33 - Precision Medicine, Genomics & Peptide Therapy with Dr. Troy Jackson

Precision Medicine, Genomics & Peptide Therapy with Dr. Troy Jackson

In this episode of the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, host Travis Richardson sits down with Dr. Troy Jackson, a family medicine physician and co-founder of Authentic Health, a direct primary care and precision medicine practice in Asheville, NC. Dr. Jackson left the insurance-based model behind to give patients more time, deeper lab work, and a genuinely personalized path to better health.

Travis and Dr. Jackson unpack the real difference between integrative, functional, and precision medicine, then dig into metabolomics, a next-generation lab science that spots problems long before a standard blood panel does. Dr. Jackson explains why nutrient insufficiency (not just deficiency) is one of the most overlooked issues in wellness today, and how his clinic built the F1, F2, and F3 supplement line to solve the deficiencies he sees over and over again.

The conversation moves into epigenetics and how daily environment quite literally turns genes on and off, then into the fast-growing world of peptide therapy, including BPC-157 and GLP-1 medications. Dr. Jackson closes with a refreshingly practical take on diet (why "diet agnostic" beats dogma) and why strength training is a non-negotiable defense against sarcopenia at any age.

Key Takeaways:

• Why Dr. Jackson left insurance for direct primary care
• Precision medicine vs. functional and integrative medicine
• What metabolomics reveals before labs turn abnormal
• Nutrient insufficiency vs. deficiency and why it matters
• How the F1, F2, and F3 supplements were built
• Epigenetics: how environment turns genes on and off
• Peptide therapy, BPC-157, and GLP-1 medications explained
• Why a diet-agnostic, Mediterranean-baseline approach works best
• Strength training as the top defense against sarcopenia

Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction to Dr. Troy Jackson and Authentic Health 01:41 – What is Authentic Health and why it launched 02:57 – Leaving insurance: the biggest surprise so far 04:56 – Inspiration for medicine and Asheville's healing culture 07:20 – Integrative vs. functional vs. precision medicine 09:53 – Metabolomics and next-generation lab testing 12:31 – Common nutrient deficiencies in daily practice 17:10 – Inside the F1, F2, and F3 formulas 20:59 – Epigenetics and how environment shapes genes 24:37 – Genometrics testing and personalized health coaching 28:16 – Peptide therapy: BPC-157, GLP-1s, and safety 34:43 – Why a diet-agnostic approach works best 41:10 – Preventing sarcopenia through strength training 48:34 – New precision health evaluation and listener offer 51:57 – Closing thoughts and where to find Dr. Jackson

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Tickets on sale now at tasteofwellnessasheville.com

The Wellness in Asheville podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville, your local news source covering health + wellness news + events in Asheville. Get the latest at bewellasheville.com or follow @bewellasheville.

Transcript

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Travis Richardson (00:11)
All right. I am so thrilled to have today's guest with me because this is someone who has been quietly doing some of the most interesting work in medicine right here in our backyard in Asheville. We are talking about a physician who left the insurance model behind, built something completely different and is now helping people figure out exactly what their body actually needs, not what the latest wellness trend says you need.

Dr. Troy Jackson is a family medicine physician with a special focus on precision medicine, improving health span and restoring health. He helps patients cut through the wellness noise, identify their true health needs and create a personalized path to long-term vitality. His approach blends systems thinking, comprehensive lab analysis and long-term clinical relationships. So without further ado, let's hear it from Dr. Troy Jackson.

Travis Richardson (01:05)
So today we've got Dr. Troy Jackson on the show. Welcome to the podcast,

Troy Jackson (01:11)
Thank you, Travis. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Travis Richardson (01:14)
Yeah, we had a great introductory talk and so really was impressed with your skill and your knowledge. I pretty much could throw anything at you and it seemed like you had an answer. So I think we could probably do a three hour podcast, although we'll save the listener that. But I think we could probably do a pretty long one. But for anybody just meeting you, give us the quick version. Who are you and where are you practicing and what is Authentic Health?

Troy Jackson (01:41)
Yeah, so I am a family physician here in town. I've been at our clinic. It's called Authentic Health since 2019. The clinic though has been around since 2005, I believe. used to be Vickery Family Medicine. The founder who's still my colleague is Dr. Gus Vickery. And we did primary care for a long time. And our interests...

that we went into medicine for just didn't feel like we were getting that in our day-to-day practice. We wanted to be healers. We wanted to help people improve their health, restore their health, prevent disease. And our day-to-day work just in the regular family medicine clinic just didn't feel like we were getting there. There's so much left on the table. And so there are a lot of different.

avenues we eventually moved to this to an authentic health brand kind of rebranded we left insurance and We just focused in on how do we give how do we serve people in a better way? As a primary care lens, but doing a lot deeper engagement in terms of their health deeper lab work genetics Advanced testing of different kinds long visits and the goal here is really just to try to improve health restore health prevent disease

Travis Richardson (02:57)
So this change happened in 2024, I believe you said. And so you've been operating like this for two years, not on the insurance model. What's the biggest surprise that you've had so far in this new way of doing business?

