Late November 2024. IVF doctor's office.

Anya is sitting next to me, and I can see red rashes spreading across her arms. Hives breaking out. She's sweating. Her breathing is getting shorter, faster.

I reach over and put my hand on hers. The reassuring touch. The "I'm here, we're in this together" gesture.

But inside, my chest is tightening. There's a pit in my stomach. My heart is racing.

I'm supposed to be her rock. Her comfort. Her security. Her safe space. And yet, I feel like I'm the one that might need immediate medical attention.

I'm not even listening to the doctor anymore. She's talking, but I can't' hear her. All I can think about is: Am I having a heart attack?

I'm 42 years old. I'm a fitness coach. A former fitness model. A physical specimen. The guy people come to when THEIR bodies break down.

And right now, in this moment, I've never felt more helpless.

The overwhelming sense of anxiety is crippling. I can't breathe. I can't think. I can barely sit still.

That was my first panic attack.

It wouldn't be my last.

Let's dive in 🚀

The Diagnosis

A few weeks later, I'm sitting in a cardiologist's office.

I'd worn a fancy new heart monitor for 72 hours. I didn't take it off once. I even wore it in the shower. How's that for a visual? 😜💦

It tracked every beat, every skip, every irregularity. And I'd press a button anytime I felt a palpitation. See below 👇🏻

The doctor looks at the data and says: "You have a 10.6% PVC burden."

I stare at her blankly.

I cannot believe nor can I even comprehend what she's saying.

It was listening to the teacher talk in Charlie Brown. All I heard was Wah Wah. But she explains:

I'm still staring in disbelief.

It's an out-of-body experience. Like I'm watching this happen to someone else.

I'm the guy who helps other people fix their body when it breaks down or won't cooperate. I'm supposed to have all the answers.

Yet, my own heart is malfunctioning 10,000+ times a day. WTF? 😳

She recommends starting beta blockers immediately. Like a battered and beaten dog, I reluctantly comply crawling into my corner.

They work... sort of.

The palpitations decrease. But I feel flat. Disconnected. Like I'm living life at 50% capacity. Worse, I suffer from ED and lose absolutely all romantic interest.

My libido is in the toilet with my joy, happiness, and love of life. Not exactly ideal when you're trying to conceive a baby.

Here's where most people stop...

Like Pavlov's dogs they are trained to accept any diagnosis as gospel. They take the prescription. They resign themselves to "managing" the condition for life.

But Anya and I learned something critical through our 3+ years of IVF hell: You have to advocate for yourself in medical settings.

The days of blindly trusting a doctor without question are over. Not because doctors are bad, but because your body is your responsibility.

(And let's be honest, financial incentives matter. Even well-meaning professionals can be influenced by them.)

I accepted my reality. I wasn't going to pretend this wasn't happening. The data was crystal clear.

But I refused to accept that beta blockers were my only option. One month in, I made a decision:

There has to be another way.

And I was going to find a way, or make a way.

When Your Body Keeps Score

Here's the thing: I thought I had it all dialed in.

Training was consistent. Three sessions per week with progressive overload and strategic cardio. Nutrition was locked in. And my clients were getting results.

On paper, everything looked good.

But my nervous system was writing checks my body couldn't cash.

Years of IVF stress had an impact especially the feeling of helplessness I often felt watching my wife go through procedure after procedure.

I'm supposed to be my wife's protector. Her problem solver. Her rock.

But I couldn't help her. I couldn't help us. I didn't have the answers. And I didn't know if we'd ever even be able to have a child.

Add to that the business pressure of being the coach. The expert. The guy who's supposed to have all the answers.

The identity trap: "I should have this figured out."

My body was keeping score, and the bill came due.

Beta blockers were a band-aid. They managed the symptom, the palpitations, but didn't address the root problem:

My stress response was broken.

I needed to teach my nervous system it was safe again.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:

I'm not a doctor. This isn't medical advice. I'm not recommending you do what I did. I'm simply sharing my personal experience with my own health journey. If you're dealing with heart palpitations, anxiety, or panic attacks, please work with qualified medical professionals. This is my story, not a prescription.

The Protocol That Changed Everything

I stopped the beta blockers and started digging.

But I didn't go rogue like Rambo in First Blood (such a good movie).

Instead, I assembled a team. I leaned on my health advisor at Marek Health starting with a comprehensive blood panel.

I had their medical team interpret my cardiology exam results, heart monitor data, bloodwork, and symptoms to provide specific supplement and protocol recommendations.

I kept my cardiologist in the loop. Not asking for permission, but making sure they were aware of my approach. You know, just in case I died or something 🤣

This wasn't about Googling my way out of a medical condition. It was about gathering expert input, analyzing the data, and making informed decisions.

Ultimately, I was responsible for every decision. Extreme Ownership like Jocko says. But I got help along the way.

