#1 Longevity Expert REVEALS Surprising Warning Signs You’re Aging Too Fast

26:16So I think doing it with a skilled practitioner, once again, is critical. Yeah, that's good to hear. You know, my philosophy when it comes to hormone replacement therapy for men and women has always been also with sort of the understanding of Eastern medicine. And the way that they would explain it is, one, when you take exogenous hormones, we know your body stops producing it. Yes. Okay. Or it decreases the amount significantly. And so in Chinese medicine, they would say, though, that stops the flow of chi in that area and would have some sort of negative side effect. For women, they would absolutely say it increases the risk of certain types of cancer like breast.

26:56For men and testosterone, it's a little bit different. All that being said, that's why I really try and focus on dietary therapy, supplementation, even things like peptides first. but I do want to say this when I look at some of the research and I've worked with people who we've I have had recommended at some point to do hormone replacement therapy it tends to be because I found that if you have a man who is not low testosterone in the tank yeah let's say it's 150 it's someone somewhere it's low they're not motivated they're tired all the time they're moody they just sort of like lack that versus if they did get on testosterone therapy be, they start lifting weights.

27:36They start having confidence again. Those things, that minor side effect that's likely happening from the lack of what I would call blood flow or movement in that area, in the testes, some of that area is going to be outweighed by the fact that now they're going out there and lifting weights and doing things in confidence and that sort of shift that happens. So I would like to share sort of my perspective on that too, because I do think hormone replacement therapy can be great for people. But the thing that I just have hard time with is that and this is not what you do at all right but a lot of the majority of these clinics out there today it's come in here's your testosterone shots exactly here's your hormone they're not changing diet they're not recommending supplements they're not doing anything to keep them on a lower it's like the highest dose possible immediately it's just not and they're not monitoring that's right like you know it's it needs to be in con look we're all born with testosterone as one of our hormones right there's other hormones like cortisol there's thyroid hormone yeah there's so much interplay between all of these different body systems that if you're just looking down one hormone and just doing that and not even monitoring anything else you're causing other problems you don't even know it and so i think it needs to be done in context of your overall body systems for sure yeah yeah i i love that um let's talk about mitochondrial health because this seems every topic this seems to be at the center of longevity Such an important discussion.

29:03And so I would love to hear from you, what are mitochondria? Why are they important for longevity? Why are they important for health? Yeah, great. I love talking about mitochondria. And many people will be surprised to hear that mitochondria are little organelles inside of our cells. Now, when we started off in evolution, our single cellular organisms did not have mitochondria in them. single cellular organisms made energy through glucose right and we know that when you take in glucose and you don't have aerobic respiration you can only make a few atp molecules which is energy the mitochondria then came into the single cellular organisms as a separate organism basically and they started living symbiotically together and why do they do that well because mitochondria can take glucose and make 32 ATP from it, much, much more energy.

29:57And this allowed the single cellular organisms to become multicellular. So it's part of evolution. And mitochondria actually has its own DNA because of this, right? So you have the nuclear DNA and mitochondria has its own DNA. And so mitochondria are basically now the powerhouses of our cells. They're a separate organelle that now live synergistically within our own cells, and they work together to allow all the cellular processes to occur that make us human and unfortunately mitochondria they get tired over time right so over time as we age we have mitochondria not functioning as well but also you have less mitochondria inside of your cells it's just normal aging process yeah but the the normal aging process right now is massively accelerated because our mitochondria are working really, really hard to keep our cells' energy up, to detoxify our cells.

30:52We're exposed to so many toxins now that our cells are working overtime, so our mitochondria are working overtime. So we have to do things to keep our mitochondria healthy. And if they're not healthy, we need to also help our mitochondria turn over. And turnover means that the old mitochondria need to be kind of eliminated and new mitochondria need to form. And so mitochondrial health is not just a buzzword, in my opinion. It is one of the core reasons that we age, why we're not feeling good. And if you learn a little bit about what can get our mitochondria healthy again to turn over again, you can really accelerate your health journey.