Troy Jackson (03:11)
So, I mean, it's hard to leave something you know, whether you like it or not, right? The enemy you know is a lot better than the enemy you don't know potentially. So,

Travis Richardson (03:23)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Jackson (03:25)
it just, there's a lot of things happening, just wasn't gonna jive with us. And so you step out and you just hope for the best. And, you know, there are some ripples, of course, it's always hard to change from a logistics perspective, from a patient perspective, it's hard.

But we've had a very, very good support. So for example, my patient panel was cut a ton in terms of number of patients I see, but the patients that followed us, I didn't have to accept a single new patient once we switched over, that we had enough people that supported, they believed in what we were doing. We had been doing it a little bit already and so they were already balled in. So that was nice just to see that support and then.

It's so rewarding to have people come and say, you know, this is the first time I've had a doctor listen to me. Or I knew something was wrong and it just took peeling back the onions to figure out the answer. You know,

it's that part is

Travis Richardson (04:21)
Right.

Troy Jackson (04:22)
what I'm doing this for. I, this is why I come to work every single day.

Travis Richardson (04:25)
Yeah, I was going to ask you what was your inspiration for getting into medicine and why this shift? mean, obviously, the primary care model as it exists today doesn't function for creating wellness in the body. That's clear. think we all kind of get that.

But what was your inspiration for getting into medicine in the first place? And then of course, the second part is what really drove you to wanna see wellness in your patients through this new model?

Troy Jackson (04:56)
first generation physicians. There's no one in my family that was a doctor, even worked in the medical field. I found the body wickedly fascinating. It's just an interesting,

Travis Richardson (05:06)
you

Troy Jackson (05:07)
everything is interesting. And that was a problem in med school, because everything's interesting and you're supposed to find your lane and go through it.

But I just, I love learning about everything that deals with the body, whether it's illness or wellness. And that's how I landed in family medicine. just, didn't have to pigeonhole myself. I could just do whatever I wanted to do, but.

I also like a body functioning well. I want that for myself, I that for my family, and so I want that for my patients also. I fortunate my wife's a dietitian and so I already had this nutrition lens or bent there and that got me talking with physicians that also were interested in nutrition and what they were doing.

And honestly, Asheville as an eye opener, you go and tell someone you should take this medication and they are like, no, I'm going

to go do this like sound retreat.

Travis Richardson (06:03)
Yeah. All right.

Troy Jackson (06:05)
Like, okay, great. And then they come back and they're better. And you're like, well, okay, there's probably something more to health than just prescribing meds. And that's really what opened my eyes.

Travis Richardson (06:16)
Yeah, that's what I love about Asheville. That's why I do what I do as well, because I've seen such a vibrant healing community here in so many different ways. there's an acceptance of all modalities here. don't feel like there's... Anybody who lives in Asheville knows that you often can't just have one... be good at one thing. You've got to be good at two, three, four things in Asheville. And that's actually one of our, I think, our strengths. So it's a pretty cool thing.

have

a question around what it is, how you define the difference between precision medicine and functional medicine and even integrative medicine. There's a lot of terms and you'll go by if you're driving down the street and you see a sign up on a building and it'll say integrative medicine. think, okay, well.

That sounds great. And then you'll see something else saying functional medicine. You don't know. So for an average listener, do you, what do you guys practice and how, does that, how do you define those different kinds of styles of medicine?

Troy Jackson (07:20)
So from a high level, you can go and do fellowship training in integrative medicine and functional medicine and have a certification that allows you to say that you're a functionalized integrative doctor. In my head, the way I think of this is an integrative physician tends to use a bunch of different modalities, herbs, nutrients, different healing practices.

and they're open to those things, whether they use them personally or not, they will have references or resources for that. A functional medicine tends to be more on the human system and how it is operating as a whole unit and how the different organs are interacting with each other. One reason why we don't claim to be either of those two is one, we didn't go through the training for that.

And we see that there's a blend to those modalities of using whatever we have at our disposal, recognizing the body as a fully functional system where fixing a problem in one area may address another problem in another area. But we're also Western trained. And so we also think of the body through that lens too of what there will be disease, there will be dysfunction. Medications is just a tool in the toolbox. And we feel comfortable with that.

We're also well-trained in lab evaluation. And so that's where this precision medicine comes in is that we know how the system works and how to get in-depth comprehensive lab work, imaging if we need it. And we can really understand where are the choke points in a system and how do we intervene on that system to improve it. Instead of just saying, I think your gut is messed up.

our thought is, let's just do some gut testing and really get to the details of what it is that may be going wrong. And then the hope is that as we're working on those things, we're seeing results, not just in the gut, but in other areas of health. So that's kind of that precision medicine idea.

Travis Richardson (09:20)
Interesting. So, and then you do something called metabolomics, which is kind of a new term for me as well. And so you do lots of lab testing yourself. I think of that as, when I think about someone doing lots of lab testing, that it trying to get to the root cause of a problem, my head goes to functional medicine. That's all I know. But what is what is metabolomics? What is your kind of lab analytics that you use?

for your patience.

Troy Jackson (09:53)
Yeah, so we'll do the traditional labs that a functional medicine doctor would run because those are very helpful and those are what we've been using for decades. They have lots of data behind them. As technology has gotten better, we are able to look at these omics. So the first one that came out was genomics, so able to understand how your genes are influencing the decisions you make in terms of health and how health outcomes.

