Why You’re Tired, Gaining Weight & Aging Faster - Fix Metabolic Health | Dr Darshan Shah

22:59Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah. That's arbitrarily picked, right? And so the other issue is that it takes a decade to go from 5.2 to 5.7 for many people, right? And so you want to know when it's headed in that direction. So when you're going to 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, you know you're going in the wrong direction. 5.9, in my view, is a problem. Like, you've got to keep working on this and get it closer to 5.2, right? And I think that no one's going to really do this for you. Sadly, medical professionals, in the United States especially, don't have the time to really deal with all of this. And so what happens is you look at the blood work paper.

23:41I've done this before. You get the paper. If nothing's red, you just put it aside and say everything's fine. Next patient. And so you really have to take control of this yourself and really have to understand what are those critical biomarkers and what is the optimal range and why they're important.

23:56Dr. Darshan Shah:So how often should people 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 of our patients. I think quarterly you can really make changes. I think especially if you're over the age of 40, quarterly is a really good idea. However, at least every six months, once a year is just not enough. So you mentioned four of that. What were the other ones? Is D3 with K2-1? 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.

24:34And your vitamin D level should be between 50 and 80. 90 % of people are chronically low on vitamin 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 like we used to. And in the UK, we don't have sunshine. Exactly. So sadly, you're going to find many people have low vitamin D, and then the solution is vitamin D3, K2 as a supplement, right?

25:05Dr. Darshan Shah: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 places. You don't want to over absorb the calcium. And so vitamin D3, K2 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?

25:41Dr. Darshan Shah:Everyone's getting their pens and papers out. Yeah. And so just to make it easy for your audience, I do have this as a free guide on my website. So if you go to drsha.com slash 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, okay, that's kind of cool. You have this. Yeah, sure. Why not? They say no, then you have to push them. 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.

26:13In the United States, you can go to any lab and 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. It should be available for less than$200. So then the other biomarker is vitamin B12. Okay, so this is another indicator of how much nutrition you're 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 a better diet going, right? But what I would say is that there's some targeted supplements I really like until you get your nutrition completely dialed in.

26:58And so vitamin B is another one of those supplements that I really like.

27:01Dr. Darshan Shah:That's also good to look at absorption, isn't it, with the gut as well. You can also see if there's some gut problems going on. Great point. Yeah, a lot of people don't absorb enough vitamins as well. And so then you have to start healing your gut and getting it to absorb better. So a really good point. So 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.

27:34And what I would almost tell everyone to do is if you have a 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 body composition. And so a scale that just gives you your skeletal muscle mass is so much better to follow. And so these scales now only cost$20,$30. And so you can get them online and they're super easy.

28:09and 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 biomarker that I really like.

28:20Dr. Darshan Shah: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 good health. But when we're thinking about aging, well, I think that's everyone's, I wouldn't say fear, but maybe concern. 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 pain. They want to feel supple and flexible. When it comes to functional health and functional medicine, what are your main areas that you focus on? If someone comes in in their late 30s and says, help me, I don't want to age.

28:56Dr. Darshan Shah:I don't want to age and I want to stay young. What would you say? Okay. So the reason I'm picking 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 amount of visceral fat, which is fat underneath your abdominal muscles. And all of this leads to accelerated aging. Okay. Okay? Poor skeletal muscle mass leads to decreased mobility, decreased balance, and poor bone health. Your bones are attached to your muscle. And people think, oh, my bones are not healthy and I have osteoporosis because I don't have enough calcium.

29:37That'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 is devoid of nutrients. So not having enough vitamin D3, vitamin B also leads to accelerated aging, right? And so the things that cause you to 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 enough. Your sleep is disrupted and you have too much stress, right? And so once you understand how these biomarkers point to those problems and you start modifying your lifestyle to optimize these biomarkers, your aging slows down dramatically.

