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The Goop Podcast: Episode Summary
Episode Title
Wellbel’s Dr. Dan on Hair Health, Hormones, and the Science of Feeling (and Looking) Your Best
Host
Gwyneth Paltrow
Guest
Dr. Dan, Co-Founder of Wellbel
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Episode Overview In this episode, Gwyneth Paltrow engages in a conversation with Dr. Dan, a Harvard-trained functional medicine expert and Co-Founder of Wellbel. The discussion explores the intricate relationships between nutrition, overall wellness, and aging, particularly focusing on hair health as a reflection of overall wellness. Dr. Dan shares insights into holistic wellness, precision medicine, and the impact of small lifestyle choices on mental and physical health.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Connection Between Mind and Body
- Holistic Approach: Dr. Dan emphasizes the importance of self-kindness and making small, positive decisions for overall wellness.
- Nutrition's Role: The conversation highlights how nutrition affects both physical appearance and mental well-being.
- Precision Medicine
- Personalized Health: Dr. Dan explains his approach, which integrates patient goals, data from biomarkers, and his professional insights to create individualized health plans.
- Genetic Influences: The discussion touches on how genetic predispositions can affect individual responses to food and health interventions.
- Nutritional Insights
- Food Tolerance Variability: Dr. Dan discusses the varying effects of foods on individuals, underscoring the need for personalized dietary strategies.
- Gut Health: The link between gut health and mental clarity is reinforced, with Dr. Dan suggesting that a happy gut contributes to a happy mind.
- Wellbel Supplement Products
- Founding Story: Dr. Dan details how Wellbel was inspired by his sisters’ hair loss issues, leading him to create supplements aimed at improving hair health.
- Key Ingredients: The supplements contain ingredients like biotin, MSM, and saw palmetto, designed to support hair growth and overall health.
- Stress and Health
- Impact of Relationships: The episode discusses the effects of toxic relationships on health, linking interpersonal dynamics with biological responses.
- Cortisol Levels: Dr. Dan explains how chronic stress and elevated cortisol can negatively affect health.
- Emerging Health Trends
- Detoxification: Insights into how to support the body’s detoxification processes, especially in response to environmental toxins.
- Innovative Technologies: Dr. Dan expresses excitement about advances in precision medicine and the potential for more widespread access to individualized health assessments.
Practical Takeaways
- Nutrition and Mental Health: Eating well can improve mental clarity and overall happiness.
- Personalized Health Strategies: Everyone's health journey is unique; finding the right diet and supplements may require experimentation and professional guidance.
- Mindfulness in Choices: Being aware of how food and relationships affect personal health is crucial to making informed lifestyle choices.
- Small Changes Matter: Small, intentional choices can lead to significant improvements in both mental and physical health.
Conclusion The episode concludes with Dr. Dan encouraging listeners to embrace their agency in health and wellness decisions and reminding them that small, consistent choices can lead to profound changes in their lives.
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For more insights and to explore Wellbel supplements, visit [Goop](https://www.goop.com). Tune in next Tuesday for more engaging conversations on wellness and lifestyle.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01When I travel, whether it's for work or just to take a break, I love staying in an Airbnb. I love the charm and how every place feels so different from a hotel. It gives me a sense of feeling grounded wherever I am, whether it's a weekend away in the country or filming somewhere far from home. There's something about waking up in a real home with a kitchen to make coffee in and a living room to spread out in. And whenever I'm in an Airbnb, I find myself thinking about the person whose home it is. While I'm making it mine for a few days, maybe they're off on their own adventure or simply opening their doors for someone else to enjoy the space they love.
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2:09When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast.
2:47Bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers. Here to start conversations. because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Welcome back to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow and today I'm thrilled to be sitting down with Dr. Dan who is the chief medical officer and co-founder of WellBell, a brand I personally love and use every day to maintain maximum hair health. Dr. Dan is a renowned expert in the field of nutritional and holistic health with a focus on how what we put into our bodies impacts not just how we look, but how we feel.
3:39So Dr. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. And I'm so excited to hear more about, you know, your connection with beauty, wellness in the brain. It's an intersection that I'm very, I'm very interested in, as you might now. Absolutely. They're all, you know, it's also interconnected brain health, overall health. It all starts with self-kindness and making good decisions for yourself, even small little good decisions for yourself. So can you tell me a little bit about your background? Because you're kind of a hardcore MD and then you've kind of adopted this idea of a more holistic approach, which seems to be the trend I've noticed.
4:18You know, when I started talking about wellness, most MDs were like, what the fuck is she talking about? That's true. So, you know, I went like a very conventional path. I went to Harvard for college. I was a psychology major. I thought I was going to become a psychiatrist, went to Cornell for med school, ended up doing internal medicine and cardiology and running the intensive care unit at a hospital in New York city, dealing with heart attacks and sudden cardiac death and these really acute issues, but I realized that I love taking care of patients holistically. So I did a fellowship in functional medicine and age management, and then my career took a detour from there.
4:57So I really focused on overall wellness, mind, body medicine, and precision medicine, which I'm very, very passionate about. Yeah. And I, I, so this is kind of a new emerging field, precision medicine. Will you tell us about how do you define it and what does it look like in your practice? The way that I think about it is every individual is different. So when we're looking at what we're going to put Gwyneth on or my sister on or a patient that walks into my office, it's based on three things. This is how I think about it. The first column is what does Gwyneth want? Like, what are your goals and aspirations health wise?