There's proteomics and then we have metabolomics. Metabolomics is the second one. They haven't figured out proteomics yet. But metabolomics is the idea of understanding how a system is working. So as an example, how your metabolism in the mitochondria is working from step one all the way to the final product.

And the point of it is that it's a whole bunch of data, but you're trying to understand where are there bottlenecks in the system that you could intervene on that may not be picking up as an elevated blood sugar as an example. It's

picking up way earlier than that,

Travis Richardson (10:54)
Interesting.

Troy Jackson (10:55)
more subtle variations that it's trying to predict outcomes in the future and doing things that keep you from getting to that point.

Travis Richardson (11:04)
That's interesting, because I think we talked about this in our initial call. I forget who exactly it was. I think it was you. I mentioned that there was a bacteria, and I think maybe you said the name of it, that was like an FDA-approved probiotic that was able to lower blood sugar and improve for lowering blood sugar. At least there was a clinical trial that showed that it could do that. I forget which one it was. But for someone dealing with

blood sugar issues to me that was like that one step back that you just described is that if you don't have a functioning gut microbiome that could be a part of increased blood sugar which could be a part of dementia for instance right so like trying to figure out what is the where is the chain broken and because it's also connected yeah

Troy Jackson (11:58)
Yeah, yeah, that bacteria is

Travis Richardson (12:00)
So.

Troy Jackson (12:01)
acrimoncia there, but that's a measurable bacteria. Not everyone has acrimoncia. Some people who have diabetes, they already have acrimoncia and that is not their issue. But when people who are deficient with acrimoncia and they do show signs of insulin resistance, that there are studies that support supplying them with acrimoncia improves their gut's ability to manage glucose.

in a different way that helps them regulate blood sugar as a full system.

Travis Richardson (12:31)
So on that same line of thinking what you can test for, deficiencies are something that crop up time and time again. We've got toxicities on the one side of the spectrum and we've got deficiencies. What kind of deficiencies do you see are common and that you regularly address?

Troy Jackson (12:55)
Yeah, and this is a bigger problem than maybe we all even realize. And it's definitely a problem in the wellness industry, mostly because when we think of wellness, you know, we're doing, we're eating well, working out, and then we jump and we say, well, let me take these things or do these things as a way to improve my lifespan or health span or whatever it is. But

so often we're missing that we're just, we may be just insufficient or deficient in nutrients. And that is really the lifeblood of health and the function of our body. And some of these nutrients can be measured, of course, and we do that all the time. Some of the nutrients are tough to measure and you have to kind of use alternative ways to understand if there's deficiency or at least insufficiency there.

So 2017, there was a study that came out that showed that 30 % of the US adults and children have at least one nutrient deficiency, vitamin or mineral. And that, of course, changes or increases depending on other medical complications that you have. Interestingly, if you took a multivitamin, didn't matter what it was, it went down to less than 15 % of people had a deficiency.

without even, this is not, you're not measuring anything. It's just random people, they just check their labs and this is what they found. And we see this too. So we used to do very in-depth micronutrient evaluations where we measure almost every vitamin, mineral, amino acid, fatty acid, and we'd commonly see things. So vitamin D, magnesium, potassium, vitamin A, most of your B vitamins, omega-3s, these are commonly low.

either deficient, so like your lab test is red, or insufficient, you're just skirting on that low side of it at any given time. And we have lots of data on deficiencies. So we have lots of data of like, if you're low in vitamin C, you could get scurvy, right? We know what happens with those things. It's insufficiency that I feel like we're missing, where we'll measure people and their B12 is normal at 300.

Well, the lab range is 250 to 1200 and it's clear that your body is needing more B12 or more B vitamins in general. so insufficiency is probably the issue that we try to address the most in our practice. feel like it's a step one, a foundational type of understanding of your health that...

At any given time, any given season, you might be insufficient in nutrients based off of your diet, because you got sick, because of a medication you take, an illness you have. And it's trying to understand what are those things that I need or the most common insufficiencies and solving that first. And that's what helps the body work well.

Travis Richardson (15:48)
Yeah, one of the biggest frustrations I think I have around this is that in a general medicine practice, you go get a test and they'll give you results and it's binary. You're okay or you're not, right? You're in range or you're not. And there's never any talk about, we want you to be the healthiest that you can be. And so we'd really like you to opt, you know, get into an optimal range for these. And I don't know if that's because

optimal isn't well defined enough with strong enough evidence that they just can't pull themselves to to make recommendations around that but that's been my big biggest pet peeve is that there's never you know if somebody's just borderline just inching toward let's say pre-diabetes right you should probably do something about that

Instead of waiting until the binary switch it goes on and now you're in pre-diabetes range It's like let's get that you're trending too close. Let's get you down I mean, maybe some doctors do that, but I've my experiences. It's been either okay or not on a thing. So Glad to see now. You've got a couple you've got three supplements actually That I've come across in my research the f1 f2 and f3 Tell us about what those are and how those address some of these insufficiencies

Troy Jackson (17:10)
So like I said, we did all these measurements on nutrients. And since we firmly believe that solving nutrients is number one in health, we would tell people, go out and you need to replace these nutrients. And the list instantly would become 15 things long. Take this, this, this, this, this. And no one wants to do that. I don't want to keep up with that as a doctor what person's taking when their list is that long.

