Medgeeks with Andrew Reid

Better health, with better science. Medgeeks teaches the mechanisms underlying chronic disease and the upstream drivers of health, translating the primary literature for clinicians and the curious. Subscribe for new podcasts covering nutrition, movement, sleep, mind-body health, metabolic medicine, and the systems approach to health optimization. Andrew Reid is the founder of Medgeeks, which has trained over 10,000 clinicians since 2013. This podcast is where his clinical work, primary literature deep dives, and self-experimentation become accessible to a broader audience. Andrew's training: - Physician Assistant Program, University of California, Davis - MS in Physician Assistant Studies, AT Still University - MS in Personalized Nutrition, University of Connecticut - Graduate Certificate in Precision Nutrition, University of Connecticut - Didactics in Dietetics, California State University, Los Angeles Learn more about our resources at medgeeks.co

I Stopped Doing Cardio and Lost 50lbs (Do This Instead) 07/23/2026

Years of metabolic research in 20 minutes (we’ve been wrong) 07/15/2026

Your Water Fast Is Eating Your Muscle (Do This Instead) 07/02/2026

The reason GLP-1s, keto, and calorie restriction aren't working (do this instead) 06/26/2026

The Real Reason You Get Tired 06/19/2026

My Cardiologist Said I Was Perfectly Healthy. He Was Wrong. 06/12/2026

ProLon vs. Sardine Fast: Why I Was Wrong 06/05/2026

ProLon vs. Sardine Fast: Why I Was Wrong I tested ProLon, the fasting-mimicking diet, against a 5-day sardine fast, ran my own bloodwork, and got the opposite result I expected. ProLon is the best-known version of the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), a 5-day, low-calorie, plant-based protocol developed from Dr. Valter Longo's research at USC. The sardine fast is the cheap, unbranded version people keep hyping online. Free course (resilient health): I ran both on myself about a month apart, kept calories low on each, and tracked the same markers throughout: IGF-1, fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and glucose ketone index. I was sure the premium protocol would win. I had spent years studying these pathways and expected the plant-based, low-protein design to be the real driver. A few cans of fish gave me the opposite answer. What you'll see in this podcast: The exact lab data that flipped my prediction IGF-1 side by side: the FMD dropped mine 55 points, the sardine fast dropped it 88 How the sardine fast drove me into a deeper ketotic state than the $200 kit Where my fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and GKI landed on each protocol A clearer way to understand mTOR and autophagy Why autophagy is not the on-off switch the internet claims Why a little of the right protein may help protect lean muscle during a deficit What this means for clinicians who want metabolic interventions patients can actually afford About: I'm Andrew Reid. I founded Medgeeks in 2013, and for the last five years, I've been rebuilding how I think about chronic disease from the cell up. My goal is to treat nutrition as a real therapeutic intervention, held to the same standard of rigor we expect from pharmaceuticals. Subscribe for nutrition held to a higher standard, with real data and honest answers even when they're inconvenient. Disclaimer: This is an N of 1 experiment on my own physiology, shared for educational purposes only. It is not medical advice. A protocol like this is not right for everyone, especially if you are lean, managing a chronic condition, or taking medication. Talk with your healthcare provider before attempting any form of fasting or significant dietary change. /episode/index/show/physicianassistantboards/id/41545210

My Daughter Saw 9 Specialists. They All Missed It. 05/29/2026

My Daughter Saw 9 Specialists. They All Missed It. When my daughter was six months old, her platelet count dropped to 2,000. Over the next two years she was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease (MELAS), lupus, and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), and was seen by nine different specialists. Not one of them connected those findings to each other. Free course (resilient health): This is the story of what almost losing her taught me about chronic disease, why our current model of medicine keeps failing complex and chronically ill clients, and why I am back on the podcast after almost a decade away. I am Andrew Reid, founder of Medgeeks. I trained as a Physician Assistant, spent five years in primary care, and have spent over a decade since educating clinicians. None of it prepared me for my own daughter. To help her, I had to go back and learn the biology underneath chronic disease: mitochondrial medicine, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, metabolomics, and clinical nutrition. What I found changed how I think about every client I see. Going forward, this show is about that biology and the clinical reasoning that follows from it. Mitochondrial function, the cell danger response, metabolic health, autoimmune disease, insulin resistance, and the systems-based, root-cause approach to chronic disease that conventional training leaves out. We also get into the other side of that same continuum: building muscle, exercise as medicine, sleep, nutrition, and the levers that move someone toward genuinely optimal health. The goal is simple: better health, with better science. Whether you are a clinician reasoning through complex clients, someone facing chronic illness in your own life or your family's, or you are already healthy and want to understand how to optimize and protect that health for the long run, this is the work I want to do in front of you. If this resonated, the best thing you can do is follow the show wherever you listen and leave a review. It genuinely helps more clinicians and more families find this work. Thank you for being here. /episode/index/show/physicianassistantboards/id/41460810