5:32Because anyone, anytime someone walks into an office, they have things that they're thinking about. Maybe their mother had breast cancer. Maybe their grandfather had Parkinson's. Maybe they want more energy. So that's column one. Two is where does the data lead us? So that could be different biomarkers. It could be gene sequencing, epigenetics. So where does the data lead us? And then three is what does Dr. Dan want for Gwyneth? You know, I want you to be on top of your health maintenance, be on top of your mammograms, make sure from a cardiovascular and brain health standpoint, you're optimized.
6:02And then those three things come together. And that's what I think precision medicine is. It's a marriage of those three things. Mm-hmm. And so are you finding that, because I think, you know, it is really interesting. I remember even, you know, wearing a continuous glucose monitor for a while just to see what was spiking my blood sugar. And I was doing it in conjunction with a friend. And we had completely different reactions to a bowl of pasta or oat milk. And so is it true that our, like, even the foods that we can tolerate, like, for some of us, certain foods are inflammatory or will spike the glycemic index and for certain people not?
6:42And what are the factors that determine that? That's such a good question. I love that question. And the absolute answer to that is yes. Every patient and person is different and their reaction to food, environmental factors is going to be different. You know, so there's a relationship between our genetics, our metabolism and how it reacts to food and nutrition. So one person might eat beets and their blood sugar is fine. Another person might eat beets, which is otherwise healthy. has a lot of health benefits and their blood glucose and insulin might spike. Right, right, right. So like how, how available is this?
7:21I mean, do you see this approach becoming more pervasive or is this still like for the 1 % right now? Like can, can regular people kind of have access to this kind of approach? We're seeing more and more businesses start out sort of focusing on precision medicine that are going to scale more and more. One of them is function health and they do all sorts of biomarkers. And we'll see in the next decade, we're going to move from just population-based medicine where we have recommendations for, okay, you're above 50. This is what you should do to, okay, this is your genetic blueprint. These are your genes.
7:57This is your blood work. And this is exactly what you should be on for optimal health outcomes. And I can't wait to see that happen at a sort of like at a mass level so that people have access to that and also have more agency. You know, really can pull the levers, whether it's sleep, nutrition, diet, meditation, supplements, how do you sort of make good decisions? And I think we need to do that with data. Yes, absolutely. And also it needs to be, I think sort of with anything, at least from my point of view, what I've observed is that, you know, consumers really shape these markets, right? And if patients want to have more agency, as you say, and be able to take steps that are more directly within their control to impact their health positively.
8:42It's so nice that there are these, as you say, startups or companies that are going to fill the hole in that market. It's undoubtedly going to happen. I think the next 10 years of medicine, there's going to be quantum leaps in terms of genetics and breakthroughs. But the focus is going to be really unpreventative medicine. This idea of like Alzheimer's is not a disease that you really want to diagnose when someone's 80 and has memory loss, but sort of look at people's genetics, like what's their APOE gene status and how can we optimize people ahead of time? And I can't wait for that shift to happen.
9:19It's happening right now. And I think we're bringing it to the surface so that people know about it. Yeah. And how, how much kind of, you know, if we get a genetic profile back, like how much of the genes that like that code is determinative and how much can we impact through the lifestyle choices that we make? Like I have the APO3, I have double copy, I think. Where do you not, I don't have the worst one. I have the second to worst one. Well, the second to worst one is what most people have. It's the normal one or the most common one, I should say. So that's a 3-3. If you have a copy of the four or two copies of the four, It increases your risk of developing Alzheimer's and also cardiovascular disease.
10:04So that's a way that genetics sort of points to how we can risk stratify and really double down on those people who carry that specific gene. In terms of like how much control we have, we have a whole lot of control. And the research that people do on Alzheimer's alone, it looks like 50 to 60 % of people who have or develop Alzheimer's can actually prevent it through lifestyle, through blood glucose, lowering, you know, body mass, exercise, having relationships, continuing education, connection with community. So I think both of them play a role and we try to make an impact wherever we can. I read somewhere that they said that Alzheimer's, I believe Alzheimer's is like also a disease of inflammation.
10:51I mean, obviously there's a genetic component to that, but Does that mean that there's a kind of downstream impact? If you have the gene and you have high inflammation, you're then more likely to develop Alzheimer's? I think those models are being figured out. There's no question that if you have the gene, your risk of developing Alzheimer's is increased. But there's different factors, like inflammation might be one of them. And we can measure inflammation in the blood through something called C-reactive protein, CRP. So if you're globally inflamed, all disease models, whether you look at Alzheimer's and memory loss, cancer, heart disease, inflammation is not your friend.
11:31It's a foe. So if we're looking to optimize and someone has a gene, we may want to look at their CRP and say, okay, your CRP is elevated. What can we do nutritionally to get you your CRP down? What interventions can we put into place to make you as in optimal health as possible? Mm-hmm. So in terms of, I guess I'll start here. So we've talked a lot and learned a lot and read a lot about these class of the GLP-1 inhibitors and how much they can impact, you know, first weight, right? That's how we all heard about it. And now, like, I have friends who are working with functional doctors who are microdosing it to control inflammation.
12:18And I'm dying to get your point of view on this. Like how safe are these drugs? Are they really like the miracle drugs that they're being touted as? Like, I'm just dying to have your take. I would, I almost just called you just to talk to you about this just because I was curious, but then I was like, I'll ask him on the podcast. First and foremost, you can call me anytime, answer any questions. You can have me on speed dial. GLP-1s are a field that I'm really passionate about. So they're GLP-1 receptor agonists, and basically they help curtail appetite and help with weight loss. And they were studied on people who had morbid obesity, cardiometabolic disease, diabetes, to try to get massive weight reduction so that they don't have the complications related to obesity and being overweight.