30:29Dr. Darshan Shah:Wow. Okay. So one thing that I'm thinking about there as you're saying this, because muscle mass is a real indicator that you're saying. Massive, yeah. The biggest thing that's booming right now, which is really interesting, is creatine monohydrate. Everyone's obviously talking about, you know, around 10 grams is what you should be taking a day of creatine for men and women. Actually, really important for postmenopausal women. There's some interesting research coming out now. I mean, obviously, we're putting more women now great into trials. And so we're seeing actually it's benefiting women too.

30:59Dr. Darshan Shah: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 increase your strength which is just as important as muscle mass okay. 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's disease too especially women.

31:34Dr. Darshan Shah:That's the biggest killer in the UK. Yeah, yeah, and it's rising every year, especially in women. And so I think creatine can be also one of those like critical core supplements that people can take. I'm not a big supplement pusher, but I will tell you that there's some supplements, just because we live in an environment and 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 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.

32:11And so creatine can be one of those supplements that can be very helpful. Yeah.

32:16Dr. Darshan Shah: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 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 gained a lot of weight or they just don't feel good about themselves, they're not feeling good, 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.

32:58And then they have a different problem, right? And so they're going on this back and forth flip-flop of diets that don't work, and then they get upset, and they gain weight, and it goes back and forth, right? So it's really, really critical in my mind to just have good habits in place. And big picture, the way I look at nutrition for almost every human, is 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? 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.

33:36And one of those critical nutrients is also fiber. And fiber is critical to your gut health. It can really help you also move the food through your body, move toxins through your body, get glucose out of your body as well. 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 pescatarian, you can get enough protein in. And lastly is getting essential fats in, right? And when I say essential fats, I mean good fats from fatty fish, from olive oil, from nuts, from avocados, healthy fats.

34:17And 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 can't help it but get an optimal diet. Think about it. If every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you start with a fibrous vegetable 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 a handful of nuts or maybe an avocado. 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.

34:53Not at all. Carbohydrates are a very important part of our diet.

34:55Dr. Darshan Shah:That's the fiber. Right. Well, yes, it's true. Carbohydrates are – fiber is carbohydrates, but I'm talking about like starchy carbohydrates, right? Yeah, yeah. Potatoes and breads and those – chips and those kind of things. Yeah, okay. But if you make that the last part of your meal, what happens is you naturally eat less of it. And you will prevent metabolic disease by eating in this pattern, right? And then just move a little bit before and after. And so, you know, I know this is becoming, like, 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.

35:26And 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. And working with a nutritionist can be very, very helpful to really dial in your diet. So that's how I look at diet, big picture. And then, you know, I'm always measuring metabolic health with hemoglobin A1c. The minute it goes over 5.4, I'm like, uh-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.

35:55Dr. Darshan Shah:I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor. Please subscribe to the show. This helps it grow more than you know. And I'm so bad at asking this from you. I'm so bad of thinking about this, but you know, my goal is a hundred thousand 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 together. So please do hit subscribe. Thank you. I think a lot of these things are also like the fun, 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.

36:34Dr. Darshan Shah: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? 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 completely gender neutral. It's an AI. You can change the voice. It said that we all know someone who 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? And I think about, so then I had to think about connecting this to a story within my family. One of my grandmothers was incredibly healthy.

37:09Dr. Darshan Shah:She walked, she had a walking group, so she walked 10 miles every week. She grew her own food. She was Christian and she worked very much in the community. You know, she would always make sure that she was cognitively active. She was a teacher. so she would do all these things that you would say is healthy right she sadly got alzheimer's and she had it for 12 years um 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 should be doing this and you should be doing that and my mom's response was well 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 apart from that, she smoked, she drunk, you know, she had a very, like, hectic lifestyle, the opposite of my other grandmother.

38:01Dr. Darshan Shah:And I'm like, wow, she lived till she was nearly 100. Wow. That's amazing. So... Explain that. Yeah. Okay, I'll give you two explanations. One 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 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?

38:46And 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. Right.

