A man collapses on a golf course with no warning. The doctors find AFib—atrial fibrillation—silently triggering seizures his body had been hiding for years. A stroke follows, same root cause, still invisible to every annual physical. He was running hard, ignoring every warning light, until his body gave him no choice but to listen.

Todd Vande Hei, CEO of Stark, reveals the cascade that high performers don't see coming: how chronic stress systematically dismantles your hormonal infrastructure. Cortisol suppresses testosterone. Testosterone kills your cognitive edge. Your entire system runs on fumes while you call it a rough quarter. You'll learn why your standard physical misses the real damage, what comprehensive testing actually looks like, and why a testosterone level marked "normal" might be eroding your leadership capacity. Health Is a Skill demands you understand the machinery before it fails.

Todd built this episode—and Stark itself—because his own body forced him to learn what most executives never do until crisis arrives: that performance without infrastructure is just scheduled collapse. His seizures, his firing, his financial ruin taught him that your physiology isn't separate from your business. It is your business. This conversation is the operations manual he wish he'd had.

About the Guest: Todd Vande Hei is the founder and CEO of Stark, a comprehensive health optimization platform built on functional medicine principles. He has led Fortune 100 operations and now applies that same systems-architecture approach to human physiology, helping executives and high performers understand their body composition, hormonal balance, and metabolic flexibility before breakdown becomes inevitable. Learn more at starknaked.com.

Your health is a skill you can build. Start with the free resources at podtodd.com or explore team-based health optimization at stark.health