Over the holidays I went through something with my own body that flat-out blindsided me, and I feel a responsibility to share it—not as a doctor or a researcher, but as a guy who has spent years running nutraceutical companies and still didn’t see this one coming. For most of my career, I’ve talked about stress, hormones, electrolytes, “resilience” and performance as if I had a good grip on them, and then life came along and ran a real-world experiment on me.
I’ve always been pretty steady under business pressure. Deals break, launches slip, cash gets tight—that’s all part of the game, and usually my pulse doesn’t move much. But when my mom passed this Christmas and I was the oldest in the family, it was a completely different category of stress. There were emotions, decisions, family dynamics, logistics, and zero real playbook. Somewhere in that mix, my body hit what I can only call a “cortisol shock.”
In plain English, it felt like my system flipped a survival switch I didn’t know existed. Over just a few days, the scale jumped even though I wasn’t eating like a maniac. My legs felt heavy, my head got foggy, and hills or stairs that were normally easy suddenly felt like I had sandbags strapped to my ankles. It was as if my body decided, “We’re under attack—hold water, hold salt, build a buffer,” and I was just along for the ride.
From the science side—yes, the part of my brain that’s been in nutraceuticals for decades eventually kicked in—this is what high acute stress can do. Cortisol ramps up to keep you going, and with it comes this whole cascade that changes how your body handles water and electrolytes like sodium and potassium. When those drift out of range, you feel weak, lightheaded, and not at all like the person who usually powers through the day. Layer on top the lousy sleep, odd eating patterns, and emotional roller coaster of grief, and the whole thing amplifies.
What actually helped was not some exotic protocol; it was basics done with intention. Getting serious about hydration with electrolytes instead of just chugging plain water. Being a bit more generous with salt—within reason and paying attention to blood pressure—so my system had something to work with. Swapping “push hard” training for gentle walking and movement. Protecting sleep like it was a core asset, not a luxury. Those are the same levers we talk about around products and programs, but now they were being tested on the founder in real time.
The main reason for telling this story is this: if you ever go through a major life hit—loss, shock, extreme stress—and suddenly your body feels foreign to you, it might not mean you’re broken. It might be your biology overcorrecting in a clumsy attempt to keep you alive. That doesn’t replace seeing a clinician; if anything feels extreme, prolonged, or just wrong, get labs and vitals checked and let a professional weigh in. But it does change the narrative from “what’s wrong with me?” to “my system is in a temporary survival mode.”
As someone who has spent years selling formulas and talking about health from the outside in, this experience forced me to look at it from the inside out. If it helps even one person recognize what might be happening in their own body during a storm like this, then sharing this little “founder meets cortisol” chapter is worth it.
