.

I am an emergency physician, triathlete and a multiple ironman finisher and a triathlon coach.

And this is the January 23rd episode of the Tridog podcast.

And I am so pleased you are here with me and I am coming to you as always from beautiful, sunny Denver, Colorado.

The voice you heard at the beginning of the podcast was that of my guest today, Matthew Schuster.

Matthew is a very accomplished age group cyclist and triathlete.

He has been in the sport for a very long time.

He has a lot of tales to tell.

He's also the co founder of Adra Labs, the producer of healthy protein bars.

He's gonna be here to talk about his experience in the world of multisport, how he came to be the co founder of an energy nutrition product company, and what he has to bring to the world of endurance sport at this time in his career.

Before that, on the Medical Mailbag, I'll be joined by my colleague, coach Juliet Hockman, so that we can answer a listener question.

This week we are going to be answering a question about whether or not the use of statins, those important drugs that lower LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol in the blood, which are so important in reducing the risk of stroke and heart attack by as much as 25% in some individuals, whether or not those medications can also have an adverse effect on performance in endurance sports.

We know that statins in some people can cause muscle soreness and even a myopathy that can decrease strength.

Well, what about performance for endurance sport?

There is some literature that suggests that this can can be an issue for some people.

We're going to look at what the evidence says and whether or not people should be concerned or even potentially think about not taking these drugs.

The short answer is no.

If you need them, you really should take them.

And we'll talk about what you can do to try and decrease the impact of statins on your muscle soreness, muscle performance, and that's going to be coming up in just a short bit.

Before we get to the medical mailbag, though, I do want to talk about something that's been weighing very heavily on me, something that I have struggled really to decide about how to handle here on the Tridark podcast, because it involves not triathlon, not endurance sport, but really everything that's going on in the world around us.

This podcast is, I know for probably many of you, a source of respite from the outside world.

And I have been hesitant to bring too much of what's going on in the world around us into the sphere of this kind of comfort zone.

But at the same time, I'm afraid that by not acknowledging what's going on, I am almost burying my head in the sand.

And as day after day brings outrage after outrage in this country and in the world around us, I feel like we just can't ignore it for too much longer because if we do, we make ourselves almost complicit and we certainly put ourselves in peril.

I have received comments from some of the athletes I coach, from some people who listen to this program, who follow me on different social media platforms, and they have expressed their concern that they know I am originally Canadian.

I am a dual citizen at this point, though, therefore hopefully not at risk of what's going on in places like Minnesota right now.

Nonetheless, I don't know that I feel 100% secure and I want to acknowledge that this is a scary time for a lot of people and what is going on right now is not okay.

And while I don't know, I don't have answers as to what it is that we can do to necessarily impact change.

I do think that we should all remain engaged, I do think that we should all remain informed, and I do think that we should all remain prepared to do whatever it is that we can to effect the kind of change that we want to see so that we can get back to the kind of society that is civil, that is kind, and that is accepting of everyone, no matter who they are, what they think, or where they are from.

So while I do want this podcast to be a place of refuge from the terrible things going on in our day to day lives, I do want to acknowledge that I feel it just the same as you do.

And I am not immune to feeling the kinds of anxiety and the kinds of fear that probably many of you who are listening are feeling on a day to day basis.

Stay kind to each other, stay focused and keep going with your training.

It is a source of respite, certainly for me, and I'm sure it is for many of you.

And if you ever want to talk about these things, then go to the Tridoc Podcast Facebook group.

I'm sure there are others who will be feeling the same as you are, and I certainly am more than happy to engage in that kind of dialogue.

Drop me a linetridocloud.com and remember, you're not alone as much as it feels like you are.

We're all going through it.

We're all feeling the same kind of fear and disgust at what we see and we all hope for better times ahead.

With that said, let's move on to the medical mailbag.

Let's think about whether or not statins are something that can improve our cardiovascular health while potentially harming our endurance performance.

It is that time again, at a time when I'm joined by my friend and colleague, Coach Juliet Hockman of LifeSport Coaching.

Juliet, how are you today?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm doing awesome.

I'm doing awesome.

I really enjoyed our conversation that we had for our last episode about finding your why, helping our athletes find your why.

I was a little, I don't know, surprised that there wasn't a discussion of sorts within the Facebook group.

Yeah, what's up people?

We pour our heart and souls into this episode.

We've talked about it, let us knew what was coming and then we get crickets from all of you.

I guess it was way more interesting to us than it was to you.

Maybe I'm putting it out there that because it came out on what, January 2nd, maybe something like that.

Came out early.

Yeah, it was early.

Yeah, there was a.

There's a little bit of a holiday hangover maybe.

Yeah, exactly.

But you still have the opportunity to go back and listen to the last episode and please let us know if you have any thoughts or insight or you'd like to add some more chatter about your why.

What gets you going in the morning?

We had a couple of follow up comments, but I guess we thought it would be a little bit more topical, particularly at this time of year when it's dark and the days are short and it's cold and it's hard to get on your bike or oh my gosh, so hard to get to the pool when it's this cold.

So mostly I would really like to know people's why.

We had some feedback when we first posted the question and it was really great to see Layla and Zinnia and Justin and Brian and they all chipped in, I thought some really insightful comments about how their why has changed over time, things like that.

I thought it was great and really informed our conversation when we had it.

But I wonder, I'd be interested in knowing if people enjoyed that conversation and also in knowing if it made people think about huh.

I wonder what my why is and I wonder if mine has changed or if it's been helpful at all to help people reset and think about that kind of thing.

As we get into the time where we really have to start being serious about our training going into this season.

I do want to say that before we start on our topic for the day, I do want to say that January is a wonderful month.

Many of us have a little bit more time and perhaps training isn't as intense and.

But you're inside a lot more because in a lot of parts of the world where athletes live, it's darker and it's colder, etc.