noticed over, this is probably a two year timeframe, that 80 % of them were about the same, that the same nutrient deficiencies popped up again and again and again. And so we partnered with a company, a supplement company that allowed us to personally create nutrients for patients, so individual personalized nutrients, and then they would also let us create like kind of bigger batches. And so what we did is we created these products, F1, F2, F3 to try to solve.

the most common nutrient deficiencies that we see in our practice and what's also been shown in data of most common deficiencies. So F1 is all of your water soluble nutrients. So it's your vitamin Bs, vitamin C, trace minerals. And then our F2 is the fats. So it's A, D, E, and K omega-3s.

and CoQ10. And then F3 is essential amino acids. So this one has gotten a little bit press recently, but the idea is that you can eat, say, 100 grams of protein in a day, and you have good muscle protein synthesis. So you're able to build muscle. But if you add essential amino acids to that, your muscle synthesis goes up. And it's the idea is that essential amino acids deplete throughout the day. And so having a better supply of them allows for

protein synthesis or muscle synthesis to happen, but you're using these in a lot of other factors too. So we think it's also one of these essential things.

Travis Richardson (19:11)
that's very interesting. actually was not aware of that. So thanks

for educating

Troy Jackson (19:15)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (19:16)
me on that topic. I do take glycine regularly just for the study, longevity benefits of that. And there's even some new research. They looked at glycine versus serine. they, it was an interesting study actually, they showed that glycine plus serine increased

in those that had cancer increased the amount of cancer that they actually had and They didn't know was it one or the other and so they took away the serine and they found that if you just supplemented with glycine not only did it improve but it actually kind of reduced the Amount of cancer activity. So that was interesting. These are all preliminary ways listening to this. Please know that this is all

like one study, there's just one study here. So lots of studies need to be done before we really understand how something is working. But so far glycine seems to be like a great amino acid. maybe I need to end F3 though to round out my own profile there.

Troy Jackson (20:22)
Yeah,

especially I mean, you do a lot of work from a physical activity perspective, so your body's in constant need of repair, I'm assuming. And this just kind of helps aid in that repair mechanism.

Travis Richardson (20:35)
Yeah, so let's get to epigenetics. I think that's a really interesting topic and it's definitely made a lot of headlines recently. I like the quote, genes load the gun but environment pulls the trigger. Maybe some of the listeners have heard of that. Can you explain what that actually means when it comes to epigenetics for folks?

Troy Jackson (20:59)
So a lot of us understand genetics from the sense of sixth grade biology where it's this code that eventually becomes the blueprint of our body and how our body is working. And a lot of us go from genetics to genetic diseases. So there are conditions that are from genetic mutations that we have in our bodies that can cause a disease. There's a lot of newborn illnesses. There are some cancer genetics that...

make your risk of having cancer 100 % or close to it if you have certain genes. Fortunately, all of those are very rare. The other part of it is what we don't really think about very much is that our genetic code, mine and yours, Travis, are 99.9 % the same. And yet we are clearly different people. We have different personalities. We look different. And how does that happen?

And so part of that, there's many reasons for that, but part of that is this epigenetic idea that we have these tiny changes in our genome that make us unique. Those are called SNPs and that our bodies are very sophisticated and are able to turn these genes on or off depending on the environment, the signals that we are getting from our surrounding world.

And so if we are in getting a lot of signals of good nutrition and good sleep, we feel safe, we feel loved, then we have genetic expression that is propagating genes that would be promoting for that. If we're not getting that, then we have genes that are turned off. Then we have genes that may be turned on that are trying to help us survive in scarce environments or help us to improve systems that allow us to run away or to fight back. And so

That whole, the environment is kind of what is telling our genes what to turn on and what to turn off based off of need. The point, like in our practice, we measure genetics. We're using what we see in terms of the changes as a way to say.

Your body wants you to eat in this way that it will likely respond better, less fatigue, more energy, yada yada. And so let's just move in that direction. It's not a, you have to do this, but if you can move in that direction, you will probably have a better outcome than another person.

Travis Richardson (23:20)
Yeah, it seems like the body is an information processing unit almost, you me coming from a software background. When I think about genes turning on and off, I just can't help but think that this is, we're really programming ourselves by our environment.

And so if we can look at ourselves as very much malleable and that we can change and have lots of influence over what happens, we're not just a victim to our circumstance. We have a lot of control. And I think there's a lot of hope for people, especially those that are suffering from various diseases that these diseases can be overcome. So it's a good thing to know that genes can turn on or off. I'm thankful for the field of epigenetics.

Now you've got a tool that you use called Genometrics and you also have an epigenetically trained health coach I'm aware of on the team. how does, if somebody's coming in to see you and they're maybe slightly aware because they've heard this episode and they're like, I've learned about epigenetics. I'm curious how you can help me. How do you take somebody and their information and how do you work with them with it?

Troy Jackson (24:37)
So the genetic test is a cheek swap. It's very simple to do. And it tests things like 700,000 different SNPs or changes in the genome that have some study correlating to a wellness topic. any wellness thing you can think of, there are genes related to that. And it organizes it into this really pretty rapport that's very long. And...

