Dr. Darshan Shah ON: 3 Step Process to Reset Your Gut Health and Reduce Inflammation & Why Sitting is Increasing Your Mortality Rate by 10%

26:37And you want to maintain that skeletal muscle mass. Number one thing to do is have one gram per pound of body weight of protein per day, broken up into three to four divided dosages. Okay. So you do that. You step on the scale. I like weighing myself every day. It gives you that accountability factor and you can track the data and make sure you're maintaining skeletal muscle mass. And if you need to decreasing fat mass, now one gram per pound of body weight, like people don't really know, like how, what is that really? So look it up. Most people weigh, you know, somewhere around 150 pounds, look up 150 grams of protein, look that up on Google and you'll see all sorts of infographics.

27:17And it's a lot of protein. It's not a small amount of protein. And if you're vegetarian or vegan, you can still do this, but you're going to probably need a little bit more because only about 80 % of that is bioavailable protein. So you want to maybe even increase a little bit more. And once you see that infographic, once you see, or just even like buy a little scale and measure out 150 grams of protein, see what it is, you're like, oh, wow, I am really not getting enough protein day to day. I've been thinking about that a lot lately myself. I've been looking at that and Radhi and I were talking about it.

27:48I was like, yeah, I'm not sure I'm getting as much protein as I need to be getting. And I'm obviously plant-based. So that was something that we were diving into. What are the best plant-based sources of protein that you're seeing? And that actually add up to that amount. I know what the sources are, but it's almost like, how do you get that much of it? Yeah, I mean, you know what the sources are, like beans and grains and all that. But also I, myself and all my vegetarian and vegan friends, I recommend, you know, pea protein powder. It's really good. It goes down easily. Put it, put it like you need to add it to like your oatmeal and other, other things that you're eating and you'll, you'll start building up, you know?

28:25And look, the idea is not to get from like 10 grams of protein a day all the way to 150 grams. You build up slowly over time and you see what kind of works for you. all of this needs to be individualized and that's why i like having like that data point which is the bioimpetence scale that in-body scale because you can see like oh wow my skeletal muscle mass is going up i'm doing good now like here's where i need to be right so you can really personalize it for yourself okay fantastic this is this is already helping me i'm like listening to everything you're saying this is it's so relatable and so so actionable immediately which which is fantastic And I love the, and I keep, keep, please keep sharing like the tools or the, the gadgets that we can have or websites or books, because I want all of our community to feel really supported and go, okay, that's what I haven't read yet.

29:13Or yeah, absolutely. And I have no financial like hookup with any of these companies. I'll tell you if I do, but this is the stuff that I love and I've seen my patients really take too as well. So I'm going to, I'm going to blurt them out and do your research, you know, but yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a bit about supplements and vitamins, because I think that there's a lot of like mixed messaging out there about what's needed, how much of it's needed. Some people are like, well, none of it really gets absorbed and does it make a difference? And there's always a debate about it. How do you go about figuring out what someone needs as an individual, as opposed to just taking what everyone's taking because you keep hearing about it everywhere?

29:54Yeah, that's such a great question. And we can't even talk about that, Jay, without talking about number four on the list, which was vegetables. All right. And I'll tell you why. So the fourth thing, which is as important as protein is getting enough vegetables in your diet on a daily basis. So do you know how much that is by chance? I don't. I mean, I have a lot of vegetables, but I have no idea. So you're going to have to tell me. Right. And so not a lot of people really know like what's the right amount. And really the amount of vegetables you eat has a lot to do with the amount of fiber intake you need, which 90 % of America doesn't get enough fiber and fiber is a critical ingredient of our diet.

30:32Secondly, that's where most of our micronutrients and phytonutrients are is in those vegetables. Thirdly, they just keep you full and satiated all the time as well. So getting enough vegetables in your diet is extremely important. The number that I've seen and a lot of fitness and nutrition gurus talk about is, it's a big number. It's like 800 grams of vegetables, which is about a quart of vegetables, right? So once again, get your scale and measure this out and see what it is. It's not a small amount. It's like two full salads a day, but that's kind of what we need to work up to. So if you're doing that, the need for supplementation is minimal to none, actually.

31:14I'm not a big supplement pusher. I'd much rather people get it in your diet. The reality of the situation is, however, it's really hard to get that much protein and that much vegetable product into your diet, right? And of course, we can't talk about vegetables without talking about making sure you're buying organic, you know, you're buying as local as possible. And if you can't go to ewg.org, Environmental Working Group's website, they'll give you a list of what are the most toxic vegetables and the least toxic out there right now. So look at that website and they'll give you the list. So if you're not getting enough vegetable intake into your diet, the next step is to add some supplementation to that.

31:55The most common supplements I recommend for people are vitamin D. We don't get enough sunlight to produce it. We're not getting enough in our diet. So most people do need some vitamin D. It needs to be dialed in based on a blood test. So you do a blood test. I like the vitamin D level to be around 50 to 80. And the vitamin D form that I like people to take is vitamin D3K2. The K2 is also another vitamin added in. It prevents over-absorption of calcium with the vitamin D and deposition of calcium in your blood vessels. So vitamin D3, K2, then fish oil supplement as well. For the vegetarians and vegans out there, there's some great non-fish sources of fish oil as well.

32:36So I would do that as well. Magnesium is something that we're all very deficient in. So I would do magnesium as well. And then creatine, believe it or not, it's amino acid. that has a lot of research behind it. Do you do creatine? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, fantastic, yeah. Five to eight milligrams every morning, just put a scoop in your coffee, it mixes in with anything. I think that's another really interesting, good one. And then I kind of then, you know, kind of do it based on what I ate the day before, right? So if I got a couple of good salads in, fine. I don't need to do anything else. If I didn't, I'll take a packet of AG1, which is like a phytonutrient powder, which I really like, and or a multivitamin.

33:15sometimes as well. I'll do that too. And then protein powders are pretty much always a staple for me as well. That's the other supplement that I use. And you're just putting that onto other stuff. Yeah. Putting that onto other stuff, putting that into a shake, you know, shakes are very convenient. There's a really good protein powder I like called super gut. It's actually a resistant starch and a protein powder and fiber all in one like bag. And so super gut is a fantastic like rescue product. I have like, if I've been on a plane for eight hours or something, you know, and I just come home and just take that and I get my nutrition in.

33:46And that's pretty much it. You know, there's other things you can do. Like if you're having trouble sleeping, there's ashwagandha, there's glycine. If you're having trouble with stress, ashwagandha is another good one for that. But then I'm really selective about which ones to use. Yeah, yeah. Great, those are fantastic. That's a really good breakdown for anyone. I mean, I remember when I first started measuring that with Mona, it's like my vitamin D, which you would never have known if you met me or saw me was 10. and it was just like i was living my life like i was on planes i was giving keynotes i was i was healthy i was energetic whatever and she was just like i don't even know how you function i was at a 10 it was like it was and i was unaware how old were you when you do this this is oh this is like a year and a half oh yeah like it was just interesting to me because the only thing i could feel is like i was feeling a bit of fatigue and that was the only thing and that's why I think that the reason why I'm raising that for my audience and community here today is don't take it for granted and don't assume that you might be like, oh, I don't need any of these vitamin supplements.