And I was having a hilarious text conversation with one of my athletes the other day because she's planning to go to USAT Nationals in Milwaukee.

I'm hoping to go as well, assuming that my training goes well.

And I was looking at the schedule and I was saying, hey, look at this, you could do the sprint, the Olympic, the mixed relay, and then the other sprint because there's a draft legal and a non draft legal sprint.

You could do all of those.

And she wrote back, question mark.

And I'm like, it's January, just run with me here.

So that would mean you'd have to take two bikes.

And I said, see the comment above, it's January.

And she goes, oh, I'm not playing the game.

And I'm like, no, you're not playing the game.

Come on.

This is where we get to think.

About all the things, all the possibilities.

You have to take two bikes, three races, four races in three days.

Of course it's possible.

It's January.

I encourage everybody to embrace your January and put them all on the calendar.

And you know, and then you whittle.

It down, you whittle it down once realism sets in.

Yeah, I like that.

That's right.

I do like that.

Speaking of all the possibilities, we have on this show looked at the concept of intermittent fasting in the past and when we Looked at it, the science was reasonable as a means of weight loss.

It actually is effective more for men than for women.

There are issues with women, especially postmenopausal women, but it have a fair body of evidence to suggest that intermittent fasting can help with weight loss.

And it does so in a couple ways.

First of all, it just makes it easier to restrict your calorie intake because you're not eating for a chunk of the day.

And then also it makes it a bit easier to convert your body to metabolizing fat during those hours that you are fasting.

So there's a two pronged effect.

There is some question about whether or not weight you lose during the intermittent fasting period actually remains off.

And you have to be careful about when you train because it's very difficult to train efficiently and effectively if it's during the fasting period.

At the time when we reviewed this, I said this is not really something that I could do.

I think it's interesting, it's something that I would certainly consider trying, but it's not something that I could do because my schedule as a clinical emergency physician was not amenable to it.

However, I now have a very different schedule.

And it occurred to me that last year I really struggled with my race weight.

And not that I'm hugely overweight or anything, but I know that I had some weight that I felt I could lose.

That would have helped me be potentially more, shall we say, efficient in my racing.

I now work in a job that is very fixed hours, so I'm up in the morning at 5, I work from 6 to 3, I don't get train at all until 3 o'.

Clock.

So suddenly I started to think to myself back in December, I started thinking I need to revisit this idea of intermittent fasting.

I took a look at the literature again and again, was compelled by what is out there, especially for men.

I do want to put a caveat here that for women this is unfortunately less of a viable strategy, but for men it's a pretty good strategy.

And for my now schedule, intermittent fasting looked very attractive.

And so I decided I would start.

So when I came back from Africa, I took it up and Basically I'm fasting 14 hours a day, eating 10 hours a day, and I have found it remarkably easy so far.

So here we are, January, what are we?

The 18th?

I started when I got back, which was January 7th, so it's been about 11 days I've been doing it and I basically I finish eating at 8.

I don't eat anything after about 8pm and the only reason I eat that late is because with my daughter's pole vaulting and with everything else I'm doing, I just.

That's generally when I stop eating.

I'm managing my calorie intake.

I'm not taking a huge calorie intake, I'm managing my fat intake.

And then I don't eat until 10am I find basically I just get up in the morning, I have my coffee and I just go to work.

And by the time I start working, it's four hours left in my fast.

At 10am I have a very high protein shake and that satisfies me.

Well, I tell you, I don't feel like it's been very difficult now.

Weight's not dropping off, I'm not melting or anything like that.

The other thing is I'm very careful to make sure that I'm taking in carbohydrates and I don't include the calories that I take when I train in my daily calorie intake, which I think is very important.

You've heard us talk with nutritionists on the show and it's very important that you fuel to perform.

And this is working for me so far.

And I will follow up as the time goes by.

I'll let you all know how it's working out for me so far.

I feel like it's helping but like I said, I haven't seen my weight hasn't precipitously dropped.

So it's coffee first thing in the morning Approaching Shake at 10.

You probably train at what, 4?

I train it around 3:30 or 4.

Yeah.

So what do you have?

Is there anything that goes into you between your 10 o' clock protein shake and your training?

Oh yeah.

So I'll have a.

Let's not forget that piece.

Oh yeah, no, absolutely.

But right now I'm restricting myself to about 23 to 2,500 calories a day as my meals and it's much easier to do when I'm only eating over 10 hours and I'm missing breakfast.

So I have a healthy lunch, high protein again but with carbs.

And then I generally will snack on protein bars that have again, I'm trying to get as much protein as possible.

Also I get carbohydrates when I go to exercise.

I'll usually take carbohydrate, vegetables, liquids.

Sometimes I have waffles or I'll even use chews to augment and to supplement my carbohydrates for training.

Yeah, so far I feel like it's been not difficult to do.

Again, easier, I think, given that I'm now working a fixed schedule and I don't train.

Yeah.

And I'm not training in the mornings.

I would not recommend this for people who can train in the mornings because I really do believe that training fasted is not the way to go if you want to perform.

Yeah.

So it's been interesting and I will.

Let you know, but you're missing the 10am Chocolone chocolate, and you're also missing the 4:30pm plate of cheese and crackers and the 5:30pm glass of wine.

Does that play into your 2,300 calories?

You're so right.

It's all the sacrifices all the time.

Kelly Pois, her husband Simon, he posted something on Instagram like making his own bars.

And it was like.

I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not, but it was like Mars bars and butter, like melted.

And then they added marshmallows.

And then there was like Count Chocula or Choc.

I don't know what it was.

It was cocoa crisps or something.

And then it became like this thing that you put on a baking plate and then you waited till it cooled and then you cut it into bars.

And I was like, this cannot be for real.

I have to follow up with them.

But I was like, there you go.

There's your.

What did you say?

Choco.

Choco.

Tony's chocolate.

Oh, that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

All right.

With all of that health.