39:03Dr. Darshan Shah:Okay? And so there's quite a few hormones that we know of, like testosterone, estrogen. But there's also like growth hormone, IGF-1, 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 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 the effects of this is compounding over more time because it's interesting because women get more um not more alzheimer's women are more predisposed to getting alzheimer's yeah and they do get more alzheimer's yeah there's many more women with alzheimer's than men yeah but i think it's like a two to one ratio and that must be connected to the menopause in some way it's 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 doctor that can tell you like what you can do to kind of normalize your hormones, right?

40:13Yeah. And then you have your other grandmother that was smoking and drank 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. And they are not genetically susceptible in anything. And in fact, they have genetic blessings that can help them detoxify a lot better than other 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 just to 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 that is true for everybody.

40:58Some 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 our habits.

41:10Dr. Darshan Shah:So Alzheimer's is a big thing. I know you have like a five-stage approach to Alzheimer's. This is probably the thing that I'm the most nervous of. One, because it's in my family. So I've seen it firsthand. I've seen how it can cause just a lot of pain to not just yourself, but also the people around you. It's one of those diseases that really affects the family, but it's massively on the rise. I had so many different conversations on this show with Dr. to Chris Palmer, where he talks about it as a metabolic kind of problem. And, you know, we see a rise in obesity and we see a rise in mental health.

41:42Dr. Darshan Shah: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 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? I'll make the introduction. You should have him on for sure. 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 testing.

42:21And 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 soon as possible. Okay. And so, um, some of the, some of the reasons people get Alzheimer's are poor metabolic health, high 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 for toxins and see what toxins are building up. We can check for inflammation with the HSCRP and go looking for where you have inflammation.

42:59And so even if you have a genetic susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease, you can prevent it by removing all of 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 time to rest. In this life, we rarely give our brains time to rest, especially with our cell phones. We feel like we have to keep our brains constantly active all the time. And that's a big problem. That's what's leading to a lot of buildup of toxins in our brain, right?

43:34Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah. I always say the best way someone can do that, that's how I say to myself, when you're in a queue, don't get out your phone. Right. The automatic thing when you're in a queue, what do you do? Get your phone out. Right. Or you're in a waiting room, I better get my phone out. Yeah. 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 yeah massive just don't take the phone into the bathroom with you exactly exactly they're the big there's not a time to go look at the phone 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 important.

44:31And then lastly, what I would say too is, you know, I keep talking about toxins is like really, really reducing your toxic burden in your life. That could come in many forms, like, you know, air purifiers at home, 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 products you put on your skin aren't toxic products, right? And then eating organic food and staying 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.

45:06So that's very important.

45:09Dr. Darshan Shah:You said something there which I think might not go over people's minds, but they might 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 with silicons and things. You know, we wear makeup. It's all of the, you know, we wash our clothes sometimes in strong chemicals. We put bleach in the home. I think these like daily things, like most people would struggle to think about alternatives or they think about, well, no, I want to smell good.

45:47Dr. Darshan Shah: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 tox? Because I think people may not even just be aware of how much is in their home. Yeah. 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 what? Okay, so for example, we think that we're supposed to have a different spray bottle of cleaner for our glass and another one for our furniture and then another, and they need to smell really good and they need to have antibacterial in it.

46:28All 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 they have is one cleaning product And 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 bacteria, you're still going to have some bacteria behind.

47:04Those are going to be the strongest bacteria. And those are going to replicate. And so now you have strong bacteria that you cannot kill throughout your entire house. house. And so you have to have that balance. So instead of killing all the bacteria, you just want to like wipe it off and get rid of it and get it out of your house, not kill it all. Okay. And so it's really not about anti, uh, 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.

47:43And the other big thing I would 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 toxic, right? And there are non-toxic products for those too. Believe it or not, peppermint repels a lot of bugs.

48:04Dr. Darshan Shah:really yeah i'm the worst 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 like 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 all the time and then i'm like oh yeah i was spraying that all over myself the other day oh yeah that's a problem it's a problem yeah and so i think once you realize you can start doing the research, you can figure this 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 next decade, so you should know now, is microplastics.

