What Would You Do with 6 Acres?

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In 2022, we moved to Northeast Oklahoma from Central Texas. After a couple of years here, we bought some property and built a house. The question people ask is... “What are you going to do on your property?”

Well, we’re not exactly starting a “homestead”. But I do plan on using it as a gym and a backdrop to talk about health while making some better food along the way.

The honest answer is: I’m going to use it to rebuild. Not in the prepper-with-a-crossbow sense (although this is Oklahoma, so let’s not rule that out)... but as a place to continue improving my health, my food, and eventually, make something truly useful for other people.

Are We Winning?

I've been in the supplement industry for 18 years. I launched PricePlow in 2008, building what's become a leading educational resource in the space, especially in terms of novel ingredients and technologies. In that time, I've helped formulate products, interviewed hundreds of researchers and athletes, analyzed thousands of studies, and published over 2000 articles on ingredients, products, flavors, studies, scandals, and more.

And after all that -- the studies, the products, the podcasts, the billions spent -- there’s this one nagging question: are we actually getting any healthier? We can debate whether supplements have helped (or hurt), but it’s pretty clear that as a society, we’re losing the overall health battle.

You’ve seen it all. It’s everything from metabolic dysfunction to mystery autoimmune conditions to funky skin conditions to turbocancer kids who can't focus and adults who can't sleep. If you watch TV, you've seen the commercials... things are messed up. The onslaught is simply overwhelming, and there’s no single solution because we’ve been hit by so many problems all at once.

I'm not going to claim I can solve all of society’s issues, but I can hammer on a few of the problems that aren’t getting enough attention. When looking at correcting the modern health landscape, I've realized that it's not just about fixing deficiencies... it’s also a situation of extreme toxicity.

And an uncomfortable truth I've come to accept is that while some supplements address those deficiencies, some are actively inducing toxicity, too. Not just from fillers or adulteration, but from actual active ingredients that are irresponsibly formulated or given to the wrong people. More is not always better!

We're Toxic, Not Deficient

In the West, we've been conditioned to think about health as filling nutritional gaps. Got a problem? Oh, you must be deficient in something... Take a supplement. Add a vitamin. Mega-dose this herb. Fortify your milk.

But what if the opposite is actually true for many people? What if we're instead dealing with bioaccumulation -- a slow buildup of compounds our bodies can't efficiently clear?

This realization hit me hard in December 2022 when I was introduced to research on vitamin A toxicity. Not the acute kind that makes headlines when someone dies after eating polar bear liver. But the chronic, subclinical kind that develops over years or decades of "healthy" eating and supplementation (and sometimes cosmetics or prescription drug use).

Fat-soluble molecules like vitamin A don't just pass through your system. You can’t just pee the excess out. They accumulate. They store in your liver and your fat. And when you've spent a lifetime getting it from your mother, baby formula, fortified milk and cereal, multivitamins, cod liver oil, organ meat, colorful vegetables, cosmetics, and a dozen other sources... you’ve taken it too far and things begin to break. And that’s exactly what happened to me as a kid.

My Vitamin A Journey: Less is More

So on January 3, 2023, I went all in on a low-vitamin-A approach. Not zero, but dramatically reduced.

And wildly, forty-plus years of symptoms I'd lived with since childhood started clearing up. The eczema. Dry eyes. Allergies. Joint issues. Carbohydrate sensitivity and metabolic sluggishness that I'd blamed on carbs and seed oils. It wasn't that I needed more nutrients. I needed LESS of something we’ve been told was essential.

There’s a surprisingly large body of research showing that excess vitamin A plays a role in bone issues, liver dysfunction, metabolic syndrome, immune dysregulation, allergies, mood disorders, skin problems, worse cardiovascular outcomes, and more. But almost nobody's talking about it because it contradicts everything we've been told about nutrition for the past century.

And there's not a ton of money to be made telling you to take less of something. "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome", after all.

Heavy Metal Overload, and Not the Cool Kind

Around the same time, I got serious bloodwork done, and discovered my ferritin was through the roof, showing a classic iron overload pattern. Ferritin started coming down on the diet, but I eventually started donating blood in 2024, and within eight donations, my blood pressure returned to the healthy range for the first time in years.

In terms of toxicity accumulation, the same applies for heavy metals. We’re simultaneously absorbing them from our cookware, water pipes, plant-based foods, and even the air we breathe. These get stored in numerous organs, ranging from the liver to the brain to the kidneys, lungs, and heart.

I won't even get into the food and milk fortification programs, all of which use the cheapest and most hazardous forms of vitamins you could get your hands on. It's all straight trash.

Point being, we're not always deficient. In the West, I argue that we’re instead more often toxic. The solutions aren't exciting -- they're actually kind of boring -- but they work. I’m merely talking about removing, moderating, and safely eliminating. There’s not tons of money to be made with this, so you don’t hear about it as much, but the process does lead to results.