13:05And then the GLP-1 started to be used off-label just for weight loss. There's some real benefits to GLP-1 receptor agonists. And we're talking about the Ozempics, the Manjaros, the Wurgobis of the world. And for those patients, it's really a life changer. It's really, really impactful. There's research in the cardiovascular community and also the Alzheimer's community that can actually improve outcomes in some of those patients. There are concerns. One of the concerns is that 40 % of the weight loss from the GLP-1s is from muscle mass. Right. So my biggest concern is let's say I have a 70 year old who comes in, if they lose 40 % of their muscle, it's going to be near impossible to get it back on.
13:47And then what happens if they lose their muscle mass, their gait imbalance is off, their strength is off, their basal metabolic rate is off. They can develop insulin resistance over time because they don't have, you know, so they're going to have to be on Ozempic forever. So I think when it comes to these things, it's not like one size fits all. It comes back to that sort of precision medicine and who's the right candidate for those medications. But are there things that you can do to mitigate that muscle loss when you're on Ozempic or one of these class of drugs? Definitely weightlifting and focusing on the big muscle groups.
14:23So your quads, your glutes, your hamstrings. I think that's important, increasing your protein intake. And as a founder of WellBell, one of the things that we're also seeing with GLP-1s is that it does precipitate hair loss. So the first sort of wave of hair loss we saw as a company was during COVID and COVID related hair loss. And now we're seeing a lot of people who are on GLP ones with hair loss. So oftentimes we preventatively put them on WellBell to prevent that hair loss from happening. There are systemic side effects, but it's really like you need to weigh that risk when it comes to these medications.
15:00Right. And we're going to talk all about Welbo, which I'm very excited to talk about. But what about this? Do the GLP-1s like inherently lower global inflammation in the body as well? I haven't read that research yet. I'd have to look at it. I wouldn't be completely surprised because a lot of that has to do with glucose and insulin regulation. So if you're more regulated and the other thing is obesity in and of itself causes inflammation. So if it's not necessarily the GLP-1s, it might be the weight loss, where the weight loss going away reduces inflammation. So I think that's more the likely mechanism.
15:38So it goes back. So if I see a patient and I'm trying to think of GLP-1, are they overweight? Are they obese? Or are they just trying to lose five pounds? So when the people are using it just, you know, as a shortcut, I think the long-term benefits are not there. But if it's for someone who, you know, really has high inflammation, they're overweight, they sort of fit the right profile. This is where the whole precision medicine comes in. It's no one size fits all. You have to look at biomarkers. You have to look at their body mass index, their percentage body fat, and then use all those markers to make the right decision for that patient.
16:14Oh yeah. So let's, let's, let's talk about WellBell for a little bit, because this is a product that you and your, your sisters co-founded it. And, and it's a product that I use and love so much that I asked if we could carry it on the Goop Shop. Can you tell me, it was your sister's hair loss that sort of incited this whole business idea. Is that right? Yeah, I have two sisters. I'm the oldest of three. My middle sister was postpartum. And then my other sister was going through some stressful life events. And they both had pretty extensive hair loss. And at the time, I really didn't like what was out there on the market.
16:54So I was like, you you know, heck, let me put my functional medicine fellowship to use. And I formulated WellBell. They were my first guinea pigs and they had really great outcomes with the supplement. And one day I remember we were like in Tribeca at some sushi spot and my sister's like, Dan, you're not going to understand. Like I've knew like baby Harris coming in and they were so excited and it sort of morphed into company. It wasn't the intention. It was sort of just like, you know, older brother rescue younger sister sort of situation. And five years later, it's an actual company and we're super proud of it.
17:28And we're super proud to be working with Goop and working with you. It's a real honor, I should say. Oh, that's so sweet. Thank you.
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18:44so i when i first met you when we were talking about the product i was skeptical you know because i've tried different hair supplements before and and by the way i always had like the thickest craziest hair whenever i got a haircut i was like can you thin it out it's like so you know and then after covid i really did lose a lot of hair when i when i got covid and then of course perimenopause is just not a friend to hair, et cetera. So how does it work and why does it work so well? So I think there's a couple of reasons. There's a couple of hero ingredients in WellBell that I think really, really allow it to work for a lot of different people.
19:31Works for men, works for women. There's one product specifically for peri and post-menopausal women, and we can get into that later. But in terms of a hero ingredient, I would say we have biotin at a much more physiologic dose. Some of our competitors have as much as six times as much biotin, and you can end up with biotin overload, which can cause cystic acne, nausea, abdominal pain, and more frighteningly, it can actually interfere with thyroid assays and cardiac troponin assays, which I, as a cardiologist, use to figure out in the emergency room if someone's having a heart attack. So having physiologic doses of things is really important.
20:09It has MSM, which is a natural form of sulfur. MSM is anti-inflammatory for the scalp. It also provides the bonds needed for healthy hair, and it's a precursor for keratin and elastin. We included a little bit of betaine hydrochloride, and betaine is something that increases your stomach acidity just enough to help you break down foods, so you're absorbing your micronutrients better. Systemically, you're just healthier because you're getting the micronutrients you need to produce healthy hair. And lastly, there's saw palmetto. So a lot of hair loss is hormonal and the main hormone is testosterone.
20:47So testosterone gets converted to its mean cousin dihydrotestosterone. And so we block that conversion with saw palmetto, which is natural so that you have less DHT and DHT is responsible for miniaturization of hair follicles. And I think We have a very compact list. I hate supplements that have like 35 ingredients. It's very concise, high yield, you know, vegan, non-GMO. I formulated it using, you know, research and doing literature searches on PubMed. And I think it just seems to work for lots of people. It does take time. It's not overnight, but it takes about two or three months. But people usually have increase in hair density, better hair quality and decreased shedding.