31:30Yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know, when I started studying the mitochondria, and I'll say this too, like I know you talked about evolution. I know I have more of a creationist point of view. but with all that being said i think that um you know the fact they're kind of like bacterial in nature yeah i mean they're microbe i mean that's that's crazy it's crazy right you know and they operate you know there is um when when we were going through uh covet and a lot of people were getting issues like long covet i started reading up on this you know things like cell danger response and how the mitochondria are sending these flares and acting and how they're part of the whole the whole process as well but mitochondria really are amazing you know when uh if anybody out there who is interested in ancient forms of medicine like chinese medicine like ayurveda i really think mitochondria are the closest thing we have to uh what we would call sort of chi within the body in terms of producing atp what's actually producing that and so it's um and if you really dive into like what mitochondria do I mean they're actually using light to create that's some of the energy right and so our body is using light inside of ourselves to help create energy and it's just mind-blowing and like you know you look at the ATP synthase the little the little protein that's in the mitochondrial membrane it actually turns like a motor yeah it's mind-blowing how this thing I was on social media watching this video, too, of conception, the sperm and the egg.

33:02And light is formed. At that conception, there's a light, this burst of light that's pretty incredible, what's happening there. And so it's powerful. Practically, what are some of the biggest needle movers for people who are saying, I want to support my mitochondria? And by the way, let me say this, too. The conditions I think that I tend to see and you probably tend to see that are most mitochondria-related, and feel free to add to this. but chronic fatigue syndrome is at the very top of the list. But I would even say things like hypothyroidism is at the top of the list. But really, fatigue, you're tired.

33:33These are your body's batteries. Brain fog. There you go. Brain fog is another one. So there are some examples of things. But practically, what are some things that people can do to really sort of recharge their mitochondria? Yeah, great question. So what I would say is one key fact that people should know is that your mitochondria actually like little bursts of stress, not not psychological stress yeah physiological stress right so going into an all-out sprint okay like a high-intensity workout can help you to recharge your mitochondria and turn over the ones that can't produce enough energy if you can't if a mitochondria in a cell cannot produce enough energy for you to go into an all-out sprint that mitochondria is turned over and a new mitochondria is made there's some more youthful mitochondria other things at work similarly is hot and cold exposure.

34:24So doing a cold plunge, doing a sauna session, those little bursts of stress for a specific time period can help your mitochondria become healthier too. That's so powerful. I love that. I'm going to let you keep going, but I do want to mention just a few things I find fascinating there. One is different organs and areas of the body are more mitochondrial dense. We know our muscles and our heart, for instance, are very mitochondrial dense. And so this is where it comes into like, you know, if you're weight training and lifting weights at the right level and not injuring yourself, you're producing more and more of these mitochondria.

34:59So that's a prime example of what's happening. And you can do this by you can build organs. You can build more mitochondria in every organ cell and tissue of your body, which is pretty amazing. But a lot of people are you can also overdo it. Right. So there's this balance of like when it comes to hot and cold, I've seen this with cold plunging. I think that there's a lot of women like with hypothyroidism and those sort of issues doing it too much or too long or too cold. Their body temperature is already very low to where they maybe need a splash of a cold shower. They don't need to get in 40 degree water for every day for two minutes.

35:38They're making themselves worse. So walk us through that a little bit to this sort of hormesis and sort of like what's the right dosage or And I know maybe it's it's of course gonna be different for everybody. But what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's just very end of one like you said it's you know, it's really cold plunging is not for everybody And there are other ways to stimulate mitochondrial Neogenesis besides cold plunging. Yeah, if you're one of these people say your hypothyroid and your body's running cold all the time anyway, definitely cold plunging is just going to increase your cortisol levels.

36:09It's going to create more stress. It's not going to be a physiological benefit to you. It's more going to be a negative physiologically. So you really got to listen to what's going on with your body. I interviewed someone for my podcast, actually, a woman who kind of coaches women through cold plunging and cryotherapy. And one of the things that she really believes is that is checking biomarkers, checking someone's temperature before they go into a cold plunge. And she understands that cold plunging is not for everybody. But one of the things that if you are nervous about cold plunging, this can also be a problem is, you know, a lot of people go into cold plunge really, really tense and stressed out, right?