Yeah.

With all of that health food talk.

We do have a medical mailbag question and it was submitted by a listener.

So why don't we get to that?

Juliet, who wrote in and what are we answering?

It's on point because it's about statins, which of course are meant to lower bad cholesterol.

And that's probably their Tony's Chocolate right there.

But anyway, this comes from, and forgive me, Kyle, if I'm mispronouncing your last name, but I believe it's Kyle Leonbauer.

Leon Bauer, something like that.

Anyway, Kyle, this comes from Kyle and he wants to know if statins inhibit cardiovascular fitness.

Now, we know that statins are out there.

They're very important drug in our sort of pharmaceutical bag of tricks.

In terms of armamentarium.

Exactly.

Our armory two, low bad cholesterol.

And we know that it has some fairly serious side effects, sometimes involving muscle soreness in some people.

But his particular question is its impact, if any, negative or positive.

But I think he was looking at the negative slant on inhibiting cardiovascular fitness.

So what did your team find out?

Yeah, really interesting question and I think very topical, especially because as we know endurance athletes, a big number of them are getting older, right?

We've talked about a lot of topics.

Perimenopausal women, postmenopausal women, older men.

And we know that as you get older, your risks for cardiovascular disease rise, especially if you have a familial hereditary component.

If you are a type 2 diabetic, there are all kinds of different risk factors, and one of those risk factors is elevated cholesterol.

If you have an elevated LDL cholesterol, your risk of cardiovascular disease goes up.

And cardiovascular disease in the form of heart attack or stroke.

And these drugs, the statins, have been around now for several decades and, and their introduction, discovery and introduction have been revolutionary in really their impact on improving outcomes and improving cardiovascular disease.

It's really quite remarkable.

We don't have too many examples of medications that have had this kind of impact.

And what we're talking about here are medications like Simvastatin, Lovastatin, Atorvastatin, and basically all of these medications taken in some, what they do is they inhibit a enzyme called HMG CoA reductase.

And these HMG CoA reductase inhibitors, they interfere.

It's a mouthful, right?

No, it sounds like a Harry Potter still reductase.

They interfere in this pathway that when you eat fats, you break down fats into something called acetyl coa and then acetyl COA enters into this pathway pathway and by this enzyme is very critical in the formation of these LDL cholesterols.

Inhibiting this enzyme prevents the formation of these cholesterols and can therefore reduce your levels of LDL and reduce your level of cholesterol and reduce cardiovascular events of heart attack and stroke by almost a quarter.

It's really impressive.

And if you've had previous cardiac event and are known to have elevated cholesterol, these statins can reduce repeat events by very dramatic numbers as well.

Now, not everybody should be on a statin.

You really should only be taking them if you fit a certain profile.

And I am not here to tell you whether or not you should be on one, you should really have that conversation with your primary care doctor.

But if you should be on one, then the question becomes, well, if I'm taking one to improve my cardiovascular health and I'm exercising to improve my cardiovascular health, does the statin somehow offset the benefits of exercise by inhibiting the benefits of exercise?

Not necessarily inhibiting the cardiovascular effects, but by inhibiting the exercise effects on my muscles.

Because statins, it turns out, do have an impact on muscle function.

And it's a little bit complicated as to how.

But first we should just say that statins come in two flavors.

There are fat soluble and water soluble.

And the reason that's important is because a fat soluble statin has the ability to get into your cells much, much easier.

So a fat soluble statin can move through the cell membrane, which is comprised of fats, basically, and a water soluble statin cannot get into the cell.

And the reason that's important, important is because this enzyme, the HMG CoA reductase, exists throughout the body and exists within the muscle cells.

So the theory, or the thought was if we can keep these molecules, these statins, outside of the muscle cells, then we will reduce the impact on muscle function.

So water soluble statins should be better.

Now, there's some studies that show that's not necessarily the case.

So what's going on?

The issue is that there's a side effect of blocking the formation of cholesterol.

There's also some downstream effects on the mitochondria, which are the tiny little furnaces, tiny little energy production units within all of our cells.

When you inhibit the HMJ CoA pathway, you also inhibit the formation of something called Coenzyme Q10 or CoQ10.

And this is a vital transport protein that is really essential for cellular respiration.

So every time we breathe, we take in oxygen.

When we breathe, we call it respiration, right?

We're taking in oxygen, we're breathing out carbon dioxide.

Cellular respiration are cells burning oxygen in the mitochondria and then producing carbon dioxide.

So the cells need this coenzyme Q10 as a vital transport protein within the mitochondria to be efficient at cellular respiration.

It's not like they can't do it, but they just don't do it as well.

So you end up getting some dysfunction of cellular respiration that translates into some dysfunction of muscle function.

And you can even get some muscle damage.

A whole bunch of research has been done on this over the years, just tons and tons of research.

And basically what has been found is people on statins often will complain of muscle soreness, they often will complain of muscle weakness.

Not everybody.

And it's very difficult to predict who.

They often will demonstrate decreased ability to perform strength, exercise, and even some endurance exercise.

And while there is a higher association with those who are on fat soluble drugs than water soluble drugs, it does cross over.

So There are impacts in both of these drugs and even in those who do not complain of any symptoms.

We can see markers of cell damage in people who are on statins in the form of elevated ck, which is CK is a marker of cell damage.

It's normally kept within the cells, but if it starts leaking into the bloodstream it suggests that the cells are damaged.

And when you have higher CK levels that with people who are on statins, even when they don't complain of symptoms.

So all of this would suggest that, yeah, Kyle's question is spot on, that statins definitely do have some significant impacts, but the trade off is simply too great.

And what I mean by that is the benefits of taking statins are simply far too great to not be taking them.

If you need to be taking them, then the question becomes what can we do to try and mitigate the effects of those statins.

And I mentioned earlier this Coenzyme Q10 or CoQ10 and CoQ10 is available as an oral supplement.

