Why You’re Tired, Gaining Weight & Aging Faster - Fix Metabolic Health | Dr Darshan Shah - Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Talk to me about creatine. Talk to me about the importance
with longevity. Creatine is one of the most well
studied supplements in human history.
It can help you not only retain muscle mass but build muscle
mass and it can also help you increase your strength, which is
just as important as muscle mass.
The other thing that's really interesting that was recently
found out was people that took creatine had lower levels of

(00:21):
cognitive decline in Alzheimer'sdisease too, especially women.
That's the biggest killer in theUK.
Meet longevity expert Doctor Darshan Shah.
Which biomarker should be we're looking at?
Vitamin D levels is very important. 90% of people are
chronically low in vitamin D. I'd love you to mention for
people that don't understand whyyou're saying K2.
If you don't take it with K2, it's going to also absorb a lot

(00:43):
of calcium with it, and calcium can deposit itself in blood
vessels and other places. You don't want to over absorb
the calcium. I worry that longevity has now
become a trend. Longevity has been around for a
long time, but people keep assigning different definitions
to it based on what they're trying to sell.
You what is functional medicine?We always start building this

(01:03):
pyramid at the base of nutrition, exercise, sleep and
emotional health, and then we build up from there by adding
functional medicine. I said this morning to one of my
friends, what do you think aboutpeptides?
And his answer was, I think I'm scared about them when I think
about testosterone. Many years ago we were all
thinking that we should be taking testosterone and now we

(01:24):
realize that's not the truth. So how would you answer that?
Great question. So the way I would think about
it. If you are a regular listener to
the show or live well, be well or this is your first episode
you're listening to, I really want to ask just a very small
quick favour if you could pleasehit the subscribe button or
leave a review. This helps the show more than

(01:45):
you can imagine. It means the world to help
growing this show and you all know that.
I have a huge thing to want to hit 100,000 on YouTube this year
and I can't do that without yoursupport.
I really aim to bring you the best guests possible out there
and I pride myself in doing thatfor the show because it's so
important. But to keep the guests coming,

(02:05):
to get them to be bigger and to bring more helpful information
to your ears and your eyes. I really would love to ask you
to subscribe to the show. Thank you for I am here in one
of your longevity clinics in LA and I think it's really
interesting because I want to delve everything into longevity.
Today. It is the biggest buzzwords of

(02:27):
2025 leading into 2026. It's only going to get bigger.
I think it can be very confusingfor people.
I worry that longevity has now become a trend.
I want to start with a quote, OK.
And this is what I think captures where so many people
feel right now, which is in a world drowning in health advice,

(02:47):
the smartest thing you can buildis discernment.
And so I want to begin there. What actually works when it
comes to longevity and and what is longevity?
Yeah. So, you know, longevity has been
around for a long time, but people keep assigning different
definitions to it based on what they're trying to sell you,

(03:07):
right. And so there was a time, I think
over 100 years ago where people were selling snake oil and they
said snake oil will help you live longer.
And then snake oil became the longevity product of the time.
And then guess what? People found out it was just
snake oil and it didn't work right.
And so you know, unfortunately, that whenever there is a basic

(03:29):
human need and desire to have something, people will try to
sell it to you and they'll try to overblow the promises and to
take your money. Sadly, right?
But the reality is longevity. And the newer definition is, you
know, you see all these biohackers trying to do
everything under the sun, and they spend millions of dollars

(03:49):
in their health to try to live longer and add more years to
their life. And the reality situation is, is
you don't need to send millions of dollars.
You don't need to do all the 5000 supplements.
We've actually had the technology to live over 100
years for centuries now. They do this in the Blue Zones,
right? Yeah, exactly.

(04:10):
And so people have figured this out a long time ago.
And to me, true longevity, the definition of longevity to me is
that we add healthy, productive years to the life that you're
going to live, right? Whether it be to 8590 or 100 or
more. And the reality situation is, is
we know that we have this technology.
Unfortunately, our environment and our habits and our routines

(04:33):
and our lifestyle have been working against our bodies and
we've we're actually living lessand less healthier lives.
But The funny thing is, is that we're living longer, right
through medical technology, through pharmaceutical agents,
through surgeries, through hospitals, all of that.
So we're living in this really weird space right now in 2025,
where we've added many, many years to our lives already.

(04:56):
Our life expectancy has doubled in the last 150 years, but a lot
of those years are being filled with unhealthy years.
And so there are things at work and your audience is, you know,
might be a little surprised. It's probably things they
already thought of, like is all the things they do in the Blue
Zone really getting your nutrition right, really getting

(05:18):
your sleep and your movement andyour stress management right?
But the really cool thing is that now we have modern day
technology and tools to help us do this and to counteract our
environment, but also to help uspoint our lifestyle in the right
direction. And so when I talk to my
patients that come and see me, we have thousands of patients

(05:38):
all over the world. Now is we always start building
this pyramid at the base of nutrition, exercise, sleep and
emotional health. And then we build up from there
by adding functional medicine, which is, you know, we can talk
a lot about functional root cause medicine.
And then on top of that we add some of the cool new technology

(05:59):
around biohacking. And so we kind of build this
pyramid based on your routines and daily lifestyle habits.
So you mentioned their functional medicine.
Yeah. It's one of the most fascinating
areas of health, But a lot of people might still be confused
exactly what this is. Now, some people who listen to
this might have seen a functional Dr. Some may have
just heard this for the first time.

(06:20):
So what is functional medicine? Thank you for asking me that
question. So, you know, functional
medicine is what I use to changethe trajectory of my health
after I got my nutrition, exercise and sleeping order.
And basically the way I like to describe functional medicine to
people is it is all the things that medicine has kind of
ignored as being a part of health.

(06:41):
And the reason is, is because previously there's there weren't
a lot of things that you can do about it, right?
There were a lot of pharmaceuticals you could throw
at it, not a lot of surgeries you can do.
So we just never really addressed it.
But if you really look at functional health, it's
understanding that your hormones, that your gut, that
your detoxification systems all have a lot to do with how

(07:04):
healthy you feel and how long you can avoid chronic disease.
A lot of people like to call functional medicine root cause
medicine, and I like that term as well.
Root cause medicine means that all the diseases out there, you
know, there's thousands of name diseases, right?
We all know cardiovascular disease, that most people would
die of a heart attack. We all know Alzheimer's,

(07:25):
neurodegenerative disease, We all know about diabetes.
All of those are due to 8 or so root causes that Doctor Jeffrey
Bland described back in the 80s.And those 8 root causes, If you
can optimize along those eight areas of your biology, you will
avoid all of the diseases out there.
And the side effect of avoiding disease is not all depressing.

(07:46):
Just avoid disease all the time is you actually feel incredible.
And so functional medicine is a route for you to put into plays,
habits and treatments and therapies that were not
available in traditional medicine to truly, truly become
your healthiest self. And that's why I love functional
medicine, because people just feel great after you practice

(08:07):
with after they put this into practice.
So what would be some areas of you know, looking at functional
medicine was that next upgrade from sleep movement like the the
foundations of health that we should all be doing what tell me
some areas of functional health?Let's talk about those 8 root
causes and what we can do. So one of the root causes, which
I think is the most important root cause, is poor metabolic

(08:29):
health. Poor metabolic health, as you
know, is how our body is able tohandle the energy that is in our
bloodstream all the time. Usually that comes from our
food. And people have poor metabolic
health right now, in fact, in America, 80% of people have poor
metabolic health. This was just a study published
last year. And people have poor metabolic
health because we take in a lot more energy than we use.

(08:52):
OK. And what I mean by that is
energy in his rawest form comes in the form of sugar.
And so people are taking in a lot of sugar, either in the form
of just direct sugar like desserts and things like that,
but more likely in the form of ultra processed food and
restaurant food and fast food and drinks and drinks.