48:45Dr. Darshan Shah:Oh, yeah. We did a big episode on this. You did. Great. Yeah. People need to listen to that episode. They do. Yeah. It's scary because I didn't want it to be a fear-mongering episode. No. That was the thing. And there was a lot of things. 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 their quite actually simple solutions. Simple solutions, right. But it's just the awareness. But I think the worry about it is people can switch off because it sounds so scary or like there's no hope. And we're surrounded by so much of it that it's like, well, what can we do?

49:17Dr. Darshan Shah:But there's actually a lot that we can do. There's a lot you can do. It's a Pareto 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 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 85, 90 % 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 exists in us. Why do I say that?

49:52Because 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. Okay. And so your liver is so complex because it can find toxins. It can get rid of them in your bile and your stool. And the rest of it, you can get rid of in your sweat, in your, by hydrating yourself well and going to the bathroom. You can get rid of toxins, but not when you're overwhelmed with toxins, you just can't catch up. Right.

50:19Dr. Darshan Shah:So something I really want to touch upon, you know, cause 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 basics of nutrition, exercise, sleep. We talked about functional medicine, hormones, detoxification, gut health. And 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 one of them. Yeah, so this is, people might not know what peptides is. So before we even talk about this part, explain what a peptide is for people that have just no idea what we're talking about.

50:58Peptides are chains of amino acids. And, you know, we're all built from amino acids, right? Every protein that we eat, every protein in our body is made out of amino acids. Peptides are short chains of amino acids that your body uses as signaling molecules. Okay. 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 it and give it to these type 1 diabetic kids, they lived long, productive lives.

51:38And so it was a game changer. The second, I would say, game-changing peptide that we've all heard of is GLP-1. 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. Now, what's incredible about peptides is our body's been making them since the dawn of humanity. We make them naturally. This is not a chemical drug that we've synthesized in a lab. And so these peptides have multiple biological effects throughout our body. For example, there's actually GLP-1 receptors on your immune cells that tell your immune system to stop being so crazy and to calm down a little bit.

52:19And so these type of biological effects can be really, really beneficial. And so there's thousands of peptides that are in our body, maybe even tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. We probably know about a few hundred of them. And just like GLP-1s, there's a list of these. There's different names. and we can get these compounded from compounding pharmacies, and they can send them to you, and you can inject them. And so why are they injected versus a pill? Well, 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.

52:58And so that's why you have to inject it underneath the skin.

53:02Dr. Darshan Shah:So even oxytocin is a peptide, which I find really interesting. Yes. 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 really idea about them, which is why I was really interested to speak to 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, you know, I really want to understand them. And I was like, okay, well, I think I need to talk about it on the show. So here we are.

53:33Dr. Darshan Shah:And I said this morning to one of my friends, what do you think about peptides? And his answer was, I think I'm scared about them because, you know, if I think, it was a 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 were all thinking that we should be taking testosterone. And now we realize that's not the truth. Like it's very dependable on when you should be taking it and how much and what age. And there's so many factors now that we've understood about it. So his answer to me was, well, I feel similar about peptides.

54:05I don't really know much about it.

54:07Dr. Darshan Shah:And I worry in 10, 15 years that I could have done damage to myself. So I was like, great, that's where I'm going to start. So how would you answer that? So here's how I think about peptides. Peptides are natural biological signals that we've made, right? We've 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 it the way the body would naturally use it. Right. And so you really, and that's 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.

54:41And people learned the hard way, right? Because they were getting it a lot of times illegally. They weren't talking to a professional on how to use it. Exactly. Exactly. And guess what? The same problems exist with peptides. So your friend has a right to be concerned for sure. 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, I mean, you can get a lot of these peptides on the internet now yourself, and there's no idea what the quality of those are.

55:19So we make sure that when we source the peptides, that we're sourcing them from a reputable pharmacy and we're testing it as well.

