There is something that will directly improve our ability to recover, our performance, our overall energy levels and metabolism, and which is key to overall health more than almost anything else (though we'd never think it was).

This is something that very specifically controls or improves or decreases our body's overall ability to repair itself, recover, and function correctly.

It directly affects our longevity, our ability to gain lean muscle, our cardiovascular health, our ability to keep weight off more easily, our energy levels and mood, and which allows us to keep improving over time.

And it's also something that directly affects and increases or decreases our overall health.

It's called VO2 Max. V is for Volume, O2 is for Oxygen, and Max is for Maximum.

VO2 Max is literally the maximum amount of oxygen our cells can use to produce energy at any given time. It's how much horsepower our body has.

A person who is unwell in one way or another has a low ability to produce energy. A well person has good energy ability. And an athlete has high energy production capability.

Conversely, a person who has a low ability to produce energy will become unwell over time, and a person with high energy production will remain well, barring emergency situations.

From a performance view, VO2 max is literally the maximum amount (volume) of oxygen that your cells can utilize to produce energy during intense exercise before you burn out.

Our cells only have so many energy-making "engines" (mitochondria). So even if we increase oxygen to the cells, if there are not enough mitochondria to use that oxygen, we don't increase energy.

If we can increase the number of these engines, our body's horsepower, then we increase our VO2 Max, and how much energy we can produce.

Raising this allows us to raise overall performance, energy, endurance, recovery ability, and overall health. And leads to greater longevity.

Let's dive in.

This is the first issue in a series on Extreme Athletes, those who push themselves to the max to achieve their goals and, possibly, greatness.

But, while the information in this series applies very strictly to extreme athletes, it applies just as much to anyone else trying to achieve peak performance for themselves in fitness and athletics, while staying healthy overall.

Also, while we will cover points individual to specific sports, most of the information is applicable to all sports and performance, energy, and recovery as a whole.

In this first article we’ll start with one of the key, over-riding aspects to maximize not only the ability and performance of an elite athlete, but of anyone.

Because, when you put your body through as much stress and pressure as an athlete does, every one of your organs, muscles, nerves, bones, hormones, etc., all play a part.

And, while any weak links will bring down the rest, improving any weak spots in health will help increase the energy production and performance of the overall.

It hasn’t been understood by most people just how vital our gut health is to our heart health.

But in truth, it’s key. If our gut health is good, and our digestive tract working properly, the risk of poor heart health is much lower.

If our gut is in poor condition, however (heart burn or acid reflux often, bloating, pains, regular diarrhea, or worse), then this will, over time, lead to poor heart health.

But gut health among Americans has diminished drastically in recent times, worsening every year mainly due to our processed foods and sugars, and the 50x increase in toxins in our environment in the last 7 decades.

Now, younger and younger people every year are experiencing more and more gut issues which were rare even in older individuals in earlier generations.

And along with them, they're experiencing more cardiovascular issues.

This is something we need to address now, for each of us, to ensure a long and healthy life.

We’ve touched on how toxins affect our digestive tract and microbiome, and also how they lead to Leaky Gut and to our immune system mistaking healthy cells for harmful microbes that must be destroyed.

They cause an inflammatory response, both in our digestive tract and throughout our body over time.

They affect our hormones, energy levels, and mental focus. They make losing body fat and building muscle much harder due to increased cortisol levels.

And they speed the aging process, both internally and in our skin and overall appearance.

But now we’re going to dive deeper. And to give a real idea of how this works we're going to look at how one toxin, Glyphosate, affects us.

Glyphosate is the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, which is used on most major crops today.

This is a real problem, because it's one of the most toxic substances there is.

And due to its widespread use, it’s in almost all processed foods and non-organic meats.

And it plays a very large roll in the destruction of our digestive tract, microbiome and overall health, leading to Leaky Gut and some of the worst physical conditions there are.

So let’s dive in and see how this actually affects us and what we can do.

In the last article we covered what the microbiome is, a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle and stay fit.