36:51And when you go in stressed out and you add an additional stress to that, that shoots your cortisol levels through the roof. So instead, what you want to do is learn to regulate your stress. So she really advocates doing breath work before going in. And then that's so powerful because now you're turning a sympathetic stress into a parasympathetic feeling before you go in, and you're learning to regulate between parasympathetic and sympathetic. And I believe, and I think this is getting more and more in kind of in the forefront of what I believe now, is that one of the key problems causing sickness is an imbalance between our sympathetic and and parasympathetic nervous system.

37:32We live at this heightened sympathetic state. So using the cold plunge, for example, as one of the ways that you learn to regulate between those two can be really powerful. That's really smart. And I love that you're sharing that too because your body's about to go into a stressful situation physiologically. And now you do breathing and you train your body, hey, you can stay calm. You can actually be in more of a parasympathetic state under stress. And this can translate to you're in relationship stress, you're having work stress, you're in a traffic jam, being able to balance that nervousness, that is a powerful…

38:06It's so powerful, right? Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, I think about that too. Like, you know, this is not just going to cryotherapy. This is like you said, like when you're in an emotional situation and just giving yourself that moment to rebalance and to use breath work, for example, and just get yourself back into a more regulated state, Doing that over and over again throughout a day can create much better HRV, for example. All of that. And so we don't do that enough, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. You know, we started off, I want to jump back here and then we'll come back to some of this too.

38:40I want to talk about biomarkers again. Yes. We talked about a lot of the biomarkers where you're not really finding things till much later on. Are there some biomarkers you like specifically for, let's say, mitochondrial health or any others that are maybe, Maybe that are absolutely some of your favorites you always like to check. Yeah. Okay. So I actually have about 10 biomarkers that I think everyone should follow for their own biology. I think, you know, unfortunately, we've outsourced our health to the medical profession. We don't know what our biomarkers are, right? We have our doctor pick the biomarkers and tell us whether something bad is going on or not.

39:17Yeah. And, you know, we need to re-empower our patients and just people in general need to re-empower themselves with the knowledge of what are some of the key critical biomarkers. So I'll give you one as an example and it ties into mitochondrial health is biomarkers of your metabolic health, right? So your metabolism, I say, lives in your muscle. And why does it live in your muscle? Because most of your mitochondria, like you mentioned earlier, are in your muscle. Your mitochondria is what is using the glucose that we dump into our bloodstream. And when you lift weights or you exercise, you're using more glucose and your mitochondria is using that glucose to create energy.

39:52And so if you're not using your muscle and you're sedentary all day long, you have way too much glucose that turns into fat. You're not using it for energy. You're not promoting mitochondrial health. So how do you know? How do you know how much you're able to handle glucose or not? There's a critical biomarker there called hemoglobin A1c. This is a three-month average of how much glucose is roaming around in your bloodstream. If it's high, you get diagnosed with diabetes. And the number for diabetes in the United States is 6.5. The optimal level, in my opinion, is below 5.2, even getting towards 5 as a goal.

40:28It takes decades to go from 5 to 6.5, right? But most people don't know when they're 5.4, 5.6, 5.7, which is prediabetes. And so if you know what your hemoglobin A1C is, you can start making adjustments to get that back into a normal range and then an optimal range, right and so that's a critical one okay can i tell you one i'm so glad you said that and because i totally agree you know what's amazing though for most people it takes them 10 years to get there if people do the right things if they took 90 days and did everything perfectly the amount that they can turn back their a1c is really amazing it's mind-blowing yeah yeah i mean you can go from like 5.7 to 5.2 in 90 days i've seen it happen yeah same it's amazing it's amazing Okay, so number one biomarker A1C.

41:16What's number two? Okay, number two, I would say, is a biomarker of inflammation. And I can't tell you the number of people that are surprised when their inflammation level is high. This biomarker is HSCRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein. It becomes higher than one when you are inflamed. The optimal is zero. You want this as close to zero as possible. Once it goes over one, you need to start doing something to reduce your inflammation. So what could that be? Well, 90 % of our immune system lives in our gut, right? Most of the inflammation, if you're going to go searching for where you're inflamed, it's probably your gut, right?