(09:12):
Exactly. And drinks.
And all of that energy is taken in through our gut and then it
gets dumped into our bloodstreamand our body, if it can't use
the energy in our bloodstream, it can't use a glucose in our
bloodstream, it becomes toxic. It starts sticking to
everything. And we can't have that.
So what does our body do? It secrets insulin to push that

(09:33):
glucose into fat. Right now this is happening,
like I said, to 80% of Americans, plus constantly.
And so people are getting diabetes.
And so poor metabolic health is one of those reasons why people
are getting all of the diseases.We know that if you have
diabetes, you have a much higherchance of heart disease and

(09:54):
Alzheimer's and all of it, depression, everything, obesity,
visceral fat, all of it. And so how do we solve this
problem, right? Well, we, you, you and I both
give a lot of dietary advice, right?
And so we talk about nutrition alot and what not to eat and what
to eat. But I mentioned earlier, there's
modern technology available thatcan help us kind of accelerate

(10:16):
and really understand how to fixthis problem.
And so today, that modern technology comes in the form of
a continuous glucose monitor. This is a monitor.
It's like a little patch you wear in your arm and it tells
you every 5 minutes what your blood glucose is.
And it feeds this data to your phone.
And when you have this data, youcan see what is causing your

(10:38):
blood glucose to spike and stay high.
And once you know what that is, you can avoid those things.
And what we do with our patientsas we have them wear a
continuous glucose monitor for six weeks, and they learn so
much. They learn not just what foods
spike their glucose, but also what habits are spiking their

(10:59):
glucose. Habits such as starting a meal
with a basket of bread, right? That is a massive glucose spike.
Instead, start your meal with vegetables or protein.
That's going to keep your glucose low.
Another habit that helps people control their glucose is after
every meal you have about 5 to 10 minutes of activity, whether

(11:21):
that means going for a walk or doing some squats or just
anything. Don't just sit there or plop
down in your bed or on a couch. Simple habits changes like that
can keep your glucose level steady.
And even if you're developing diabetes or have developed
diabetes, you can completely reverse this.
And so it's a six week learning program with a continuous

(11:44):
glucose monitor. We usually pair them with a
nutritionist who can give them the advice and tell them why
they're having spikes and why they're not.
And then people have realizations and they change
your entire life and they changewhether or not they head towards
disease, you know? So that's one of the 8 root
causes. Would you like another example?
I would. I was actually thinking about

(12:04):
something as you were saying that because one of the things
that I talk about, you know, a lot of my work is based on self
compassion. I get people to try and dance
before they eat to move their body.
And you know, if you really wantto make it boring because it's
fun, right? That's also part of the joy.
But it opens up the glut for transporters, which also helps
bring in in your, your glucose and it helps start regulating

(12:25):
that. So if you can start doing some
movement before you eat, you're kind of priming your cells ready
to be able to absorb that better.
Exactly. And so it's, you know, not only
is it fun, but also it's also better for your health.
And so, you know, I find that really interesting, like a small
walk after dinner as well can help uptake those glucose, as
you just said. And it's interesting that

(12:47):
people, you know, we don't intuitively know these things,
right? Like it's almost like our body
tells us after a meal that we need to rest a little bit and
digest, right? But it's that rest and digest,
especially if you have a lot of carbohydrate that you've just
eaten, that actually causes diabetes in the long term.
So it's a little bit counterintuitive almost.
And so the continuous glucose monitor is a great feedback

(13:08):
mechanism using technology so that you really understand
what's going on in your biology in the moment, right?
And so it's going to be really, really helpful.
Yeah, I think it's interesting, right, because we have now have
so much data on what we can use.But then the worry is people can
become obsessed with their data and then kind of disconnect from
how they feel. So how do you help people

(13:28):
navigate through that world where you get to show them where
their baseline is? Like, it's important to
understand what your biomarkers are, and that can help you
understand yourself, but where do you draw the line where it's
like, OK, now it's unhealthy? You know, every person is very
different in how they handle data.
And you're absolutely right. There are a subset of people
that get overwhelmed with the data and actually causes more

(13:50):
stress, which is, as we know, a negative detriment to your
health. So we don't want to create more
stress for sure. And then you have a lot of
people that are OK with looking at the data for a temporary
amount of time while they're instituting behavior chains.
And then we stop looking. And then you have people that
just want to know the data all the time, right?

(14:10):
And So what we really try to do is there's never A1 size fits
all solution in health. We have to be able to talk to
our patients, understand where they're coming from at that
moment, understand when it's helping and understand when it's
hurting and hold their hands through the process.
For a lot of our patients that get data overwhelm, we tell them

(14:32):
don't look at the data. What we're going to do is you're
just going to wear this thing for two weeks.
You're going to come back in twoweeks and then I will look at
your data for you. And then we'll compare to a food
log. And we're going to sit here and
talk and we're going to discuss what's happening here and we're
going to learn together. And that's a really good way to
help people that have too much data.
You don't have to look at it yourself.
However, I will tell you that the people that love the data,

(14:54):
they make immediate improvementsbecause they can see what's
happening in real time. Exactly.
And so it'll be a little bit slower if you're, you know, too
much data is overwhelming for you and you need me or a
nutritionist or a coach to look at it with you.
But that's OK. We're not in a rush here because

(15:14):
whether it takes you six weeks or six months, you'll make the
changes and those changes will last you a lifetime.
And that's what's important is to make habit and routine
changes that last a lifetime. Yeah, I think that is the most
important thing I think, I thinkpeople can find.
I think data is really helpful to get people to understand
where they are. The thing that I find really

(15:35):
interesting and maybe you can help me understand this is so I,
I mean, I love wearables and I'mwearing 2 right now, but I find
I have to be really strict with myself because I'm the person
who can become obsessed with data.
And sometimes if I'm looking at my sleep score and it's bad, I
then feel worse. So how do you manage?

(15:55):
Like how does one manage that? So I think sleep score is one of
those that you can actually feelworse when you, when you look at
it because you kind of, you know, it's what you talk about.
It's like you have this lack of self compassion for yourself and
you beat yourself up over getting a poor sleep score, you
know. And so I think sleep score is
the one area that I tell people look at like weekly averages

(16:17):
more than the actual day-to-day data.
Obviously you're going to know if you had poor sleep, right?
And so sometimes it's a good idea.
I actually, you know, put my ring that I wear on no Bluetooth
mode and I don't synchronize it until the week is over.
But I keep a diary too, so I understand.
Like, what day did I get poor sleep?

(16:38):
What I do that day, I look at mydiary and I'm like, that's what
happened. I had a dinner really too late.
And when I have dinner at 9 PMI know my sleep gets messed up.
I feel it's so much better to look at sleep on a week to week
basis than it is to look on a day-to-day basis, right, Because
then you can be more student of your sleep and your behaviors

(16:59):
rather than reactionary. So that's sleep is one of them
that I don't look at it every single day.
Activity I do try to look at on a daily basis because then I can
make micro adjustments the next day and try to make up for low
activity days. You know, I also, you know, I
have a scale at home. It's a bio impotent scale.
That's a scale that's sends a little electrical current
through your body and it tells you your fat mass and your

(17:20):
skeletal muscle mass. And so I step on that on a
weekly basis. I'm sorry, a daily basis as
well. And then I look at the trend on
a weekly basis. And so, you know, I always tell
my patients, I don't care about what your weight is.
I do care about what your skeletal muscle mass is, right?
And so week over week, if thingsare going lower, you know you
need to pick up your protein intake, you know you need to

(17:41):
increase your time lifting heavyweights at the gym.
So those are the kind of the important ones I look at on a on
a weekly basis and then biomarkers I look at on a
quarterly basis. OK.
So talk to me about these. Which biomarkers should we be
looking at? Yeah, there's about 10 important
ones I think that every person needs to know.
And the analogy I give people islike, you don't drive your car

(18:03):
not knowing what the fuel level is, right?
You don't drive your car if you still have a non electric car,
not knowing that the oil is a really, really low, right?
Even the windshield washer fluid.
You want to know, right? And so we drive our cars year
after year, not checking anything, right?
And so I agree, you do want to listen to your body.

(18:26):
You do want to listen to yourself.
However, the problem with listening to your body and
listening to yourself is this isthat our bodies are very
resilient, especially when you're younger and you can build
up a lot of biological damage before you feel symptoms, right?
So sometimes you want to, you want to look at how is your

(18:47):
biology doing way before you have symptoms And the way to do
this by looking at blood tests. And so some of the blood tests I
like to look at are hemoglobin A1C.
This is a three month average ofyour blood sugar level.
Once again, it tells you if yourmetabolic health is off.
Doctors use this diagnosed diabetes.
Actually, there's another measure of inflammation.

(19:08):
Inflammation is another one of those root causes of all
diseases when your immune systemis overactive.
This biomarker is called CRPHSCRPI.
Look at that. We also look at a marker called
APOB, which is a collection of all of your damaging forms of
cholesterol, especially when you're over 40 and you have some
risk of heart disease, maybe a family history or other risks.

(19:31):
And then we look at testosteronelevels in both men and women,
especially after the age of 40. So these are some of the blood
tests that we like looking at because they give us a really
good indicator of how things areworking from a big picture
level. As someone who has spent a long
time studying the mind body connection, I'm constantly asked
what do I use to track my healthsince April?