21:32and there's been so many stories. I never thought Gwyneth going into this that I would be hearing from post-chemo patients or people with autoimmune diseases. And you hear these stories about how much of your identity is related to like your appearance and your hair and like people with, you know, not wanting to go on dates or not wanting to, you know, socialize because they're embarrassed from their alopecia. And the fact that we can make an impact in those customers has been so fulfilling. Yeah. Yeah. And it really is, you know, you're right when you say it's such a part of identity. And, you know, I still have a ton of hair, but I don't have, like, I probably have a quarter of what I used to have.
22:14And it's like, you feel sort of naked, you know, you're like, where did all my hair go? Is this a symptom of a larger problem? Like, it's startling. It's startling. Yeah. It's, it gives you a feeling of feeling maybe exposed or, you know, vulnerable in a little way. And then exactly like, what's wrong? Do I have something wrong with my thyroid or is this a product of aging and reminding that, you know, all of us are getting older. Like those thoughts do come up. Yeah. And what about, or do you, do you ever recommend that people like people have, you know, topical minoxidil, or I heard there are certain lasers for your scalp or PRP for the scalp?
22:56Like, are there other things that people who are really struggling with hair loss that want to attack it from a multi-pronged, you know, way? You stole the words right out of my mouth. I love multi-pronged. Yeah. So I think in some complicated patients and patients with really difficult hair loss, you need, you know, a multi-pronged approach, you know, even like a medical dermatologist who specializes in hair loss and alopecia. Sometimes I have patients who've needed scalp biopsies to try to figure out what's going on, their hair loss, but those things can help. Minoxidil can help lasers. Is it toxic?
23:29Is it okay to use? I think topical minoxidil safe. And I think oral minoxidil at low dosages is usually pretty well tolerated. So we have plenty of patients on WellBell who are on other modalities and interventions to try to help them with their alopecia. Right. Because presumably if you get PRP in the scalp and it's helpful, or like, you know, you're keeping more hair, you want to make it as healthy as possible and keep it on the scalp. And absolutely. I think some of it is hair health. And then I don't think scalp health really gets enough attention. Scalp health, everything that's good for your skin is good for your scalp.
24:11So you want to sort of get inflammation down at the scalp level. So a lot of the modalities sort of work on that, making sure that the circulation to the scalp is good because the follicles need nutrients. They need oxygen, they need blood, they need nutrients. So you have to sort of think about that. And some of these ingredients help promote circulation to the scalp as well. So it's the hair follicle and the scalp that are both important. What is vitamin K2 that's included just out of curiosity? So I slipped in vitamin K2 for the women's plus because I'm also really osteopenia and osteoporosis are very important to me.
24:47I have a lot of women who are over the age of 40, 45, who struggle with bone loss. And I was like, you know what, if I'm going to create a supplement for that age group, why don't I slip in something that's good for their bone health and their hair health? So we know that vitamin K and vitamin D and calcium are great for your bone health. Vitamin K actually is improved circulation to the scalp and it's a pre helps with elastin and collagen production for hair. So sort of like a little secret ingredient we put in there address all those issues. That's awesome. Yeah. And can be used like in conjunction with estrogen replacement as well for bone protection.
25:28Totally. Yeah. That's good to know. So you often talk about like nutrition as a whole and kind of what we eat and how it impacts how it impacts how we age, but can you talk from your perspective a little bit about how it impacts mental health? So in my mind, the way I think about nutrition and overall health is that it's all connected. So if you're, you know, if you don't have a happy gut and your GI tract is inflamed and you're bloated and eating things that don't agree with you, sometimes those patients have mental fog. They don't have mental clarity. Their wake sleep cycles can be set off. So they're not really sleeping well at nighttime.
Read the full transcript
26:11So I think nutrition is super important. Feeling good. I always say happy stomach, happy patients. So there's clearly a connection between the GI tract and the gut and the brain and getting patients optimized from that standpoint is something that I often focus on. There are things, for instance, like omega fatty acids, like from salmon that are great for your skin and also great for your heart and your brain. And I love including those sorts of things. So when I wake up in the morning, I do intermittent fasting. I'll have a tablespoon of flaxseed oil. And then that's sort of one of my morning routines.
26:48That's how I get my day started. And interestingly, it keeps me super satiated and we want to have good alpha linoleic acid levels. And flaxseed oil is fabulous for that. It's anti-inflammatory and it's great for your gut. You break your fast with that or it doesn't break the fast? It's under the... Yeah, I think it's fine. It's just a tablespoon of alpha-linoleic acid and that's it until I break my fast. How long do you fast for? On average, like 18 hours. Oh, wow. That's a hefty fast, Dr. Dan. Yeah, you get used to it. You get used to it. And why do you find that it works for you? I feel like I have better mental clarity, more energy.
27:32in animal models, when they look at intermittent fasting or, you know, that kind of calorie restriction, it promotes autophagy, which is a way for your immune system to sort of prune and get rid of like bad cells. And I just feel, I just feel good. So I listened to my body. I don't do it all the time. You know, with these routines, we don't have to be a hundred percent. Are there weekends where my kids have like French toast and I like totally scarf it down 100%. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The French toast is hard to resist, I got to tell you.
28:14So some things that I hear a bit conflicting is like some cardiologists will say, you know, watch your red meat intake if you have cholesterol issue. And then the people that I speak to on the more functional side, say, if you're having grass-fed, grass-finished beef, it doesn't impact your cholesterol as negatively. And grass-fed beef is actually a superfood and the organ meats, et cetera. Where do you land on this? So I sort of, you know, I'm a functional medicine doctor and a cardiologist. So... Exactly. That's why I'm asking you. The first thing I would say is sort of goes back to this end of one sort of practice of medicine, like not everyone's the same and not everyone responds the same to red meat and their cholesterol metabolism.