34:50It's like, it could be the tiniest thing that you're experiencing as a symptom. It's important to take it seriously because you don't want to be at a 10. You bring up an extremely good point. A couple of points I want to make here. One is you have to become the CEO of your own health. And what I mean by that is a CEO manages a business by looking at numbers on a daily basis, right? Most people manage their health based on a feeling that they have, symptoms that they have. They're not looking at numbers. So becoming the CEO of your own health means knowing what are the key KPIs of your health. There's only about 10 of them.

35:24Skeletal muscle mass being one of them, body fat percentage being another, vitamin D level being another. You gotta keep that dialed in, right? Because the other point I wanna make with you is that when your vitamin D level is low, like this age, and you don't take care of it for 20 to 30 years, that's when the lack of vitamin D leads to the higher risk of Alzheimer's, leads to the higher risk of heart attack, leads to the higher risk of hormone problems. It all started 20 to 30 years before when you barely felt it. You see what I mean? So looking at those numbers 20 to 30 years ahead of becoming sick is the key to becoming CEO of your own health.

36:02And then making all those diseases a non-issue, making all the things that people die of a non-issue. Fantastic. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And I'm so glad you made that connection because I think it often, when you find it out long-term, it then feels like a surprise. Right. But actually it isn't if you're looking at the numbers. And I think we just haven't been trained to look at our health in terms of numbers. Like you'd measure your height growing up or you'd measure your weight growing up, but those are such poor indicators of health in and of themselves without looking at all of these other metrics that we're talking about here today whether it's your glucose levels whether it's your vitamin d levels magnesium etc you mentioned so many other vitamins and supplements i just don't think we're trained to know where to look and what to look at and therefore we're basing it on i feel tired today i feel and i think this is something i want to mention as well that the mind and the body are so connected but I think so often our physical challenges we think are a mental challenge so we think we're tired because we have we're not focused enough or we're not excited enough or we're not motivated enough we make the physical issue a mental issue but it isn't it's purely a physical and I know that because I feel so purposeful and love what I do and I'm so joyful about it and I'm so excited about it so if my body's not working to the degree I want it to, I'm very clear that you can have all the mental stuff down, but if you're not taking care of your body, it doesn't just, you can push it a bit further, but that's not going to get you up the hill.

37:32So you're absolutely right. There's when your brain starts feeling it, usually your body is in big trouble. That's when you start feeling it. So, you know, I think your point about the numbers is so it resonates with me because that's what happened to me when I became sick, I outsourced my numbers to my primary care doctor and my concierge medicine doctor. And they got my numbers back. They looked at them. And you get these, if you've ever seen your blood worksheet, if something is out of range, it turns red. Otherwise, it's all black. It's all like a bunch of numbers. And so because things were barely in the red and not moving, they decided not to even talk to me about them.

38:12But in reality, things were changing for a long time and going in the wrong direction. And that's because Western medicine can't really do anything about that number until they can prescribe you a pill for it. And that pill only comes when it's disease time. That's the problem. And I also think people get overwhelmed with the numbers because, you know, most people don't know what these numbers mean. So what I really try to do with my patients is give them like 10 numbers. These are the 10 numbers you need to watch and why. and I think that makes it a lot easier for them. So I give them a spreadsheet.

38:45I let them watch their own numbers and I think it's important for them to watch their own numbers rather than outsource their health to their physician because they need to know what the optimal range is, not just the disease range, right? So let me just give you one more real quick on the glucose point. Please, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a really important one. It's a hemoglobin A1c and you probably heard of this before too. It's a measure of your last three months average of glucose and you're pre-diabetic when this number is 5.7 and you're diabetic when it's 6.5 or above. My number was 5.7 and he just put me on a medication.

39:21But five years ago, I had measured this with my doctor and it had gone from 4.7 to 5.0 to 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.4 and no one said anything to me, you know? And I could have done something about it back then before I had to, now it's an emergency, right? So I think that's another number people should watch nutrition-wise is that hemoglobin A1C number. And I guarantee you, if people call their doctors and ask for their latest blood work result, it's on there. Or it should be. If it's not on there, you have a bigger problem. But it should be on there and you'll see kind of where you're at. This is fantastic, Dr.

39:57Shah. Thank you so much. All right. I want to dive into, let's do exercise next. You brought that up. I want to dive into it. And if there's ever a time where you want to go back or share something, feel free. this is all about giving the most value to everyone who's listening and watching right when we talk about exercise i think everyone's kind of always known their need to exercise one of the things i love before we start talking about the technicality of it you talk a lot about the need for social exercising which i love that because recently i've been playing so much pickle ball with friends i don't know if you've been playing as well i gotta play pickleball with you I love pickleball.

40:33Yeah, and it's just, it is like, I have played, at this point today, I'm not playing today, I played the last five days in a row every day. I probably played for an average of two hours a day, on average, some days were three, some days was one. And it is such an easy workout because you're just running around, you're sweating, you're having a good time with friends, you're outdoors. And I've made it a priority in my life that all of my friendships this year, we're going to do something active together. So instead of getting together and sitting down and eating dinner, even though I love doing that, we're actually going to go on a hike instead or we're going to go on a walk.

41:11And if I don't feel like going on a hike or a walk, then at least we're just going to do something active, whether it be an escape room so that we're moving around or if it is that I have enough energy to play pickleball, we're doing that. The idea is how can every friendship be based on fitness that is also fun rather than friendship, which is based on us sitting on a couch, watching a movie together, which by the way, I still do as well, but that can't be the primary way to hang out. I'm Radhi Dvlukia and I'm the host of a really good cry podcast. And I have the opportunity to talk to Logan Uri.

41:40Logan is a dating expert, a behavioral scientist, a bestselling author, and someone who is seriously changing the way we think about love and dating. In our conversation, we talk all things dating that Logan has studied and tested from what to put in your dating profile, the pictures you should and shouldn't be using to the conversation starters that actually work. and the huge no-nos that people probably do not realize are reducing their chances of success on apps. Whether you're single, dating, or just trying to be more intentional in love, Logan offers the kind of clarity we all need. Relationships do require work.

42:13And the best relationships are people who really work on them together. They're so focused on, if I find the perfect person, then I'll have the perfect relationship. Instead of understanding really that they can choose someone great and then build that relationship together. They don't need to keep searching for perfection. Listen to a really good cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Such an incredibly good point. And I just spent the last weekend in Ojai with some of my friends. And literally, we would not sit down until we all hit 10 ,000 steps for the day.

