BITESIZE | The Most Important Daily Habits That Could Add Decades to Your Life & Keep Your Brain Young | Dr Darshan Shah #609

0:00Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by AG1, a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years. Now, this is the time of year when our immune systems are under the most pressure. It's natural to look for extra ways to support our immune defenses. But most people don't want to juggle multiple pills. They want something simple, effective and easy to stick with. AG1 is a daily health drink that provides key immunity supporting nutrients, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, all of which contribute to the normal function of the immune system. These nutrients are included in highly bioavailable forms, meaning they are much easier for the body to absorb and use.

0:50And the best thing, of course, is that all this goodness comes in one convenient, tasty daily serving. For a limited time only, get a free AG1 flavor sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavors, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's$87 in free gifts for first-time subscribers. See all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 573 of the podcast with medical doctor, board certified surgeon and expert in preventive health, Dr.

1:48Darshan Shah. Now this full episode was one of the most listened to podcast episodes in the UK in 2025 and one that clearly resonated with so many of you. In this clip, Darshan shares practical advice that could transform how you think about your health and we explore some of the most important daily habits that could add decades to your life. Most people are asking you how they can prevent getting sick in the future. But I wanted to start by asking you, what would I need to do if I want to get Alzheimer's or shorten my life as quickly as possible? To get Alzheimer's. Okay, you're right. No one's ever asked me that question, but I can give you a five-step program to getting Alzheimer's.

2:41Why don't we do that? Let's do it, yeah. And you'll be surprised to hear that your genetics actually not in my five steps, believe it or not. Okay? Because I really believe that even if you are genetically susceptible to Alzheimer's, the chance of you being able to prevent it completely is very, very high. So I think we need to move on from my mother had it, my family members had it, so I'm destined to have it. That is absolutely not the case. Okay? So the five steps to getting Alzheimer's starts in childhood, believe it or not. Play football, American football or rugby, a sport that you're hitting your head over and over again at high velocities.

3:25That constant trauma and not necessarily getting concussions. the trauma of hitting your head over and over again as a child and then into high school and beyond definitely sets you up for a situation where your chance of having dementia later on in life is greatly increased okay the longer you extend that and the more you play these sports that your head is unprotected the more damage builds up over time in your brain okay Then step two, moving on to like adolescence and early adulthood, eat a ton of ultra processed food, lots of sugar. Don't start your meals with vegetables. Instead, have a very carby diet and throw your metabolism off.

4:14And so step two is having poor metabolic health, right? We know in the Western world, 80 % of adults have poor metabolic health, and that sets you up in a situation where you have a much higher risk of getting dementia in the future. And what's beautiful about this conversation, Rangan, is we don't need to just talk about dementia. It's the same for heart disease, cancer, all sorts of longevity in general. Exactly. And of course, I know we're already two parts into the five-step plan, and of course, it's a slightly ridiculous question in many ways, but the reason I was asking it was to really just showcase how many of these things so many of us are doing.

4:56So we don't directly ask ourselves the question, how can we speed up getting a brain disease? But it turns out that many of us are living lives which are actually doing that. Exactly. Exactly. And the damage builds up over time. And what's incredible about our human body is it's so incredibly resilient, especially up to the age of about 30 or so, right? And this resiliency tricks us into believing that we're incredibly healthy, that we can live through anything, that nothing bad is gonna happen to us. But the damage builds up in childhood and adolescence as well, just as much it can build up later.

5:32Now, what happens as we age, so step three of the program then, is to create a massive amount of inflammation. And that is through having poor gut health, even poor oral health, being sedentary. So this all happens when we get a job, right? We become more sedentary. We continue to have a poor diet. We're eating more ultra-processed food, and our gut health suffers. And 90 % of our immune system lives in our gut, right? And so when our gut is not healthy, it's being attacked by thousands of toxins that are basically in our food, and our immune system is on overdrive, which creates a situation that we all know it's another root cause of disease called inflammation.

6:14Then the next thing that you can do is just don't care about your level of exposure to toxins. And so we know that we live in a society now where we have 150 ,000 man-made toxins in our environment. And these have only been here for the last 60, 70 years. These were never here before. And we are constantly and consistently physically exposed to toxins in our air, our water, our food, and the skin products that we use. And you just don't even think about it, right? And so we live in this state of just ignorance of toxins, but they do build up. They're almost the fourth leg of the stool of health.

6:51You know, you have nutrition, you have exercise, you have sleep. I really believe that toxin buildup and detoxifying your lifestyle is incredibly important, right? And then lastly, you hit your 30s and your 40s and many people are living a very stressed life. You have children, you have a job, you're trying to make it financially and the amount of stress builds up, cortisol builds up, your hormones levels start going down, right, as we age. And all of that situation where you have hormonal dysfunction or dysregulation combined with high levels of stress also then start predisposing you to Alzheimer's disease and all the other diseases, right?