41:54And so there's probably something going on in your gut. Maybe, like you were mentioning, you were on antibiotics for a while. That's like a nuclear bomb to your gut. On steroids, we talked about gluten can be a major problem for your gut. even alcohol, eating ultra-processed food, all of this can cause a lot of inflammation in your gut. So why does that happen? Well, most people don't realize your gut is one cell layer thick. You have one cell between the outside environment and the inside environment, and that's one cell layer is damaged. You're going to create inflammation. And so that's where you need to go looking and get your gut health optimized.

42:30And then if it's still high, another place to look is your oral health. A lot of times we have gingivitis, maybe that's in dental work, and we have inflammation in our mouth, and that's causing inflammation. And then other parts of your body can also be inflamed, but that's kind of where you start. But the critical element there is most people are inflamed and they don't even know it. And then when they get their HSCRP, they're like, wait, what's going on here? Why is this high? Yeah. Like, well, let's take a look at your gut and let's see what's going on. That's so good. What's number three? Number three is a critical biomarker for cardiovascular health is ApoB.

43:07All right. Yeah. So, you know, for decades, we've been talking about LDL. And if your LDL is high, you know, maybe you need a statin. And I just think that's all so flawed. That's like 1980 medicine. Yes. Your LDL is not the critical biomarker, in my opinion, of cardiovascular risk. ApoB is much, much better. This is a marker that ties in LDL, VLDL, triglycerides, LP little a, all of the potential cholesterol molecules that can cause cardiovascular risk. Now, what's really important to realize with cardiovascular risk is this is not just your cholesterol level. There's many other things going on if you're creating plaque in your arteries.

43:50One of them is poor metabolic health. So look at your hemoglobin A1c. Another one is inflammation. So look at your HSCRP. Another one is your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is elevated, cholesterol molecules can get into your endothelium and cause plaque. So, you know, all of these need to be taken in context together. But ApoB is another one that I like to watch, and I like to keep that less than 100 for sure. If you have plaque in your arteries, we aim for less than 80, actually. Yeah. And feel free to just go through any other. I mean, if you want to do all 10, we can, or if you want to just go through the five or however many.

44:22Yeah, yeah. Okay, so blood pressure is another one of them. So some of them are blood tests. Some of them are actual measurements you can take. On the blood test one, vitamin D is another one. I find a lot of people go up and down with their vitamin D all over the place. And sometimes you need supplementation. Sometimes you just go out in the sun more, but you got to keep that optimized. Vitamin B12 is another one that I think is a good one to follow. Vitamin B12 is so critical in so many physiological processes, but it's also an indicator in my mind of your overall nutrient status too. Yeah. Yeah.

44:55So that's another one that I follow. That's good. Yeah. And then we follow hormone levels, testosterone, TSH, T4, T3, reverse T3. So we follow a few critical hormones as well. So that doesn't sneak up on you. And I actually have like for people, for your audience, I have a tool that they can download from my website, drsha.com slash biomarkers. and it'll give you a free 10-page guide to what are these biomarkers, what is the optimal level, and why they're important. Cool, amazing. And you can just use that and follow these 10 critical biomarkers on yourself. Outside of blood tests, we mentioned blood pressure.

45:33You know, blood pressure in medicine, we refer to it as a silent killer. Yes. And why is that? Well, because no one knows what their blood pressure is, and you measure it once you're at your doctor's office, and that measurement is usually thrown out because they're like, Like, oh, you have white coat syndrome today. And then you live with high blood pressure for 20 years before someone does something about it. And the blood pressure doesn't just damage your heart. It damages every organ in your body. Wow. And we know that anything over 130, over 80 has an increased risk of mortality. So you've got to get that fixed, you know?

46:06I mean, I'll tell you. I mean, this is really, really personal for me because I had my father-in-law passed away. And to be honest, we didn't know because he didn't go to the doctor often. And anytime he'd go in, they'd say, oh, it's white coat syndrome. But like looking back, like he had blood pressure, high blood pressure a really, really long time. And he died tragically of a heart attack about a year and a half ago. And the thing is, he was on no medications. He was working out regularly. Like we didn't see it coming. But that was the one thing that I think if we really would go back and look at things, we would have done something about that, you know.