42:48And pickleball was part of it. Hiking was part of it. And the old adage is so true. You become the average of the eight people you surround yourself with, right? And so of the eight people you're friends with, like my community of friends, we work out together. That is our social activity and it's so much fun. We find different things to do. We're lucky we live in the hills and we can hike together. We can go to these really fun gyms together. but it makes exercise not exercise i think what happens and why people don't get enough exercise is because exercise is literally like going to the gym by yourself and it's not inspiring a lot of times when you go to the gym if you don't especially if you don't have a trainer you know and social exercise for me was the cure to not getting enough movement in my day absolutely yeah it's huge and tell us about let's talk about what type of movement is needed because i think again we have so many preconceived notions exercise in someone's head could be like weightlifting that's what it looks like exercise could be doing a high intensity workout at a gym exercise could mean a sport what movement do we actually need to genuinely be healthy in a real way because you could be doing any or none of these things and you could or could not be healthy so what is that?

44:07What do we actually need? What do our bodies need? I love this question because it's counterintuitive. Okay. So people are always like, what do I need to do? I go to the gym. How many sets and reps and minutes on the treadmill do I need? And I tell them, wait, once again, Pareto principle, all you have to do is move all day long. So sedentary behavior, which means sitting for more than an hour at a time for eight hours a day is literally what's killing most of us right now. And so what happens is most people have an eight hour job, right? Out of that eight hour job, they'll sit for two hours, maybe get up to go to the bathroom, sit down for two or three hours again, have lunch where they're sitting.

44:46So just sitting for long periods of time increases your rate of mortality exponentially. So for every 10 % additional time you spend sitting, you have an increase of 10 % in your all cause mortality. And it's like linear. Wait, say that again? Yeah. For every 10 % of time that you spend sitting over a baseline, you have a 10 % increase in all cause mortality. That's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy how much sitting or just moving changes the entire equation. So once you go from being sedentary to not sedentary, your rate of death from heart attacks, from Alzheimer's and dementia, from stroke, from anything goes down exponentially.

45:27So what I tell people is no matter what, every 45 minutes you can take an exercise snack. And this has been proven in research as well. Every 45 minutes, spend 10 minutes getting up and walking around a little bit. And if you do that, you've broken the cycle of sedentary behavior completely. So what I do is I have my patients buy like a little egg timer, like a little metal. It looks like an egg. And we just set it to 45, put it down. And when it rings, you get up, walk around. and guess what? That's the same amount of time needed to break the strain on your eyes, to break the stress cycle as well.

46:03So it's a really good idea to take these exercise snacks when you're at home. I'm sorry, when you're at work, but then also when you're at home, people sit down and watch TV for two hours. So it happens again. So that's step one is don't be sedentary. Even athletes, there's so many athletes that are sedentary during the day, or during the evening, that they're affected by this as well. So focus on that first, don't be sedentary. Then step two on exercise is now what kind of activity can we put in to really start like moving the needle with how exercise can improve your longevity and health span.

46:37So do you want me to talk about that a little bit too? Yeah. Before you dive into that, there's something that I'm really glad to hear that because one thing I've been recommending to a lot of my corporate clients is I don't know who invented 30 minute and 60 minute meetings. meetings i just don't know where that came from we just invent these things where they have to be that long and i've started saying to so many of my clients who are living like i don't live a meeting to meeting life anymore so i get a lot of movement i'll stand up i'll walk over there i'll walk back i'll walk next door i'll jump in a car we'll walk to the meeting so i thankfully have a lot of movement in my day but when i used to work in the corporate world i used to always tell everyone have a 55 minute meeting or have a 25 minute meeting that then gives you an extra five minutes to stand up, to walk, to get hydrated, to look out of a window or maybe get some fresh air and then to look out into the distance so that you're not constantly short-sighted.

47:31I feel today we're constantly looking at our phone, at our laptop, at an iPad and we're becoming more and more short-sighted and that's why it kind of feels like our mind can feel a bit crowded and clouded and to me just going outside and looking out into the distance, maybe spotting a bird, a cloud, a distant building it just opens up the mind a little bit and i feel like just shifting it from having five minutes off every hour which isn't going to negatively impact a meeting you're not going to achieve anything more in that extra five minutes and same with if you took 15 minutes of a meeting maybe if meeting shifted to being 45 not an hour i think you'd achieve so much more in the meeting too because now you have less time and so i just think there's so much there and i just want to give people more value on that, that it's so easy and practical to implement some of this.

48:18And a lot of it's just breaking these old rules that have just lasted for far too long. Yeah, so true. And you must have talked to Google about this because on Google Calendar, you can program 25 minute meetings. Did you know that? Or - I didn't know that. Yeah, or 55 minute meetings. So every meeting is automatically like cut short by five or 10 minutes. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. And then what I tell people to do too is switch from a regular Zoom account to the free zoom account because it kicks you off in 40 minutes that's like sorry guys i gotta go i'm running out of time here yeah you might look cheap but it will save your health yeah but um on that one more double click on that point too is that if you do have a life where you have to spend a lot of time at your desk um on the computer on meetings really consider getting a treadmill desk or a walking desk that's been a game changer for me too like i'll get 25 30 000 steps in after three hours of meetings.

49:09You know, it's pretty, pretty incredible amount of steps. Yeah. That's amazing. All right. So, right. So, go to number two on the exercise. Okay. So, number two, I always think the most important thing that you can first start doing in an exercise routine is strength training, especially after the age of 40. Muscle breakdown is a root of all physical problems and frailty as we age. And so, really getting into a good strength training routine is key. And then secondly, you want to work on your cardio, right? And cardio really need to think about it in two prongs. There's anaerobic and aerobic. And anaerobic is basically, you know, working really hard.

49:45And then you have the aerobic where you're not working as hard and you're utilizing oxygen to make energy. So the way you do your anaerobic, I like using head exercises. There's anaerobic training protocols. Sports, I guess. Sports, right. Exactly. Where you're working really hard. You don't have to do a lot of that every week, but you do need to get some of that in every, every week. And then I really like what Peter Atiyah says about zone two aerobic exercise, like getting 30 to 45 minutes a day and to start every other day or so. I think that's important. But look, it's so hard for people to fit all this into their life, right?

50:17So you got to make it as easy as possible. So there's like these seven minute hit routine apps that you can do, which are fantastic. Getting a set of barbells and putting them in your closet or your bedroom. so every time you go there, you do 15, 20, like, you know, Arnold presses or something. Even that, as long as it's consistent and done on a daily basis for busy people, is gonna be extremely helpful. I think a lot of people think like, it's either go to the gym for an hour, three to four days a week, or just give up completely. Yeah. And nothing can be farther from the truth, right? Yeah, and you're saying literally having something at your office desk, having something in your bedroom, just that little bit of addition to your already busy life is going to make a difference and we need to stop having this glorified view of going to the gym and having the perfect workout routine right how do we get how do we get how have you found people get rid of that perfectionist mentality when it comes to health because i feel like we also have it with food we have it we're on we talked about nutrition we have it with exercise where it's like i'm gonna eat really healthy or i'm gonna eat really bad like if i had a pizza too many days in a row i might as well just carry on eating pizza because oh it's not going to matter that I had vegetables for one day, although you would argue it does matter.