(19:52):
You've probably seen if you're watching the show, me wearing a
piece of tech on my arm and thatis no watch because I genuinely
believe it is being one of the most thoughtful and mind aware
pieces of tech that you can wearunlike most wearables that
focus. In your steps or your sleep, No
Watch is a bit different. It gives you real time insights
into your nervous system, the invisible engine that calibrates

(20:14):
everything from your stress to your sleep, to your recovery,
your rest, and ultimately your health.
With its stress recovery metric,it doesn't just show you how
long you were stressed for, but also how long you were covered.
It shows you your homeostatis. And that, to me, is where real
health begins. And I think it's all something
that we're craving. And most importantly, it does

(20:34):
this without dragging you back to your phone because that
motion just depletes you. It delivers meaningful health
insights to you only when something genuinely matters.
Using AI to turn complex signalsinto clarity that you can
understand. And in just five days, it
calibrates to your body and creates your personalized health
fingerprint. You can try it for 30 days

(20:56):
completely free. And if you're curious, now's the
time because they're giving you guys 15% off with my code L LW
BW15. If you head to know watch.com
and you guys know as listeners of Liva, be well and this whole
community that understanding yourself in the most mindful way
is one of the most powerful things that you can do for your

(21:16):
health. And this little gadget helps you
on your journey. When it comes to Rangers, you've
just mentioned a few there. What Rangers should these be in
it like? Where should our blood sugar
typically sit? Because I know scarily and the
UK when it gets to six, you'll then pre diabetic.
But I know that you look at a much lower level of this.

(21:40):
I'd love for you to talk to me about because I worry that
people go to the doctor and go. What I raised my saying is my
father, my father has been pre diabetic and we've worked really
hard to get him back. And then he'll go and he'll say
I'm 5.9, I'm fine. And that the doctor has said and
the diabetic nurse, it's like, oh, you're fine.
You're doing really well. And you can imagine me as a

(22:01):
daughter. He was like very much in this
like health affair of knowing about this.
I'm like, no, it's not like I don't want to discourage you and
say it's bad, but there's so much more that we could do and
his responses. But my doctor said that it's
great. And this is the problem, right?
Because I think in medical school, of which I went to
medical school and I was taught this way, you look at these

(22:23):
blood work results and you really just look for the number
where you're diagnosed with the disease because then you can
prescribe A pharmaceutical for that disease, right?
But we're not taught optimal ranges.
So the optimal range of hemoglobin A1C is 5.2 or below.
That's where you want to aim for.
Now the problem is in the UK 5.9is considered not pre diabetic,

(22:48):
but in the United States 5.7 is considered pre diabetic.
So, you know, there's no difference in the in the
laboratories for the most part. Is this these you just use a
different number? Yeah, that's arbitrarily picked
right. And so the other issue is, is
that it takes a decade to go from 5.2 to 5.7 for many people,

(23:09):
right? And so you want to know when is
headed in that direction. So when you're going to
5.45.55.6, you know you're goingin the wrong direction. 5.9 in
my view, is a problem like you got to keep working on this and
get it closer to 5.2, right? And I think that, you know, no
one's going to really do this for you, sadly.

(23:30):
You know, medical professionals,they in the United States
especially, don't have the time to really deal with all of this,
right? And So what happens is you look
at the blood work paper, and I've done this before, you get
the paper, if nothing's read, you just put it aside and say
everything's fine, you know, next patient, right?
And so you have really have to take control of this yourself

(23:51):
and really have to understand what are those critical
biomarkers and what is the optimal range and why they're
important. So how often should be getting
these blood tests in your opinion?
In my opinion, quarterly, yeah, in my opinion, quarterly.
Now that's what we do for all ofour patients.
I think quarterly you can reallymake changes.
I think especially if you're over the age of 40, quarterly is

(24:13):
a really good idea. However, at least every six
months, once a year is just not enough.
So you mentioned for that what the other ones is DD3 with K21.
Yeah, so vitamin D levels is very important.
Your vitamin D is a hormone in your body.
Without it, many of your body systems just don't function as
well, and your vitamin D level should be between 50 and 8090%

(24:40):
of people are chronically low invitamin D.
Vitamin D is the only vitamin your body can make, and it's
made by exposing yourself to sunlight.
Sadly, we spend a lot of our times inside with all of our
clothes on and so we just don't make vitamin D.
In the UK we don't have sunshineexactly.
So sadly you're going to find many people have low vitamin D

(25:01):
and then the solution is vitaminD3K2 as a supplement, right?
I'd love you to mention for people that don't understand why
you're saying K2. Yeah.
So vitamin D comes in the form of vitamin D3, which is what's
really well absorbed. However, if you don't take it
with K2, it's going to also absorb a lot of calcium with it,
and calcium can deposit itself in blood vessels and other

(25:24):
places. You don't want to overabsorb the
calcium and so vitamin D3K2 prevents that calcium absorption
problem. I love that.
I call it like the signaling kind of enzyme that kind of
helps push it into where it's going.
Exactly right. That's another way to think of
it too. What else is on your list?
Everyone's getting their pens and papers out, yeah.
And so just to make it easy for your audience, I do have this as

(25:46):
a free guide on my website. So if you go to Doctor
shaw.com/biomarkers, you can download a free guide to these
biomarkers. And you can bring this guide,
print it out, bring it to your doctor and say, I want you to
test these things. And most of the time, they'll be
like, oh, OK, that's kind of cool.
You have this. Yeah, sure, why not?
They say no, then you have to push them.

(26:07):
And if they don't do it, then there's ways you can get these
blood tests yourself in the UK. You can get them yourself in the
United States. You can go to any lab to get it
yourself. So it's not hard to get it
yourself. And believe it or not, it's
really not that expensive to get.
These blood tests now should be available for less than $200.00.
So then the other biomarker is vitamin B12.
OK, So this is another indicatorof how much nutrition you're

(26:31):
getting and how well your nutrition is formed.
And if your vitamin B is low, then it generally means you're
probably not getting enough nutrition in your diet along all
your vitamin levels, right? And the solution is obviously
get get a better diet going, right?
But what I would say is that, you know, there's some targeted

(26:52):
supplements I really like in until you get your nutrition
completely dialed in. And so vitamin B is another one
of those supplements that I really like.
That's also good to look at absorption isn't it?
Of the gut as well? You can also see if there's gut
problems going on. Great point.
Yeah, a lot of people don't absorb enough vitamins as well.
And so then you got to start healing your gut and getting it

(27:14):
to absorb better. So a really good point.
So you it's an indicator that something's not going on that's
not going correctly. Yeah.
I mean, you know, a lot of the biomarkers I look at are not
blood tests. Like I mentioned, skeletal
muscle mass is one, right? And so getting a special scale
will give you this number every time you step on the scale.
And what I would almost tell everyone to do is if you have a

(27:36):
scale that just tells you your weight, you should throw it
away. That number is not valuable.
Everyone's weight is a combination of your muscle mass,
your fat mass, your bone mass. And if you're trying to lose
weight, the best thing you can do is increase your skeletal
muscle mass. You will lose weight and you
will completely change your bodycomposition.

(27:58):
And so a scale that just gives you your skeletal muscle mass is
so much better to follow, you know?
And so these scales now only cost $2030.
And so you can get them online and they're super easy and
they're very, you know, you can argue all day long about the
accuracy, but it's really the directionality that matters.
And so like we talked about earlier and so that's another

(28:19):
biomarker that I really like. So when it comes to aging in
general, like we're doing these as preventative measures, right?
All of these biomarkers are asked to kind of keep us in in
good health. But when we're thinking about
aging, well, I think that's everyone's, I wouldn't say fear,
but maybe concerned. People are aware that as they
get older, they want to age well, they want to be able to
move well. They want to not have joint

(28:40):
pain. They want to feel supple and
flexible, like when it comes to functional health and functional
medicine, what are your main kind of areas that you focus on?
If someone comes in in their late 30s and says help me, I
don't want to age, that I don't want to age, but I want to stay
young, what would you say? OK, so the reason I'm picking

(29:02):
these biomarkers is they're all an indicator of aging, right?
Right. Poor metabolic health will
increase your risk of all the chronic diseases and also
increase the amount of fat on your body.
It will also increase the amountof visceral fat, which is fat
underneath here abdominal muscles.
And all of this leads to accelerated aging.
OK, Poroskeletal muscle mass leads to decreased mobility,

(29:27):
decreased balance and poor bone health.
Your bones are attached to your muscle and people think, oh, you
know, my bones are not healthy and I have osteoporosis because
I don't have enough calcium. That's not true.
It's because you're not using your muscles enough is the
reason that you have poor bone health, right?
Another thing that leads to accelerated aging is a diet that

(29:48):
is devoid of nutrients. So not having enough vitamin D3,
vitamin B also leads to accelerated aging, right?
And so the things that cause youto age faster are in general
detectable by these biomarkers. A lot of these are detectable
because they point to you're just not getting your lifestyle
right, your nutrition is not good, your movement is not