46:37But it's just. And the thing about taking blood pressure is it's so easy. It's so easy. I know. Yeah. You just look up a YouTube video on how to do the blood pressure right. And my wife and I actually do this every quarter. You can get something that does it for you. It does it for you the whole thing. Just put it on there. It does three of the measurements in a row. It averages them. You do it first thing in the morning, seated, legs not crossed, arm on a table. That's it. Super easy. Buy a blood pressure cuff. And this is something you can do as a couple with your wife or your significant other.

47:06And just once a quarter. And you should start doing it, in my opinion, even as early as 25 years old. because I've seen 25-year-olds with high blood pressure. Yeah, yeah. It's critically important to get under control. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. You know, I wanted to dive in a little bit about just some practical things people can do and also get your opinion on why many people are aging so quickly. You know, when I think about our average lifespan, it's probably somewhere around 78 years old in the United States. Now other countries, you know, you go to Okinawa and other areas, it's longer.

47:38But when I think about that, and I believe the Bible talks about we're designed to live 120 years. There are scientific studies saying, hey, we should live about 120 years. But if you think about that, most people are taking more than one third off of their life. Some people, if they're 60, 50 % of their life, they're aging themselves prematurely. What are the biggest causes of premature aging today? Yeah, and you know, I'll add one more thing to that, which I think is important. Even if people are living to 80, they're spending that last 20 to 30 years frail, not being able to recognize their family members and multiple chronic diseases.

48:17So even though we've extended life, I would say almost artificially with all of these medical treatments that we have, people don't have the health span too. That's right. We know that you can live to 120 years old, being able to do all the things you want to do and enjoy life. There was a woman that died last year at 117 years old and she was super active. That's amazing. Yeah. There's centenarians all over the world in blue zones that have, you know, they're over 100 years old and they are just out there working in the fields. They're dancing. They're hanging out with their family, playing chess like this.

48:50We know it's possible. Right. So the question was, why are we aging so fast? I think there's probably four main causes. One is that we are very, very sedentary in our life. We spend a lot of time not moving. humans, you know, since the dawn of humanity have walked and roamed this earth, right? We are, we are made to walk. Um, we, we need to walk at least 8 ,000 steps a day. The research shows to prevent mortality from, from being sedentary. So number one is sedentary behavior. Number two, I would think is we do not live in the rhythm of the universe and we do not live with the rhythms of the planet and our circadian rhythms are completely destroyed by living indoors, shift work, lighting, all these things that we've destroyed our circadian rhythm with.

49:45Thirdly, I think, is our level of toxic exposure right now. We're exposed to 150 ,000 toxins we were never exposed to 80 years ago. These are just chemicals being dumped into the environment, our air, water, our food, you know, our skincare products, all of that. We're just assaulting our system with those. Right. And so, and I would say fourthly is our level of emotional stress and not dealing with traumas that we suffer and the dysregulation. We alluded to this earlier, that that has on our balance between our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system on a day-to-day basis so that we are not emotionally regulated and therefore our physiology is not regulated.

50:30You know, I have, I've had quite a few people with cancer come to me over the last, I mean, I mean, really, I feel like it's more and more, but it's just a lot of people for a lot of years. And the thing that I can pinpoint with all of them, absolutely, is that there has been emotional trauma in their life and they have not fully healed from it. Like, and, and, and because Because there are a few people I could think of, and my mom is one of these people. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer at 41, she was my gym teacher in elementary school. She was a swim instructor. My mom was fit. She was healthy from that standpoint.

51:03My mom, we didn't eat that bad. I mean, it was a lot of Midwest food, like casseroles, but it was actually a fair amount of real food. Not to say she didn't drink too much fruit juice, and we didn't eat fast food sometimes, but I had a woman come to me recently and she is uh in her she's like 39 years old and one of the most upbeat people eats like perfect like you look at her diet you're like wow that's a perfect diet and really serious cancer and you just know like there's so much emotional trauma with with her mom and her family members and those things so so I just wanted to just re-emphasize I think that it's probably the most overlooked thing in medicine absolutely and when you look at a lot of these ancient forms of medicine, I think they were more aware of the importance of your spiritual and your mental and emotional health.