55:25Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah, because that's really important. There's a lot of things in that connection from very toxic to the body that aren't removed, right? Which you know when it's regulated from a physician that it is. So one thing I'm really interested in is the gut. Yeah. Because there's a very specific peptide that they work on with 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 one called PPC-157. And so a lot of people have leaky gut or they have damage to their gut from ultra-processed food. Maybe they took too many antibiotics and it's really messed up their gut, right?

56:01And what happens when you have 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 you get 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 overactive and you get inflammation. So how do you heal this? Well, number one, you stop taking the thing that is causing your gut to be inflamed. So whether it be antibiotics, non-chlorida, anti-inflammatory drugs, ultra-processed food, all these things, stop them, take away the thing that's causing the problem, and then give your gut what it needs to heal.

56:40And so one of the things that is a signal for your gut to heal is called BPC-157. It's actually made in your gut. 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 other probiotics to heal people's gut. And it's a really well-known peptide. A lot of people have taken it and very low side effect profile, actually. I actually never seen anyone with a side effect from it. And it's been really helpful to help people with leaky gut and gut issues.

57:19Now, here's the crazy thing about it, though. The same peptide, BPC-157, if you inject it, it can actually help joints to heal. It can help you heal from surgery faster. 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.

57:37Dr. Darshan Shah:Wow. Wow. And there's a lot of research on this, like big randomized control trials. I would say 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 and more research come out as people realize the massive potential of these peptides. Wow. And then what about aging? When you're looking at peptides and like what ones would you use when somebody's looking 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.

58:10One of those factors of aging is your immune system as we age becomes less and less able to do its job. It becomes less able to find cancers and get rid of cancer. It gets less able to fight infections, for example. Your immune system is actually very intimately involved in the healing processes through your body. So as you age, your immune cells become less and less able to do their job. And there's a peptide called TB500, which helps your immune system to work better. And so TB500 is a fantastic peptide for people with autoimmune diseases, but also for just keeping your immune cells healthy and young and vibrant.

58:48So that's one that I use. Another issue with aging is after you turn about 55 or so, your growth hormone levels start going down quite significantly. And so we measure proxy for growth hormone called IGF-1. And if your IGF-1 level is low, we can give you a growth hormone secretagogue, it's called. These are peptides like CJC or Tessamorlin, the two names of them, that promote or push your hypothalamus to secrete more growth hormone. Okay? And so we try to dial it up a little bit because we know that when we dial up the growth hormone, you sleep better, you heal better, you build more muscle, you put on less fat.

59:31all of these things that can lead to early aging as well. So those are a couple of aging peptides, I would say.

59:37Dr. Darshan Shah:And is there any risks for taking these? Like, are there any, obviously, if it's not via a 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 coming from. So if we take that out and we're doing it the proper route, are there any risks with taking peptides? Yeah, for sure. Like, if you over, so each one has different risks, right? I would say BPC-157 has a very low risk peptide. But for example, if you take too much teslamorin and you have your growth hormone go too high, that can also lead to problems.

1:00:06You get high blood pressure. You can get more inflammation, actually, believe it or not. So you really want to make sure that you're dosing it appropriately.

1:00:14Dr. Darshan Shah:Okay. And so the interesting thing is at what age? I mean, I'm guessing nobody in their 20s, obviously. But 30s, 40s, 50s, like when should we be looking at these types of things? I would say yes to all those. Yeah, it just kind of depends on how your body is biologically at that age, right? Obviously, as you turn 50, 55, 60, these are going to become more and more important in your life. When you're younger, like say in your 30s, say you hurt yourself in a sporting injury or something, BPC-157 could be very appropriate, you know? I have friends who are 40s, they maybe go through a knee surgery.

1:00:52We put them on Tessa Moreland and BPC-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 of what they're going after. You know, a lot of young people have gut issues. And so we'll still use BPC for their gut.

1:01:09Dr. Darshan Shah:It's a big thing, the gut. I think it's one of the biggest engagements that we have on this program. Ah, yeah. Anything that we do in the gut microbiome, people are so eager to find out more because I think everyone'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. Sometimes people think that they can't understand why they're not being solved. And so they just live with a painful gut. Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people live with this because their traditional doctors don't really have much to offer them, right?