(30:12):
enough, your sleep is disrupted and you have too much stress,
right. And so once you get once you
understand how these biomarkers point to those those problems
and you start modifying your lifestyle to optimize these
biomarkers, your ageing slows down dramatically.
Wow. OK, so one thing that I'm
thinking about there is you're saying this because muscle mass

(30:33):
is a real indicator that you're saying the biggest thing that's
booming right now, which is really interesting, is creatine
monohydrate. Everyone's obviously talking
about, you know, around 10 gramsis what you should be taking a
day of creatine for men and women.
It actually really important forpost menopausal women.
There was some interesting research coming out now.
I mean, obviously we're putting more women now great into

(30:56):
trials. And so we're seeing actually
it's benefiting women too. Talk to me about creatine.
Talk to me about the importance with longevity.
Sure, creatine is one of the most well studied supplements in
human history. There's hundreds of thousands of
studies on creatine and what I can tell you about it is that
it's very safe. It can help you not only retain
muscle mass, but build muscle mass, and it can also help you

(31:18):
increase your strength, which isjust as important as muscle
mass. OK.
The other thing that's really interesting that was recently
found out was people that took creatine had lower levels of
cognitive decline in Alzheimer'sdisease too, especially women.
That's the biggest killer in theUK.
Yeah, yeah. And it's rising every year,

(31:39):
especially in women. And so I think creatine can be
also one of those like critical course supplements like people
can take. I'm not a big supplement pusher,
but I will tell you that there'ssome supplements just because we
live in an environment in a society that is constantly
pushing us to the brink. We're using all of our nutrients
much faster than our, you know, ancestors did back in the 1920s

(32:02):
or 30s. And we just need more, you know,
and sadly, pair that with the lack of nutrient density in most
of our diets and we're just not getting enough nutrition.
And so creatine can be one of those supplements that can be
very helpful. Yeah.
How do you look at your like daily nutrition?
Yeah. You know, it's hard, right?
Because, you know, this is something you talk with people

(32:23):
about all the day and it's really understanding that you
have to get it right, I would say 80% of the time, right?
And you have to give yourself some leeway because we can't
always eat perfectly every single meal.
The problem is people get it wrong 80% of the time.
And then when they're gain a lotof weight or they just don't
feel good about themselves, they're not feeling good.

(32:44):
Then they go on a diet, you know, and I'm doing quotation
marks. And that diet helps them get it
right for a little while, but it's usually a very restrictive
diet, which then causes other problems, less nutrients and
they lose muscle and then they have a different problem, right?
And so they're like going on this, like back and forth flip
flop of diets that don't work and then they get upset and they

(33:08):
gain weight and it goes back andforth, right?
So it's really, really critical in my mind to just have good
habits in place. Big picture, the way I look at
nutrition for almost every humanis you want to get three things
right. Number one is you want to start
every meal with vegetables for the most part, if you can, and
specifically high fiber vegetables, right?

(33:29):
And so vegetables have a lot of nutrients in them, obviously,
especially if you buy them organic and especially have a
good variety of vegetables. And one of those critical
nutrients is also fiber. Fiber is critical to your gut
health. They can really help you also
move the food through your body,move toxin through your body,
get glucose out of your body as well.

(33:51):
Second is protein. We have a severe lack of protein
intake in the United States and also in most Western countries.
And so getting enough protein from well sourced protein
sources, whether you're vegetarian or you're a meat
eater or a pescetarian, you can you can get enough protein in.
And lastly is getting essential fats in, right?
And then when I say essential fats, I mean good fats from

(34:13):
fatty fish, from olive oil, fromnuts, from avocados, healthy
fats. And if you can focus on those
three things and just swear off ultra processed food naturally
for 90% of people. Plus you're going to optimize
your diet because you just, you just can't help it, but get an
optimal diet. Think about it every meal,
breakfast, lunch and dinner, youstart with a fibrous vegetable

(34:35):
and it's and lots of colors of different vegetables.
Then you add in like a really good source of protein and you
make sure that you have some olive oil on it or handful of
nuts or, you know, maybe an avocado.
You're like, you're going to be full, you're going to be
satiated, you're going to feel great.
And then yes, I'm not saying swear off carbohydrates, not at
all. Carbides are a very important
part of our diet. Fiber.

(34:56):
Right. Well, yes, it's true.
Carbohydrates are fiber is carbohydrates, but I'm talking
about like starchy carbohydrates, right?
Potatoes and breads and those kind of chips and those kind of
things. But if you make that the last
part of your meal, what happens is you naturally less of it and
you will prevent metabolic disease by eating in this
pattern, right? And then just move a little bit

(35:16):
before and after. And so, you know, I know this is
becoming, I'm trying to make it like really simple for people,
but I just try to put, give people some simple rules that
they can easily get some quick wins.
And then they obviously you and I both know it's not that
simple. Sometimes you have to customize
it, You have to factor in gut health issues.
Some people are sensitive to some vegetables, obviously.

(35:37):
And working with a nutritionist can be very, very helpful to
really dial in your diet. So that's how you look at diet
big picture. And then, you know, I'm, I'm
always measuring metabolic health with hemoglobin A1C.
The minute it goes over 5.4, I'mlike, oh, oh, we have to make a
change. That's when we start looking at
putting a continuous glucose monitor on and start making some
adjustments. I'm interrupting for one moment

(35:57):
to ask one small favour. Please subscribe to the show.
This helps it grow more than youknow.
And I'm so bad at asking this from you.
I'm so bad at thinking about this.
But you know, my goal was 100,000 to get to on YouTube,
and I really want to bring you more content and better guests
and bigger episodes, and we can only do that with your help

(36:19):
together. So please do hit subscribe.
Thank you. I think a lot of these things
are also like the there should be the fundamentals of health,
in my opinion, right? The interesting things that I
wanted to ask ChatGPT because I was like, longevity is such a
big thing right now. Let's see what you know, Chad
thinks. So I said to him like, what are
some of the biggest questions that people want to know?

(36:40):
And do you know what he said to me?
I thought, I'm actually making it a man.
I don't know why it's completelygender neutral.
It's. An AI.
It said that we all know someonewho lives to 95, who smokes,
drinks and they do everything wrong, yet they still live long.
It's an interesting kind of point on this, right?

(37:01):
And I think about, so then I hadto think about connecting this
to a story with within my family.
One of my grandmother's was incredibly healthy.
She walked, she had a walk in Group, so she walked 10 miles
every week. She grew her own food.
She she was working, she was Christian and she worked very
much in the community. You know, she would always make

(37:21):
sure that she was cognitively active.
She was a teacher. So she would do all these things
that you would say is really healthy, right?
She sadly got Alzheimer's and she had it for 12 years.
So she was diagnosed in her 70s and, you know, sadly passed in
her 80s. And I would, and I would always
say to my parents, you know, youshould be doing this and you
should be doing that. And my mum's response was, well,

(37:43):
your grandmother did all of it and got Alzheimer's.
And I was like, good point. And then my other grandmother
was the opposite. She was a vegetarian, but she
apart from that, she smoke, she drunk, you know, she had a very
like hectic lifestyle, the opposite of my other
grandmother. And I'm like, wow.
She lived till she was nearly 100.

(38:04):
Wow, that's amazing. So.
Explain that. Explain.
Yeah, OK. I'll give you 2 explanations. 1
explanation is about your healthy grandmother, right?
That did everything right. There are hidden risks out there
that people don't really consider.
And specifically for Alzheimer's, there's a few that

(38:26):
I think are really important to recognize.
There's a lot of toxins in our environment right now, and she
might have had some toxic exposure that could have led to
her Alzheimer's disease right now.
The other thing is that even though people sometimes think
they're eating healthy, you can still develop metabolic disease
by the patterns of eating, right.

(38:46):
And so it would be really interesting to know what was her
hemoglobin A1C, for example. And lastly, there is a lot of
variability in how people's hormones decrease as they go
through life, OK. And so there's quite a few

(39:06):
hormones that we know of like like testosterone, estrogen.
There's also like growth hormone, IGF one, for example,
there's thyroid hormone. And so sometimes aging decreases
our hormones. We know that, right?
Specifically sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen.
Women fall off a Cliff after perimenopause and they go

(39:30):
through menopause. So that could be a major effect
for one grandmother, right? Especially if she had children
very early and she had maybe early menopause too.
The effects of this is compounding over more time.
Because it's interesting, because women get more, well,
not more Alzheimer's. Women are more predisposed to

(39:50):
getting Alzheimer's. Than men and they do get more
Alzheimer's. Yeah, but there's many more
women with Alzheimer's than men.Yeah, but I think it's like a 2
to one. Ratio and that must be connected
to the menopause in some way. Absolutely.
Connected to estrogen, yeah. And so.
The message there is, you know, if you're a woman, make sure if
you're going through perimenopause or menopause, see
a really, really good hormone Dr. that can tell you like, what
you can do to kind of normalize your hormones, right?