These bacteria also produce or help to produce neurotransmitters in our body, such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us and allow us to fall asleep.

In this article we’re going to cover how the number of toxins coming into our body, which increases every year, affects these bacteria.

This is the second article in the Autoimmune Series.

In the last article we covered what autoimmune conditions are and what they’re actually doing in the body. But in this article we’re going to cover how they come about.

What actually causes them.

And it starts in the gut, our first defense against illness.

About 1 in 10 people in the US now suffer from some sort of autoimmune disease. And this level has been rising fast over the last couple of decades.

It’s rising fastest amongst adolescents, where the number has tripled in the last 3 decades.

In 1988-1991 an estimated 22 million people between 12 and 19 years old had an autoimmune disease, and in 2011-2012 it rose to 41 million.

But it affects adults as well, generally manifesting somewhere between the ages of 15-45. And about 75% of those affected are female.

These are conditions such as Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn's disease, Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Ulcerative Colitis and a host of some 80 others.

And other conditions, such as Lyme disease, can trigger autoimmune conditions.

These can cause low thyroid, muscle pain or fatigue, stiff or painful joints, and exhaustion and lethargy. Or they can attack specific organs or nerve cells, and even the skin.

But what is an autoimmune disease? What's happening in the body when someone has one?

Perimenopause and Menopause are two parts of a transition a woman goes through when their body comes to the end of its reproductive ability.

It usually occurs sometime in a woman’s 40’s or 50s, but can occur earlier.

Perimenopause is the start of this transition, when her menstrual cycle starts to fluctuate as the amount of eggs she has in her ovaries starts coming to an end.

Then, when she has not had a menstrual cycle in 12 months, we say menopause has begun.

This whole transition is a period of somewhat intense hormonal fluctuations, somewhat different for everyone, that ends with very low production of key hormones, and generally lasts around 7 years. Though it can be as long as 14 years.

During this transition a woman can experience extreme hot flashes and sweats as hormone levels fluctuate erratically, poor sleep, poor mood, brain fog or inability to make decisions, weight gain to one degree or another, headaches, bone loss and muscle loss, reduced libido, low energy and much more.

So understanding exactly what is occurring here, what causes it, what can make it worse and what we can do about it is quite important.

Let’s dive in.

There are key things causing hormonal disruptions in men and women today, even in our children, affecting their overall growth.

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades while estrogen levels have risen sharply.

Levels of growth hormone and progesterone are lower and cortisol levels are too high.

And hormonal imbalances are now much more than just being deficient in one or another hormone.

There are exact chemicals in the environment today which block hormones from being created, block them from being used, disrupt their normal action, or impersonate them entirely.

And they're increasing each year.

While this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond this to our sleep, stress levels, overall health and how fast we age.

In this article we cover what's happening and what you can do about it.

While insulin is in the bloodstream, almost no fat burning can take place.

But something can happen here when our diet is quite high in sugar over a long period of time, keeping our Insulin levels high for longer each day.

The cells build up a resistance to the Insulin. Meaning, when Insulin comes knocking, trying to give the sugar to the cell so it can make energy, the cell says “no” and closes its doors.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also contribute to depression and brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

But there’s one more thing affecting this — low magnesium. Magnesium is necessary for thyroid to be produced inside the body. Yet it’s being processed out of our foods more and more every year, until more than half the people in the US are now magnesium deficient.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, energy levels, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.

Electrolytes are necessary for hydration, energy, recovery, and mental clarity.

They power our nervous system, regulate our water levels, allow our cells to function, and are key to protein synthesis, recovery, and even brain function.

And they're vital for fat loss.

Lack of electrolytes can cause dizziness, cramps, headaches, exhaustion, mental confusion, and even affect our heartbeat.

But they are exact minerals and they're needed by the body in exact ratios.

Too much of one and not enough of another can actually exacerbate the problems they're supposed to address.

In fact, the wrong ratio can even cause dehydration and bloating, not to mention weight gain and slower recoveries.