51:29And that one day of breaking the cycle is probably useful. How have you worked with clients on that mental aspect of it? Because that's obviously what I focus on in my work so much. I'd love to hear about it from yours. Yeah. You know, it's, there's a lot of science around habit building and routine building. Atomic Habits is a great book that I read. There's a couple of others that I really like. And it's this kind of like this reward and cycle that you reward yourself over, you have to consistently reward yourself on a daily basis for doing the right things and then not punish yourself for doing the wrong things.

52:01And so I think there's a lot of psychology around that. It's, it's honestly, it's really hard. I mean, we find it hard for ourselves too, right? But I really believe in having a positive attitude about it. I think if you come at it with positivity and say, you know what, it's fine, I messed up, but I'm going to do it. And you're just positive about it. That in itself is a psychological barrier broken into starting today as a first day of your life to start building new habits again. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. It's, I think, I can't remember who said it, but I've heard The Rock say it plenty of times.

52:35He's like, it's either one day or day one. Right. And he'll always quote that, right? It's a mindset. Like it's either one day, we'll get to it one day, I'll do it one day. Or it's like, no, today's day one. This is the day that I'm going to solve it and start it. And I think that's that positive mindset you're speaking about. Yeah, exactly. was there a 0.3 on exercise that you wanted to make? I'm sure there's a 0.7, but was there another one you wanted to kind of? We should probably stop there on exercises. There's absolutely more you can do. Of course. As you get older, your audience spans all ages and everyone.

53:08As you get older, you really want to look at stability and balance. So I try to do stability and balance exercises on a daily basis as well. Things like standing on one foot, believe it or not. Yeah, just things like that. As we get older, we lose that. and if you're not training it, especially after the age of 50, you're gonna keep losing it and then the number one killer of older people is becoming frail, falling because they lose their balance and breaking a hip or a bone. That's what usually takes out most older people and so you can avoid that by incorporating some stability balance routines in your life.

53:41I really appreciate you also looking at it from the perspective of like, let's stop there because I think so often people listen to podcasts or read books there's just so much information and then that makes us go all right i don't know where to start and so i love the fact that you're like well wait a minute let's just this is step one this is stage two i love that very curriculum systematic based approach to mastering our health rather than starting on point number seven and then figuring it out so and like what i do with my patients is like we're having this conversation about everything but i'll only give them one thing to do right and like we'll change two or three things and then you come back and we'll do the next thing and then the next thing.

54:21So let's not worry about how much protein you have in your diet until you clean out your pantry and get rid of all the crap in your pantry, right? Let's do that first and then let's talk again next week. And so we take it at a stepwise approach. But if whoever's listening to this, you know, if you're taking notes, don't try to implement all of it at the same time. You're getting overwhelmed and quit. Yes, absolutely. Right? Absolutely. All right, let's talk about sleep. So I've generally been a good sleeper my whole life and very grateful for that. How do you know? By measuring, as in I was going to say, yeah, by measuring, not by how I feel.

54:53By measuring, I wanted to talk about an experience that I had that was bad, which was surprising for me. So I was wearing the Oura ring for a long time, measuring my sleep, and I was scoring really well. And then during the pandemic, we moved home and we were renting a place that was... really disruptive at night we'd get real animals in the floorboards in the walls there was lots of noises outside I often because of where we were and there were certain things about it that I was worried that what if someone broke in and you know there were these other anxieties that I had around it and it was the first time in my life that I think I consecutively had one and a half years of bad sleep during the pandemic and it was really interesting because I was doing my supplements I was eating right I've always meditated I was doing everything and just this one undercurrent man I was fatigued I was exhausted I was irritable like it was so it was so intense because I just wasn't sleeping deeply and I'd often wake up multiple times per night and that wasn't normal for me and I also was wearing the aura ring at that time and it was my sleep score was just not great and that was actually what forced me to move to this place and and get this home because I was just like I was I was telling Radhi I was like I need to leave like it was that bad and so I know what it feels like to have good sleep and bad sleep and I think that sleep is one of those areas of our health that we underestimate in terms of how great it can be but I think so many of us struggle with sleep whether it be anxiety whether it be insomnia whether it be stress and so I want to start off by talking about tracking your sleep and improving the environment that we sleep in at least as a starting point.

56:42But I do want to get to two and three with you today on your list, because I do think there are people who are trying to do all that stuff, but there's still something not clicking. And I'm sure you've experienced this a million times with clients. So let's start at step one and then see where we go from there. Right. So I agree with you, like tracking is a game changer, but I can also tell you that I've had a lot of patients that get super anxious tracking and they live and die by those numbers. Right. So if you're one of those people that the over tracking of sleep kind of changes your day and changes your perspective on your day, only use tracking for a very specified amount of time.

57:18Use it for when you are very mindfully changing your sleep habits and your routines and then stop worrying it once you got your sleep score up to a score that you like. Right. I personally, I like tracking my sleep all the time. I'm just a real data guy. So I like to see it. but when i go on vacation now i don't wear my aura ring because i know that the sleep's not going to be as good sometimes right um so so you know i use it i use it for when i'm being mindful about trying to get better sleep or if something's changed like i notice um i had covid um and right after covid i had long covid and my heart rate was racing for months yeah it was horrible and um um it really affected my sleep but my aura ring told me that this is what's happening this is why you're not sleeping well, your heart rate is racing.

58:04So I think the benefit of sleep tracking is really understanding it's not just the number of hours you're sleeping, it's really the sleep pattern and educating yourself on that sleep pattern. Aura does a good job. Whoop does a good job. The Eight Sleep mattress has a phenomenal tracker. Eight Sleep is great. It's great. I love it. Yeah. And, you know, understanding how much deep sleep you need, where that deep sleep needs to be in your sleep night and understanding things like heart rate variability and an average heart rate at night is a game changer, right? While you're modifying your sleep environment and your routine.

58:38So once we get that in place, then the second thing we do is we absolutely make sure the person doesn't have sleep apnea. All right. So for those of you don't know, sleep apnea is that's when you stop breathing at night, your body physically stops taking in oxygen. You don't have oxygen in your body for a few seconds at a time, but all night long. That affects your brain, your heart, virtually every organ in your body. So many people have sleep apnea and don't recognize it. And it's really sad because it's causing, basically, I tell them it's causing a slow death, believe it or not. If you have sleep apnea, you have to get it treated right away.