(40:13):
Yeah. And then you have your other
grandmother that was smoking anddrank alcohol and everything and
lived to 90. And some people have just
genetic resilience, you know, really, really good resilience
that they build up over time andthey are not genetically
susceptible in anything. And in fact, they have genetic
blessings that can help them detoxify a lot better than other

(40:35):
people can as well. I for one, don't want to play
like genetic roulette, you know,and I want to give myself the
best chances that I can not justit live longer.
It's just really to be healthy for a long time, you know.
And so I think I think it's really important that, you know,
don't look at the people that won the lottery as something

(40:56):
that is true for everybody. Some people win the lottery,
right? I don't care how many times you
buy a lottery ticket. Sometimes you might never win
the lottery, right? And so we have to kind of stack
the deck in our favor, you know,with their habits.
So Alzheimer's is a big thing and then you have like a five
stage approach to Alzheimer's. This is probably the thing that

(41:16):
I'm the most nervous of one because it's in my family.
So I've seen it first hand. I've seen how it can cause just
a lot of pain to not just yourself, also the people around
you. It's one of those diseases that
really affects the family, but it's massively on the rise.
I've had so many different conversations on this show with
Doctor Chris Palmer where he talks about it as a metabolic

(41:38):
kind of problem. And, you know, we see a rise in
obesity and we see a rise in mental health.
I've had the brain doctors on here who talk a lot about, you
know, Alzheimer's and what we should be doing.
It is on everyone's minds. I think, you know, the fact that
we could all get this at some point.
What are your kind of main things that we should be doing
to avoid Alzheimer's or to try and reduce it and look at

(41:59):
prevention? Yeah, my favorite researcher in
this. I love Chris Palmer too, by the
way, But also Dale Bredesen is excellent.
Have you interviewed him yet or?Yeah, I'll make the
introduction. You should have him on for sure.
He, his message is basically like, there's different types of
Alzheimer's due to different things and you have to find out
what type of Alzheimer's you have and you can do that through

(42:20):
testing. And once you know, then you
start working on those things and you will decrease your
chance of getting Alzheimer's. The critical piece of this
puzzle is timing to know as soonas possible.
OK. And so some of the some of the
reasons people get Alzheimer's are poor metabolic health, high

(42:41):
levels of inflammation, high levels of toxic exposure, All of
those things we can test for, right?
We talked about the continuous glucose monitor.
We can do a urine toxin test fortoxins and see what toxins are
building up. We can check for inflammation
with an HSCRP and go looking forwhere you have inflammation.
And so even if you have a genetic susceptibility to
Alzheimer's disease, you can prevent it by removing all of

(43:06):
these problems, right? The other things that you can do
to prevent Alzheimer's is to exercise your brain and keep it
healthy. How do you do that?
Meditation is really, really good.
You want to give your brain timeto rest.
In this life, we rarely give ourbrains time to rest, especially
with our cells phones. We feel like our we have to keep

(43:27):
our brains constantly active allthe time and that's a big
problem. That's what's leading to a lot
of build up of toxins in our brain.
Right. Yeah, I always say the best way
someone can do that is how I sayto myself, when you're in a
queue, don't get out of your phone.
The automatic thing. When you're in a queue, what do
you do? Get your phone out or you're in

(43:47):
a light or waiting room. I better get my phone out.
And that's the moment because I think it can be really hard to
go home and just be like, I'm not going to look at my phone.
But actually we have so many moments in the day when we might
go and get a coffee when you're going to the bathroom.
Massive. Just don't take the phone into
the bathroom with you. Exactly.
Exactly. They're the they're the big no.
It's not a time to go look at the phone.

(44:09):
No one did that until like 20 years ago, right?
This. Is the thing.
Yeah, so I think, I think that is a real problem.
And so, you know, giving your brain time to relax and just
kind of empty is really important.
When does your brain clean itself?
It's at night when you sleep. So making sure you get really,
really good sleep and you prioritize sleep is super

(44:30):
important. And then lastly, what I would
say too is, you know, I Kee talking about toxins.
It's like really, really reducing your toxic burden in
your life. That could come in many forms,
like, you know, air purifiers athome, opening your windows at
home, not drinking out of plastic water bottles all the
time, filtering your water either with a reverse osmosis
unit or through filtration devices, making sure the

(44:52):
products you put on your skin aren't toxic products, right?
And then eating organic food andstaying away from ultra
processed food. All of that will reduce the
level of toxic exposure to your body and let your body catch up
and kind of mitigate for the toxins you do get exposed to.
So that's that's very important.You said something though, which
I think might and not go over people's minds, but they might

(45:15):
not digest it in the way that I haven't done in the past where
you said not putting toxic things into your home or toxic
things into your body. You know, most people wear
deodorants, Most people wear perfumes.
Most people wash their hair withsilicones and things.
You know, we wear makeup. It's all of the, you know, we
wash up our clothes sometimes in, in, in strong chemicals.

(45:36):
We put bleach in the home. I think these like daily thing
that most people would struggle to think about alternatives or
they think about, well, no, I want to smell good so I don't
care. I'm going to wear that perfume
because I love it. Like how can you navigate this
to reduce the talk? Because I think people might not
even just be aware of how much is in their home.

(45:58):
There's a lot of toxins in our home and most of the toxins we
get are from our home, believe it or not.
And so you really need to look at all the products you're
using, specifically your cleaning products for your
clothes and for your home and try to find non-toxic versions
of those which. Is wall.
OK. So for example, like we're, we
think that we're supposed to have a different spray bottle of

(46:21):
cleaner for our glass and another one for furniture and
then another. And then you just smell really
good and they need to have antibacterial in it.
All of those things are very negative and you don't need a
different cleaner for everything.
So there are companies now that make non-toxic cleaners.
For example, there's a company called Branch Basics and all

(46:41):
they have is 1 cleaning product and then you just mix it in
different concentrations for your windows, for your
furniture, for your countertops.And you just use that and it
works great and it still smells good and it's still it is
non-toxic. And you don't want to kill all
the bacteria in your home because when you kill all the

(47:01):
bacteria, you're still going to have some bacteria behind.
Those are going to be the strongest bacteria and those are
going to replicate into now you have strong bacteria that you
cannot kill throughout your entire house.
And so you have to have that balance.
So instead of killing all the bacteria, you just want to wipe
it off and get rid of it and getit out of your house, not kill

(47:22):
it all, okay. And so it's really not about
anti antibiotics or antibacterial cleaning products,
Stay away from those and try to find non-toxic versions.
And there's different, you know,all over the world now people
are making non-toxic cleaning products because we realized
finally that our cleaners are really causing a lot of health
problems. And the other big thing I would

(47:45):
say is a lot of people have in their home anti pest products,
right? Like sprays for ants and
cockroaches and all these things.
And those are flies, very flies,very toxic, right?
And there are non-toxic productsfor those two.
Believe it or not, peppermint repels a lot of bugs.
Really. Yeah, I'm the worst.

(48:07):
I'm always like. Yeah, I don't want that fly.
Yeah, you're spraying this chemical into the air, then
you're breathing it, and it's not good for you.
Yeah, yeah, that's actually, that's just made me see.
I'm see even I'm not aware of this.
This is the thing I took about all the time.
And then I'm like, Oh yeah, I was spraying that all over
myself the other day. Yeah, that's a problem.

(48:27):
Same problem. Yeah.
And so I think once you realize you can start doing the
research, you can you can figurethis out.
And it's not that hard actually.I would say the other big hidden
danger that we have, and this I think is going to become a
major, major problem in the nextdecade.
So you should know now is microplastics.
Ohh yeah we did a big episode onthis.

(48:48):
You did great. Yeah.
People need to listen to that episode.
They do, yeah. It's scary 'cause I don't, I
didn't want it to be a fear mongering episode.
No, that was the thing and therewas a lot of thing, I mean a lot
of it was from kitchens, you know, like your topping boards
and making sure you air your home correctly.
Like all of they're quite actually simple solutions.
Simple solutions. Right.
But it's just the awareness. But I think the worry about it

(49:09):
is people can switch off becauseit sounds so scary or like
there's no hope. And we're surrounded by so much
of it that it's like, well, whatcan we do?
But there's actually a lot that we can do.
There's a lot you can do it as aPareto principle.
There's 20% of the actions that'll detoxify 80% of your
life. So there isn't an unlimited
list. There's probably like 30 or 40
things that you need to do. You don't need to do them all

(49:30):
today, but if you do them like maybe one a week for the year,
then in one year you will completely detoxify your life
better than 8590% of people out there.
And your body can do the rest. You know, your body is made.
It's an incredible machine. You have this liver, the most
complicated organ that is, that exists in US.