1:01:43If you go see a gastroenterologist, what are they going to do? They're going to scope you. They're going to look down your esophagus. They're going to look up the other side.

1:01:51Dr. Darshan Shah:They're going to do a lovely colonoscopy and a lovely endoscopy. Right. And you can see what's going on microscopically with those. But microscopically, what's happening is your gut microbiome could be damaged. You can have leaky gut. Your endocytes 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 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 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.

1:02:32The gut is really controlling a lot of what's going on in our body, okay? And so the healthier your gut, the healthier the rest of your body is going to feel.

1:02:41Dr. Darshan Shah: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 is in others. Some people might be hearing this for the first time this year or the last few years. You've been surrounded by this 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 when I graduated from medical school at 21, I immediately went into becoming a surgeon. I love surgery. I did general surgery, trauma surgery. I was at the hospital all night long operating on people, sometimes 14, 16-hour cases.

1:03:21I then went to the Mayo Clinic to train, which is one of the best hospitals in the country, in my 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 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.

1:03:56And what I found in Western medicine was I just kept getting more and more pills to cover up the symptoms. And I just did not want to be on a 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 10 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 learned nutrition and exercise and functional medicine and got myself healthy. And that's what made me say, like, I want to practice this type of medicine now.

1:04:28I'm done being kind of a cog in the wheel of typical Western medicine, you know, and want to do something different.

1:04:35Dr. Darshan Shah:How much do you think emotions play in that? How much do I think emotions play in health and wellness or in my personal health and wellness? Yeah. Because I feel like your journey is 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. Yeah. 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, um, when I first did it, I was frustrated and angry. and as I got better, the emotions kept me going, right?

1:05:14Because 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 were telling me, you look so much better, you know? I lost 50 pounds over the course of a year. And so, and that was 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 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 say, of this journey. I would 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.

1:06:05And so some people have more effect of their emotional health on their overall health than 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 look in 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.

1:06:46It has to be the opposite, right?

1:06:47Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah, it does, because actually it's this never-ending journey of acceptance. And health is, in an interesting way, health is a metric of control, because you can control it. You can control your behaviors, right? 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. Yeah. You know, if I get to my million pounds a year, I'm going to finally be happy. When I get to five million a year, I'm going to finally be happy. You know, when I get to 500 million, when I sell my company for a billion, and it's like, are you ever going to be happy?

1:07:29Dr. Darshan Shah:You know, it's interesting. And I think there's this, and I'd love to talk to you about it, and I'd love to know if your patients feel this, sacrificing parts of these external metrics for joy and happiness? I would say that I talk a lot to my patients about this, you know, because people sometimes do get very obsessive and they do too much and they're always 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 than good, you know? You're getting more stressed.

1:08:05You're spending less time in joy than you are in, you know, 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 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 more positive, right? And there's a lot of ways to care for yourself, but it gives you more empathy for yourself when you refer to it as self-care.

1:08:39Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah, I love that. It's definitely been like a bit misconstrued with a bubble bath, but I think self-care needs a reframe. 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? 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 for me is really, I'm finding a really fascinating area to understand more about.

1:09:08Dr. Darshan Shah: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 come in different stages. So the first thing that's going to happen is people are going to 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 your entire health journey and then giving you real personalized, real-time feedback.

1:09:50and then for the first time, you're not going to feel like, I don't know what's going on and I don't know what to do because you are going to know what's going on and your AI is going to know what to do and it's going to tell you. And so at that point, you're not going 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 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 first place.

1:10:22It 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. And so that's really exciting because, you know, we all see these curves of how unhealthy people are getting. Obesity is rising. Alzheimer is rising. You know, diabetes is rising. And you see these graphs. You're like, oh, this is horrible. Like pretty soon 100 % of people are going to have 100 % of everything. And I think the reality is, I think we're going to reach in the next five years a point where that plateaus and actually reverses.