I re-read The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal.

Not just skimming, but hanging on every single word. And I did EVERY journaling prompt. Processing the stress, reframing it, understanding it, redefining it.

I leaned more into my faith. Attended church more regularly. Looked to God for answers with the belief that somehow this was happening for us, not to us.

And now I know why. We've raised nearly $40K to help families struggling with infertility pay for IVF. Our pain became our purpose.

But faith alone wasn't going to fix my heart rhythm. After all, action is the difference 😉

So I researched nervous system regulation, heart rate variability, and supplements for cardiovascular health.

The pattern became clear:

My problem wasn't my heart. It was my stress response.

And fixing a broken stress response doesn't happen with one supplement or one workout. It requires attacking the problem from every angle.

Here's what else I did.

The Supplement Stack

I built a protocol around nervous system support and cardiovascular health, based on actual research:

​Taurine: 3g daily (2g morning, 1g evening) — A naturally occurring amino acid that’s highly concentrated in heart tissue and plays a role in how heart cells function.

It’s been studied in the context of heart rhythm and is often described as supportive of overall cardiovascular health and a calmer nervous system.

The most frequently cited paper (Eby & Halcomb, 2006) explored much higher doses (10–20g per day) in a small case series and reported significant reductions in premature beats.

While large clinical trials are still lacking, many people (including myself) report subjective improvements at more conservative doses in the 1–4g range.

​Phosphatidylserine: 400mg daily (200mg morning, 200mg evening) — Has been shown to blunt the body’s stress response, meaning your stress hormones don’t spike as aggressively when life gets intense.

Research in humans suggests this stress-buffering effect becomes most noticeable at doses of roughly 400 mg per day (Starks et al., 2008).

​CoQ10: 100mg (morning) — CoQ10 plays a key role in how heart cells produce energy, which is especially important for a constantly working muscle like the heart. It’s commonly used to support overall cardiovascular function.

Clinical trials and meta-analyses show that CoQ10 supplementation in the 100–300 mg/day range can improve functional capacity and certain heart function measures in people with heart failure (Di Lorenzo et al., 2020).

​Magnesium: 450mg daily (150mg morning, 300mg evening) — Magnesium plays a critical role in electrical signaling in the heart. Low magnesium levels are associated with cardiac arrhythmias, including premature beats, and deficiency is relatively common.

Studies have shown that magnesium supplementation is associated with a reduced incidence of ventricular and supraventricular arrhythmias (Salaminia et al., 2018).

Individual clinical reports describe cases in which oral magnesium was linked with resolution of premature ventricular contractions in people with low magnesium levels (Tsuji et al., 2005).

My dose is a bit higher than most, but this dose was selected after numerous rounds of bloodwork.

​L-Theanine: 400mg daily (200mg with morning coffee, 200mg before bed) — An amino acid found in green tea that promotes calm, focused alertness. It helps reduce stress and anxiety without sedation and can smooth out caffeine’s jittery effects.

In other words, it let me keep drinking coffee without sending my nervous system into overdrive. I was prepared to give up caffeine if I had to, but I wasn’t ready to accept a caffeine-free future without a fight. I'm not a quitter. 😉

Human studies show L-theanine reduces psychological stress and dampens stress-related nervous system activity (Kimura et al., 2007; Hidese et al., 2019).

While it hasn’t been shown to directly reduce PVCs, lowering baseline stress may help remove a common trigger for palpitations.

The Cardio Protocol

Here's where most people would've gone wrong: crushing intense cardio to "fix" the heart. Interval training, sprints, and max efforts...

My initial thought, and my inner David Goggins wanted to do the same.

"Who's gonna carry the boats!?"

But I resisted. I did the opposite as Tim Ferriss often advocates.

I started doing Zone 2 cardio on my Peloton twice a week for 30 minutes at around 125 bpm. Low intensity. Easy pace. And I watched Netflix while I did it.

All 46 episodes of The Last Kingdom.

Over 2-3 months, I gradually increased duration first, then intensity. Worked up to 60 minutes at 125 bpm.

Once comfortable there, I'd drop back to 30 minutes but bump the heart rate to 130 bpm. Build duration again. Then repeat at 135 bpm.

Always giving my nervous system time to adapt at each level.

Some of this was unintentional. As I've previously stated, I didn't know my actual Zone 2 until I got a proper V02max test. But here's what I didn't do...

No HIIT. No crushing myself. No "more is better."

I was training my nervous system to stay calm, not trigger panic mode.

What I Kept Doing

I also didn't stop lifting. Three strength sessions per week with hypertrophy focus and adequate rest between sets.

No metabolic conditioning.

I just separated the stimulus: strength training for controlled stress, cardio for nervous system regulation.

The Breakthrough(s)

The changes came gradually, then all at once.

