Elevate Your Game with Maggie Awad

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Well, Patty Devers.

Welcome back to the world.

Thank you, Michael Chapman. Thanks for that.

You've been around the block.

So of you.

We've both been around the block.

Uh-huh.

We haven't done one of these podcasts in a while.

I know.

It's not a lot going on.

Sicknesses, illnesses, family emergencies.

But we're back.

That's right.

And I've been sent to my closet.

I don't even know where to start.

I guess we just start.

I've been here the whole time.

I've just been chilling in this room waiting for you.

These are lies.

But I'm glad you're here.

I watched the entire Game of Thrones series.

Good for you.

Hello.

Hi, Michael Chapman. How are you today?

I'm fantastic, Patty Devers.

How are you doing?

Well, 2026 started out not great for me,

but currently I'm crushing it and living my best life.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Would you say that the beginning of 2026,

you were not crushing it?

I was not.

No, the universe just kept punching me in the face every time I

turned around and in my mom's words, stop turning around.

So here we are.

That's one way to go about it.

Well, this is a podcast.

It's called The Lab Report.

It's brought to you on behalf of Genova Diagnostics

and we always say thank you to Genova Diagnostics

for all the support,

for the microphones, for the computers,

and for the content.

Yeah.

So we talk about lots of different things,

specialty, testing, functional medicine,

precision medicine, personalized medicine,

all the medicines.

And we also talk about integrative therapeutics

and some other things.

And here's where I usually say,

if you're new, welcome.

If you're returning, thank you.

Right now, if you're returning,

I can't thank you enough.

It's not really returning at this point.

I don't know what to say about this,

but welcome to everyone.

Falling back into something.

We're so grateful that you're checking us out again.

And if you want to leave us some feedback,

maybe get in touch with us.

What can they do, Michael Chapman?

Well, you can always send feedback to podcast.

at gdx.net.

I would also encourage you to re-subscribe to the show

because we're going to do more of them.

I promise.

We are.

I promise.

I promise.

Yes.

I mean, that's barring anymore.

Illnesses.

Right.

Winter weather.

Right.

Hurricanes.

Seriously.

We've had some stuff.

We've had some stuff.

But here we are.

And since we're coming back,

we thought we'd come back with a bank.

So we called one of our old friends

to come on the show Maggie Aewad.

Yeah.

It's really our failings

that we have not had Maggie on.

She's incredible.

She's an incredible

functional medicine practitioner,

especially in exercise force medicine.

She's been a friend,

fan of the show,

connections with so many other people

who've been on the show.

And it really is an example of

how we are terrible humans

that we haven't had her on yet.

And I feel bad about that.

But I don't feel so bad

because I'm also a terrible human.

Well, we finally did get her on.

And since we had this small hiatus,

I'm saying small, it was a big hiatus.

A figure, Maggie's the person

to bring us back into the fray.

Absolutely.

Without further ado,

let's just bring Maggie on.

Michael, our friend,

Maggie Aewad is here with us today.

I would like to say emphasis on friend.

I hope I hope Maggie feels that way.

But I do.

We don't Maggie many years.

So for those of you who perhaps live under a rock

and don't know who Maggie Aewad is,

Maggie Aewad is a board certified

nurse practitioner and founder

of Elevate Performance Medicine.

She specializes in functional sports medicine

for elite NBA NFL and other professional athletes.

Maggie began her career as a nurse,

but soon realized the traditional

model was not enough to provide high quality care.

She eventually decided to pursue a master's

degree for nurse practitioners,

focusing on functional and integrative medicine

at Texas Women's University.

Maggie also personally trained

under the world renowned and sought-out physician Dr.

RS Supaya, friend of the show.

He's so good.

He coined the term functional sports medicine.

Over the years, Maggie has grown her practice

in reputation in the sports world

by taking a holistic approach

to improve performance for professional athletes

and high achievers.

And with that,

welcome to the lab report, Maggie.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you guys.

This is such a treat just about

to jam with my favorite people.

So Maggie, functional sports medicine.

It's kind of new to the sports world, right?

So tell me a little bit about this approach,

functional sports medicine.

What this means to you and how it's different

from sort of the traditional model

of caring for athletes.