29:01Also, it depends on like, if someone has coronary plaque, my targets and goal for that person, if they did a calcium score and it's positive, it's going to be very different than someone who has high cholesterol and has no plaque at all. So I really need to get to know the patient first. That's my first answer. And like my intuitive sort of responses, like every person's different and their response to red meat and where they are on the spectrum of heart disease is different. And then the second thing I want to say is like sort of like everything in moderation, if you're having red meat a couple of times a month, I don't think that that's going to be really negative on your health if you're sourcing really good grass fed meat.
29:41So that's my stance on it. So if someone asks me, that's usually what I say. Okay. Do you eat red meat? Sparingly. So it's not completely out of my diet, but I tend to eat, get protein from other sources prior to red meat, but a couple of times a month I will have red meat. Okay. Yeah. So it's like a special occasion, you know, like nice, you know, nice steak dinner. Maybe, you know, there's a restaurant that just opened up in my building that has grass fed hamburgers and my kids love it. So like we've hit that spot up a couple of times. So it's not a no. And I think that goes for everything in life.
30:16I think people really want a schedule and things to be super binary, like yes to red meat, no to red meat. And there's a comfortable in between where you can say, okay, there's enough evidence that maybe red meat shouldn't be the primary source of protein, but I can still include it in my diet. And taking the stress away from those kind of decisions, I see people getting really into a tailspin about what supplements should I be on and what should my diet be? I think if you have a generalized philosophy of what works well and you're good 80 % of the time, 85 % of the time, I think that's okay. Presumably it also changes with different chapters, right?
30:57I mean, like I'm hardcore perimenopausal. I wish it would just stop already before I like, I can't take it anymore. But I noticed that, you know, after I was, I had long COVID and was dealing with sort of chronic inflammation for a long time, and I went really paleo. It felt great. And I had more clarity and more energy and my C4A was going down a bit and all that. And then in the past year, I feel like I need more carbohydrates and more fiber. I've really been craving legumes, lentils, and great homemade organic sourdough bread, that kind of thing. So I've been sort of experimenting with just eating, you know, more instinctually.
31:45And I have to say, like, I feel good right now having like some sourdough, great quality sourdough bread, like a really nice glass of organic unsprayed grapes, you know, like glass of red wine. So I don't know, do you think it's bad to sort of follow your, what your body is kind of craving? And if it's like Dunkin' Donuts every morning, probably i would say let's let's revisit that question but in general i think people know like what their body needs and carbs are important you just need to get good carbs you know and like have enough healthy carbs enough protein and fiber enough healthy fats i think most people know like what feels good if you eat something and you don't feel good afterwards it's probably something that's not really meshing well with your body and what do i mean by not feeling well you might feel bloated.
32:38You might have some brain fog. Sometimes people break out in allergies or just feel slowed down. Those are foods that are inflammatory. Your body's telling you, Hey, I'm not happy. And interestingly enough, if you look at the small bowel, the highest concentration of immune cells is in your small bowel. So your small bowel is a huge immune system. It's like a giant immune system. So if it's not happy, it's going to like sort of set off and then you get the systemic effects of bit and I'm feeling brain foggy and slow and sluggish. And I try to eat towards a certain feeling. So if you eat towards that feeling of like feeling good afterwards, you're probably making good decisions.
33:16Yeah. That's a great distinction. And I think that's right. And I've just been surprised at like, you know, putting some of these foods back into my diet has made me feel really good, you know? But again, like you say, we're all sui generis, completely unique and one of a kind. And so maybe, you know, a diet that works for every, you know, that I find that really interesting as well. And that the thinking really evolves there around precision medicine. That's why no diet has ever been like the forever diet for society. Right. Because like, there's common trends. I would say the closest thing is a Mediterranean diet probably fits most people.
33:56Yeah. Just because it's high in like the healthy fats and, you know, phytonutrients and vegetables and those things time and time again seem to be beneficial for us. But there's certain vegetables that some patients absolutely can't tolerate that give them, you know, they're going to be bloated and miserable. So there's no one diet that fits everybody. And I think we're going to get to a point in medicine and wellness where we'll be able to look at people's DNA, we'll be able to do blood tests, and really know exactly what you should eat based on your metabolomics, your genes, your epigenetics, et cetera.
34:31I don't think that's at prime time, but the best sort of thing now to do is figure out what foods make you feel good and what foods make you feel, keep a food journal, like what makes you not feel good. And if it doesn't put it on the maybe avoid list. Right. And like, you know, not, or not sleeping well, like for me, that's, that's a clue always like if I, cause I tend to eat dinner early so that I'll digest before I go to sleep. And if I still don't sleep well, it's that I ate something that my body isn't loving. A hundred percent. I think your body will tell you, will tell you something to sign.
35:04I've had patients who've developed migraines from eating foods that don't agree with them. Yeah. It's really interesting. And what about alcohol? Do you ever have a tequila or a glass of wine or never? It's again, not never. I'm usually there's very seldomly am I in the never category. There are a couple, there's certain things that are in the never category. What's in your never category. If you feel comfortable, I've never done any drugs. Oh, you're missing out Dr. Denton. I've never done any drugs. Gosh, I think that's probably one of them. I've never tried a cigarette, never had an interest in it.
35:40Honestly. Lucky. I was so addicted back in the day. Oh my God. Never had an interest. So I think those things are definitely like the no, there's never really upside evidence that there might be a use case for like hallucinogens in certain people with mental health issues. And that's being researched. So that or like trauma, MDMA, trauma, MDMA, ketamine, like, I think there's a use case for that. But sort of self medicating with drugs to help yourself when you know, things don't feel right, can often not, you know, bad direction. But when it comes to alcohol, I mean, I'll have a drink, like, I would say like once or twice a month, you know, at a friend's dinner or a birthday party, you know, New Year's kind of at the same frequency I have the red meat.
