Half of heart attack patients don't have elevated cholesterol before they have a heart attack. The room shifts. Everything you've been told about health markers suddenly feels incomplete. This episode dismantles a decades-old assumption about how leaders should measure their bodies. You'll discover why cholesterol—the metric everyone obsesses over—might be optimizing for the wrong outcome, and what actually predicts whether you can think clearly at hour ten of a strategy meeting, recover from brutal travel, or stay steady when pressure rises. The conversation moves from biochemistry into something more personal: what it means to have real capacity under load, and why training for it changes not just your heart, but your psychology. Health Is a Skill isn't about metrics that look good on paper—it's about building the infrastructure that performs when it matters. Todd Vande Hei, CEO of Stark, leads this exploration from a particular vantage point: someone who has operated at scale where the margin for error was thin. He's built his own health as infrastructure, not hobby, and he's asking the leaders listening to do the same. For Todd, this conversation cuts to the core of why he started this show—the recognition that your body's performance capacity directly determines your capacity to lead. 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