(49:51):
Why do I say that? Because every organ in your body
except for your brain and your liver, we have a medical
replacement for, but we don't have it for your brain or your
liver, OK. And so your liver is so complex
because it can find toxins. It can get rid of them in your
bile, in your stool. And the rest of it you can get
rid of in your sweat, in your byhydrating yourself well and

(50:12):
going to the bathroom. You can get rid of toxins, but
not when you're overwhelmed withtoxins.
You just can't catch up, right? So something I really want to
touch upon, you know, because I spoke to you this at dinner last
night, is Peptides. Yes, let's go there now because.
I'm dying to get there, Yeah. And this is how we're building
the pyramid, right? We went from the, we went from

(50:32):
the basics of nutrition, exercise, sleep.
We talked about functional medicine, hormones,
detoxification, gut health. And now, now we can start
putting in some of these fun, cool kind of modern tech into
our lives to really accelerate our health journey.
And peptides is 1 of. Them.
Yeah. So this is so people might not
know what peptides is. So before we even talk about

(50:52):
this part, explain what a peptide is for people that have
just no idea what we're talking about.
Peptides are chains of amino acids.
And you know we're all built from amino acids, right?
Every protein that we eat, everyprotein in our body is made out
of amino acids. Peptides are short chains of
amino acids that your body uses as signalling molecules.

(51:13):
OK, it's really easy for our cells to make peptides and so
they make them to send signals to other cells in our body.
The first peptide we ever created and isolated was called
insulin. Insulin was a game changer
because people and kids were dying of type 1 diabetes.
So when we were isolated, insulin figured out how to make

(51:34):
it and give it to these type 1 diabetic kids.
They lived long productive livesand so it was a game changer.
The second I would say game changing peptide that we've all
heard of is GLP one. GLP 1 is a peptide that is made
in our gut to signal you're not hungry anymore and it causes you
to decrease the amount of food that you're eating.

(51:54):
Now what's incredible about peptides is our body's been
making them since the dawn of humanity or we make them
naturally. This is not a chemical drug that
we've synthesized in the lab. And so these peptides have
multiple biological effects throughout our body.
For example, there's actually GLP one receptors on your immune
cells that tells your immune system to like D, to stop being

(52:17):
so crazy and to calm down a little bit, you know, And so
these type of biological effectscan be really, really
beneficial. And so there's thousands of
peptides that are in our body, maybe even 10s of thousands,
hundreds of thousands. We probably know about a few
hundred of them. And just like GLP ones, you
know, there's a list of these, there's different names, and we

(52:40):
can get these compounded from compounding pharmacies and they
can send them to you and you caninject them.
And so why are they injected versus a pill?
Well, the if you think about it,if you take any protein into
your body, any chain of amino acids, your gut will break it
down really rapidly. So you don't really get a good
dose. And so that's why you have to
inject it underneath the skin. So even oxytocin is a peptide,

(53:04):
which I find really interesting.So there's a whole kind of area
now of the longevity space of people looking at peptides.
I have to admit I have no reallyidea about them, which is why I
was really interested to speech you today about it because it
came up on a few panels that I was on.
And you know, I don't have the expertise on that to talk about
it. I don't know.
And then a couple of my friends were asking about them and like,

(53:26):
you know, I really want to understand them.
And I was like, OK, well, I think I need to talk about on
the show. So here we are.
And I said this morning to one of my friends, what do you think
about peptides? And his answer was, I think I'm
I'm scared about them because, you know, if I think it was
really interesting example. So This is why I want to really
talk about it because there's a lot of confusion.
He said, when I think about testosterone, many years ago we

(53:51):
were all thinking that we shouldbe taking testosterone and now
we realize that's not the truth,like it's very dependable and
when you should be taking it andhow much and what age, and
there's so many factors now thatwe've understood about it.
So his answer to me was, well, Ifeel similar about Pepto.
I don't really know much about it and I worry in 10-15 years
that I could have done damage tomyself.

(54:12):
So I was like, great, that's where I'm going to start.
So how would you answer that? So here's how we think about
peptides. Peptides are natural biological
signals that we've made, right? We said that.
And when can you get in trouble with peptides?
Well, if you don't dose it correctly, so you overdose on it
or you don't dose at the way thebody would naturally use it,
right? And so you really, and that's

(54:33):
what happened with testosterone,right?
It was like people were taking way too much of it way too long,
too early in life that it affected their fertility.
And people learn the hard way, right?
Because they were getting it a lot of times illegally.
They weren't talking to a professional and how to use it.
Exactly, Exactly. And guess what?
The same problems exist with peptides.
So your friend has a right to beconcerned for sure.

(54:55):
And I would say that we have a lot of data on some of the
peptides. And so those are the ones that I
feel safe using for myself and my patients, as long as they're
listening to me on the dose, as long as we are cycling them the
way the body would cycle them and as long as we're sourcing
them well, right. Like you can get a lot of these
peptides on the Internet now yourself and there's no idea

(55:18):
what the quality of those are. So we make sure that when we
source the peptides that we're sourcing them from a reputable
pharmacy and we're testing it aswell.
Yeah, because that's really important because there's a lot
of things in that connection. We're very toxic to the body
that aren't removed, right, As you know, when it's regulated
from a physician that it is, yes.
So one thing I'm really interested is the guts, because
there's a very specific peptide that they work on with

(55:40):
inflammation and gut problems. So can we talk a bit about that?
Yeah, so one of the peptides I found extremely helpful for the
gut is 1 called BPC 157. And so a lot of people have
leaky gut or they have damage totheir gut from ultra processed
food, maybe they took too many antibiotics and it's really
messed up their gut, right. And what happens when you have

(56:04):
gut that is inflamed is, you know, our gut is only one cell
layer thick. And so these enterocytes, they
separate from each other and youget leaky gut and then the
toxins kind of easily flow through your gut wall.
And that's a big problem, right?Because that creates your immune
system to become very overactiveand you get inflammation.
So how do you heal this? Well, number one, you stop

(56:25):
taking the thing that is causingyour gut to be inflamed.
So whether it be antibiotics, non short anti-inflammatory
drugs, ultra processed food, allthese things, stop them.
Take away the thing that's causing the problem and then
give your gut what it needs to heal.
And so one of the things that isa signal that for your gut to
heal is called BPC 157. It's actually made in your gut.

(56:47):
So this is one of those signaling molecules made in your
gut. And when you take this one
peptide orally, it actually signals your gut that things are
okay. Now we can heal.
And so we use that in combination with collagen, bone
broth, glutamine, and a few of the probiotics that heal
people's gut. And it's, it's a really well
known peptide. A lot of people have taken it

(57:10):
and very low side effect profile.
Actually, I actually never seen anyone with side effect from it.
And it's been really helpful to help people with leaky gut and
gut issues. Now here's the crazy thing about
it though. The same peptide, BBC 157, if
you inject it, it can actually help joints to heal.
It can help you heal from surgery faster.

(57:30):
It's just a healing peptide overall.
So it works beyond just the gut.It can work anywhere in your
body if it's injected. Wow.
And there's a lot of research onthis, like big randomized
control trials. I would say there's, there's a
good amount of research on it, nowhere near the kind that the
pharma industry can fund, you know, but I think we're going to
see more, more research come outas, as people realize the

(57:52):
massive potential of these peptides.
Wow. And then what about aging when
they're looking at peptides and like what ones would you use
when somebody's looking at at their aging?
So I would say, you know, aging is due to a lot of different
factors, right? And so I can tell you some
peptides that help with some of the factors of aging.
One of those factors of aging isyour immune system, as we age,

(58:13):
becomes less and less able to doits job.
It becomes less able to find cancers and get rid of cancer.
It gets less able to fight infections, for example.
I guess your immune system is actually very intimately
involved in the healing processes through your body.
So as you age, your immune cellsbecome less and less able to do

(58:33):
their job. And there's a peptide called TB
500 which helps your immune system to work better.
And so TB 500 is a fantastic peptide for people with
autoimmune diseases, but also for just keeping your immune
cells healthy and young and vibrant.
So that's one that I use. Another issue with aging is
after you turn about 55 or so, your growth hormone levels start

