The Energy Blueprint Podcast

Most people think body fat is the problem. If you gain weight, the goal is simple: eat less, burn more, and try to get rid of it.
But what if that way of thinking is fundamentally flawed?
Today, I'm joined by Dr. William Li, a world-renowned physician and scientist who has led the development of more than 30 new medical treatments that impact care for over 70 diseases, including cancer, diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. Dr. Li has spent decades studying the biology of metabolism, fat, and disease.
In his view, body fat itself is not the enemy. In fact, it plays a critical role in your health. The real problem begins when fat becomes excessive, dysfunctional, and inflammatory, disrupting the systems that regulate metabolism and energy balance.
This shift in perspective changes everything.

Most people think of chronic illness as something caused by a specific trigger…an infection, a toxin, or even an autoimmune reaction. And the solution is to find and eliminate that one thing. 
But what if that's not how it actually works?
Today, I'm excited to have Dr. Eric Gordon back on the podcast. He's built a reputation for doing what most doctors won't, which is looking beyond the diagnosis to find what's actually driving a patient's illness and figuring out the right order to address it. His clinical work spans Lyme disease, ME/CFS, autoimmune conditions, and mitochondrial dysfunction, and many other forms of dysfunction, often all at once in the same patient.
In 2016, he co-authored a landmark study with Dr. Robert Naviaux, also a former guest on this podcast and a bit of a personal hero of mine, someone who has done some of the most important work in medicine of the last century, with his work on the cell danger response. 
In Dr. Gordon's view, chronic illness happens when the body's normal healing cycle gets interrupted and stuck in a persistent inflammatory state.
From that perspective, the problem isn't just the original trigger. It's the state your body has shifted into. And if that's true, it changes how you approach treatment.
That shift in thinking opens the door to very different kinds of interventions. These approaches focus on changing the broader biological environment rather than chasing a single cause.
In this episode, Dr. Gordon and I discuss a therapy that filters and replaces part of your blood plasma and may help remove inflammatory factors circulating in the blood that keep the body stuck.
In this podcast, Dr. Eric Gordon and I discuss:
Why chronic illness often reflects a body stuck in the wrong healing state; compensations the body makes for stressors are designed to be short-term, not chronic

What happens when the body's normal repair cycle gets interrupted

Why the body's response, not the original trigger, can keep people sick

The surprising role of "old information" in ongoing dysfunction

Why trying to fix one problem at a time often falls short in people with overlapping conditions 

Dr. Gordon explains why treating the body as a machine will never work - biological reductionism is the fundamental error

How a fascinating intervention called plasmapheresis works to filter and replace blood plasma and lower inflammatory load

Why plasmapheresis is gaining attention in chronic illness and longevity

Dr. Gordon's belief that medicine is faulty because it's hooked on specificity, that the more we can do exactly what we want, the better…but this approach is lacking because we don't know exactly how our bodies work

In this episode of The Energy Blueprint, I'm speaking with neuroscientist and bestselling author Mark Waldman. Mark has been on the podcast multiple times, but I find his information so interesting that I'm excited to have him back today. 
Mark is now working in a new field called network neuroscience. During our conversation, he explains the framework of this field and shares some very practical but very effective steps to reduce mind-wandering and improve psychotherapy outcomes.

A 2018 study found that 88% of the population is metabolically unwell. But more recent studies estimate the number is closer to 92%! 
My guest today is Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo, founder of the Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology. She has 30+ years of clinical experience and sees imbalanced blood sugar and disordered insulin regulation as the underlying cause of so many people's problems. 
Her bottom line is that to get fuel into your mitochondria, good insulin and blood sugar control is a non-negotiable.
Most people think of insulin resistance as the diagnosis you get from your doctor, but by that point, there's already been retinopathies (damage to retinas), neuropathies (damage to peripheral nerves), damage to kidneys, and damage to blood vessel linings. 
Dr. Loscalzo focuses on "pre-insulin resistance," catching the breakdown decades before diagnosis, when you can actually prevent it.
This episode was initially released in November 2022

Today's podcast guest is Dr. Amie Hornaman, most well-known as The Thyroid Fixer. She was a figure competitor and powerlifter who gained 25 pounds eating chicken, broccoli, and asparagus while hitting the gym twice a day. Biologically, it didn't make sense. 
It took seven doctors before she got diagnosed with Hashimoto's, and the sixth one made her cry in her car, praying that something was wrong because, as she told me, "if something was wrong, we could fix it." The seventh doctor gave her Synthroid, and after five months, there was zero change. Not one pound lost, no energy gained, hair still falling out.
In this episode, she explains that nearly all diagnoses of hypothyroidism are Hashimoto's, the autoimmune form, where your body attacks your thyroid gland. The conventional standard of care is to check only TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone), even though TSH doesn't identify an autoimmune disease.
This episode is especially important if you've been struggling with thyroid symptoms and haven't been checked for thyroid autoimmunity.
(This episode was originally released in Dec 2022)