The way I use it is that when I'm going through the patient's data at the beginning and understanding kind of what they're doing from a health questionnaire, looking at their blood work, I'm using the genetics as a way to tailor how I'm going to make recommendations to them, where I want to push them into, where I want to avoid. And then our health coach who has had extensive training in understanding these reports.

she will use them as more of a coaching side of things, of using it as validation or this is what your genes show. Let's try to make this tweet today or this week in terms of your exercise to push you more towards endurance, whatever the thing is. And we're constantly going back to it. each year when people renew, I'm going back to it, looking over again, refreshing, know, and the report updates. I love that about this company's gene metrics is

If new studies come out, they're going to plug it in, the algorithm is going to change a little bit. And so I press the update button and I can make sure that what I'm telling people is the most up-to-date information that we have available.

Travis Richardson (26:09)
Wow, that's powerful. Like that is super valuable because now you're able to, with one cheek swab, stay up to date forever on updates that are personalized to you. I guess that really is where the precision part of the precision medicine comes in.

Troy Jackson (26:27)
Yeah, it's way more detailed than like

people have done 23andMe or something like that. 23andMe got dinged by the FDA because they were using medical terminology in their reports as they really truncated it. So if anyone has done that before, you're like, I don't see too much information there. Ours is 120 pages of information, way more than you need to know, but it's helpful for us to understand from a complexity perspective.

Travis Richardson (26:54)
Yeah,

I had mine done by a company called Nebula Genomics and they honestly, it's it is something that it's best to have these reports. It's best to have professional support, I think on these some of these because what comes back can use it needs a little bit of identification of what's important, what's not in my case.

It can be hard to read, guess is what I'm saying. And it can be hard to know what to do and what are the actionable things that you should do based off of the report. So I do feel like it would be nice to have a coach to sort of work through some of those decision points. So that's cool that you have somebody who can do that.

All right, well let's move on to peptides because I'm curious about and I think that it's a trending topic and there's a lot of potential for peptides. And the one I'm familiar with is BPC 157. That is the one I believe that could help support injuries, ligaments, tissue regeneration, repair, that kind of thing.

How do you use peptides? What can you say about those and what other ones that are interesting to know about?

Troy Jackson (28:16)
So yeah, peptides has become a hot topic. seems like on, I'm not on social media, but I hear from patients that they're asking me lots of questions about it. And it is an exciting area of practice or therapeutics. They, just to orient the listener, if you're not aware, peptides are short chains of amino acids and they work as a signaling molecule in the body.

So all peptides that are available have a derivative in the body. They've just been remanufactured as a, usually they're injections. There are some that are capsules, but you use them as a way to tell the body or to nudge the body in a direction. So you brought up BPC. If you have an injury to a joint, if you have gut inflammation,

BPC has been shown in some animal models at least to improve signaling to those areas in order to improve healing. So the body sees BPC floating in the bloodstream and it's going towards these areas of injury and then the body reorients blood flow, immune system to try to attack or tackle, improve, heal that area of the body.

So it's a very exciting field because they don't really come with very many side effects. And they can be very specific to a need. The negative that everyone needs to caution, I feel like I have to caution, is that they're not FDA approved. They are considered experimental.

I hope that changes as they get more popular that we start to see some really small trials. And there are a few that use humans. There's a lot of ANIC data, so lots of people talking about how well they work. And we clearly see that in our practice. we recommend you working with someone who's familiar with them. You can, some people buy them online without any guidance.

Just like you said earlier, I think these are something where you need to have some level of guidance, at least from a purity perspective, making sure what you're buying is appropriate. But it is the next wave, I believe, is peptide therapies using them in practice. So I think they're very exciting.

Travis Richardson (30:27)
And I think there's maybe a hundred being studied currently, or at least that are available, which seems like an overwhelming number to even consider. I take collagen peptides. I think those are the most familiar. think for most listeners, you can find collagen peptides pretty easily. Those are the same, right? That we're talking the same language when we say?

Troy Jackson (30:53)
be the same sort of idea.

I would say the most popular one is our GLP-1. So semiglutide, terzepotide, those

Travis Richardson (30:59)
right.

Troy Jackson (31:00)
are technically peptides and they work. So some of these peptides are FDA approved medications. That's an example.

There are some that were pharmaceutical studied molecules that failed the endpoint that they were studying and so they sort of scrapped them. And then some random person noticed that they had other potential benefits and that's how they got popular. You're right, there's hundreds of them probably. We probably only use 10 to 15. There's only a subset that is...

that has a good bit of signal that we like, that we see pretty consistently. And so we just stick to the ones that we know and are interested in the ones that we don't know yet.

Travis Richardson (31:40)
Yeah, and I think I mentioned this earlier when we were talking before is that a lot of times marketing gets ahead of science and when we see anything exciting from a subsection of something like let's say, like the probiotics is an example and we see some benefit.

then what happens is marketing takes over and it espouses tons of claims that are may or may not be true and puts together combinations of probiotics and things that are.

kind of random in my opinion, because none of these combinations have real, often real science behind showing that this combination with this amount from this manufacturer will produce this result. So you often don't know what you're getting. Not to say, you know, don't take probiotics, but it is something where I think peptides probably are in that same class of, well, we're just not sure. We think there's lots of great benefits, but you know, it takes probably, you know,

decades to tease out all of the different mechanisms that are at work and come to some solutions on what we should be doing. I hope AI helps speed that process up, maybe with modeling. That's one promising thing that we have going for us, guess, there.