Well, with, I, you know,

I saw a really big gap in the world of sport

and they, there are so many.

So I do want to start off with saying

there are so many incredible

straight-to-conditioning coaches

and nutritionists

and athletic trainers

that are doing incredible,

incredible work with athletes.

So I want to really acknowledge their work.

And I feel like there is a gap

with looking at other biomarkers

of utilizing functional medicine,

looking at the gut microbiome,

looking at mitochondrial health

in order to optimize some of the things

that a lot of these professionals

are really scratching their head about.

And it's, it's really looking

at shifting the narrative

of how do we treat the injury

versus we ask, why did this injury occur?

And granted, there are some things

where injuries can be

that are not preventable.

And we do know that.

However, I do know

from my training

and diving deep into

so many labs that there is a sweet spot

and there are some things

that we can really look at

to optimize athletic performance and health.

It's, it's such a niche part

of functional medicine, right?

Just catering to athletes.

What was your personal journey

in deciding to pursue this type of work?

Well, it's interesting.

It's, I'm going to, I'm going to start

with a COVID story.

I feel like there's just a COVID story

behind everything.

And it's, it, it's really did.

I was, a lot of people probably

ate an excessively

or drank excessively

or watched a lot of TV.

I dived into more training excessively.

That was my, that was my addiction.

And I was training every single day,

seven, seven days a week.

And I looked forward to doing it.

And even though I look like I had

the, the eight pack abs

and, you know, people typically

they look at me and are like, wow,

she's, she's really crushing it.

She, she looks great.

And on the inside, I wasn't.

And when I came across

getting trained six years ago

around functional sports medicine,

a lot of the things that were taught to me,

I was like, oh my goodness,

I'm having, you know, a lot of joint pain.

I'm having fatigue.

I'm having brain fog.

I'm having really scary symptoms

and I'm not sure what's going on.

Fast forward, I, you know,

as a nurse practitioner,

I was trying to diagnose myself

and I thought it was NS.

I mean, I was so,

really scared y'all.

Like it was the symptoms that I have

were, were really weird,

like tingling in my, in my legs and my hands.

Of course, I had told the doctor

that I went an MRI.

Like if you're not going to order it, I will.

So we did the MRI and by God's grace,

there was nothing.

There was no spotting on the spine

or anything like that.

But it just, it was an invitation

for me to get really curious

about what was going on.

And what was going on was I had

severe leaky gut.

I had massive amounts of nutrient deficiency.

I pretty much wiped out

through my glutathione.

I didn't have any reserve

because I was utilizing my reserves

through training,

through old training.

And that is what got me into this thing.

I'm like, well,

how about these people

are doing this as a profession?

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, is that sort of what you see so

commonly with a lot of our different types of athletes?

You know, we talk about some of the overarching

health issues that occur,

including injury and preventing injury and things like that.

But like in dealing with,

you know, optimizing the nutrition

and other components of our athletes,

what is what is a health issue

that you do find keeps coming up repeatedly?

I would say repeatedly,

obviously it would be the leaky gut part.

And that is mainly due to they,

their profession is typically set up for

this type of phenomenon to go on.

And we call it intestinal permeability, right?

And the reason being is because

whenever someone is training for more than 60 minutes,

the blood is diverted

from the gut to the muscles.

And that is kind of like our biology of way of saying,

hey, we need, we need some repair here.

You're breaking some muscle down

and we need to bring more blood to the muscle.

Unfortunately, what happens

when we are in that state

is a lack of oxygen in the intestinal

environment.

We start create this leaky gut syndrome

that is a term that's mostly used.

So I could say that most,

I would say about 60%.

Obviously, athletes do tend to have

symptoms of overreaching and overtraining.

And it's definitely a gap that when I do come back

and I see a test, I'm pretty much not surprised.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, speaking of gut,

we know that you use functional medicine

and specialty testing in your practice.

Sometimes you use the GI effects, which is our stool test here.

When you're looking at a stool test,

what specifically are you looking for

when it comes to athletic performance?

What aspects of the GI effects are helpful to you for athletic performance?

So one of the things obviously that I talk about is inflammation.

And we're not talking about the acute inflammation.