36:25Right. Maybe I just have red meat and alcohol at the same time.
36:36Just going back to what you were saying around psychedelics and like mitigation techniques or modality for like, how much does stress and trauma impact our cellular health, our metabolic health? So, so much that I don't even know where to start. Gosh, you know, the first thing I think about is cortisol. So cortisol is a stress hormone that our body was designed to produce when like a grizzly bear was coming so that we can like save ourselves and, you know, jump into fight or flight. nowadays that hormone is more maladaptive, meaning we produce it because we're in traffic or we get into an argument with a coworker.
37:18I think chronic cortisol and inflammation really, really can be toxic at the molecular level. An interesting study that I looked at a while ago in Asia was that they looked at people who had good relationships, like healthy work relationships and healthy marriages, and they measured these inflammatory markers called interleukins. Yeah. And then they chronicled the same interleukins for people who had toxic relationships. So they were in a bad romance, you know, they didn't like their boss. And those pro-inflammatory cytokines that are known to cause cancer, heart disease, and brain disease were all elevated in those people.
37:53And it just leads you to think that your outer world and what you interface with directly impacts your inner biology. And that's when like being aware and having agency and thinking about these things that we're not separate from our environments. And that decisions about what we eat, the thoughts we maintain, the people we keep around us, that all affects you. I just met with a woman the other day who had metastatic eye cancer. You don't really hear about that that often. Wow. I'm here, eye cancer. And we're talking about her health and we went through her nutrition and what supplements she should be on.
38:28And I said to her at the end of it, I said, do you have any toxic relationships? And her husband nearly fell off his chair. And she said, sort of like I told you so. And I said, whatever's going on with that toxic relationship, that needs to end, because if we're looking to keep you around for as long as possible, those stressful situations need to completely not exist. So I think that's a beautiful question. It's a very insightful question, Gwyneth, and one that I really appreciate and feel strongly about. Hmm. Is it called like something like morphic resonance, like that you're sort of, you're internally resonating with those external, you know, energetic factors that can impact you positively or negatively?
39:12100%. It's all energy. Yeah. One source of energy impacting another energy. So if you have those toxicities in your life, toxicity can be food. Toxicity can be the thoughts that you feed yourself. Toxicity can be the relationships you have will have a direct impact on your biologic and molecular health. And it's not spoken about enough. No, it's true. And we normalize the toxicity. We normalize being in toxic situations. I have been in my life, thankfully, I'm too old now to sustain anyone or anything toxic. But I did for many, many years and, you know, like throughout my life. And, you know, I think we're also sort of sometimes even a little bit shamed in the culture for, or at least in the past, you know, couple of decades for wanting to abstain from certain things that are toxic, like, you know, hyper-processed foods or, you know, or alcohol, you know, having like the culture judge you for that or, you know, which I also find really interesting that there's this sort of sociological acceptance for us in for that toxicity on whatever level is acceptable or normal?
40:31I, you know, there's a lot of social pressures in that. And what I would want to tell people is to think about your own self kindness and self love. When you're tuned into that, you really don't those sort of external factors of judgment or society perceives matter less. And one of the things that I said recently that, that I liked was that every decision you make is a micro contract with your DNA, little micro contracts, you know, how you treat the mailman, what you have at the restaurant and you don't have to get a perfect, but they're little micro contracts. And I think when you think about longevity and health span, it's the accumulation of those micro contracts that make an impact in our lives.
41:13So there's, there's a lot of agency here. And that's what I want to tell the people who are listening to this podcast, you have a lot of agency in terms of what your life can look like, who you surround yourself with, the decisions that you make. And as soon as you become aware that you have that agency, the external factors cannot have that same control and come from self-love and self-care and you'll always land on top. And I think you make a really interesting point about being guided by, you know, you sometimes say like your body speaks to you right and i think if we can move out of the model of like tolerating stuff and move more into the model of like how does this make me feel how does this food make me feel how does this person make me feel how does this co-worker you know that that that the agency has to start there right with real honesty around how you relate to yourself how you're how you're really feeling like you have to be able to let the information bubble up in a real way.
42:12100 % awareness, but awareness without necessarily the victimhood of it. So if you all of a sudden, you know, awareness becomes the poor me, then that poor me is going to be its own kind of toxicity. So it's being curious about how things make you so without judgments. So how can you be curious about how this food makes me feel or this person makes me feel without judgment, and without putting yourself in that poor me victim category, because that in and of itself can increase cortisol levels and make you feel lousy. And all of a sudden you, you develop an identity of someone who's everything's wrong.
42:46And then you, what do you attract wrong more and more wrong? So it's doing it in a way that's still, again, with a self-kindness and saying, well, this doesn't really work out for me. Let me, let me marinate over this. Let me think about this. Yeah. Yeah. So a well, bell, you can take with all your other supplements that your, you know, doctor or nutritionist or whatever has given you, or is it important to take it and sort of let them let people like, do doctors want to know more holistically the supplements that you're taking? I would recommend that. I always think it's good to keep your healthcare practitioner in the loop of what you're taking just so that they're aware, make sure that doesn't interact with any of your medications that you're not on anything that might be a duplicate.