59:14There's lots of different ways of treating it. There's dental appliances. There's, you know, that CPAP mask you you're aware of this surgery, but you got to figure it out because no matter what you do, it's not going to go away. What are some of the symptoms that people could notice? Right. So the symptoms of sleep apnea are number one, you wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night or your significant other you're sleeping with tells you that. Secondly, you wake up really tired every morning and you have daytime somnolence where you're just kind of falling asleep a few hours after you've woken up.

59:43Even snoring very loudly can indicate sleep apnea as well. So if you know your spouse, whoever tells you you're snoring really a lot. And then there's a questionnaire you can take online. It's a very simple questionnaire called a stop bang questionnaire, S-T-O-P-B-A-N-J. Just Google that. And you take the questionnaire, it'll give you a score and it'll tell you if you need to be evaluated for sleep apnea. So being evaluated for sleep apnea now is much easier. People used to dread going to a sleep lab and getting all the wires put on them. Now you just wear like a little device on your finger overnight at home and we can get a good idea if you have sleep apnea or not wow and the sleep doctors are very good at treating this now as well well and you're saying there's different types of uh therapy or there's different types of treatments for sleep apnea yeah yeah yeah there's there's stuff you can get from your dentist like a little dental appliance that pulls your jaw forward there's a c-pap mask there's also surgeries that you can do as well losing weight special pillows propping your bed there's lots of things you can do.

1:00:42Wow. Okay. Yeah. I can't believe that. It's so fascinating, right? Again, because these things haven't been measured since we were young and because we don't know what to look out for, you could be sitting there for months or years going, why do I wake up feeling like this? Maybe I'm anxious. Maybe I'm stressed. And that could be a part of it, but there's something else going on as well. Yeah. I can tell you how many people that I simply asked a few questions I just asked you and they're like, yeah, I have that. Yeah, I have that. And it's like a revelation. And they're 55 years old and they have sleep apnea.

1:01:11They've had it for 25 years. So it's really sad how underdiagnosed it is and how incredibly treatable it is. And that could change the trajectory of your life, you know, because once you treat sleep apnea, your metabolism actually gets under control and you start losing weight. You start having less glucose spikes. You start eating better. You feel less brain fog. And then you also prevent, sleep apnea is one of the main risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. So you prevent Alzheimer's too. So once again, it's knowing early and treating things early. What if someone's, they're okay just about getting to sleep, but that they wake up multiple times when they're sleeping.

1:01:51What have you found to be useful for someone in that scenario? Have you treated, worked with anyone who has that? I've just met so many more people these days that are not telling me they can't sleep. they're saying I can sleep but then I'm waking up and then waking up and these aren't people with kids or anything so this is like a you know it's just how they're feeling three main reasons for it I normally see one is nocturia where they have to get up in the morning to go to the bathroom and so there's medications and exercises you can do to treat that the second reason is going to bed with anxiety and stresses on your mind so what I tell people to do is number one no electronics and maybe even no TV before going to bed because that can keep you thinking.

1:02:29But keep a notebook by the side of your bed. If you're one of these busy people that you have so many things going through your head, write them all down and then you'll at least download that onto a piece of paper and hopefully get it out of your head. But the third thing that I find that really does this too is eating or drinking a little bit too close to your sleep. You have this kind of glucose surge that happens after you get to bed and it just wakes you up too. So really making sure there's three to four hours between your last meal and going to bed is key. Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought up the devices and conversation because I was talking to a lot of people when people have been saying to me, Jay, I'm experiencing anxiety.

1:03:11One question that I often ask people is, what did you watch last night? And there are some people in the world who can watch the craziest, scariest, eeriest things and not feel anything. and there are people who watch those things and it puts these cliffhanger chemicals, as I like to call them, into your body, which constantly puts you on that cliffhanger, which keeps you up, that makes you wake up with this state of fright. I was just at, we went to watch Oppenheimer a couple of weeks ago and we were watching the trailers and the Exorcist trailer came up. There's another Exorcist movie. And Radhi just sat there like this.

1:03:45If you're watching, sorry, if you're listening, then I'm closing my eyes and my ears. And Radhi literally sat there like that and she was like just tell me when it's done because she doesn't want to watch it and that that trailer was far too long for a trailer i felt like it told me the whole movie it was so faradhi she knows that she's aware of that and so she won't watch and consume content like that i can watch it and laugh it off and be fine and it won't affect me unless i'm watching it every day and i think it's so important that we we check ourselves that way because you're just making it harder for yourself in a way you don't need to right absolutely i'm one of those people i can't watch horror movies anymore it just affects me way too much it sticks in my head i actually become a scaredy cat at night and i can't sleep so i just don't even entertain the thought of watching like even a trailer i'd probably close my eyes from that trailer that trailer was haunted that was like do not watch the new exodus trailer if you want to sleep at night down like it stayed with me for a while but uh no that's great anything else on sleep that you feel as as that one two three as we're going yeah so number one is sleep apnea make sure you don't have it as you're tracking your sleep two and three are fix your sleep environment and fix your sleep routine so your sleep environment needs to be like how our ancestors slept when they were cavemen a cold dark cave right so turn the temperature down in your room what's even better than turning it down in your room is buying like an eight sleep or something that keeps your bed cool itself but it should be somewhere around 65 degrees dark like totally dark like even the little red lights and alarm clock, cover them with black electrical tape and put them in a different room and then quiet.

1:05:21And most people can't get it fully quiet or some people like the quiet even becomes like it becomes noise to them. So a sound machine, like a white noise machine is very, very effective in improving your sleep. And what's really cool about doing these things is you can do like one thing and see how it affects your sleep score. And then a week later, buy a white noise machine and see what happens to your sleep score. Like you might not feel it physically the next day, but your tracker will tell you like you went up from 85 to 95 just by buying a white noise machine. And I've seen it happen over and over again.

1:05:53And so your sleep routine, what I like to tell people is your sleep routine actually starts the moment you wake up. And there's probably like only 3 % of people that the moment they wake up, they actually go outside to expose themselves to sun, right most people just they go from being inside to going in their garage getting in their car going to work parking in the garage right like no one goes outside anymore in the morning i make it a point to take me and my kids outside first thing in the morning expose yourself to sunlight that sets your secretion rhythm your melatonin is going to start secreting like it's 14 hours afterwards that's key sleep routine starts first thing in the morning and then you know how the iphone now has like a sleep alarm right so like it's not an alarm clock to wake you up is when you need to start preparing for sleep.