1:11:00And 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-1, for sure. I think GLP-1 is number one out of 100 different technological advances 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 going to lead to a place maybe in our children's generations where all of the problems that we talk about now are going to go away.

1:11:41you know and you know i might 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 the next 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 like we've eliminated massive amounts of death from infectious disease but people still get infectious disease, right? We're going to eliminate massive amounts of death from chronic disease, but people will still have some weird things happen and go on.

1:12:17But then we're going to figure out those things too. And it's an incredible world out there. Like, I mean, I don't see how we don't constantly keep heading towards a life of mostly being healthy.

1:12:29Dr. Darshan Shah:Well, I love that because we need optimism. Yeah, I'm very optimistic. And without that, we don't have, I mean, I mean, there's not a life worth 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 what you're meant to do, people can 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 sharing all your knowledge. You're so welcome.

1:13:01And I'll give your readers one more tip. Like, don't wait for someone to come to you and say, look, I made this app and it can tell you everything you need to do. Like, you know, this exists right now. And so all you need to do is get your blood work done. Take some of your wearable data, wear wearable for a little while, take the data, export it and take the PDFs of this and upload it to 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 know, ChatGPT is not a doctor, so it discussed the results with the doctor, but you will get good information right now today.

1:13:38And 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 10 causes of death, you know, the CDC publishes a top 10 list of why humans will die. These are all preventable things, right? One of them is actually car accidents. So, you know, you can prevent car accidents, wear your seatbelt, 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 prevented. Diabetes, we talked about a lot today, can be prevented. And so you can do that now, today, everyone can do it.

1:14:21And so it's just understanding that you have the power and then just taking the steps.

1:14:26Dr. Darshan Shah:Yeah, I think that's the most important thing. It's the power. because a lot of people, I think, and you know what it's like here, but in the UK you can't get a doctor's appointment and it can feel very frustrating. And then they have so many patients to see. You get 10 minutes and sometimes you've got three 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 ChattwT because I do think like being curious with what we've got out there and obviously making sure that you seek medical advice afterwards.

1:14:53Dr. Darshan Shah:But some of these things are the basics. And so that's where ChattwT can be a real help. Absolutely. And I think like, you know, 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 stopped being frustrated with this medical system and know that there's other solutions out there. AI is one solution. There's incredible practitioners just waiting to hear from you. Many nutritionists, there's, you know, trainers at the gym.

1:15:27They're just waiting for you to call them. waiting exactly so give them a call and start start making you know start making moves with your health because i promise you they can add up um if you do them and detoxify your life like 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 just waiting on your podcast

1:15:48Dr. Darshan Shah:this is the whole reason i made this five years ago was because i struggled to find it And I know it's a very different climate now that we're in, but it's literally changed my life, this show. You know, the amount of conversations I've had on this show, the amount of knowledge that I've consumed, doesn't mean that I do it all. It 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 get to share it with everyone too.

1:16:26Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

1:16:28Dr. Darshan Shah:So I always ask one question and it's my final question, which is Dachshund, 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, um, that's a really good, um, uh, question to end with. 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.

1:17:06And so for me, living well is getting it right as much as I can day to day and sticking to my daily routines and daily habits so that I feel great and I can have more time with my friends and my family. And that's it. That's all there is to it.

1:17:25Dr. Darshan Shah:I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dash. And I'm so glad we got to do this. 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 and down your biomarkers. But where else, like what else can they find you on? And 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. And then also my social media handle is at Darshan Shah MD.

1:17:55And then I give everyone my website, drshah.com. I have other tools on there on how to decrease your toxic exposure, improve your sleep, biomarkers. And so it's all free stuff on drshah.com.

1:18:07Dr. Darshan Shah:Amazing. And Next Health as well. Yes, at my clinic. So if you happen to be in the United States, also you're looking to come to the UK very soon, next-health.com. Can't wait. Sign me up. We have clinics 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 I'm very thankful that you're doing it. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

1:18:40Thank you.