The one way to be sure you nip health problems in the bud is through testing. And here to tell us exactly which five health tests we need and why is my good friend, Dr. Paul Maximus. Dr. Paul is a naturopathic physician, coach, speaker, and former natural heavyweight bodybuilding champion. With a focus on high-performance medicine, his therapeutic approach prioritizes a strong foundation of nutrition, exercise, and psychology. He runs Maximus Concierge Medicine (MxCM) in Vancouver, B.C., a house-call service that offers in-depth, extended medical consults and health coaching. Join us as he brings his bright light and wealth of information to today's Awesome Health podcast. More About Awesome Health with Dr. Paul Maximus To start the show we dig into his background. Dr. Paul went to university and didn't have a lot of tools to deal with the stress that came along with college life. He took up running as a way to cope and went all in on it. He admits to having a "black and white" type of personality which he has adjusted over the years. But back then that all or nothing mentality led him to becoming an anorexic marathon runner. Eventually, his knee and leg gave out so he couldn't run any more. He became so depressed he had to leave school. Many of his family members are medical doctors so they provided him with help, which was fantastic at the time. But he found every time he went on an anti-depressant he would feel temporarily better, but would ultimately crash down.He was so sick he couldn't function - he couldn't hold down a job or stay in school. This went on for a year, and he became sick of the cycle. To find out what was really going on he took it upon himself to dive into the literature on anti-depressants: he wanted to know what was wrong with his brain and why the medications weren't working for him. Doing so showed him it wasn't healthy to run a half-marathon every week and restrict your food intake. It also isn't healthy to avoid fats, eat high amounts of carbs and avoid protein. He also learned the facts behind pharmaceutical trails, the low efficacy rates of anti-depressants (efficacy meaning their ability to produced the desired effects and results), and the importance of sleep, omega 3s, and stress reduction. Everything changed when he found books like Dr. Allen Logan's Your Brain Diet and Wayne Dyer's Erroneous Zones. He went from a 134 pound anorexic, college dropout marathon runner to a 200-pound bodybuilder getting 90s in his Psychology classes. He was on fire and everything was different for him. He came off the anti-depressants with his doctor's approval, and he has never gone back on them. His next step into the health world was when he worked online for Dr. Jon Berardi; he coached 300 guys through the Scrawny to Brawny program. That only gave him the itch to do more: he wanted to dive into labs, blood work and to generally understand physiology in a deeper way. He considered medical school before going to naturopath school. Four years and 4700 hours of training later he came out the other side, and now runs a high performance men's medical program. He's based in Vancouver and does house calls within the area, and works with his out of area patients virtually. From there we dig into the meat of this show. Dr. Paul posted something on social media that relates to this directly, and I asked him to talk about that particular post and how it relates to the way men think about and approach their health. Dr. Paul says he was walking home one day from a client visit and he saw a $2.4 million Pagani roadster. People were crowded around it and taking photos, everyone was in awe of it! But a lot of those people around the car didn't look fit or very healthy, they revered the car as if it was far more valuable than the body they were using to experience the car. If you are born you already have something far more valuable than a $2.4 million car. You can replace parts of the ca