51:48But we had this happen during the Renaissance, like what's happened in the world when you kind of also separated church and state was, well, your spiritual and emotional health, that's over here. And your physical health is all the way over here. And we don't blend them. Now, that's starting to change just really in the last few years. But I'm so glad you said it because I've rarely had doctors come on here because I ask a lot of people, hey, what's the root cause of things? And sometimes I'll hear, well, maybe it's stress, but that trauma piece, that's critical. It's critical. It's so critical.

52:20And you've talked a lot about ancient modalities like Chinese medicine, Japanese medicine, the Bible. My dad was an Ayurvedic physician. Really? Amazing. I grew up with Ayurveda. I grew up with the different, you know, the different doshas in Ayurveda, right? And so emotional health is a big part of that, is how you relate to the outside world and how the outside world affect you. It's a big part of the conversation. So we've known this and all these ancient healing modalities and then we forgot it to your point right for so long We separated away from that and I am glad that more attention is being brought towards it And so what do you do like what do you do about?

53:03Emotional dysregulation and traumas and I think you know number one. I think it's number one most important thing is to realize that almost everyone has Minor traumas and major traumas in their life. Yeah, right? So I just think we've learned to suppress them, and we have to understand that these are affecting our physiology, right? Yeah. So just having that admission and then doing some inward-looking work and then understanding what are the tools available out there to help you kind of mitigate the damage that's doing to your physiology. I look at trauma as a toxin, basically. That's right. Just like a mold toxin.

53:43Exactly. Just like PFAS. It's a toxin in our physiology. That's right. Right. And you got to do something about it. Yeah. One thing I see sometimes, and I just want to say this, when it comes to people that have, some people are aware that they've had emotional trauma. And I see two things happen. And the third is what people want to do. Sometimes people just leave it buried. Yeah. I did that for many years. Yeah. And that's probably the biggest thing people do is they just bury it and leave it. the second thing is people live in it and wallow in it yeah and never move on from it they go to their therapist the therapist makes it worse because they just right have them wallow in it and and they see themselves as a victim right still 20 years later they're still living in it no you need to go to it you need to process it and you need to heal it right and you need to move on now you're the hero now you're the guide in the story you're no longer the victim and that healing process is so important.

54:38And it's like this with doctors too. There's some amazing 10 out of 10 therapists that know exactly how to help you heal and process this and move forward in your life. Just like there's some doctors that can help you do that, but there's also some people that they don't know how to do it, okay? And so this is why I am very, very conscious of, if I'm going to a doctor or I'm sending my family members to a doctor, they're gonna be a 10 out of 10. I'm sending them to Darshan Shah, a good friend of mine, Dr. Gezzagoli. Like I'm sending it to these people because, man, a good physician is worth a lot.

55:10Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, a lot of times people are not ready to deal with their traumas. And so I think there's other tools available to help. In my mind, emotional dysregulation comes first. and then once you learn to regulate your emotions, then you can put yourself in a much better place to dive deeper into your traumas, right? And so emotional regulation to me means, I just interviewed Gabby Bernstein. Do you know Gabby? Yeah, I guess she is. She's the best, yeah. So she taught me about internal family systems and she wrote this book called Self-Help. And basically it says giving yourself a pause between an emotion and your reaction to it, right?

55:58And so that pause, if you learn to live in that pause for a moment and understand what's going on and what internal family systems tells you is that usually it's something from your childhood that's crying out for help and looking inward, man, it can really help you regulate. And you feel it. You feel it in your physiology. You feel your sympathetic system be less unfit. fire and your parasympathetic takeover. And it's so powerful. Once you can do that, it can really help. You know, I think having that self-awareness and emotional intelligence to be able to do that, it is, you know, it's even more powerful than having a high IQ, right?

56:39It's like, I mean, it's so, so important. And I think that, yeah, I wrote about this, I wrote a book called think this, not that. And I really got into this in the book, that it's just so important to be self aware and be able to pause and reflect. And what is that emotion? Where did it come from? They must always come from memories. Something happened when you were a child is where it starts. And then it's just continued to just feed and grow and grow and grow until, you know, emotionally, it can, you know, kind of take you over and you can react in ways you don't want to react. in. And so I'm so glad you're saying this because it's just so it's so key to all the things we're talking about longevity.