1:06:38So when that alarm goes off two hours before sleep, all the lights turn off as much as possible, switch on some, you know, soft orange colored bulbs instead, and just start winding down your brain. You know, a big part of that is avoiding electronic devices. Absolutely. Yeah, great advice. No, great, great advice. And all things that I've been practicing, I used to, I used to worry about sleeping at 65 degrees, because I think it would feel cold. And what I always remind people is you still have your duvet, you still have your blanket over you like you don't you don't have to be cold uh you can still wear pajamas right like it's just cooler in the room and that's been done wonders for my sleep even for sleeping in longer and and being more comfortable the cave-like darkness has always been a a big win for me and and huge and i think that the we've always tried to have very early dinners and that's been such a huge thing of like we try and eat dinner like 6 6 30 p.m just so that when you're in bed at 9 30 that it's, you know, easier to go to sleep.

1:07:38But all the things we've had to work on over time and adjust and figure out, and it's not always perfect. And, you know, it's, yeah. And part of like the eating dinner earlier thing too is our caveman ancestors didn't eat after it became dark, right? And so it's really food is another item that sets your circadian clock almost as much as light does as well. So that's a key factor eating earlier. But yeah, it's all little things and one at a time. And, you know, you're not going to change everything overnight it might take a year but it benefits you for the next 50 yeah right absolutely absolutely i want to dive into so there's a few areas left and i want to take bits and pieces of all of them i don't want to do all of them but i want to dive into gut health just because it's so i didn't realize for years i was having gut issues because i just didn't know what that even meant i didn't know how to know i think today now people are much more informed i'm talking about like 10 13 15 years ago when I didn't feel it was in the zeitgeist or the conversation as much.

1:08:37How can someone be conscious and aware if they're not already that they may have leaky gut, that they may have gut issues that they're not fully conscious or aware of, or they're being negligent? I was one of those people who, even if there was some discomfort, I would just write it off because you're young and you're fit and you're healthy and you don't care about it too much. What should people be looking out for? Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And once again, by the time you become symptomatic from some of this stuff, a lot of damage has already been done for a long period of time, right?

1:09:09And so what I look at here is another one of those biomarkers, one of those CO of your own health type of things, which is a biomarker called HSCRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein. This is a marker of inflammation. It's a very simple test that every doctor lab can do. We've been doing it for like 50, 60 years in medicine, but it's a marker of inflammation. You want this number as close to zero as possible, but a lot of times it'll go up to one, two, three, or four. And usually that comes from some sort of situation going on in your gut. So your gut is the biggest organ in your body protecting you from the outside environment.

1:09:46Most people think it's your skin, but your gut actually has four or five times the surface area of your skin does. And so when that barrier to the outside environment is disrupted, toxins from the outside environment filter into your bloodstream, causing inflammation. Inflammation is when your immune system is overactive and you not only destroy the toxins, but you start destroying your normal brain, heart, muscle, bone cells, all of it. So you need to know when you have inflammation going on in your body. the first way to tell is by this blood test and then probably after that blood test has been elevated for months and years is you finally start feeling it in your gut so if you get this measured and you have this a little bit too high then you start looking at your gut as a primary source secondary source would be your oral health believe it or not like yeah talk about that that was yeah go for it yeah there's a huge association between poor oral health dementia and heart attacks as well.

1:10:44And that's because a lot of inflammation takes place in your mouth if you have cavities, if you have gingivitis, etc. So, you know, if your inflammation levels are high, you need to go see the dentist, make sure your oral health is okay, but then you need to start treating your gut. Here's where a functional medicine doctor can be extremely helpful because they can really sort through like what is going on with your gut? Do you have leaky gut? Why do you have leaky gut, you know, 10 % of the population has gluten sensitivities, 7 % is dairy sensitive, or probably even more. These are just, you know, these are just estimates.

1:11:18And once you start eliminating those inflammatory foods, the toxins in your food from your diet, your gut starts to heal and we can put you on a gut healing protocol, reduces inflammation and inflammation is a root cause of all the major diseases. Once you treat inflammation, your chance of getting all the other diseases or much less, right? So you got to focus on your gut. And so this is where, you know, I tell my patients, like, look, it's not just about sleep, exercise, and diet. Now we need to start talking about gut health. Like that's another thing we need to talk about. And so HSCRP is the biomarker for that.

1:11:54Measure that. And then of course, if you're having symptoms, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, definitely need to go get that checked out. Yeah. It can be so easy to just kind of feel embarrassed about it or be negligent of it or to just kind of brush it off to the side but i can't tell you the number of like men and women that i see that are like don't want to talk about it because they're just like doctor you know like i have a lot of gas they're so embarrassed about it but it's like let's double click on that we need to figure that out right yeah and it's just and it's just it's almost like it's it's weird what we've been taught to like be ashamed of in society when these are like really normal natural things that we all need to be massively aware of.

1:12:35It's interesting how the most important things in society become the most taboo to talk about. You know, we're talking about health right now. Money's another one in a different way. Even like relationship challenges or things that are vulnerable have become this thing of like, don't talk about it. It's weird, it's strange. Yeah, it's sad, right? Yeah, it's really sad. Yeah, it's really sad. Well, hopefully, I mean, stuff like this podcast, you bring it to light, people start talking about it and bringing it more into mainstream conversation is so important. Yeah, I think that's what's needed.

1:13:03I mean, I know for a long time, like, I didn't know who to talk to about things because you just don't hear it. And I think when people are talking to their doctors, also having physicians who we feel understand this language. And that's why I think with you saying that we need to become the CEO of our own health, I think we've always wanted to outsource it to a doctor or to a healthcare professional, whatever it may be. And the truth is, no one's going to care about it as much as you. Absolutely. And so it has to start there. So this, I want to focus on this one because it's so interesting. So you obviously talk about heart health as one part of your wellness wheel.

1:13:38And it fascinates me because even when I've seen it on your wellness wheel a million times when I've been in, and when we know how important the heart is, we rarely talk about heart health. And if we do, we kind of do it in a soft way. We don't really talk about it from a scientific point of view. and you talk about how important it is to know our levels at 25 years old is the ap a p ob yep it will be right yeah so walk us through that and understanding what that is what it means and how do we know right exactly so i think everyone's heard about like watching your cholesterol levels right okay so right now what happens is you get your cholesterol levels measured sometimes in your 30s if you're lucky usually dock to wait till you're 40 and unless it's like over a really high number no one's really going to do anything about it and then people will start talking to you about your diet and managing your exercise you know exercise more eat better eat less fat eat less cholesterol then you just kind of let it go until all of a sudden it's an emergency for you to get on a statin, you know?

1:14:45And I think it's kind of 10, 15, 20 years too late at that point in time, right? The damage has already been done. If you do cardiac testing, you'll see that there's already blockages in blood vessels at that point in time. And most of the time, these are not diagnosed until people have their first heart attack. No one even looks at the blood vessels until you've had a heart attack. And it's really sad the way this whole thing goes. And it's especially sad because heart attacks and strokes can become like an orphan disease, like a disease that never affects us if we just do it right. And this is where I think medicine has made like a tremendous, incredible amount of knowledge has been gained.