(58:56):
going down quite significantly. And so we measured proxy for
growth hormone called IGF one. And if your IGF one level is
low, we can give you a growth hormone secretagog, it's called.
These are peptides like CJC or Tessamorlin, the two names of
them that promote or push your hypothalamus to secrete more

(59:20):
growth hormone, OK. And so we try to dial it up a
little bit because we know that we when we dial up the growth
hormone, you sleep better, you heal better, you build more
muscle, you put on less fat, allof these things that can lead to
early aging as well. So there's a couple of aging
peptides, I would say. And is there any risks for
taking these like there and obviously if it's not via a

(59:41):
black market, let's just take the risks are massive.
I think if you don't get it via a physician, right, because you
have no idea where that's comingfrom.
So if we take that out and we'redoing it the proper route, are
there any risks with taking peptide?
Yeah, for sure. Like if you over, so each one
has different risks, right. I would say BPC 1 by 7 is very
low risk peptide. But for example, if you take too
much tessamorlin and you have your growth hormone go too high,

(01:00:04):
that can also lead to problems. You get high blood pressure, you
can get more inflammation actually believe it or not.
So you really want to be make sure that you're dosing it
appropriately. OK.
And so when like the interestingthing is that what age, I mean,
I'm guessing nobody in their 20sobviously, but 30s, forties,
50s, like when, when should we be looking at these types of

(01:00:25):
things? I would say yes to all those,
yeah. Just kind of depends on how your
body is biologically at that age, right?
Obviously as you turn 5055 sixty, these are going to become
more and more important in your life.
When you're younger, like say inyour 30s, say you hurt yourself
in a sporting injury or something.

(01:00:45):
BBC 157 could be very appropriate.
You know, I have friends who are40s, they maybe go through a
knee surgery and we put them on Tessa Moreland and BBC TB500 to
help them heal from surgery a lot faster.
And so these are just all tools that we can use depending on the
status of the person and kind ofwhat they're going after.
You know, a lot of young people have gut issues and so we'll

(01:01:08):
still use BPC for their gut. It's.
A big thing, the gut, the gut, Ithink it's one of the biggest
engagements that we have on thisprogram.
Anything that we do in the gut microbiome, people are so eager
to find out more because I thinkeveryone's suffering in such a
range of different scenarios. And I also think that there's
not always a simple solution with a lot of gut problems.

(01:01:29):
Sometimes people think like theycan't understand why they're not
being solved and so they just live with the painful guts.
Yeah. You know, I think I think a lot
of people live with this becausetheir traditional doctors don't
really have much to offer them, right?
If you go see a gastroenterologist, what are
they going to do? They're going to scope you.
You know, they're going to look down your esophagus.
They're going to look up the other side.

(01:01:51):
You're doing lovely colonoscopy and a lovely endoscopy.
Yeah, and. You can't see what's going on
microscopically with those, but microscopically what's happening
is your gut microbiome could be damaged, your you can have leaky
gut, your enterocytes could be damaged.
There's so many other things that we can see now with
advanced testing that we use in functional medicine that can

(01:02:12):
really help people, you know, and we have so many better
treatments now too. The more that we understand the
gut. Yeah, I think it's one of the
most, like, you know, the most important powerhouses of our of
our systems. I mean, the more we understand
the microbiome, the more we are truly understanding that there
is a gut brain connection, there's a gut heart connection.
The gut is really controlling a lot of what's going on in our

(01:02:35):
body, OK. And so you the healthier your
gut, the healthier the rest of your body is going to feel.
So you qualified as a medical doctor at 21, Am I correct?
Yeah. What made you?
Because this is, I want to say this is a new area of health.
It's not in some domains and it isn't others.
Some people might be hearing this for the first time this
year or the last few years. You've been surrounded by this

(01:02:57):
for a while. What made you switch into this
world? Yeah.
More into the precision prevention side of things.
It was my own personal health journey.
So I, when I graduated from medical school at 21, I
immediately went into becoming asurgeon.
I love surgery. I did general surgery, trauma
surgery, you know, I was at the hospital all night long

(01:03:18):
operating on people, sometimes 1416 hour cases.
I then went to the Mayo Clinic to train, which is one of the
best hospitals in the country inmy opinion.
And we did all sorts of complicated surgeries every
other day. So the way Mayo operates, you go
to the operating room every other day and you spend the
entire day there. Sometimes you're in two or three
different surgery rooms at the same time.
And then I started to practice and I did that for a long time

(01:03:40):
of surgery. And so I spent 25 years in
surgery and you can tell it's like hard work, intense work.
And I got really sick myself. Multiple medical issues, blood
pressure, diabetes, autoimmune, and I needed to get healthy.
And what I found in Western medicine was I just kept getting
more and more pills to cover up the symptoms.

(01:04:01):
And I just did not want to be ona handful of pills because I
just kept feeling more and more horrible from the side effects
of those pills. And so I was wanting to get off
of my ten prescription medications.
So I went out there and learned the science of health.
And it's a completely different science, you know.
And so I went out there and learn nutrition and exercise and
functional medicine and got myself healthy.

(01:04:24):
And that's what made me say like, I want to practice this
type of medicine now. I'm done being kind of a cog in
the wheel of of typical Western medicine, you know, and want to
do something different. How much do you think emotions
play in that? How much do you think emotions
play in health and Wellness or in my personal health and
wealth? Yeah.

(01:04:44):
Because I feel like your journeyis the, it's not the typical
journey because a lot of people don't always go to that extreme,
but yours is. You got to a point where it
wasn't working and you saw a change, but also that's an
emotional journey at the same time and health, I think, is an
emotional journey. Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I would say for me personally, when I first did it,

(01:05:07):
I was frustrated and angry. And as I got better, the
emotions kept me going, right? Because I felt like finally I
was taking care of myself. I was feeling better about
myself and I was feeling more energy and you know, like I
could do more. People are telling me you look
so much better. You know, like, I lost 50 lbs

(01:05:27):
over the course of a year. And so, and that's probably too
fast, but you know, I feel like I did it all naturally, you
know, And so I was really feeling that I went from a state
of like not feeling great about myself to a state of just
feeling really, really good about myself.
And so emotions kind of was the wind behind my sails, I would

(01:05:50):
say of this journey, you know, Iwould say for most people,
emotional health is another major category of where we need
to focus our attention at the beginning, during and after this
health journey, right? And so some people have more
more effect of their emotional health on their overall health

(01:06:12):
and others do, for example, people that have suffered
traumas before, people that are really suffering from poor self
worth. You know, you talk a lot about
this. And I think, you know, you have
to make that part of, I would say the beginning of the health
journey rather than the consequence of a health journey.
I think a lot of people want to get thinner or, you know, just

(01:06:37):
look at the mirror and feel better about how they look, and
they think that that's going to emotionally heal them somehow.
And it doesn't do that. A lot of times it has to be the
opposite, right? Yeah, it does, because actually
it's this never ending journey of acceptance, you know, and
health is in a way an interesting way.
Health is a metric of control because you can control it You.

(01:06:59):
Can control your your behaviours.
Right, right. And so it's one of those things
that you're like, well, if I tweak that and do this and do
this, I will naturally get to that state of looking in the
mirror and feeling great. Similar to money, You know, if
I, and you know, if I get to my £1,000,000 a year, I'm going to
finally be happy. It's 5 million a year, I'm going

(01:07:20):
to finally be happy. You know, when I get 500
million, I, when I sell my company for a billion and it's
like, are you ever going to be happy?
You know, it's interesting. And I think there's this and I'd
love to talk to you about it Theand I'd love to know if your
patients feel this sacrificing parts of this external, these

(01:07:41):
external metrics for joy and happiness.
I would say that I talk a lot tomy patients about this, you
know, and because people sometimes do get very obsessive
and they do too much and they'realways focused on their health
and they deprive themselves of joy for what they think is going
to lead to ultimate health. And they're not happy.
And I always say that that's causing you more damage and

(01:08:03):
good, you know, you're getting more stressed, you're spending
less time and joy than you are in, in stressing about your
health. And that's a problem, you know?
And so, you know, the way I try to look at health, health is a
reframing into, I would say giving yourself time for

(01:08:23):
self-care. I use the word self-care a lot
because, yeah, health is really caring for yourself, right?
And I think that really makes itmore positive, right?
And there's a lot of ways to care for yourself, but it gives
you more empathy for yourself when you you refer to it as
self-care. Yeah, I love that.
It's definitely been like a bit misconstrued with a bubble bath.
But I think self-care needs a reframe.

