Half Of Heart Attack Patients Didn't Present With Elevated Cholesterol — The Metric Doctors Miss

Something broke—not the heart itself yet, but the man carrying it. Exhausted from running a company, believing discipline alone could absorb the pressure, discovering too late that stress accumulates like debt, that sleep loss compounds, that physiology collapses when it reaches the breaking point. The lesson: you cannot willpower your way through biological limits. Todd Vande Hei, CEO of Stark, challenges the metric most leaders obsess over—cholesterol—and redirects attention to a number that actually predicts your capacity under load: VO2 max. This episode is for leaders operating under constant pressure, responsible for outcomes, payroll, decisions that demand clarity even when exhaustion sets in. You'll learn how to build measurable cardiovascular infrastructure that lets you think straight in hour ten of a crisis, that keeps your nervous system from overreacting when stakes rise, and that transforms stress from a liability into a controlled variable. Health Is a Skill teaches you to treat your body like the mission-critical system it is. Todd's early failure—the collision between relentless ambition and biological reality—shaped everything he now builds at Stark and brings to this conversation. He learned that risk management isn't enough. Real toughness comes from building capacity: genuine physiological resilience that your mind can trust when pressure arrives. This is what separates leaders who survive high performance from those who burn out. 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