Troy Jackson (33:00)
and

discovery, so being able to even understand peptides that we can't measure. There's probably some like bucket of things we've found that we have no clue what it does. And I'm sure AI will be helpful in that. I know it is in the pharmaceutical industry of creating new molecules.

Travis Richardson (33:18)
Yeah, yeah, lots of lots of interesting things going on there for sure. Let's let's get into so diet. These are the reason I want to go into diet is because I think it is one of the most challenging things for people. It's actually kind of easy to take a supplement. If you can remember to do it, you just pop it in your mouth and you're good to go.

being able to eat for, for health and eat for wellness over the longterm is really a struggle. often, you know, start one diet and move to another. And I myself have done that. I've been, I've tried, I was on a fruit diet and all fruit diet for a while to see how that worked. It worked horribly for me. I was on a raw vegan diet as well. also extremely challenging and I couldn't do that either.

I'm kind of on a keto diet now. And I, when I say kind of, I mean, I'm not measuring my ketones. I'm not being strict, but I'm aware of how I feel when I eat this way. And I like how I feel. And so I'm sort of gravitating naturally to eating just more fats in my diet, simply because I like it. I have less bloating, digestion, that kind of thing. How do you approach diet? How do you work with folks when there's

so many different variations out there.

Troy Jackson (34:43)
Yeah, and I've done the same thing you have. I have not done the fruit diet, but I've tried my own

Travis Richardson (34:49)
Yeah

Troy Jackson (34:50)
exploration. Like I said, my wife's a dietitian and so that is part of it. But I would say through the years, I've become more and more diet agnostic, more just saying whatever diet works for you, works for you. That's number one. You have to be able to stick to it. And if you don't like what I'm asking you to eat, then it's not going to work out.

Number two, there are reasons that maybe one diet is quote better. That's where we come back to the genetics and epigenetic idea that there might be some that just weren't better. You may have conditions where less gluten would be a good idea. And so going more ketogenic would be a favorable way of doing that. But I think the way I think of diet is we know the general idea of what's healthy and not healthy from a food perspective.

Whole foods, minimally processed, as close to the source as possible. That's what we're trying to shoot for. And I feel like if we're doing that 80 % of the time, that we're probably good enough, regardless of the macronutrient percentages that we're hitting in each individual meal. I think food has also helped from a social perspective, a community perspective. So many people get isolated when they get so restrictive in their diet that they can't go hang out with their friends.

because they can't eat any food that's at the restaurant that they're at. So that worries me. And unfortunately, you know, I don't think that we can rely on food anymore as the sole way of getting nutrients in our body at a sufficient level, at least all of the time. And that's just the reality of our lives. We're going to be busy. We're going to miss meals. We're going to have

not have enough time to cook meals. have two young kids at home. They have their own thoughts on what's good and not good food wise. And so we have to also be realistic that diet may not be be all end all. It's helpful. We should always focus on good healthy meals as much as possible. But I don't think that would make it so I'm doing that. So therefore I don't need to take something. Therefore I don't have insufficiencies. I don't think that's true.

whether that's the quality of our food that we're eating or the inherent inflammatory burden that we may be experiencing any given time due to toxicants or other illnesses, medications that we may be taking. so it's eat what you love, stay in the framework, the general framework of what's healthy and not healthy. We all know those things. And then the rest of it kind of shakes out.

Travis Richardson (37:24)
Yeah, I think I'm sort of gravitating similarly is that I have a baseline of like, know what's good for me, what's not. And it really becomes, actually it's starting to become very easy because it's either for me personally, it's either sugar and carbs oriented or it's not. So I don't

Troy Jackson (37:42)
Right.

Travis Richardson (37:43)
really have a lot of choices. either, look at a food and I say, is it high in sugar and carbs or not? And I know like what my decision should be.

And I also allow myself some, some flexibility to, even enjoy those things. It's just like, you know, like moderation, think the 80, 20 rule, 80%, you know, I'm good in 20%. I think I'm 90, 10 though. I'm going to pat myself on the back. I'm like, I'm like 10 % bad.

Troy Jackson (38:07)
There you go.

Travis Richardson (38:11)
I uh, yeah. And it matters, you know, how your body processes all of these things. You know, we know obviously that, you know, some people process alcohol for instance, better.

than others. Some folks liver is better at doing that. And even as we age, we have to change some some things. we know that processing alcohol as we age becomes more challenging. So I think all of this is really contextual and it's highly nuanced. So becomes really challenging to talk about, I think, and to make recommendations. I do like to start from a Mediterranean. Just I feel like that's it. That is kind of the

has earned the gold standard, you start with that as a baseline and can deviate because it does have kind of all the food groups in it. It doesn't exclude really anything, but it does choose healthier options. I guess, what do you think of that? Is the Mediterranean like a, would that be a good starting point or do you even make such a?