57:20Last few questions for you. What are some new therapies that you are getting turned on to now? I mean, I, you know, I think a lot of people aren't you, of course, it's so funny. Some of the things are old and they become new. It's like, you know, plasma exchange. Okay. That's, you know, used for other things quite a year. And now you've brought it back and really started using it for a lot of people with these different infections. What are some of the other more advanced therapies that maybe you just introducing in your clinic or you're looking into right now that you think are pretty pretty fascinating and may have some promise?

57:50There's so much cool stuff out there coming out now. You know, we live in an incredible time where we are making discoveries rapid fire. And so there's some stuff coming in the next 10, 15 years that I think are going to be a game changer. And so my message to all my patients is just stay healthy and stay alive long enough to see what's coming, you know. But what I would say is the stuff that I'm really excited about at this moment is the focus on stem cells and how we can use them responsibly and use them as a therapy that if done in the right way, they can be very powerful. And so I'm really excited that Florida, Montana, Utah, that they've approved stem cell usage now.

58:32So now we can start really doing the science and really start helping people, but also be responsible and make them in a responsible way so that people don't get hurt, you know? And so I'm really excited about stem cells and specific new kinds of stem cells that are coming out. One of them is called Muse cells. You might have heard of Muse cells. And then, you know, peptides. Okay, so peptides also, the way I like for people to think about peptides is peptides are very unlike pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are chemicals that are created that kind of force a specific response in our body, and they have a lot of side effects.

59:13Peptides are actually a recreation of natural biological signals, right? These are signals our body has used once again since the dawn of humanity, and we're finally learning what those signals are. Turns out there are thousands of signals that our body uses, right? And once we know what they are, we can replicate and we can use them, but they also need to be used responsibly. Our body is not making these signals for a reason, and you can give someone that signal, but why are they not making that signal? That's what you need to figure out. What are some of your favorite peptides you recommend regularly for patients?

59:45Yeah. So, you know, I think that these GLP peptides are very useful if used responsibly, once again. So things like terzepatide I found to be very helpful, not just for weight loss, right? Obviously, the reason people need GLP for weight loss is because their gut is not making it enough anymore. And that's because of poor gut health. Once you get your gut health back, which every single person on GLP, we put into place a gut healing protocol so they can start making their own GLP. What I've also found with GLPs, and this is brand new, is that it can be very powerful in reducing the effects of autoimmune disease.

1:00:24And so we're using it for a lot of Hashimoto's, for example. We're using it to decrease the effect of autoimmune disease. Turns out our T cells have GLP receptors on them as well. Now, how much of you? Okay. Makes sense. I mean, part of me, when you first said that, the thing that came into my mind was how much of that is in effect from being more in a fast caloric restriction or going lower calorie. But that makes sense. What are your thoughts on, again, you already know the pushback, so I don't even need that. I'm going to ask a question anyways. But, you know, the amount of muscle loss, I mean, it's very high.

1:00:59So how do you deal with that as a practitioner? Yeah. So number one, muscle loss will occur when you take GLP-1s and you just reduce your intake and you don't do anything else, right? Obviously, if you're not taking in protein and you're not moving, you're going to lose muscle. Just like, you know, I used to do surgery and we would do gastric bypass surgeries on people that were morbidly obese, right? And it became a really popular surgery because many people are morbidly obese and they couldn't lose the weight. And we saw tremendous amounts of fat and muscle loss in the people that still remain sedentary and the people that would not eat anything, okay, except carbohydrate.

1:01:37And so the ones that built muscle by exercising and by taking in protein as our primary source of food intake, they never lost muscle. They actually gained muscle. And so what we do when we have people on GLP-1s is we put into place a very specific protocol to make them gain muscle. So we give them about a gram per pound of protein a day as a core piece of their diet. We have them go strength train three times a week. And then we also monitor their skeletal muscle mass using a DEXA scan and we use a bioimpetent scale at home. We want people to monitor their own muscle mass as well. And you can do that with a special scale that puts an electrical current through your body called the bioimpetent scale.