I think it's really important that we separate

having inflammation that benefits us,

and that actually for an athlete

can make athletic gains within muscle.

We want a little bit of acute inflammation.

What I'm looking at is chronic inflammation.

And so there are some markers in the GI effects,

which by the way,

love Genova Genova GI effects.

So many people have come to me to try to convert me to their other

stool testing.

I'm like, no, I'm in Genova.

Sorry, it's back off people.

Maggie's ours.

Exactly.

And so there are inflammatory markers

that I do look at.

I also look at digestive function.

And are they absorbing nutrients efficiently?

Now, these people typically invest a lot of money

into bringing the best chef on.

And bringing amazing people that are cooking incredible food.

The only thing that I would say is that I think that's great.

And looking at the environment of the gut to see

are we absorbing our protein is a really big deal.

If I'm having a case where I have an athlete that's

have repetitive tendon injury,

I get curious about there are amino acid status.

And looking at if they are able to absorb the protein

because that's where we extract a lot of the amino acids.

So that is a marker that I look at.

And obviously we look at the parasites and

you know, look at other commensal bacteria that, you know, keep us healthy.

It's so interesting, you know, because I think,

correct me if I'm wrong, Maggie.

Like it took a while, but certainly nowadays most

athletes are aware of the importance of nutrition

and being nutritionally replete.

And they take that pretty seriously, I think, now more than ever.

When it comes to GI, you know, I think people are aware that yeah,

maybe you're long distance runners and stuff like that.

They tend to have some GI issues, but like the average athlete,

I would imagine still there's maybe not as much awareness

around just how common this is for a lot of our athletes.

And then ultimately like, what do you do about it?

Yeah, so I think that the statistics are pretty staggering

where we do see up to 40% of chronic inflammation in athletes.

And like I said, the profession is you're running on V12.

So we need to make sure that just like, you know, in a Ferrari,

which is how I view their body is making sure, hey,

are there the right components within the car

in order for them to perform the way that they need to perform?

And so that's how I really look at it.

And I think for people like you and I, Michael and Patty,

where we are, you know, running businesses,

or you know, for the, you know, the CEO or for the high level entrepreneur,

I think there are some things that we all do have in common,

which we just we tend to utilize our resources to the max.

And we want to make sure that we have the right environment within our body in order to

maximize our performance on a daily basis.

Do you see connections between gut health and injury?

Well, that was my kind of my thing with the amino acid and tendon repair, right?

So there, you know, if we have chronic inflammation or gut,

which we, you know, the statistics that's put out there is 80% of our immune system resides in our gut.

We're not going to be sending out the right immune response cells in order to be like,

hey, I want the cell to go repair, you know, this, I, we know, I want to tell the cell to repair that.

So we want to make sure that the environment of the gut is optimal and making sure that

if there are any pathogens, if there are any path of parasites that were eradicating those,

because having that in our gut is actually taking energy away from recovery.

Right. Right. Right. Interesting. Yeah.

Well, so here's another question that I have to because you mentioned that like with yourself,

that it seems like your activity, your training was a bit of an addiction and you used a little

bit of that, that metaphor around it. And so I think about of our athletes, they're so used to the

activity, the stress, the training as being, you know, what they do. How difficult is it to talk

about recovery and sleep and some of these opposite ends of the spectrum with them to really get

them to see like that's as important part of the process as the training is. Yeah. I think a lot

of the times their mind is running faster than their body. And they wouldn't be where they're at,

you know, they wouldn't be the elite of all elites. If in their mind, they can just say one more rep,

even if you're in pain or, you know, just really push the boundaries and push the limits,

which is why I love being around that energy because I tend to be that way too.

Sleep is a huge part of recovery. And it's, it's really interesting because there is a statistic

that say that athletes who sleep less than six hours per night have a 1.7 times higher risk of

injury. Oh, yeah, it makes sense though, right? Right. Right. And, you know, to Michael's point,

it's hard to convince some of that, but sometimes data can be compelling against their tests that

look at cortisol that can really be compelling to an athlete. But the other thing that we've been

talking all about nutrition and amino acids, when you do nutritional testing on these elite athletes,

is there an overarching deficiency that you see? Is it amino acids or is it other minerals?