7:39And so I think those are the five steps you can take to try to get Alzheimer's early. Yeah. Okay. So that's super, super clear. So head trauma, poor diet, inflammation, toxin exposure, and chronic stress. If we supercharge those five things, we're going to start increasing our risk of getting sick in the future. We're going to start increasing the rate at which we age. And I guess it's interesting that as I think about those five things, all of them are amenable to change. Absolutely. Okay. And I think that's the key thing that we're both very passionate about. Now I want to go through some of those things in detail.

8:20Okay. So I want this to be a really practical episode for people. So they they truly understand what kind of things they can start doing immediately. Of course, we're living in a world now where there's more and more information out there. People are getting very, very confused. And I know, Darshan, that you're very passionate about the 80-20 rule, aren't you? So can you explain what the 80-20 rule is? I see patients almost every single day. And I find a lot of people have paralysis by over-analysis of their Instagram feed, right? And it gets so confusing. And in reality, there's really 20 % of the information out there that we know moves the needle 80%.

9:00And if you don't get those right, it doesn't matter how much you go down the rabbit hole of supplements and biohacking. You're not going to get the effect that you need. And so we need to absolutely focus on the Pareto principle, which is the 20-80 principle. Yeah. Food, of course, is a very important pillar of health. in your five-step plan, point two was directly about food, but I guess point three, inflammation is also related to foods. Point four, you could even argue in this sort of toxin exposure, depending on what you're eating, could also apply. So food is one of those key pillars. What is your 80-20 approach when it comes to food?

9:39Yeah. So I'll see a patient, they'll sit in front of me, doctor, tell me what diet is perfect for me, right? That's always the first question. Program out my diet for me. I'm eating vegetarian. Should I be adding more protein? How many grams of protein? And I always take it back to look. I really almost don't care what diet you eat. You can have any diet that makes you feel good as long as you eliminate ultra-processed food from your diet. So we know also through research, massive studies, that for every 10 % increase that you have over your daily caloric requirement in ultra-processed food, you also add 15 % to your all-cause mortality rate.

10:20It's massive. Ultra-processed food is everything that comes in the center of the supermarket. You know, in the United States, 90 % of the supermarket real estate is ultra-processed food, the entire center. packaging, food dyes, preservatives, things that were never really meant to be food in the first place. And it's a tremendous amount of salt, tremendous amount of chemicals, and a tremendous amount of inflammatory factors in it as well. So just eliminating ultra-processed food can completely change your health. Not even talking about what type of diet to eat, right? Because once you eliminate ultra-processed food, you're going to eat more produce.

10:57You're going to have more protein in your diet. It just happens naturally. And I think that's the one thing that I think makes the 80 % difference. I completely agree with you. Okay. I think contrary to, I think, popular opinion, it's more important in the modern food environment to focus on what you're not eating as opposed to what you are. Okay. And people push back and go, no, oh, it's about, you know, just small changes, bring the right foods in. And I get that thinking. But I've got to be honest and go, in my entire clinical career, if you add a punnet of blueberries to your diet once a week, right, and you change nothing else, I haven't seen much of a change, right?

11:42You can look at the study about blueberries and cognitive health. There are great studies on that, okay? I don't dispute that. But what I've seen move the needle is when people start eliminating the modern ultra processed stuff. And of course, as you mentioned, when you eliminate that stuff, you've got to eat something, right? So you tend to eat that good stuff. But I think through that 80-20 lens, I think if you just focus on cutting out the ultra processed foods or reducing them compared to where they are now, you're going to start to feel better. And that feeling of more energy, more vitality, that's the motivation you then need to continue with it.

12:21Do you see it like that as well? One thousand percent. You know, a lot of people, when I ask them, how do you get your fruits? Like, oh, I get blueberries every morning in my little container of oats that I add hot water to. And that's my blueberry. I'm like, that's not even real blueberries. There's like blueberry flavored junk in there. That's not a blueberry. And I think what's happened is in our modern day society is it's become very difficult to avoid ultra processed food. Yeah, it really has. Right? Because a lot of the marketing is made to trick you into thinking that the foods are healthy, that they're providing us, right?

13:02No one's marketing broccoli to you on the TV, right? They're marketing to you all these foods that are trying to convince you are healthy, but they're not. A lot of people consume these snack bars, for example, right? And these snack bars, even though they might fill you up, they're just candy bars. They're not really healthy for you. Some of them could be healthy, but most of them I find are not. And so just getting to the point again where we are more in touch with nature, we're eating foods that were grown. They're organic, hopefully, if you can get organic foods. And just selecting foods and bringing it home and cooking it, I think that's a game changer for people.