1:02:21And then we also do vitamin D. We do nutritional supplementation. And what we've found is over 90 % of the time, people will not lose muscle being on GLP-1s. They've done right. The other big problem with GLP-1s, I'll tell you too, is that kind of the dosing algorithm that we're taught. You beat me to my next question. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, what all doctors are taught by the pharma companies is started this dose and go all the way up to this dose. And And that's just the way you do it. That's the wrong way of doing it. When you give someone a GLP-1, you go up to the dose that affects weight change at a reasonable level so they can keep up their skeletal muscle, right?

1:03:03You don't want to lose 10 pounds a week. That's way too much. You can't keep up with the skeletal muscle loss. So what we like to do is get people to lose maybe one or two pounds a week with the GLP-1s so then they can keep going to the gym and building skeletal muscle and they don't get that imbalance as well. And so a lot of people, like terzepatide, will stop him like 5 or 7.5. They don't need to go all the way up to the 15 milligram dose. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, once again, like everything we've talked about, working with a skilled practitioner, looking at the overall context, following the biomarkers, so important.

1:03:35Any other peptides you like? Yeah. I like a bunch of them. BPC157 is a peptide. It's known as a healing peptide, but it also has a lot of other effects. I like TB500, which is an immune regulatory peptide. I really believe that immunosenescence or aging of our immune system is one of the primary reasons that we're aging. We are overtaxing our immune system. You asked me all the reasons why we age. Most of those have to do with overtaxing our immune system. Right. So TB 500 can reinvigorate your immune system and not just, you know, slow down aging, but also help you fight off infections and all the things our immune system does for us, reduce inflammation, all of it.

1:04:20So, yeah, so powerful. Yeah. And then for some people, you know, I like to cycle growth hormone secretagogues. Okay. And some people are really low on their growth hormone levels. And they, I find that this, um, helps to just give them that little edge they need, but I don't use them for long periods of time. We might use like a three month course and then stop. Yeah. Yeah. It's so powerful. It's so powerful. There's so many more. I mean, I just like thinking, I was reading an article recently, just going into like, yeah, I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of peptides and they're going to be hundreds and hundreds of more over the next few years.

1:04:57So it's, it's crazy. And then you get into whole bioregulators. I mean, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot, but the future medicine is bright. It is really bright. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, um, peptides is going to be like a whole new pharmaceutical industry. It's going to be a whole new industry and people just need to be very careful and think about them as, um, as a drug, right? I mean, you, you need to go with the skilled practitioner. Don't just buy them online. Make sure you have good quality. Make sure you're working with someone that can help you really create a protocol that's going to work well.

1:05:29Follow your biomarkers. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, this has been amazing, Darshan. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on. Hey, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to comment. We'd love to hear what is the biggest piece of wisdom and advice that Dr. Darshan Shaw here shared with us today, and where can people find out more about you? DrShaw.com is my website, and I have tools on there for people. I have a social media at Darshan Shah MD and then our clinics are at nexthealth, next-health.com. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, and I have a podcast that you're going to be on called Extend. I'm excited.

1:06:00Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be a good one. I'm excited for that too. Well, this was an amazing, amazing interview and just so grateful for you. So grateful for all the great work you do. And hey, thanks everybody for watching here, the Dr. Josh Ack Show. Remember each and every week, we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Did you know that if you're not subscribed, you may miss out on some of the incredible interviews we have? We've had a few episodes that have been shadow banned because we're talking about controversial topics like cancer, like autoimmune disease and a number of other things.

1:06:31And so if you're not subscribed, you may not see it. And it's the number one thing you do to support the show. So thank you, all of you who are subscribed, who are on mission with us to help heal people naturally. And I would encourage you to keep up with what Dr. Shaw is doing, what I'm doing, because, you know, I think about it like this. You know, if you were to get surgery on your knee 50 years ago, it was very different than what they would do today. Going in microscopically and using more natural tissues and things versus literally tearing your whole knee apart. We're going to see this very same thing in medicine today with things like stem cell therapy and a number of things.

1:07:06The amount of preventative measures you can take, the ways that we can do things in the future with tracking your health in real time, it's going to be absolutely incredible. And I know myself and Dr. Shaw are really committed to getting you the best information and how to add years to your life and life to your years. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you on the next episode.

1:07:33This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach, built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

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