What's Coming

Over the years, one of my regrets is that I didn’t put myself out there enough. I’ve always had leading edge thoughts, but rarely put them into long form content. And while I’ve filmed over 200 podcast episodes for my business, I’ve rarely made video content on my own research. It’s time that changed. I’m middle-aged now, but there’s still plenty left to say and time left to say it.

So back to the land. We bought these 6 acres after my wife’s mother passed away and we inherited some money. We call it Lola Ranch in her honor. But the land isn't just a memorial - it's a laboratory, a gym, and a content studio.

On this site, I'm going to explore metabolic health a bit differently. No “guru” nonsense. No drugs or injections. And no insane zealotry (OK, well, maybe a little). But it’ll mostly be some contrarian science, curiosity, and a fun sense of humor about how absurd modern nutrition discourse has become.

Here’s what we’ll be doing:

• Research breakdowns. I'll cover studies that too few people are talking about. Starting with the story of beta-carotene - the plant carotenoid that converts to vitamin A in the body. The story here is wild, the FDA's regulations are hazardous, and nobody is telling it properly.

  Later, I look forward to a big series on RBP4 and the growing (and understated) concerns over nickel toxicity. I’m also interested in the protein leverage hypothesis, why MSG is awesome and erroneously maligned, as well as body fat’s role in toxicity storage (not just energy storage). I also like potassium a lot.

• Food experiments. I'll tinker with recipes and food construction using low-toxicity profiles. Simple, protein-forward foods that don't stress your liver. We’ll mess with some diet strategies along the way.

• Property projects. Meanwhile, we’ll have some fun on the land. At some point, I’ll be growing white carrots instead of orange ones. Maybe we’ll have some animals down the road, but the plan isn’t to turn this into a homesteading site. For now, it's just a backdrop for us to tinker.

• Talk of the town. Hot topics. Trending studies. The viral health takes that need a calm but entertaining voice to sort through the noise. I'll weigh in when something matters, but I'm not chasing drama.

• Life philosophy. Occasionally, we'll talk about fatherhood, society, the passage of time, the three kinds of people in the world, and what it means to be a Xennial caught between analog childhoods and digital adulthoods.

  Anyway, someone on Twitter asked what everyone was doing for their mid-life crisis. I replied: "I bought acreage." So here we are.

I'll also document my ongoing iron overload journey - sharing all of my bloodwork, the interventions, and any shifts. But if I'm being honest, I want to hyper-focus on vitamin A and other metals, because I believe that's where the biggest revelations are hiding. Anyone with iron overload can donate blood. Vitamin A toxicity is a bit trickier.

The Long Game

I’m not doing this just to make content. We don’t need more rambling influencers with no vision. All of this is heading somewhere specific.

1. First, I'm starting a new segment covering the "better-for-you" food and snack industry. We already do this in the beverage space with Bevlab, and we cover supplement news and ingredients at PricePlow. Now it's time to apply the same analytical lens to food.

   What's working? What's marketing hype? What should exist that doesn't? I need to better understand the industry and meet the right people before I can improve it.

2. Second, we're eventually going to fight for labeling transparency and policy reform.

   In the coming years, I'll be pushing for better labeling and smarter policy around vitamin A, beta-carotene, fortification programs, and toxicity research. Yes, that means lobbying and dealing with government officials. Someone's gotta do it -- and if you don't tell your story, someone else will.

3. Third - and this is the real endgame - we’re going to start a healthy food company, and I’m bringing you all with me. The goal is to build low-toxicity products that are lab-tested for what matters. There are some good attempts out there, but the category is nowhere near mature.

   The goal isn't to launch next month. It's to learn the industry and build something that actually makes sense, backed by research and personal experimentation that you can follow along.

So here's where we'll start: high-dose beta-carotene. The trail begins with a study I warned readers about in 2008, then largely forgot about for the next 15 years. But the research kept coming, and now the concern looks far more serious than it ever did back then. And I'm seeing toxic doses in supplements where the amount isn't even disclosed. It needs to be fixed.

The Invitation

The reality is this: in order to pull any of this off, I'm going to need a bigger team. PricePlow and Bevlab are doing well and the infrastructure is there for expansion. But this vision -- the research, the content, the food development, the advocacy stuff -- it all requires more hands, more expertise, and more energy.

So I'm inviting you to join the journey. Subscribe to the channel. Follow along on Twitter. Join the newsletter. Share the research that resonates. And down the road, when we need educators, reviewers, food scientists, donors, or even investors, I hope you'll be ready to step up.

Because I'm not proposing a quick fix or a magic supplement here. That doesn’t work, and we know it. I’m instead pushing a rethinking of how we approach metabolic health in a society that's been under attack from so many angles you can’t even count them all.

So... what would YOU do with 6 acres?

I'm going to use mine to make some content, grow some plants, train and swim, make some friends, and figure out how we can right this ship for those who want to feel great again.