And several researchers have looked at supplementing with CoQ10.

And there is some promising early research that suggests if you give people CoQ10 that they will actually have improvement of their muscle function, decrease of muscle damage and overall will offset the impacts of the statins.

A good study by Markoff and Thompson from 2007 was a systematic meta analysis of five published studies looking at 765 patients with CoQ10 treatment on statin induced myopathy showed improvement in statin associated myopathy.

So this was people who had soreness and giving them Coq 10, they got better.

Another study, another meta analysis by in 2015 showed giving CoQ10 really also improved people people's CoQ10 levels, suggesting that they would have.

Now this didn't actually look at their overall performance or cell markers or anything like that, but it did show that if you take CoQ10 you will increase your intracellular CoQ10, which suggests that you will get improvement in a lot of these things.

So it's a drug that absolutely has huge benefits and if you need to be on it, you really should be taking it.

I would say if you're an athlete and you're concerned about the effects of a statin because of it, I would ask your doctor, can I be on a water soluble statin and take Coq10?

That would be my two bits of advice because I think these drugs are just too important not to take if you need to be taking them.

I think that the evidence for CoQ10 is probably good enough at this point that we can recommend using it.

There's no downsides to Coq10.

At least none have been reported or mentioned at this point.

And it doesn't impact the effect of the statins.

It's really a downstream sort of thing.

Do you have any athletes that you know of who are taking these?

I don't think we at life sport athletes fill in an athlete questionnaire as when they come on.

And I always, of course, check the medication.

I may have one or two, but I don't think so.

I would have noted it.

No one jumps to mind.

I usually note it because if you're on a status and that makes me ask the questions about cardiovascular risks and then I start to.

That makes my antenna go up and I'm like, oh, have you had a previous heart problem?

Do you have diabetes?

Do you have high cholesterol?

So at least that I know.

But now when I start to see patients or patients, when I start to see athletes who are on these drugs, I am going to.

I spend a little bit more time kind of thinking, are they on the water soluble ones and do they have any symptoms related to this?

And, and are you taking COQ10?

Because I think that there is reasonable evidence to suggest that this is beneficial.

Yeah.

I was wondering if you were looking up, I was wondering if you were looking up how much it was while I was talking about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no.

It's probably something that it would be good to pay more attention to that, I guess, if you're an athlete who were on these, both understand the type of statin that you were on and also, of course, to really notice the effects that you might be feeling when you're on them too.

And it's interesting because I know, I've heard from cyclists who don't want to go on these medications because they feel that they don't want to take the risk of having soreness, they don't want to take the risk of having decreased performance, which I fully understand.

But at the same time I'm like, if you need to be on these medications, I don't know.

I think the risk of the soreness and everything else, especially if it can be lessened by taking this CoQ10, to me, that's not that we're doing this to stay healthy, we're not doing this to win the Tour de France.

And now the soreness, obviously that's a bigger deal.

But if you're having, if you're having soreness, you could change statins.

We know that soreness with one doesn't necessarily translate to another.

I don't know, I would be hard pressed to not take these medications.

I'm just looking up.

The Coq 10 is actually quite inexpensive.

It's $29 for a 240 capsule bottle and you take two a day.

So that's 120 days.

That's four months right there.

So not very expensive at all.

As always.

I guess if you are an athlete who is training really consistently and you have goals, particularly specific goals for the year, and you are on statins, make sure your doctor understands that you might be a little bit different from his or her other patients in terms of what your daily activity is.

Really make sure that you can help educate them on how you're spending so much time training.

And also to see if there are alternatives to the medication that you're on is there are the supplements, et cetera, that could help alleviate the potential side effects of this as it pertains to your endurance training.

Those are very good points.

Those are really good points, Juliette, because I think that most of us who go to see a physician and we are not the typical patient and our physician isn't necessarily going to be thinking about how a medication's effects on muscle performance might be much more important to someone who is a very active triathlete versus somebody who's just a normal, unattractive, average person who's who some exercise might be playing pickleball or just golfing or something where it's not nearly as important.

And I don't mean any disrespect to pickleball players.

No.

To golfers or pickleballers.

No, of course not.

So I think that's a really valid and important point to raise, which is really be open and I think take the lead with those conversations with your primary care physician and just say, look, how's this medication going to affect me?

Are there alternatives?

What can I take to try and decrease any of these potential side effects if they're going to affect performance?

So yeah, those are very good.

Yeah.

To take that one step further, this is actually a conversation I have more and more with my athletes now than I did even 10 years ago, which is, I think that we rightfully so have a reverence for the medical profession.

We should.

They've trained long and hard, they're experts in our field, etc.

But I also find and have found the particular as a middle aged woman, if I'm going in and seeing a doctor who doesn't know anything about me and I have 16 minutes because that's what our current system allows.

I have to hit them right between the eyes in terms of this is who I am.

This is how much I'm training every day.

This is my level of performance.

These are my goals for the year.

This is my background.

We can't wait around.

And I advise all of my athletes of this, particularly women.

And I'm like, look, you've got to tell them exactly who you are, what you intend to do this year, that you're not your typical person off the couch who eats bon bons all day because you just don't have time to mess around.

Yeah.

And you don't want to forget to lay that out there and get caught up in everything else.

Yeah.

I couldn't agree more.

Couldn't agree more.

And I actually think physicians, for the most part, not all.

I've run again a couple that don't love it, but they're very grateful because now they know exactly from where you're operating.

That's really good advice, and I think.

That'S a good way to end this segment.

And I want to thank Kyle for sending in the question.

It's always great to have questions coming in that we can answer.

We have several more that are coming down the pike.

I know we got a good list now.

Yeah, got a good list.

So keep them coming, folks.

We really appreciate them.

If you want to send in a question for us to consider on the medical mailbag, I hope that you will.

You can put them into the Facebook group where I know people are going to be commenting about their why.