The biggest thing that I see is like in glycine. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Huge. And for our listeners, because I know a lot of our great nutritionists and

trainers and coaches are going to be listening, glycine is huge. Glicine is necessary for

collagen production. And giving someone collagen is not going to make their tendons stronger.

Right. Right. So, so the glycine has been a really huge eye opening marker.

In order to support them with their with their recovery.

It's fascinating. I think about glycine sometimes. This is what I do in my nerd

ruminations. I just sit here and I think about glycine. Because, right, it's it's one of our

schedules. I do. I'm like, oh, look at the structures. I was just about to talk about the structure.

It's one of the simplest amino acids, right? It's so versatile. And for that reason, you can make

glutathione with it. You use it in detoxification. You use it in so many different processes.

It's sort of like cash on hand. If you're going to have a limitation in an amino acid,

it makes sense that that would be the one. And it's so easy to supplement, right? It's just a nice

little powder and it's surprisingly taste sweet. I love glycine. It's all right for that little

thing. I just had to do it. I love glycine too. I mean, and the thing is with with this amino acid,

it is so easy to test. And yeah, we are not looking at this biomarker that can really

support or even prevent a really serious injury from going on. That's important.

I had a follow up. Talk to me a little bit about hormones and how you think about hormones

in your athletes. You know, I think sometimes people are always like, oh, these athletes,

you know, they must have really high levels of testosterone and they must have this particular

pattern. Like what do you do around hormones? Do you approach hormones at all or do you do it

more with that lifestyle? How do you approach hormones? Well, obviously, I'm going to look at the

low-hanging fruit, right? I think it's just coming from my background as a nurse practitioner

and having that medical background for so many years. You know, it's easy to just look at,

say for example, testosterone and measure testosterone and oh, it's low. So we've got to give you

testosterone placement therapy. And I think the beauty of functional medicine is looking at the

pathways, right? And looking at what creates testosterone? We know we're looking at DHEA. We're

looking at cholesterol. We're looking at all these other markers that if we were to fix that,

then we can really optimize the testosterone levels. And it's interesting because when

guys come to me for testosterone issues, I don't look at them as testosterone issues. I don't

look at as a hormonal issue. I look at as a mitochondrial issue. And it's an opportunity to be able

to educate them of what are some of the things that we can look at other metabolites to optimize

your testosterone? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it makes sense. It does make sense. And then I would

think because you deal with so many professional athletes that there are some restrictions on what

you can actually give them regardless, right? Absolutely. Obviously, for the most part of their low

in DHEA, that's something that I cannot give. DHEA is considered a band substance. So we get creative.

Yeah. I love that. I love that. Well, like we said, Maggie deals with some really elite athletes,

y'all, like some big names. But in your practice, do you also see non-athletes?

I do. I do. You know, I see moms. I see dads. I see CEOs. I see everyone that really wants to

either squeeze the extra 1% in their life and be able to show up the best possible

human that they could be. And that drives me. I mean, that type of energy, it's the same thing

as working with an athlete. And they're, to be honest with you, sometimes they're a little bit

more receptive, you know? And just it's just so cool to really see the shifts. You know, whether

you're wanting to win the championship or, you know, whether you're wanting more energy and

better health, I'm always, I'm always here to support. I think I should see Maggie. Because I feel like,

I feel like, I don't know how many, like classic type B personalities like myself, Maggie sees,

and how frustrated she would get by, come on, Michael, would you just do the thing? I'm like,

I don't want to. I will say Maggie, the joke, the ongoing joke here, is that? Do you want Michael?

Listen, Michael uses the podcast to get his own questions answered and his own health,

taking care of. So we're just going to let you know that's right.

I've got all these questions about testosterone. What's up with that?

We'll talk later. Well, Maggie, if Michael wants to come work with you, where can people find you?

Where can they sign up to to work with you? Absolutely. I've got my website that

www.maggyfirstnameawadwadad.com. You'll have to reach me there. Also on Instagram, I've got my

Instagram page. I also have my LinkedIn, you know, show me a DM, an email, I'll be more than happy

to say how I can support. And hey, I don't know everything. If I'm able to, you know, send you to

the right provider or send you to the right person to support you, I'm so blessed with an

incredible network of people that have amazing niches and that are able to support as well.