Troy Jackson (39:10)
Yeah, I know it's tried

and true. It has a lot of data behind it. So you can't argue 20, 30 years of studied data on a Mediterranean diet, at least the style of eating as a beneficial thing.

Travis Richardson (39:22)
Yeah.

Troy Jackson (39:24)
And that's probably one to gravitate to. And then you maybe for six months or a year, you push into a ketogenic diet or push into something else. Or you just say, I can't tolerate gluten. So I'm going do this and just avoid gluten containing foods.

And that's a good framework to be in. I agree with you. That's probably a nice starting point, launching point.

Travis Richardson (39:43)
And you said you tried keto, right?

Troy Jackson (39:46)
No, not down to 20 grams per day. I like to bake bread. So it's probably never going to happen. That's a outlook.

Travis Richardson (39:51)
Yeah.

Troy Jackson (39:52)
That's my 10%.

Travis Richardson (39:55)
Yeah,

yeah. man, there's nothing like homemade bread. There's absolutely nothing like it. Do you do sourdough or what kind of breads do do?

Troy Jackson (40:03)
Yeah, mostly sourdough. That was my outlet in presidency, back in like 2016

Travis Richardson (40:08)
You

Troy Jackson (40:09)
or so. So, yeah.

Travis Richardson (40:11)
Nice, nice,

yeah.

Amazing. All right. I guess last topic to cover is muscle loss with age, also known as sarcopenia. think that is a pretty underappreciated threat to longer term health. And I also don't really see it as something that is being addressed preventatively when people are like in their middle ages as a, you know,

it

feels like very reactionary is, that once you're diagnosed with like sarcopenia, maybe you've, you've gotten onto into your seventies or so, or, and then it becomes a problem and you start having to try to figure out how to, how to handle it. I guess what is your recommendation or stance? How do you help people not develop sarcopenia? If, how do you, how do you prevent, prevent that within your model?

Troy Jackson (41:10)
So first thing is that we can argue which diet is best all day, but there has never been a study, to my knowledge, that has a negative impact when exercise is the primary intervention. It's always a pro, and it doesn't matter if it's cardio, resistance, high-intensity interval training, it's all positive.

And so if there's any one thing that someone can do for their health, it's to move more and especially to move in a way that is challenging to your body. That's really the definition of exercise is to give your body a stimulus that's outside its normal. We measure body composition in office on every single patient and with body composition scans, you get a weight, but it tells you how much of that weight is body fat, lean mass, bone density.

And so we're looking at muscle mass and bone density very rare, very regularly on people. And it's very rare for me to see out the gate someone with a normal muscle mass, especially with women. So we see a ton of people that are, they're not sarcopenic, but they are bordering that line pretty closely. And I think a lot of that is just.

especially women in their 50s, 60s, the messaging of most of their life has been to stay thin and small and not to go lift weights because that's what men do. And I think that is changing. That messaging is changing that we that being a strong, physically strong woman is a good thing. There's also other challenges hormonally that plays into that. But I think strength training is a big piece that is missing that.

we think of, in America, we think of running, biking, jogging, swimming. That's kind what we gravitate to. But we very rarely think of strength training as a modality of exercise, or it's just for like 18 year olds. So.

I think that if anybody can increase muscle mass, even just a little bit, your functional ability in your life in your 70s, 80s and 90s is demonstrably better. And that's also been shown in studies of nine year old women lifting weights, gaining muscle mass and feeling better, falling last, doing, being able to do more things. And so in my opinion, that's a non-negotiable is some level of strength training and just really watching and following that over time.

Travis Richardson (43:32)
Yeah, and doesn't, it doesn't, people don't realize, I think it requires less than you think. or a better way to say it, anything you do is beneficial when it comes to strength training. There's like maybe an ideal, but, doing anything, something even once per week, if you did a full body workout once per week, that is substantially better than doing nothing. Like the, if you looked at the

a lot of the charts on anything you want to measure, whether it's longevity or blood sugar control, risk for sarcopenia, activity matters. the more, better up to a point, but for the most part, the idea is get out and do something you love.

What I do, I like to, I was mentioning this on the last podcast. I go outside and I'll, I'll, um, I just enjoy being outside while I'm out there. I will just do some pushups. Um, I'll hang on a tree and maybe do a few pull ups, maybe do a few squats and right there. I've got a full body workout essentially that I've done all of the major moves with squats, pushups and pull ups, or just even hanging. If you don't want to pull, do pull ups like that, that is

And it's easy. like I'm outside. I'm in the sun. I'm enjoying myself.

Troy Jackson (44:50)
Yeah, so just

a personal story here. I have two young kids. They are at the time of this recording, five and three. And I didn't step inside of a gym until like I started here at this practice in 2019. And it's a little bit of like you got to walk the walk if you're going to talk the talk. I was a very active person, but lifting weights was never part of thing I like to do. But it is important. And I saw the data is very clear.

So my workouts to this day, five years after having kids, is I do two 30 minute workouts per week in my gym with free weights that I bought on Amazon and a bench that I got off of Facebook Marketplace. And you can see the change on our body composition scan from 2019 to today on lean mass by just doing that. And it's the consistency piece more than what I'm lifting, because I mean, people lift way more than I do, but I'm pretty regimented at twice a week.

And think that is the big thing for people. That's an hour of my time in a week. It's very simple to do. And it doesn't take a lot.