I'm very excited to see see that.

But yes, you can put them into the Facebook group if you're not already a member.

I hope that you will look for the Tridoc podcast on that platform.

Answer the three very easy questions and we will grant you admittance so you can join the conversation and ask your questions there.

You could send me an email AtTri_docloud.com, you could go to my website.

There are innumerable ways to get your question to us and we would be happy to look into the medical literature and get you an answer here on the Medical Mailbox.

Until the next time.

Juliet, thank you so much for joining me.

It's always a pleasure and thanks for being here.

Talk to you again soon.

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm excited today to have not one.

But two guests on the podcast and it is a great pleasure to welcome them both.

The first of my guests is Matt Schuster.

Matt has a history as an NCAA Division I lacrosse player.

He is a three time USAT All American.

He's an Ironman and 70.3 age group podium finisher and he raced in Kona in 2024.

His partner in crime.

Today on the podcast is my second guest.

That's Eric Zaltas.

I hope I'm pronouncing that right.

Should have asked before we started recording.

He is a former member of the National Road Cycling Team, a US national champion in the team time trial.

He has done 20 marathons, two of them sub three hours.

I think if I took both of those, he'd get close to my average time.

He's done a full Ironman 270.3s.

He has a history in science, he has a Master of Science in Human Nutrition and he has a diploma in Sports nutrition from the IOC.

He has spent 30 years in the sports nutrition industry in research and development and both he and Matt are co founders of ADRA Lab, something we will be talking about throughout our conversation.

But for now I want to welcome them both to the Tridoc Podcast.

Thank you both for taking some time out of your day to speak with me today and to my listeners.

Hey, it's.

It's great to be here.

I think what I learned from that is I need to figure out a way to beef up my bio when you read it next to Eric's because.

Wow, that often is the case when.

You get to to be a part.

Or that's my issue with Tempo Talks.

The other podcast that I do here I am lowly age grouper working with Matt Sharp, a Olympian and 70.3 race winner.

So I definitely know how you feel in that.

Let's start with you.

Where did you play lacrosse As a Division 1 athlete?

Yes.

I grew up in Long island in New York and it is.

It's known as the hotbed for lacrosse.

Quite a few of the top collegiate players come out of that, among other areas.

But that's a big one.

And we have the notoriety of being the worst team in Long island, which is still a pretty good team outside of.

But.

But you get to play all the best teams.

It's not as much fun, but I was able to scrape together a pretty decent high school career and then was recruited to go play at Siena College, which is just outside of Albany.

And similarly, they were Division one.

We got to go back in its heyday play Syracuse.

We went out to Denver to play those guys and just like in high school, we got to play all the big guys.

It wasn't as fun because they were a few steps above where we were, but yeah, it was a, it was quite the experience for sure.

Now, listeners of the podcast know I.

Have a daughter who is a very.

Prolific and very good pole vaulter in high school and she is in the.

Midst of being recruited to college for her vaulting skills and is talking to a bunch of Division 1 schools.

So how did your athletic career in college, was it something that you would recommend for high school students?

Is it because you hear a lot of plus minus for about being a D1 athlete?

I think it definitely teaches you a lot.

It definitely the demands of being a collegiate athlete, even whether it's NCAA club, no matter what, if you're committed to your sport, you're going to learn very quickly that, that you all of a sudden have to balance your time and your energy.

And that is a skill that it's a hard one to learn.

The collegiate experience really gives you a training ground to figure that out.

Obviously, as you compete at the higher levels, it becomes a little less because the demands go up, but they have a lot of support systems, they have a lot of resources for you, but it forces you into that life skill which you're going to need once you graduate, regardless.

On the flip side, it's also very easy to overdo it and you can over commit yourself in many directions.

Sport, academics, socially, all three at the same time.

And there are some individuals that will go in and fail to find that balance and then unfortunately can't maintain it.

And you see it all the time, very promising athletes or students will go to a highly decorated university and then unfortunately have to leave after a year or two years just because they couldn't keep it up.

But I would still say if the passion is there and they're doing it for the right reasons, it's such a wonderful experience for young individuals.

As a parent now and what my parents did for me, they really stress the importance of you are going to have to figure out how to balance all of this and you can't do everything.

And I encourage parents today to do the same thing with their kids.

Yeah, that's good pointers because I know.

That we have told our daughter, hey, pole vault's not going to pay the.

Bills, so use it to get into a good school.

But then the education is really what's going to count.

Eric, tell me about your past as a cyclist.

Getting on the national road cycling team, that must have been quite an amazing journey.

I'm going to tell you a story that's probably different than any story You've heard, and I don't know that there's many like it.

So.

I grew up in the Bronx, and I grew up at a time when the movie Breaking Away hadn't even happened yet, and Greg Lamond wasn't even in Europe.

And I went to the Bronx High School of Science.

It has some Nobel Prize winners that came out of that high school.

I was terrible at team sports and had a bit of confidence in what was above my shoulders and not much with what was below.

I stumbled into the sport of bicycle racing.

I started bike racing in Central park and I was good at it.

I was good at it right away and it gave me an incredible feeling that I hadn't gotten through traditional sports that you're exposed to.

I was racing my bike in the early 80s and I actually raced collegiately.

And there was a very nascent intercollegiate competitive circuit.

It was not national, but there was an Eastern Collegiate Champion Championships.

And I fell in with a group of guys at State University New York at Stony, Brooklyn.

We ended up with a team there that basically kicked butt up and down the East Coast.

It was an incredible time.

We beat up on all the Ivy League schools.

And I don't know that we had raced against Siena, but it was a great time.

Toward the end of my time at school in college, I got the opportunity to go out to the Olympic Training center in Colorado Springs.

It was a development camp.

Yeah, I just more and more fell in love with the sport and kept seeing success.

And I took it as far as I wanted to.