Perfect. We'll link to all of those in the show notes for the listeners. And

after having been friends with you for so many years, we're so grateful that you finally

came on the show. This has been fantastic. We're going to link everything in the show notes.

But before we let you go, we do have one last question that I'm going to kick to Michael

Yeah, we've got a question called the fireball. We don't prep you for this one.

I just wanted to catch you off guard. And so I've been thinking about

so, you know, I know that you worked with lots of different types of athletes. I've heard about,

you know, many of them. And with the Olympics just having had happened, I've been thinking about

all these wonderful Olympic sports and so many of them. My question for you is, what do you think

is the most underappreciated Olympics sport? The underappreciated Olympics sport.

Can we say the shop putt maybe? Oh, yeah. Don't you think? Yeah. I don't think I've watched it in

years probably. I have a client that does, you know, she's she it's the three. It's the the

high jump running and then the shop putt. And I here's one thing about that too. Now that you say that

if I'm thinking about, but I was like, I'm always, you know, I should ask her how do you train for

a shop putt? I mean, obviously it's going to be a lot of upper body strings. Right. Right.

But like, to me, it's also probably one of like the most simple, like long term, like throughout time.

It's basically a sport that's like, how far can you throw a rock? Right? Obviously, that's a

simplification. And I'm not meaning to offend anybody. But like, how long have people been sitting

here? Like, like, kids, like, for ages and eons being like, how far can you throw this thing?

And that's like such a simple, but like elegant way to determine strength.

I wouldn't think so. Yeah. Like, I'm going to start doing it. How far can you throw a rock? I

think it's more complicated than 100%. 100%. And I know I alienated probably so many people by

saying, how heavy is the rock? Right. Right. Exactly. I don't know how heavy is a shock, but

shot put. I don't know. I don't know either. We're going to have to look it up. Yeah. We're

going to take some glycine to start throwing rocks after this. But again, Maggie, we love you.

We're so grateful you came on the show. We're going to encourage all the listeners to go to

magiawad.com and sign up with Elevate Performance Medicine. And again, thank you so much for all of

your wisdom, Maggie. Thank you, guys. Well, since you did alienate a whole bunch of people,

I didn't throw any of the rocks. I was just talking about antiquity and like,

I totally got it. I totally got it. But I'm thinking this is throwing a rock. Let's be

great. Well, you know, there's more to it. I think maybe more. Of course, there's more to it.

We should look up how heavy shot puts really are. Yeah, I agree. If we can do this, maybe you

know I'll throw a shot. I have no idea. I mean, I assume it's heavy. It looks heavy when you watch

them do it. Oh, for men, it's 16 pounds. That's pretty heavy. Yeah, throw. So like basically,

you're throwing an armadillo. And then for women, it says average four kilograms, so like 8.82 pounds,

so like nine pounds. Yeah, that's terrible. Who are you? What is happening right now?

No, your brain didn't protest about throwing armadillos. Now you're all up in arms.

Fair point. We don't condone any animal cruelty on this show, Michael Trattman. Don't throw

my animals. Next time on the lab report, Dr. Nation Winters. What a story. What an inspiration.

So much wisdom. You're going to love this interview. I don't have anything else to say. You got it.

Okay. So you know how I have this thing that happens to me where the most obvious things go

missed by me for my entire life. Yeah, like, um, you know, the restaurant that closed across

on our building that you missed for four years and didn't realize it was closed. I remember my

friends looking at me at high school when I was like, you know, it looks kind of like the target

logo. And they were like, you mean a target? And I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I had one of those

happened to me. I was reading something. And it was talking about intermittent fasting and

things in this nature, right? All right. And realize that the term breakfast is actually

break the fast. Are you kidding me? I had not put that together. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I did not,

I break fast. No, I did not thought about the origin of the term breakfast. I'm so proud of you

for figuring that out. So just put that on the list. All right, adding it. But when I look at the

list and these things happen to me, okay, I have this overwhelming sense that I'm actually an alien

from another planet. And I've just come down and these things take a while for me to put together.

I'm not arguing any of that.