Travis Richardson (45:55)
Super efficient, 30 minutes. I think I could get behind two 30 minute workouts a week pretty easily, especially when it requires maybe a few pairs of dumbbells. Speaking of habit change, is that the hardest thing that you see in your, I mean, it is for most people, is habit change. It's not what to do once somebody's given what to do. It's then actually implementing it and staying consistent. How do you approach that? I assume that's what

coaching is about.

Troy Jackson (46:27)
Yeah, so that is her bread and butter. I obviously will speak to it and encourage and motivate, but what I say in a visit is out the window an hour later when they...

So

Travis Richardson (46:42)
Yeah

Troy Jackson (46:42)
it's the health codes, that accountability aspect of it that gets people kind of remembering that this is what we talked about and the check-ins that she'll do has been very helpful. It is tough. We are built as creatures of comfort. We do not like change, especially if that change is taking us into more discomfort, right? For asking people to work out as an example that's uncomfortable. I find that if I can get someone to do it,

And they give me, I see people three months after the first visit. If I can get people to do it for those three months and they come back and they feel better, their anchor for what they are accepted, what they accept in their life is different. And it's that piece, then they like, I'll never go back to where I was because I feel so much better now. I didn't realize that I could feel better. And that's kind of the thing that propagates itself, but the getting started, that inertia piece is tough to overcome.

And I think that's where a health coach is helpful. Sometimes if they have bad lab work, that's helpful. If I say like, this is technically a place we should put some medications in and they're like, no, no, no. Great, I'll give you three months, but you got to give me three months of effort. And that's all. It's a good motivator.

Travis Richardson (47:57)
I like

that. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I love that. Having a goal post and saying, all right, let's do it. You got three months. Let's see what we can do. And rooting the person on. I love that. That's really actually pretty smart. It would motivate me, especially if my doctor was like, all right, you got this. Let's go. Let's see what you can do. I'd be like, all right, I'm really going to go for it. So that's amazing. All right, well, anything coming up on?

on the radar for you, any launches, any programs, anything you want people to know about that feels interesting.

Troy Jackson (48:34)
So we're an active practice in Asheville. We also have licenses in all the neighboring states. So if you are interested in working with us, you can get our website at AuthenticHealth.com. We did just release a new sort of dip your toe in program where it's a full set of blood work, about an hour and a half, two hours with me, body composition scan. And we just go through that data. You don't have to join our practice at all. It's kind of a one time thing.

as a way to just get a full assessment. You can go to function health and get your labs, but you're to have to have someone look at them and tell you what that means. so the idea is to give you as complete a rundown of your health as possible. give you a, but I would do my thoughts for the year. Like if you do these things, my expectation that these numbers would get better, your health would get better. And that's a summary that you just get and you leave and you go implement it yourself.

So that's the newest program we have. Our other programs, it's a year, you join for a year. And so some people didn't need that. And so we thought this would be a good way to start getting that health out. If you don't want to join a practice, I do have a fairly regular YouTube channel where I'll post some video per week, 20, 30 minutes, just about some health topic that I'm seeing in practice that get asked questions about a lot.

My hope there is that I just can cut through some of the noise in the wellness industry and give people some really thoughtful advice just from my perspective. If I can help one person, that's a good thing to me.

Travis Richardson (50:13)
Yeah, was just watching the last episode, I think it was March 11th, 2026 on omega-3 fatty acids and homocysteine and the interactions and why, so I encourage you, it's great information, I was really enjoying listening to it and you're gonna learn a lot, so I definitely see that as a great starting point to learn more about what you do. And I believe there,

We've got a special offer for the listeners. I think it is 10 % off for the F1, F2, and F3 packages, the vitamins, the minerals that you mentioned earlier. Is that correct?

Troy Jackson (50:58)
That's correct. That's at shopauthentichealth.com and the code is BWELLAVL, all one word, and get you 10 % off whether you buy one thing or you sign up for a subscription, doesn't matter. But the hope is that you can try them out and see what you think. And we love them. We're very behind them. Our patients love them. And it just makes it a whole lot simpler to know that you're getting everything that you need in as little effort as possible.

Travis Richardson (51:26)
Awesome. Well, it's been great spending time with you. I do appreciate your time very much, Dr. Jackson, and we will get that out. We'll get that into the show notes and get your message out there. Let's keep making Asheville healthy and beyond actually as well.

Troy Jackson (51:44)
Thank you so much, Travis. That's great.

Travis Richardson (51:46)
Yeah, thank you and you have a great rest of your day.

Travis Richardson (51:57)
All right, that was Dr. Troy Jackson. And honestly, this conversation is exactly why I started the podcast. That's what I mentioned earlier during the show is that the idea that you can actually know what your body needs instead of guessing and that a physician right here in Nashville is doing that work at this level. And it's something I want every person in the community to know about. So you can head over to AuthenticHealth.com to learn more about Dr.

Jackson's practice and his new precision health evaluation for supplements you can visit shopauthentichealth.com and use code bewellavl for 10 % off. You can also catch him on YouTube at at Authentic Health AVL and the Authentic Health podcast wherever you listen. Share this episode with someone who's tired of guessing when it comes to their health and until next time be well.