13:39And it's hard to do that nowadays. If a patient comes up to you and says, hey, listen, Dr. Shah, I've heard about the negatis of having too many ultra-processed foods, but they're everywhere, right? I don't know where to start. What kind of practical guidance do you have for people? Yeah, that's a great question. So I tell people, let's make it as simple as possible to start. Pick three meals that you can easily make that have no more than two or three or four ingredients. And let's plan out a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner for you that has those ingredients. So, for example, breakfast can be three scrambled eggs and a piece of rye toast and some steamed vegetables, for example.

14:25Pick your vegetable. For lunch, it can be a salad with a piece of salmon on it or a piece of chicken. And then for dinner, it could be a vegetable, one piece of protein, and maybe some good carbs or slow carbs, right? And so just pick that and eat that consistently as many meals as possible, right? And then let's start stair-stepping you into a healthier diet. Then let's add another easy, simple meal and another one and another one to your menu of options. And so my patients actually have on their fridge, like, here are my options. Here's my list of things I need to buy from the supermarket on a weekly basis.

15:02And we add to it. You're an expert in habit formation yourself. You got to start simple and then add and stack on top of it. And that's how we kind of shift people's diets completely. And look, it's not fun. It's kind of boring. The foods that you're eating are boring. They're very simple. But the amount of change I see in people's health in just two weeks, it's so massive. people get addicted to this new way of eating. Yeah. It's really helpful that you say boring, but you do this for long enough and it's not that long. Then suddenly your taste buds do start to change. And again, look, we're all on our own journey.

15:40We've all got different levels of means. We all have different capacities to make choices in our life. I'm at the point now, Darshan, where I generally don't want to eat out anymore. Right. If I can help it, I just want to eat at home. A, I can control what I mean. So don't get me wrong. it's still fun to go out sometimes with your friends and there's a social aspect. I don't dispute that. But again, as I get older, I realized that, hey, Rangan, you know, if you are not being really proactive about your health, the modern world is going to drag you down a certain path, right? It's not easy anymore for most people to be well and healthy.

16:17You have to actively make choices often that are in conflict with the world around you. Once your taste buds re-acclimatize to what whole natural food tastes like, after a while, you will choose that over the ultra-processed foods. Is that what you found yourself? One thousand percent. You know, what people need to understand is the ultra-processed food is made by giant corporations that have a lot of money. And they found the right chemical mixture. I mean, they have scientists paid hundreds of thousand dollars a year to make that food hyper palatable, to make it addicting to your taste buds and your mouth.

17:00And you have to untrain that in your biology, in your brain. Right. And it's that way on purpose. Right. That's why it doesn't seem as enticing to eat a salad. Right. As it does maybe a TV dinner. Right. But at the end of the day, your brain does want to rewire itself into choosing natural food for sure. Yeah. In your five-step Alzheimer's plan, in number three where you mentioned inflammation, I think you also mentioned inflammation from the gut and inflammation from the mouth. Yes. Okay, so could you just briefly explain to people what inflammation is? Absolutely. and then sort of talk to us about gut inflammation and oral inflammation and what we can actually do to improve those things.

17:49Yeah, so inflammation is a state where your immune system, which is there to help us fight off bacteria, viruses, toxins, is there to eliminate cancer cells from inside of our body. Our immune system is incredibly important. And unfortunately, as we age, it does become weaker. It's a process called immunosenescence that happens as we age. But the healthier you are, the longer your immune system will stay healthy. And why is that important? Because obviously we needed to fight off infections and cancer, et cetera. Now, what happens when you get inflammation is that your immune system is active all the time.

18:27And it's not active fighting off cancer. It's not active fighting off infections. It's fighting off all the toxins that are being accumulated in our body. Most of those toxins come in through our gut and our gut starts in our mouth and it goes all the way down to the other side, right? And so once again, ultra-processed food has a lot of toxins in it, a lot of inflammatory factors in it. And if you constantly assault your gut with ultra-processed food, it's going to all be absorbed and keep your immune system overactive. And when you have a lot of inflammation, what's happening is your body is just in a state where it's fighting off these toxins, but it's also destroying normal cells.

19:04and it's also creating havoc throughout areas of your body that aren't necessarily injured. And so this is why we always check for inflammation in our patients. And then when we see high inflammatory markers, the first place we look is in the gut. Wow. Yeah. How do you check for inflammation in your patients? So we use a marker called HSCRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein, as one of the first markers we look for. This is a super simple blood test that anyone should be able to ask their doctor for. And I'm a huge believer in checking this marker once a quarter or once every six months. Wow.

19:41Just to make sure what's happening in your lifestyle over the last few months is not causing inflammation, right? One area where people get a lot of inflammation from is from their oral cavity. What happens is they haven't seen a dentist in a while. They forget to floss and they get inflammation in their gums. And people live with inflammation in their gums, in their oral cavity, sometimes for years and years and years. And you and I both know there's an association between poor oral health and Alzheimer's disease and cancer and also heart disease. And so we know keeping your oral cavity healthy is critical.