1:15:26And this is where I try to really encourage my patients to really partner with their medical doctors and really get this treated. So when I say know your ApoB level, I love ApoB. It's a new type of cholesterol measurement, kind of lumps together all the bad forms of cholesterol, which I even hate saying bad cholesterol, but it lumps that together, the dangerous forms. And knowing what your APOB level is when you're 20, 25, that's kind of the baseline where you want it to be, right? So as this starts creeping up, you want to start doing things about it with your exercise, diet, sleep, gut health, all of that matters.

1:16:01But then when it gets to a certain level, that's a little bit too high, that's when you want to start doing cardiac testing and diagnosis. So there's really great tests that can be done now, CAT scans of your heart that can tell you 20, 30 years ahead of time before you have a heart attack if you have a blockage. And we have great therapeutics now to turn back the time on these blockages to get rid of these blockages to prevent you from having a heart attack. I can't tell you the number of patients that we've had in our clinics that we've done this scan on preventatively. And how many of them had to go straight to the emergency room to get a blood vessel opened up, you know?

1:16:38double clicking on this, just because I think it's really important for your audience to know APOB. And there's another one. Everyone needs to get measured when they're young is LP little a, or even young or old. If you've never had it done, got to measure LP little a. LP little a is a genetic form of cholesterol that can't be treated with diet, nutrition, and exercise or cholesterol lowering medication, traditional ones. And if you're one of the few percentage of people that have it you'll still get massive blockages in your arteries at a very young age so most people don't check that until it's too late as well and we can treat that now as well so lp little a and apob two tests everyone need to ask their doctor about that's fantastic i'm so glad you're like giving us a vocabulary of knowing what to check because i think otherwise you know i know i just got to my doctor and be like well how how healthy is my heart and they're gonna be like you're fine like you know and it's and i think that's the challenge we don't really have a vocabulary or we don't know the exact tests and checks that need to happen and again i think you've given us so many across the board and i just hope everyone who's listening or watching like please please please go and check these things out because i just want you to live a healthier longer happier life and you know so much of this could either make it easier or harder right absolutely and i think you know there's different types of people some people like you like you want to know and you want to know as soon as possible because you want to make sure you get it treated or take care of it before it becomes a big problem.

1:18:05And so those are the type of people I think will take this information and really run with it. Then there's another type of people that will take this information, bring their notes to their doctor. Some of their doctors will say, okay, let's check it. Some will be like, no, you don't need to do that. And they'll be like, okay, I'll just leave it, which, you know, it's fine. But I really encourage people to become the CEO of their own health, become more aggressive and proactive and learning and tracking these things and pushing your doctor on some of this stuff. And then you have a group of people that just like, they want their head in their sand, like, I don't want to know until it's a problem.

1:18:36Tell me then, which there's not much you can do about that except, you know, take care of them. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We've talked about brain health before on the show, but I wanted to talk about cancer. And the reason why I want to touch on that, obviously it's because I think the rates are just going up and up and up I've lost two people in the last four years three people in my entire life people that I'm like very close to this does not include your auntie your mom's friend like you know like not even just like looking around the whole space but like people that I'm directly close to and all from different causes all from different reasons it's something that I think you know that we all have a fear around because you You just hear it so often and everyone's going through something.

1:19:18Like you talk about cancer's biggest enemy is being diagnosed at stage one. But whenever I've had friends or people I love, we always find out at stage three or four. So how do we get that? What do you need to do? So cancer diagnostics literally in the last five years has become incredibly revolutionized. And there's two tests that have done this. One is a test called the full body MRI, like the PRNUVO scan. Which is what we did when I think, yeah. Right, exactly. Yep, you did the full body MRI. And that happened because we've always had MRI scanners, but now MRIs are becoming more ubiquitous and cheaper.

1:19:57These are no radiation scans of your entire body. And they're getting quicker too. So we can do the whole body in like under an hour. I always say if Steve Jobs had one of these, he'd still be alive today. You know, so it's a scan that scans your whole body for not just tumors, but also other anatomical abnormalities that can kill you like aneurysms in your brain or your aorta. So I think that's a very useful test. It's controversial because you do find a lot of what's called incidentalomas. These are incidentals that you end up chasing down a rabbit hole as far as what is that thing over there.

1:20:27but if you can tolerate a little bit of you know having diagnostics done and a little bit of stress while you figure out what those things are you'll know a lot more about your body in enough time to take care of an issue so that's one technology the second technology which is truly revolutionary is the liquid biopsy this is the grill the gallery grill test and this is a blood test that you can do and you just send in a vial of blood they check it for little fragments of DNA from active tumors in your body. Okay. And so it can diagnose 50 of the most hard to diagnose tumors at very early stages.

1:21:08And right now, unfortunately, this test is expensive and not covered by insurance. My feeling is as the technology evolves, it'll become cheaper and cheaper, of course, and it'll become the new standard in medicine is to check everyone for this once a year. because the reason cancer is so hard to treat is because of being diagnosed at stage three or four when it's sometimes metastatic, right? And then it's almost, you have to go chemo, radiation, surgery. It's so hard. But once you diagnose it as stage one, it's like it's not even had a chance to get there, right? So this blood test, if you can afford it right now, you know, once a year, I would start doing it.

1:21:45If you can't, it's gonna get cheaper. Keep your eye out on it. I think it'll get cheaper really quickly as a lot of technology is becoming right now. It's going to revolutionize the way we diagnose cancer. And then everyone, in addition to those, you can't just do those. Each of those detects its own things, right? You've got to get your colonoscopy, do it early, especially if you have a family history of colon cancer. We had that done too. Yep, exactly. Yeah, very important. I was scared for like a week. It was like, yeah. Yeah, it is scary. But the nice thing about colonoscopy is not just diagnosing cancer.

1:22:16Like if you go in there and you see a pre-cancer, you can remove it immediately. So it's like treatment as well, right? And then for men, get the PSA test, which is a blood test for your prostate. For women, make sure you get your mammograms and make sure you get your OBGYN exams. That's kind of like the array of preventative diagnostics you wanna do now in the 21st century to basically diagnose cancer before it kills you, as soon as possible. And how do we cancer-proof our body? Cancer-proofing is done by doing all of the other things that we talked about today. Getting seven, eight hours of sleep, making sure that your nutrition comes mostly from whole foods, not processed foods, and exercising and not being sedentary.

1:23:01The other thing is eliminating toxins from your day-to-day life. And so we can talk about that a little bit, if you like, how to eliminate toxins. So the Pareto principle on that is, realize where do you spend the most time, right? You spend the most time probably at work and asleep in your bed at night. That environment, the air in that environment, you want that to be as clean as possible. So you want to detoxify your air, your water, your food, and chemicals on your skin. So air, buy an air purifier for each one of those environments if the air is not perfectly clean. For your water, I recommend getting an under-sink reverse osmosis system in your kitchen where you get most of your drinking water, drink it out of glass bottles for the most part.