I wore the stars and stripes, representing the US in many stage races, amateur stage races around the world, far flung places as Morocco and Australia and New Zealand.

The thing that I ended up being best at was an event called the team time trial, which is four guys or gals against the clock.

You're at the front for 25, 30 seconds and you pull off and you've got a minute and a half till you're at the front again.

And we would do 100k in a little more than 2 hours.

I love the concept of working super hard with a few people and you've got to look out for everybody.

And got a national championship in that.

Very close.

I will say it because it's true.

I was very close.

Probably one person away from going to the Olympics in 92 in the team time trial.

There's gotta be somebody who is one person away.

Right.

But 93 was national champion.

And that was my last year racing.

And then given my science background and the performance stuff, there were A few things I got interested in and I eventually took that into diving into both academically and then eventually professionally.

The connection between nutrition and performance.

Now you were racing at a time before time trial bikes.

Were they even using aero bars when you were doing the team time trial?

Yeah.

So by the time I was finishing up, we had bikes that were not that different than today.

Certainly not as much carbon fiber.

I don't remember which year it was that Greg Lamond first put the clip ons on and beat Finon in the time trial.

That famous really transition.

But I'm pretty sure that was before 93.

I think so too.

Yeah, yeah.

When we were doing the teen time trial.

It is a wild event to be out in the bars, pulling off and then tucking back in.

You really cannot see the wheel of the guy in front of you.

You just have to know how far that wheel is in front of you.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's amazing to.

To do triathlons on the bike.

And I'm in aero position.

I have no problem navigating because I'm usually very slow out of the water and I get to pass a lot of people and I try not to get carried away.

I bet.

Yeah.

Team time trial no longer an Olympic.

Event, I believe, which is too bad.

Really too bad.

It was actually stopped in 90s, I believe, actually not long after I stopped and it used to be in the Tour and it was absolutely my favorite thing to watch.

Nine guys.

Yeah.

In the top four or five.

They just brought it back last year.

Into the Vuelta, I believe, and they.

Changed the rules slightly, but it was.

Still just a very exciting stage to watch.

Hopefully it'll come back and be more popular.

Matt, I want to come back to.

You and, and just hear about how.

You went from being a lacrosse player to getting yourself into triathlon.

Yeah, There was a 15 year gap between those two individuals.

Lacrosse Matt and triathlon Matt.

After college I went.

I graduated on a Thursday and then started my first job on Monday and was working at a small advertising agency in New York City and basically took the trajectory of advertising technology, sales trajectory and ran with it for 15 years.

I worked within different startups and it was burning the candle at both ends.

Having probably too good of a time on the company's expense budgets, having a lot of success from a business standpoint, but slowly deteriorating from a health standpoint, as that lifestyle usually does to people.

I went through where we were running on my second company that I was an executive for and I was actually running the sales team and we were Working towards an exit and the pressure and the stakes started to get really high.

That's when the amount of physical activity went near close to zero, if not totally zero, for probably a good couple years.

And after that experience and after that exit, you take a step back, you have a little bit of reprieve, you build yourself back up, and then went into the next company with a similar situation, similar role, similar outcome, positive from a business standpoint, but same sort of torment on the body and the mind, really.

It was just before COVID that I was working at a company and things had gotten to a point where both trajectories crossed over.

The company was doing so well and about to be purchased, but my health was going like this and I hit the breaking point and essentially had to walk away.

And I remember there was one morning very vividly, it was October of 2019, cloudy day, and got up to go to work, sat up, looked at my wife and I said, I don't think I could do it, I don't think I can go.

And she just looked at me and she said, you're quitting your job today.

I was like, yeah.

And she goes, no, you don't get it.

You're quitting your job today.

This is it, this is done.

This has been going on for too long.

So I went in, sat down CEO and said, I'm out, can't do it anymore.

But worked out a transition plan and an exit.

I joke around.

I like to say that I did the sabbatical during lockdown before.

It was cool because my sabbatical started in December of 2019 and then everyone else has started in March of 2020.

Took a solid six months to build back and repair from my core up.

Like everything was broken physically, mentally, emotionally.

That takes its toll on you.

And where I found my outlet to start that rebuilding process was through running at first.

So I started taking running back up.

I had done some half marathons in the past, but nothing crazy.

And then like many of us do, we overdo it.

And I went from zero to probably like 30, 40 miles a week and picked up a little running injury, a little hamstring issue.

And then.

So what do you do if you've found this outlet that helps you feel better?

You find an alternative outlet, which was a bicycle.

So I grabbed a bike and started riding an old mountain bike around.

And then the mile started racking up.

All of a sudden I'm out on this bike for two hours, three hours, and we're talking old, like 15 year old Diamondback, not Conducive for road riding.

But I was just ripping around Jersey and then finally somebody was like, hey, you're doing all the pieces.

Why don't you go do an iron man?

And I was like, that's it.

That's what I'm doing.

Thankfully, somebody talked me off the ledge to not do a full ironman right out of the gate.

But I, fully committed, dove into the sport, and it was like all of the bells went off.

This is everything that you've probably wanted.

You can nerd out in the gear, you can nerd out in the science.

You can nerd out on the hard work, on the progression.

Like, every single piece, checked every box, and it was like.

Like, why haven't I been doing this my whole life?

What an idiot.

Just kept running with it and decided I actually made a pitch to my family.

When I say my family, my one son was one and my other one was four.

Our dog and my wife.

But I made a whole pitch deck, took them through it and said, I want funding to do one year of just triathlon, and here's how I'm going to pay for it.

And here's what it's going to mean.

Here's what I'm going to do, here's my goals.

And I think I did it more for me, but my older son was like, nope, you're not allowed to do it.

I was like, okay, I'm still going to do it.

But I appreciate your feedback.

This is such a triathlete story.

It is fantastic.

Talk about, like the overachiever executive at the ad agency then becomes the overachiever addictive, like, triathlete guy.