20:18So go to see your dentist every six months at least. People may think, what the hell's my tooth or my teeth got to do with my physical health? But of course, there's ample research on the relationship between oral health and brain health and gut health and mood. mood, you know, all kinds of different things. When you went through your five-step getting Alzheimer's plan, one of the things you mentioned was the inflammation caused by sedentary behavior. Right. Okay, so talk to me about physical inactivity. Where do the real problems come? And what can we start to do to start changing things? Yeah, it's a great question.

20:59First of all, it's very important to define what is sedentary behavior, right? I think we have this intuition like we wake up, we sit down for breakfast, and we sit in our car, drive to work, and then we sit at work. We're just sitting all day long. But in science, you can actually define where that stretch of sedentary behavior actually goes wrong. And what we see is that for every hour you spend being sedentary after four hours, there's a 15 % increased risk of all-cause mortality. OK, so really the magic number is anything more than four hours is going to be detrimental to your life. And what I tell people is this is more important than exercising.

21:40A lot of people think that they can work eight hours in front of a computer, go to the gym for an hour afterwards, and then that's fine. They've done everything they need to do to combat this negative aspect of being sedentary. And that's not true. The gym workout does not negate the sedentary behavior during the day. Right. So what I tell people is we've also had a lot of research into how do we counteract sedentary behavior. And the Pareto principle here is it's just one easy thing. It's so easy. It's mind blowing to people. Every 45 minutes, getting up and moving around. And that's it. It's called an exercise snack.

22:18We have lots of research out there on exercise snacks, completely negating the effect of being sedentary. and it could be as simple as just like getting up and having a conversation with somebody or walking around the office for three to five minutes. What I tell people to do is once you start getting to that routine and habit, why not do some air squats? Why not have a pair of weights and just lift some weights for a few minutes, right? There's other things that you can do that actually can then build up into even not just negating sedentary behavior, but reversing the negative effects of it as well.

22:49And so 45 minutes is the key. Take an exercise, snack. I will say one more thing on this too. I think it's so important to walk. You know, humans were meant to walk. Walking is so profound in so many ways. Maybe do your meetings while you're walking instead of, you know, sitting there on the phone. Maybe you walk after every meal. Walking after every meal has massive effects on reducing blood glucose level as well. So getting those steps in is also important. Yeah. We've covered quite a lot in terms of this 20-80 principle. I keep thinking back to you as a surgeon and I don't know, looking under the skin and seeing someone's liver or seeing someone's bowel and seeing the health, you know, does it look healthy and rosy?

23:35Possibly not if you're operating on them or does it look necrotic or so the blood flow is lacking, whatever it might be, okay. And it just makes me think how many of don't take action, right? So they want to take action and they don't. And there's many reasons for that. One of the reasons I believe is because we think we don't have a direct way of seeing what we're doing and how it's impacting us. And I know you recommend that people track various biomarkers. There's actually a really good free PDF on your website for people. I downloaded it last night. It's great that you provide that resource for free.

24:11Yeah, just go to my website, drshah.com forward slash biomarker. And I have a PDF that I created of all the biomarkers that everyone should follow. There's not a lot of them. I think it was 10 and normal ranges and why? And normal ranges, right. I did it last night, but it's really good. So what's your take on wearables? I see you, I think you have an aura ring on. Yes, I do. I've been wearing a Woot band now since, I think, July last year. I'll share my experience in just a moment. But what is your take on wearables? Are you a fan or are you against them? So part of my talk track with patients about becoming the CEO of their own health or the boss of their own biology is not just blood tests.

24:51But let me tell you why I love wearables. You can get them for less and less money now. In fact, you can start, there are some Fitbits now that are less than$50 that people can buy. And this gives you a few really important numbers. One of them is your amount of movement you've had throughout the day. So number of steps. Another one is the HRV, which I think is a biomarker that, you know, in medicine, we don't even look at that, right? But it's such an important biomarker of health, right? And lastly is a sleep score, okay? And so another marker we rarely talk about in medicine, in Western medicine, but something that people can really improve on.

25:31And what I love about all of these markers is there's something that you can do almost every single day that can make it a tiny bit better. and just doing a 1 % improvement day after day adds up to a 3 ,800 % change over the course of a year. It's massive. So just getting a few more steps in, just trying to optimize your sleep so you get better deep sleep, doing some breath work once a day for even just two minutes can help improve your HRV. This is all data that you can now get on yourself that once again, no one's gonna care about this more than you do, right? And so I think it's important. and just start with one thing, right?

26:09Just start maybe one biomarker and then just understand it takes time, right? And so give yourself a year to go through a health journey perhaps. But keep doing something on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis. Do something, one thing a week and it will add up over time. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.