1:23:43and for your food organic or go to that website called ewg.org and finally for the cosmetics that you use and the stuff you put on your body there's a great app called think dirty and it you can put any product in there scan the barcode it'll tell you the level of toxin and recommend to you the most non-toxic products you do that you've covered 80 of the landscape like you're you're living in a mostly non-toxic environment i'm sure there's people that have other things that they do but that to me are the keys yeah my wife is my think dirty app like she's gonna figure out she's like she's checked every product she got us to switch to a glass bottled water she put the reverse osmosis system in like she's just so on top of all this stuff and i'm like if i didn't have her in my life i don't know what i'd be doing right now and it's incredible how these and and also you know when someone recommends these things like when my wife first came up with this reverse osmosis water thing i was like come on like do we really need it like you know and and it's interesting how we have such random resistance to a lot of these things we kind of overthink it or we we underthink it where we just go oh well that can't be that such a big deal like i think the whole bottled water thing is now blown up when my wife was talking to me about it like four or five years ago and at the time it was like i could have been a bit like oh no it doesn't matter it's just a plastic water bottle and now you see the research right and so i think it's so interesting how like Like if you have someone in your life, your friends, your family who are recommending things to you, be open-minded about it because you have no idea when it's finally going to be proven.

1:25:15And I'm hoping that anyone who's listened to this episode, please, please, please share this episode with friends and family members because I think what Dr. Shah has done beautifully today is he's laid out step one, step two, and step three. And so whether you're someone who's just getting started in your journey or whether you're someone who's trying to refine it and improve it and enhance it in a deep way, you know, you've kind of given the pathway for all of those. Well, thank you. And you know, you're right. It's so easy to be skeptical, right? It's hard to be not skeptical and open-minded and do your research and really dive in.

1:25:47But I mean, you do such a good job of, you know, trying to get people to break through that barrier of skepticism and opening their mind to new possibilities that I think if people were to like, just kind of, even if they pick up one thing and research it on their own, you're going to make a positive change, right? I agree. Dr. Shah, you've been incredible today. I mean, you've given us such a wealth of insight And like I said at the beginning, I want this to be the episode that you come back to, to go, if I'm looking at my gut health, what do I need to focus on? If I'm looking at my nutrients, what do I need to focus on?

1:26:16Please, please, please take a screenshot of this episode right now. I want you to make sure that you tag Dr. Shah and I on social media so that he can see what resonated with you, so that I can see what's that one thing you're trying? What's that thing that is now your day one, not your one day? What is the thing that you're putting into practice that is going to shift how you feel? that is going to shift how you live your life? What is the thing that you've been avoiding measuring that you're going to measure from now on to make sure that you can start taking the proactive steps in avoiding some of these challenges that you can?

1:26:48Dr. Shah, I want to ask you the final five, of course, which we do with every guest. But I want to make sure that I ask, where should people find you? Where should people follow you? Where can people connect with your work to continue to be educated? Yeah, so I've been doing this course for my patients now for many years. And a lot of them want their family and friends to do this, but they might be living in different countries. So I recently started putting the entire course on my Instagram page. So at Darshan Shah MD, if you go there, like it's all kind of in order. We're going to start with nutrition, then move on to sleep and move on to exercise, et cetera.

1:27:22And over the course of the year, we'll have all the content on there, but in a sequential fashion. That's fantastic. So Darshan Shah MD on Instagram is the place to go and follow. We're hoping you can upload it to TikTok as well. so yes yeah yeah we need we need darshan shah md on tiktok i love it both of them would be amazing uh dr shah these are your final five we ask these to every guest sometimes a different mocktail of of all of them but we need one word to one sentence maximum for each question so question number one what is the best health advice you've ever received get up and start moving nice all right question number two what is the worst health advice you've ever received let your doctor watch your blood markers.

1:28:05Right. Wow. All right. Question number three, what is something you used to be skeptical about in terms of health and wellness techniques, but now you swear by? Yeah. This whole field of eliminating toxins from your day-to-day environment. I used to think it didn't matter, but it matters so much. Again, yeah. You think, oh, air purifier. Like it's just, yeah. What are they trying to sell me? But it does make a huge difference. Right. Question number before, what is something that you used to swear by for your health? And now you actually think, no, I don't need to focus on that anymore. Intermittent fasting.

1:28:38I know a lot of people will get upset at that answer, but I think there's a lot of science to the contrary now. Yeah, let's dive into that. Let's segue into that for a second. Yeah. So intermittent fasting is great for people that need to start eating less calories on a day basis is a good way to manage your caloric intake. But like I said earlier, a lot of people end up taking less protein. And so they lose skeletal muscle mass. And that's what happened to me. I was intermittent fasting, I started at my skeletal muscle mass and my scale started like plummeting. And I was like, what is happening?

1:29:11And it's all because intermittent fasting. So I stopped it. So it's really more about what molecules you're putting into your body, I think, rather than the timing of it. And I think, you know, you really want to be careful if you are intermittent fasting that you're still getting your protein intake and you are also not in the category of people that are either pregnant or breastfeeding or you know an athlete i think i've seen a lot of athletes actually cause a lot of damage to their metabolism by intermittent fasting that's i i mean i'm not an athlete but i found that when i was experimenting with it so i do i stop eating dinner by like 6 30 p.m and i don't eat until the next morning until 9 a.m so that's the closest I get to it but I'm someone who needs to eat three meals a day and I don't snack a lot and so for me it's like those three meals are my main meals and I'm very happy with them so breakfast lunch and dinner so I eat breakfast at nine lunch at 12 to one and then dinner at six and it's like for me that keeps my energy steady I'm not overeating or under eating at any point like it works for me and so I've always I've always been interested in that as well because I've always found myself feel healthier, happier, and stronger when I'm doing that.

1:30:20Yep. And that's the key. You have to go by how you feel. And I think you said another key where you don't have to snack during the day. Like you're obviously eating cold foods and you're eating an adequate quantity where you're not having a snack. So that's another key as well. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Fifth and final question, Dr. Sarr, which is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? get yourself a group of friends that you're so happy and proud to be around that you share common interests in where you want your life to go not just where it's at right now it's a great answer everyone that's dr shah on on purpose thank you so much for listening and watching again i hope that you take away and practice as dr shah kept saying just one thing from this episode and watch how your life changes again a big thank you follow dr shah on instagram at darshan shah md on instagram and on tiktok soon to come uh make sure you do that and i hope that you stay happy stay healthy and stay well uh thank you again thank you so much thank you thank you if you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with dr daniel amon on how to change your life by changing your brain if we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain you know I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers.

1:31:47And their brains are very damaged. This is an iHeart Podcast.