Professional Grade Supplements for Wise Athletes

Trevor Connor is an exercise physiologist, endurance sports coach, and former professional cyclist with nearly 20 years of racing experience. He has coached at national performance centers in both Canada and the U.S., managed teams such as Team Rio Grande, and holds a master's degree in exercise bioenergetics and nutrition. He is also the co-host of the Fast Talk podcast, which focuses on the science of endurance performance.

Trevor earned his master's degree in exercise bioenergetics and nutrition from Colorado State University, where he was the final graduate student of Dr. Loren Cordain, the originator of the Paleo Diet. His research focused on the effects of a Paleo-style diet on autoimmune conditions, including multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease

• CEO of The Paleo Diet, LLC: Since 2018, Connor has led the company, overseeing its programs, certifications, and branding initiatives
• Co-founder and CEO of Fast Talk Laboratories: He co-founded this platform dedicated to endurance sports science, offering resources on training, nutrition, and performance
• Cycling Career: A former semi-professional cyclist, Connor trained at the Canadian National Center and managed Team Rio Grande, a top-ranked amateur team in the U.S.

The Paleo Diet. Initially skeptical of the Paleo Diet, Connor's perspective shifted after personal experimentation led to improved health and a return to competitive cycling at age 40. He now advocates for whole-food nutrition and challenges traditional high-carbohydrate sports diets, emphasizing the benefits of healthy fats and reduced sugar intake

Our talk today is mostly about how can the older athlete get the most out of the Paleo Diet and how to personalize it to make it work for each of us. What are the most important guidelines of the Paleo Diet that should guide and simplify our food decision-making. Foods to emphasize and minimize. Eating (and not eating) patterns that matter.

Some important notes:

• Macronutrient based diets are hard to get right because there are healthy and unhealthy versions of all macronutrient diets. Paleo is not about macros, but instead about whole foods that mimics the food supply 10,000 years ago. Fruits, vegetables, naturally grown meat and fish, and nuts and seeds sparingly. Limit grains and minimize dairy. Some people should also limit legumes (beans / pulses / lentils / etc)
• Eating whole foods means not just getting the vitamins and minerals and macronutrients but also the food matrix....all the other stuff in things that were once alive. Everything provides some benefit as long as we don't overdo it. But eating processed foods without the food matrix is a poor health choice.
• An ancestral diet is hard to define exactly and impossible to replicate today, but some features can be mimicked: not eating the same things all the time or out of season, not eating the full daily calorie requirements every single day, eating foods that were recently alive are hard to chew (good for oral health and is satiating), not over-eating foods that didn't exist (dairy, processed food) or were in short supply (grains, beans).
• Eat more potassium and less sodium (people generally get too much sodium; avoid processed food with sodium)
• Eat more magnesium and less dairy (less calcium). Target 2:1 calcium to magnesium; most people are 4:1 calcium to magnesium.
• Supplements recommended by Trevor: Vitamin D, Fish Oil (EPA/DHA), Magnesium (especially if consuming dairy: heavy calcium source), Taurine (especiall...

Professional Grade Supplements for WiseAthletes

The TriDoc Podcast is a bi-weekly show hosted by Dr. Jeff Sankoff, the host of the TriDoc podcast, is an emergency physician, Ironman triathlete, certified coach, and older athlete (58). Dr Sankoff is the exact type of expert for the Wise Athletes podcast. Dr Sankoff specializes in providing athletes with evidence-based insights into health, wellness, and training, and helping us all distinguish scientific facts from marketing hype.

• TriDoc Podcast
• TriDoc Coaching
• Tempo Talks Podcast

• OTC Drugs -- impact on exercise performance -- aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, anti-histamines
• Pharmacutical Drugs - impact on exercise performance -- cholesterol, BP, heart rhythm, prostate meds, ED meds
• Jeff's 3 Supplements

• Episode 36 | Dr Jeff Sankoff is the TriDoc

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• Leave a review (or share this episode)
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*This content is never meant to serve as medical advice.

Episode 36 | Dr Jeff Sankoff is the Tri-Doc

Professional Grade Supplements for WiseAthletes

On today's show, Dr. Merijn van de Laar, a recovering insomniac, sleep therapist, and the author of How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest, will tell us how learning about our prehistoric ancestors’ sleep (via studying the Hadza) can help us relax about our own imperfect sleep. He explains that the behaviors we think of as sleep problems are actually normal, natural, and adaptive. Merijn destroys the myth that you have to get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and how being awake during the night is normal, and how efforts to change normal healthy sleep into "perfect" sleep scores is detrimental to our health.

Today’s episode is not for those few, lucky souls who fall asleep the moment their head hits the pillow, cruise through the night, and bounce out of bed in the morning ready to take on the world. Good for you—but seriously, get out of here. This one’s for the rest of us wise athletes who work hard to be fit and healthy—through exercise, through diet—only to be undone by poor sleep. The poor sleep that slows your recovery, ramps up your risk of illness, and leaves you reaching for caffeine just to survive the day, and then something else entirely just to shut down at night and squeeze 7-9 hours into the 6-hour window we allow for.

This talk is not a list of sleep hygiene factors and discount codes for fancy tools that work well to lighten your wallet without addressing the real reasons for poor sleep. Dr. Merijn van de Laar says "sleep is cheap" and that we've been sold a bunch of BS about sleep. This isn’t about chasing perfection. This is about letting go of the pressure and easing into realistically healthy sleep—the kind your ancestors would recognize—without needing to track every blink and breath.

So unplug, lie back, and listen up—because it’s time to learn how to Sleep Like a Caveman.

Dr Merijn van de Laar (https://merijnvandelaar.com/the-sleep-scientist/)

Merijn van de Laar studied biological psychology at the University of Maastricht and obtained his PhD on the subject of personality and sleep and the treatment of insomnia. He worked for years at Kempenhaeghe, Center for Sleep Medicine, and treated people with insomnia, parasomnia and delayed sleep phase syndrome. He is now adjunct director at the University of Maastricht.

Merijn’s professional and personal mission is to create restful nights across the world. His motivation to give people a better night’s sleep arose when he experienced what it was like to have chronic insomnia in his twenties. He did not receive the right care and, in retrospect, not the right scientifically substantiated information that could have helped him get rid of the problem much sooner.

Merijn’s slogan is “Sleep is Cheap”. By this he means that most people with insomnia do not need expensive products, apps or medication at all and that these often don’t help or even worsen the problem. For most people, a good night’s sleep can be achieved through natural solutions that cost little but are very effective. In many ways, we should learn to sleep like Cavemen again.

Merijn van de Laar website

• Why do modern people report worsening sleep quality, despite the emergence of optimized sheets, mattresses, sound machines, and sleep trackers have emerged during that time, and despite the fact that the amount of time people are sleeping hasn’t decreased...