43:27So I think that's a really good practice to keep your healthcare practitioner, your holistic practitioner plugged into what you're doing and taking. I don't know if you're developing new products for WellBell, but even for the existing SKUs that you have, like how did you, are they, did you put like clinicals behind them? Did you, can you talk a little bit about the product development process? Yeah. So I put my super nerd hat on, put on my glasses, like mad scientist. And then I started researching like ingredients that were clinically validated. And, you know, early on in the company, we didn't have enough money to like launch a clinical trial.
44:08Those are really expensive. Luckily we've grown to the point that we hired our own CRO and we're running some clinical trials with dermatologists. So we should have some exciting, double blind placebo controlled data within the year. But the early days we're really looking at safe. You know, the first thing they teach you in med school is do no harm. Yeah. So important to me. I was like, it would be great if it works, but I definitely don't want to cause any harm. What can I put together that's going to be safe for most people? And it took a lot of research and time and trial and error to find that formulation.
44:43And now we really want to get it substantiated through a clinical trial. And that process, the enrollment for that clinical trial is happening as we speak. That's really exciting. I mean, even anecdotally, you have so many incredible stories and before and after pictures that I'm sure the results of the clinical trials are going to be impressive. Thank you. Yes, we're excited. I feel encouraged. Yeah.
45:13do you feel like on some level the kind of wellness industry that has gotten so popular now it's so funny because i look back and like when i think about what the things that we used to ask questions about at goop back in the day it's like so much of it is mainstream now which is so funny to me. But there's also, I mean, it's kind of a great thing about social media is that it's this great democratizer and people can find an audience and find people who they resonate with, et cetera, and get good information. But presumably there's also not good information. And I hear all the time from my kids about, I'm not on TikTok, but I hear like there's all these wellness trends on TikTok.
45:55Does this concern you at all? And are there ways to sort of fact check these, you know, cause you, we spoke about cortisol, for example, on this call. And apparently there's a whole thing on social media about cortisol face and how to get rid when you have it and how to get rid of it. So what's your sort of take on like the, you know, social media isation of wellness information. In some part, I like it because it's bringing health and wellness to the forefront and allowing people to be aware about the importance of it. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. In that respect, I think it's great that people are interested in these things, wanting to understand it and wanting to share with other people to help them.
46:40The problem is a lot of the people who are posting don't necessarily have a health and wellness background. Misinformation can be propagated really easily. So it's sort of like a double-edged sword. I'm hoping that at some point, maybe AI or some platforms will be able to help us really, you know, fact check against like journal articles and like clinicians and thought leaders who maybe are, you know, experts in cortisol or cholesterol so that if you hear something great, and then maybe you'll take the opportunity to just fact check it before you take it as, you know, as gospel. So I know I didn't answer it as a yes or no, it's sort of a yes and no, but that's what I would recommend.
47:25Be curious, be your own self-advocate, try to find a couple of doctors or health experts that resonate with you. So as opposed to like jumping from one TikTok channel to another, where you're just going to hear all sorts of random facts and there's no way to really validate it and it becomes information overload, pick a couple of people that resonate with you who seem like they're well-credentialed. Another way to know if someone really knows what they're talking about, those people tend to tell you, I don't know, when they don't know. So I look for those people. I love when someone smart says, I don't know, because it makes me feel that when they do know, they really understand the concept.
48:04Right, right. Pick your people who are going to inspire you and seem to know what they're talking about. Right, right. Can I ask you a couple of questions, just heart related, since I have a cardiologist on the podcast here for a minute? So I have recently discovered that I have a tiny bit of plaque, which is really surprising to me because I'm super healthy and I... Guilty. This guy, also plaque. That's crazy. Tiny speck. Me too. Tiny, tiny bit. And I think I also, I'm not unconvinced that it was, you know, some, you know, I've been reading a lot about COVID and heart disease and stuff like that.
48:50And so I don't know if it's because of that or just because I'm 52 or what. Because genetically, like, I don't, you know, nobody in my family has ever dealt with like any heart disease at all. So it's a little bit of a mystery. But I wanted to ask you about protocols to really keep that in check. There's a drug called Repatha that I've heard of. I wanted to ask your opinion on that, your opinion on the efficacy of statins, which seems to be a real hotbed topic these days. We're going to need a whole separate podcast on cholesterol management, but love this category. I was excited to be on this podcast.
49:33down like through the roof. So, you know, I think once you have any demonstrable plaque, you should be on a low dose statin if you can tolerate it. The reason statins are important are that they stabilize plaque. Obviously, we know that they lower cholesterol, but we don't really care about cholesterol. We really care about the effect of cholesterol on plaque, on the actual thing that we're judging. And there's different kinds of plaque. I sit on the board as an advisor for this company that does plaque analysis. It's called Clearly. I don't know if you've had a Clearly scan. If you haven't, we should probably get you one.
50:08I'd love one. It uses AI to look at your plaque and determine if it's vulnerable, high-risk plaque or low-risk calcified plaque. And statins can help move plaque from that vulnerable plaque to the more stable calcified plaque. If I have someone with high cholesterol and their calcium spores is zero and their carotid ultrasound is normal and they have no evidence of heart disease or plaque, I'll manage it with supplements and diet and exercise and nutrition. So we'll look at, you know, bergamot extract and berberine and red yeast rice. I'm on a statin myself. As soon as I realized I was on, you know, had plaque, I started on a statin, but I think the efficacy of statins is at its lowest dose.
50:49Meaning that if you increase the dose, you don't really get that much more benefit, but you get much more side effects. So for instance, I'm on Crestor, Rosuvastatin, five milligrams. I take it every day. My cholesterol is beautiful now. It's a lot better than it was. Also, there's a couple of new kids on the block with cholesterol that we never talked about. It used to be like HDL, LDL, and triglycerides, and that's it. Now there's LP little a, lipoprotein A, ApoB, different inflammatory markers that have to do with the heart. And so we've moved from those basic cholesterol panels to these more advanced cardiac biomarkers.