(01:08:45):
I think it needs an upgrade. And I think it's one of the main
pillars of longevity. Yeah.
Because if you care, if you actually care about yourself,
you're going to have a, you're going to make the choices that
are right for you, right? Exactly.
So I mean, everyone's probably listening to this going well.
That is we really have gone through the pyramid.
We kind of ended up at the peptides, which is for me is
really, I find it a really fascinating area to understand

(01:09:07):
more about. What are you most excited about
that's going to come up in the next kind of because there's so
much with AI as well where I'm like, that's where I'm quite
excited about with healthcare, where everything's going to
start turning and I think we will turn way more towards
preventative. What are you most excited about?
I think things are going to comein different stages.
So the first thing that's going to happen is people are going to

(01:09:29):
be so much more empowered to really take control of their
health, right? And that's going to come through
a combination of wearables, giving data back to an AI and
the AI really understanding yourentire health journey and then
giving you real personalized, real time feedback.

(01:09:51):
And then for the first time, you're not going to feel like I
don't know what's going on and Idon't know what to do because
you are going to know what's going on and AI is going to know
what to do and it's going to tell you.
And so at that point, you're notgoing to have any excuse except
not having the right mindset, right?
Because then it's just really getting the right mindset.
So once you feel empowered, you're going to be able to make

(01:10:12):
real time changes for yourself. And then people only start going
to the doctor when things are really bad, right?
Which is what the healthcare system was really developed for
in the 1st place. It wasn't meant to keep you
healthy. It wasn't meant to reverse
chronic disease. It was built for when you get
into an accident, when you have a heart attack, when you get
diagnosed with cancer, when you have a severe infection.

(01:10:33):
And so that's really exciting because, you know, we all see
these curves of how unhealthy people are getting.
Obesity is rising, Alzheimer's rising, you know, diabetes is
rising. And you see these graphs, you're
like, oh, this is horrible. Like pretty soon 100% of people
going to have 100% of everything.
And I think the reality. Right.
And so the reality is, I think we're going to reach in the next

(01:10:56):
5 years a point where that plateaus and actually reverses.
And the next 20-30 years is going to be on the downtrend,
all of it. I do think there's technological
advancements that are going to really help this to turn around
and go back down. One of them is GLP one for sure.
I think GLP one is #1 out of 100different technological advances

(01:11:19):
that are going to come in the next decade.
And the compounding effect of technological advances and
people having agency and being empowered over their own health
using technology is really goingto lead to a place maybe in our
children's generations where allof the problems that we talk
about now are going to go away. You know, And you know, I might

(01:11:43):
be overly optimistic, but I do think that I'm echoing the
sentiments of people that are really in this industry right
now that there's going to be a point where we virtually
eliminate chronic disease in thenext few decades.
Well, it's like how we eliminated infectious diseases.
Exactly, exactly. Right.
And look, we're going to struggle with some of it, right?

(01:12:05):
Like we've eliminated massive amounts of death from infectious
disease, but people still get infectious disease, right?
We're going to eliminate massiveamounts of death from chronic
disease, but people will still have some weird things happen
and go on, But then we're going to figure out those things too.
And, and it's an incredible world out there.
Like, I mean, I, I, I don't see how we don't constantly keep

(01:12:26):
heading towards a life of mostlybeing healthy.
Well, I love that because we need optimism and without that
we don't have, I mean, I and it's not a life worth of living
if we don't have hope and optimism.
I mean, then it's all very, I love that you said it all feels
very heavy because it can. And I think that coupled with
like, just the overwhelm of whatyou're meant to do, people can

(01:12:48):
sometimes just feel like a bit stuck or, you know, a bit numb.
And I'm not quite sure what they're meant to be doing.
So I'm hoping I'm definitely educated in this podcast.
So thank you so much for sharingall your knowledge.
You're so welcome. And I'll give your readers one
more tip. Like, yeah, please don't wait
for someone to come to you and say, look, I've made this app
and it can tell you everything you need to do.

(01:13:10):
Like you know, this exists rightnow and so all you need to do is
get your blood work done, take some of your wearable data, wear
a wearable for a little while, take the data, export it and
take the PD FS of this and uploaded the ChatGPT and just
ask it questions like what should I be concerned about?
What are the things that I can do to improve the markers that
are off? And then obviously, like you

(01:13:32):
know, ChatGPT is not a doctor, so it discussed the results with
the doctor, but you will get good information right now
today. And the people I see doing this
today are truly accelerating their pathway to staying away
from chronic disease, right? And so all of the top ten causes
of death, you know, the CDC publishes a top ten list of why

(01:13:54):
humans will die. These are all preventable
things, right? One of them is actually car
accidents. So, you know, you can you can
prevent car accidents. Wear your seat belt.
You know, don't. Drive.
Distracted and drunk, but also like heart disease is very
preventable. Now Alzheimer's can be
prevented. Many of these diseases can be

(01:14:16):
prevented. Diabetes, we talked about a lot
today can be prevented. And so you can do that now
today, everyone can do it. And so it's just, it's just
understanding that you have the power and then just taking the
steps. Yeah, I think that's the most
important thing. It's the power and the field
because a lot of people I think end, you know what it's like
here, but in the UK you can't get a doctor's appointment and
they feel very frustrating. And then they have so many

(01:14:37):
patients to see. You get 10 minutes and sometimes
you're like, what, 3 things to ask you and you can kind of just
end up giving up and go, Oh well, it just feels too much of
an effort. So I think I love that you said
ChatGPT because I do think like being curious with what we've
got out there and obviously making sure that you seek
medical advice afterwards. But some of these things are the
basics. And so that's where charity can

(01:14:57):
be a real health. Absolutely.
And I think like, you know, the,the device your doctor is going
to give you about, you know, what vegetable should I eat
today? How much protein should I be
eating? All this stuff is like, you're
not going to have enough time with your doctor to get this
advice. And so I think we just need to
be, stop being frustrated with this medical system and know
that there's other solutions outthere.

(01:15:19):
AI is 1 solution. There's incredible practitioners
just waiting to hear from you. Many nutritionists.
There's, you know, trainers at the gym, They're just waiting
for you to call them. Exactly.
So give them a call and, and start, start making, you know,
start making moves with your health because I promise you
they can add up if you do them and detoxify your life.

(01:15:40):
I go out there and learn about, let's type into the computer.
What are the toxins in my house and how do I get rid of them?
Yeah, the information is there for you.
It's waiting on your podcast. On my podcast, this is the whole
reason I made this five years ago was because I struggled to
find it. And I know it's very different,
you know, climate now that we'rein, but it's literally it's
changed my life. This show, you know, the amount

(01:16:00):
of conversations I've had on this show, the amount of
knowledge that I've consumed doesn't mean that I do it all,
doesn't mean that I live this like monk life life at all.
But I'm much more attuned to things that I know are going to
be better for me than worse as opposed to not being, you know,
I didn't have as much self-awareness before because I
didn't have such an amount of information at my fingertips,
which now I feel so grateful for, but I'm so grateful that I

(01:16:24):
get to share it with everyone too.
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
So I always ask one question andit's my final question, which is
dashing. What does live well be well mean
to you? You know, it's, I was just
thinking about this as a response to your last question
so I can answer it. So that's a really good, that's
a really good question to end with.

(01:16:45):
So for me, I think living well and being well is not about
getting it perfect all the time,right?
I don't get it perfect all the time, but I will tell you
because I get it pretty good 80%of the time.
I'm living the most energetic life I've ever had probably
since I was like a teenager, right?
And I'm 53 years old now. And so for me, living well is

(01:17:09):
getting it right as much as I can day-to-day and sticking to
my daily routines and really daily habits that I feel great
and I can have more time with myfriends and my family.
And that's it. That's all that all there is to
it. I love that.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you Dash and Osmo. I'm so glad we got to do this.

(01:17:30):
Me too. Thank you for inviting me to
your beautiful clinic. Next Health, if everyone wants
to find more about you, obviously we know that they can
go in down your biomarkers, but where else?
Like what else can they find youon?
Please tell them everything because you have so much.
Yeah, Well, thank you. So I have a podcast also called
Extend that you were graciously accepted to be on as well.
So thank you for doing that. Extend my podcast.

(01:17:52):
And then also my social media handle is at Darshan Shah, MD.
And then I give everyone my website, doctorshaw.com.
I have other tools on there on how to decrease your doctor
exposure, improve your sleep biomarkers.
And so it's all free stuff on Doctor shaw.com.
Amazing and Next Health as well.Yes, in my clinic.
So if you happen to be in UnitedStates also, you're looking to

(01:18:13):
come to the UK very soon, next-health.com.
Can't wait. It's all over the US and
Vancouver and Dubai as well. Yeah, amazing.
It's incredible. It really is incredible what
you've built and thank you for just pioneering preventative
health and medicine. It's so important and very
thankful that you're doing it. My pleasure, thank you for
having me.

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