Yeah, it's pretty much bang, all about dopamine, man.

Yeah.

And then what do you do when you dive in and do that?

Oh, I'm going to do triathlon.

And I'm going to start a company in triathlon.

Yeah, I want to get to that next, but I want to hear from Eric.

I want to hear.

Eric, you said that once you step back from cycling, you return to your origins, really, your origins in science.

So I want to hear about what you did in science and how that led you to Matt.

Yeah.

So in a parallel universe, I went off and did a PhD in who knows, exercise physiology, nutrition biochemistry, whatever.

And by the time I finished, got the full physical bike racing out of my system.

I couldn't rationalize a bunch of years of doing that.

Toward the end of my racing career, I was interviewing people and thinking about different things I could do.

And the domestic cycling team that I was on had a nutrition component, which is why they were sponsoring the team.

And I did an internship and I got involved in a research study.

And I was the grunt.

I did all of the work for this study.

I really loved it.

And they hired me, and I got.

I just worked my way up from staff researcher to head of the department in seven years.

It was all in research and development and reading scientific articles and getting to talk to incredible researchers.

So this company had a scientific advisory board and just a little bit about the science side of me.

My heroes are these incredible scientists who are not trying to stand on a soapbox and have huge followings, but they're getting really good work done and are really nice to people who don't know a lot, and they're able to handle their questions.

So my first hero was this guy named Bill Haskell.

I don't know if you've ever heard the name.

He was a Stanford professor.

He was involved in some of the very early formative work on the benefits of physical activity for health.

We take it for granted, but there's actually work that had to be done.

And he was like that.

And I was like, this is what I want to do.

And went to a couple of different places along the way.

Biotech startup, always doing some research and development, close to clinical research, but more at the intersection of how do you take science and turn it into something that could be commercially useful?

So I'll just tell you the thing that happened before I went to PowerBar is I was living in Berkeley, California, and I was commuting to Santa Clara down in Silicon Valley, working for this biotech startup.

I was biking down there, by the way, once a week, which is like 50 miles.

And that's a whole other story.

But one day, a few of us were asked to go up to Power Bar because there was a mutual investor in the biotech company and Empower, which was Nestle.

So we went up there, and that morning I went from home.

I walked 10 minutes to the office, and they were doing such cool stuff there that I was like, why am I not working here?

So I took some business cards home, and within six months I was working there.

I was head of Scientific affairs in Berkeley, walking 10 minutes to the office.

I was there for about three years, and then I went with the head of the Power Bar business to the Nestle headquarters in Switzerland.

My boss, who was the head of Power Bar at the time, said, I want you to ask some really hard questions when we go over there to see what they could do.

To support us on the scientific side.

So I did my homework and got my list of questions together and I'm in this meeting, all these scientists and business people and I'm asking my hard questions and they didn't really have the answers to them.

So the head of R and D for Nestle Nutrition pulls me to the back of the room at the end of the meeting and says, you ask such good questions, why don't you come here and answer them?

So I moved my family to Switzerland and at the Nestle headquarters there, got to lead from the business standpoint, some incredible research projects.

I don't know.

Do you know the name Asker you can drop to Hester?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we funded a PhD in his lab and extended the carbohydrate research that he had done on the carbohydrate combination.

And this is 15 plus years ago now.

That research is still rolling out amongst triathletes and endurance athletes.

And even last year, the crazy high levels of carbs being consumed and records being said and Tour de France tactics changing because now they're feeding so many carbs.

I cut my teeth really in that experience and had incredible collaborations and now I have as friends the top sports nutrition researchers in the world.

That's a bit of the founding story that's really interesting.

And I have to just interject for a second because you mentioned that research on the carbohydrates and how carbohydrates, high carbohydrates, have been so important to understanding how to really fuel athletes during these really high intensity, long distance, long duration kind of events.

I was just contacted by this.

What are they?

Some kind of media group in Washington D.C. representing a MAHA organization that is trying to promote some new research that says, oh, no, carbohydrates bad.

This is the whole thing.

These people are bonkers.

And they tried to tell me that.

No, this is nonpartisan.

This is just, we're just trying to get the research out.

And we know that you with your podcast would be interested in this kind of medicine and research.

And I immediately started digging in to see who it was that was funding this.

And sure enough, it's.

I can't remember his name, but he's basically bankrolls all this maha stuff.

And I was like, yeah, no, not interested.

You could send me the research, but I'm going to read it, knowing exactly where it comes from.

And it's like you do all of this good science and then you have.

People who are willing to try to undermine it.

With clearly biased and I don't really understand, and that is the bane of my existence these days, is seeing so much disinformation and undermining of good science.

It's so frustrating and why I've tried to dedicate myself on this program to trying to show the people the truth.

And it's really frustrating at how hard it is to get the truth out there and dig through the mountain of disinformation.

And I've had guests on the program recently to talk specifically about that man you're up against.

Because anybody can go out and say.

Anything they want on social media and we as scientists hold ourselves to a much higher standard and we're stacking the deck against ourselves because we won't say anything and then try to explain the scientific method to people who are only interested in sound bites.

Anyways, that was a long aside.

I applaud that effort.

Keep fighting the good fight.

I'll tell you just on this whole area of high carb versus for athletes, those who think that low carb is the way to go.

Another good friend of mine, Louise Burke, who was head of sports and nutrition at the Australian Institute of Sport for many years and is arguably the top sports nutritionist in the world and we've run a few marathons together, she attacked that controversy that there might be some benefit to going low carb and you can go forever on fat.

She's done a really incredible series of studies over the last 10 years because she wanted to help Australian Olympic athletes.

And if there was something there, she wanted to find it out.

She has put it to bed and her thing is this, okay, let's see if there's something there.

And then she does a study, publishes it, and then gets criticized because it was two weeks and not six weeks.

So then she goes and does the six week study and they criticize it.

Oh, you did.