After 4-6 weeks: energy returned, sleep improved, palpitations became less frequent.

Sex drive came back and romantic interest in my wife returned — not because of anything she did, but because the beta blockers finally wore off.

After 8 weeks: no more visible heart rate spikes on my WHOOP during workouts.

My last panic attack was in January 2025, after two EMDR sessions with a therapist my wife recommended.

The realization:

My body wasn't broken. My nervous system was stuck in overdrive.

I didn't need to be "fixed."

I needed to retrain my stress response.

What This Taught Me

High-performers are really good at doing, but we're terrible at recovering.

We treat our bodies like machines that just need more optimization, more discipline, more intensity. Most of my clients are the same way.

But your nervous system isn't a machine. It's a biological system designed to keep you alive.

And when you're constantly in fight-or-flight from IVF stress, business pressure, financial strain, or trying to be everyone's rock — your body will eventually force you to slow down.

Mine chose heart palpitations.

Four things that mattered most:

1. Reframe the stress

I had to change how I interpreted what was happening to me.

Life wasn't happening to me, it was happening for me. The IVF struggle, the palpitations, the anxiety...

...all of it was creating the foundation for something bigger. For our son. For the families we'd eventually help through our foundation.

Viktor Frankl survived a concentration camp by finding meaning in his suffering. I could find meaning in mine.

Faith helped. Believing in something bigger than myself. Trusting that this had a purpose, even when I couldn't see it yet.

2. Advocate for yourself

Most people accept their diagnosis as a life sentence. They don't question. They don't explore alternatives. My mom was like this.

I accepted my reality (the diagnosis was real), but I didn't accept the doctor's solution as the only solution.

That mindset shift changed everything...

It opened the door to the possibility of finding an alternative solution.

3. Treat the ROOT, not just the SYMPTOM

Beta blockers managed palpitations. But they didn't address why my nervous system was in overdrive.

I needed to fix the underlying problem: chronic stress activation.

I did that with a combination of EMDR therapy, reading, journaling, faith, sleep, cardio, and supplementation.

4. Think in risk/reward

In my email last week, I talked about how everything in life is a tradeoff. This situation was no different.

Natural supplements had 80% upside with 20% downside (mostly cost).

Beta blockers had immediate relief but long-term trade-offs I wasn't willing to accept.

I chose the path with asymmetric upside.

If you're a high-achiever dealing with anxiety, panic, palpitations, or feeling like your body is betraying you:

You're not broken.

You might just need to retrain your stress response.

If I can do it, so can you. 🎤

Research:

1. Eby G, Halcomb WW. Elimination of cardiac arrhythmias using oral taurine with l-arginine with case histories: Hypothesis for nitric oxide stabilization of the sinus node. Med Hypotheses. 2006;67(5):1200-4. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2006.04.055. Epub 2006 Jun 23. PMID: 16797868.
2. Starks MA, Starks SL, Kingsley M, Purpura M, Jäger R. The effects of phosphatidylserine on endocrine response to moderate intensity exercise. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2008 Jul 28;5:11. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-5-11. PMID: 18662395; PMCID: PMC2503954.
3. Di Lorenzo A, Iannuzzo G, Parlato A, Cuomo G, Testa C, Coppola M, D’Ambrosio G, Oliviero DA, Sarullo S, Vitale G, et al. Clinical Evidence for Q10 Coenzyme Supplementation in Heart Failure: From Energetics to Functional Improvement. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2020; 9(5):1266. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9051266
4. Salaminia S, Sayehmiri F, Angha P, Sayehmiri K, Motedayen M. Evaluating the effect of magnesium supplementation and cardiac arrhythmias after acute coronary syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Cardiovasc Disord. 2018 Jun 28;18(1):129. doi: 10.1186/s12872-018-0857-6. PMID: 29954320; PMCID: PMC6025730.
5. Tsuji, Atsutoshi & Araki, Kiyoshi & Maeyama, Katsuhiro & Hashimoto, Keitaro. (2005). Effectiveness of Oral Magnesium in a Patient With Ventricular Tachycardia Due to Hypomagnesemia. Journal of cardiovascular pharmacology and therapeutics. 10. 205-8. 10.1177/107424840501000309.
6. Kimura K, Ozeki M, Juneja LR, Ohira H. L-Theanine reduces psychological and physiological stress responses. Biol Psychol. 2007 Jan;74(1):39-45. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.006. Epub 2006 Aug 22. PMID: 16930802.
7. Hidese S, Ogawa S, Ota M, Ishida I, Yasukawa Z, Ozeki M, Kunugi H. Effects of L-Theanine Administration on Stress-Related Symptoms and Cognitive Functions in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients. 2019 Oct 3;11(10):2362. doi: 10.3390/nu11102362. PMID: 31623400; PMCID: PMC6836118.