Meet Jamie Mentzer

The accidents

Jamie was the guy who played soccer three nights a week and had never had an injury he couldn't come back from. Then, in less than a year and a half, everything broke. First, a driver hit his car from behind at full speed, and a doctor started him on Vicodin. Then, at 37, on an elk hunt in Montana, his horse took off at a gallop and threw him, crushing his spine. Two more car accidents followed. Surgery wasn't an option, and doctors told him the pain was something he would live with for the rest of his life.

The pills

The prescriptions kept climbing. Over seven years, mostly in bed, he went from Vicodin to as much as 1,000 milligrams of morphine a day, and some days he needed a rope tied to his headboard just to pull himself up. When insurance stopped paying, he turned to heroin. He put himself in the hospital five times trying to quit cold turkey. He lost custody of his triplets, and for five years he couldn't see or talk to them. Wanting to be there for his kids became his reason to find another way.

The rest of his body

His back wasn't the only thing failing. From about 25 to 35, he had an upper and lower GI every year and collected diagnoses of IBS, Crohn's disease and Barrett's esophagus. He had diarrhea all the time, and at times he was bleeding. He had been on acid-reflux medication since he was about 23, and he stayed on it for more than 20 years. At 40, he was diagnosed with osteoporosis and anemia, and he broke his leg twice in six months just by taking a simple step. Along the way came kidney failure and pneumonia five times in one year, and he weighed about 100 pounds more than he does today. Doctors told him he might not live another year. For almost a year, his whole workout was walking half a mile to a mile to the grocery store and back.

Finding flow

One thing still worked. With music on, he could do an old break-dance move from when he was a kid, and for those few minutes he felt like himself again. A friend told him athletes have a name for that: flow. That led him, in August 2017, to attend the Flow Genome Project's Flow Camp on Powder Mountain, Utah, which The New York Times covered. There he met a doctor who began working with him on his own health. They ran his DNA, then tested his saliva, blood, stool and urine, anything that could be tested, and adjusted his nutrition every three to six months based on what came back. After about two years, he joined one of the first DNA-based nutrition programs in the country that worked with doctors, and learned how DNA panels are read for everything from digestion to skin to athletic performance. At the same time, he started measuring his breath, heart rhythm and brain, a few minutes at a time.

Today

There was no single breakthrough, and he isn't finished. After an iron infusion, his kidneys started working again and he shed about 30 pounds of water weight. He found his way off opioids, and about six months later off the reflux medication too. He learned his body had adapted to both: on the reflux pills it seemed to make more acid, and on the painkillers it seemed to feel more pain. Today he is about 100 pounds lighter, takes no prescription medications and tracks his sleep and heart rate every day. About eight years ago, his testosterone tested at about 1,200. He has been off all supplements for about eight months, and it just tested at 1,000. He still has mornings that start with pain, and he is still working on his acid reflux. He measures, adjusts and keeps going.

Why it matters for you

None of this makes Jamie a doctor, and he won't promise you his results. What it does make him is someone who has sat in every waiting room, read every kind of report and done the slow work of testing, adjusting and retesting for years. He knows what it is to start from the bottom. Today he coaches the same blueprint he built for himself: BioFlow Trifecta Training for brain, breath and heart, with live sensor feedback and a coach every week, and FlowFuel.Pro testing for anyone who wants the fuel side too. He went from bedridden to badass one session at a time.

Watch the video

Watch Zay's video

Watch Bob's video