You lifted your left elbow.

So she's got this whole series of studies and if you haven't read them, it's really great.

There is no way to force the body to burn more fat.

And that would be better than actually feeding carbs.

And by the way, you also can't do both.

You can't force the body to burn more fat, feed carbs.

It would be great if you could.

It'd be great if you could, but you can't.

Those studies are really compelling.

And what I tell people is you.

Want to go low carb, have at it.

Just be sure you're on the start.

Line when I am because I want.

To see how it all works out.

Matt, I really want to hear how.

You guys came together.

I want to know how it comes to be that Eric is out there globetrotting.

He's finding his way into the boardrooms of all these amazing companies, working his way up the ladder to each one by asking these amazing questions.

You are finding yourself self funding a year as a semi pro triathlete.

How is it that you come together and and end up forming a company?

There's a bit of that story you're going to have to ask Eric about because there was some fun development of how the power bar business continued to go through.

I'll table that for there.

But after a year plus of doing the sport, I qualified for the 70.3 World Championships in St. George.

This back in 2022.

I was about a week out and I'll do my last training ride and sure enough had a crash.

And it was a silly stupid mistake, probably over fatigued, wasn't paying attention.

Ended up doing the full house of collarbone, shoulder blade, ribs, everything.

And it was the first time since I'd started the journey that I was laid up and couldn't do anything.

I remember sitting there at my computer just like not knowing what to do with myself.

And it was just this all of a sudden stream of consciousness where I just started writing in a Google Doc everything I'd learned in the first year, first year plus.

And at one point it was just gobbledygook, but it was 90 pages of gobbledygook.

And I was like, I don't know what to do with all this.

Like this just, it was just coming out of me and I was like, maybe it's a book.

Should I write a book?

Is that, do people do that?

And then I have a friend that works at Penguin Publishing and I went over to them, I was like, is this a book?

And they're like, this is not a book.

Don't get your hopes up.

They're like, maybe it's a cool blog.

So I was like, all right, maybe I'll do that.

So I started a blog.

It was called Age Grouper but started to pick up some steam.

And the thing that I was able to pull from that was it was all about connecting, similar how you do with the podcast, but it was through publication, connecting and interviewing and talking to different people and then sharing that sort of borrowed equity to help grow the influence.

So I did better.

Part of a hundred, maybe to 120 interviews and articles, some of them published, some of them definitely did not get published.

But still did the interviews and really learned what it meant to create an ambassador group that is sharing the same vision, bought into your mission and willing to help you.

That didn't really go too far.

So then from there it progressed into maybe that's not a business, but I do have this idea about virtual coaching because at the time the coach I had that I was working with, it was, I just transitioned to a new one and I saw the value of doing like, like virtual swim analysis or run gate analysis.

And I was like, this is amazing.

Like most people are spending 400 bucks on carbon shoes, but what they don't realize is that they just spent a hundred bucks with a coach that knows what they're doing.

They could get so much more out of it.

So I went and created a whole business, recruited 10 world class coaches, launched this platform and learned very quickly people want what they want, not what they need.

No kidding.

Athletes, money to burn.

They still bought the carbon shoes and didn't buy the coaching or at least not to the scale.

There was a couple hurdles, but I very quickly learned and realized, okay, that is not the business, but took from it.

Learned how to build out a website, learned how to build up a platform, do a formal launch, put out the press releases, marketing.

I learned how to acquire customers.

And then one day I remember a friend of ours, or we were both in Jersey, Eric, still living in Jersey at the time, a mutual friend suggested that we should connect and go for a run.

So we went for a run and at the time Eric was doing a lot more of the heavy lifting for Power Bar.

And we did about an hour, but he was talking to me about a lot of the challenges that he was having was all the things that I had learned how to do from the day I sat down at that computer up until that point and it was like, oh, I know how to acquire customers.

I know how to build an ambassador group.

I know how to create a website and manage it and make it high converting and manage a database.

Like I learned how to do all these things and I just didn't have the right product.

Product.

Sure enough, call it six months later I'm sitting there with him and we're working on Power Bar together, doing all the social media, doing all the digital online sales and the partnership started there and it was formed and I think it, it really solidified when we did this pop up sampling event.

I don't know how familiar you are with New York City, but the GFNY Gran Fondo there's right off of the George Washington Bridge.

There's this route that is part of the course, but it's also the main route.

Everyone goes from New York City to go up 9W and there's a couple bike shops there and we plopped a power bar tent right there and we were handing out and sampling gels to people as they were coming in.

And then at at four or five o' clock we packed the whole thing up and we shipped everything over to Randall's island where we were sponsoring a track event, was there till probably 11 o' clock at night, packed everything up and we're back at the bike shop at seven in the morning.

The next day I looked at him, I said, eric, this is what I want to be when I grow up.

Like, we're doing it.

I was like, this is it.

And he's me too.

This has been a really amazing conversation.

And I am excited to say that.

We still have a lot to talk about and I want to hear much more about the formation of this partnership and where it has led.

So what we're going to do is we're going to bring Matt and Eric back on the next episode of the Tridoc Podcast to conclude this conversation.

They've been very gracious to agree to stick around and talk some more with.

Me, but we're going to wrap up.

This section for this episode because I don't want to extend the episode significantly longer than we usually run and we will continue the conversation on the next episode of the Tridark Podcast.

So for now, Eric and Matt, thank you so much for being here.

I really look forward to continuing the conversation on the next episode and for my listeners, I hope that you have enjoyed it as well.

We look forward to seeing you to continue the conversation on the next episod.

All the Songs that no One Knows.

My name is Stephanie Van Bever and I am a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridock Podcast.

The Tridock Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Sankoff, along with his amazing interns Cosette Rhodes and Nina Takeshima.

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The Tridoc Podcast will be back again soon with another medical question and answer and another interview with someone in the world of multisport.

Until then, train hard, train healthy.