51:26So if you haven't done that, we should do that as well. Okay. Okay. And what about Repatha? I use Repatha in patients who are statin intolerant or patients who are really high risk where statins are not really getting them to go. Repatha is an injectable. It's a monoclonal antibody that works to lower cholesterol. It's very, very effective. But I think most people who have heart disease and coronary plaque don't need Repatha, but it's great to have it to use in addition to statins or in replacement when people are statin intolerant. Thank you so much. Yes. I do want to ask you a little bit about detoxification.
52:08detoxification. You mentioned early autophagy, so the process whereby the body, when it's not digesting, starts to kind of gobble up these unhealthy cells and sort of like gets the toxins out of the body. That's part of our natural detoxification system, of course, sweating, et cetera. We live in a super toxic environment, obviously. Our bodies were not designed to detoxify, you know, these forever chemicals with great ease. And so there's a lot of discussion around helping the body detoxify some of these substances. And especially, you know, right now, we're dealing with this kind of post, I don't even know what to call it, apocalyptic fire in Los Angeles.
52:55And I have so many friends that are so worried about VOCs and benzene and, And, you know, all of these incredibly toxic things that could potentially be in the air or the water, asbestos that burned, you know, lithium and car batteries, etc. So I guess in your opinion, you know, what are some of the things to, you know, sort of generally like do we need to help our body with its detoxification processes? And then if so, you know, especially in a more extreme event, like post fire, what are some of the things that we can do to help the body with that process? So the first thing I would say is even after sort of like a post apocalyptic disaster where a lot of chemicals and molecules are put into the air, there's no no need to short term panic.
53:49Do you know what I mean? So like a lot of these effects that take time to accumulate and really cause damage in terms of like detoxing, there's ways to sort of help with like liver, your liver is very important for detoxification. So there's things that can upregulate liver detoxification. There's antioxidants, for instance, the number one, you know, antioxidant for the body glutathione. I think glutathione is like a master antioxidant. So, you know, glutathione, there's transdermal glutathione, if people are really worried about toxic exposures, or if they feel like they're symptomatic, there are specialty labs that can check for these, you know, like in your urine or your blood, and you can check for benzene and toluene and these different, you know, chemicals.
54:32And then, you know, we can figure out ways of detoxing the body from those. So it really depends on what the exposure is, you know, increasing your antioxidant support, antioxidants neutralize free radicals. So our concerns with a lot of these chemicals is that they produce these free radicals that can cause DNA damage. So we want to neutralize the free radicals. What neutralizes free radicals? It's antioxidants. What's an antioxidant? Vitamin C is an antioxidant. You know, eat the rainbow. You know, you're going to get a lot of phytonutrients, a lot of antioxidants just from your food. If you're worried about the air quality, you know, maybe investing in a good HEPA filter in your bedroom is a way to hedge against some of the toxicities of the air and, you know, clean your HEPA filter often.
55:18So these are sort of things that you can do that are simple that can, you know, combat, you know, toxicity and promote, you know, body detoxification. And what about things like, like saunas or taking binders like charcoal binders and sitting in a sauna? I have had patients who've done that and they found it really helpful. What I do is like I use like spirulina and broken chlorella extract. And I put those in my smoothie. That seems a lot easier for me. I love the sauna. There's a lot of health benefits for sauna separate of detoxification. But if you want to sort of use like something natural that you can put in a smoothie, spirulina and broken chlorella extract and moringa extract are things that I add to my smoothie probably two or three times a week.
56:06I don't think I get to it every single day, but I try to do it a couple of times a week and that really helps. I'll even get broken chlorella extract little capsules and I'll just take them when I remember. Chelates and gets rid of toxins. Really good for mercury also. If your heavy metals are high, that's another way of getting it down. So are there interesting wellness modalities or ways of thinking about things that are that are emerging now that you feel excited about implementing or researching further? There's so many, there's some in like the very sort of basic science medical world. And then there are things that are more in the functional medicine.
56:47I think the things in the biotech world that I'm really excited about are like liquid biopsies where we can detect tumors in the blood before that cancer becomes clinically manifest. There's a company called Galeri, which does the grail test and they look for circulating tumor DNA and are able to evaluate whether you have one of 50 different cancers. I think that that AI is going to take healthcare and medicine to the stratosphere in terms of like the use for plaque analysis and, you know, making sure that you're not going to have complications for medicines and even over-reading mammographies and ultrasounds to make sure that breast cancer is not, you know, not missed.
57:26On the functional medicine side, I I think this concept of precision medicine for the masses is what I'm the most excited about. And really seeing that come to fruition is something that is going to be part of my life's mission. That's so exciting. The thing I did want to ask you was there's WellBell Women, WellBell Women Plus, and WellBell Men. Can you talk a little bit about the distinctions between each one of those three products? Yeah, I'll start with the timeline. We started with regular WellBell for all women. And then we did WellBell men's only because men have more testosterone and we needed to have more salt palmetto to block the DHT conversion for them.
58:10And then we realized that the hormonal needs of peri and postmenopausal women also are different. When women go into perimenopause, their estrogen and progesterone drop more than their testosterone does also have relative androgen excess. So they have more testosterone compared to estrogen and progesterone. So they also needed more DHT blockade. And then I added the vitamin K2 for the osteopenia and osteoporosis and some copper and zinc to help with hormones and testosterone metabolism. The core of the different products is very similar with slight nuances for each one of those groups. That's great.
58:50And you said your, your hair like completely changed after. I have more hair now than I did in college. This is not an ad, by the way, this is like, we were, this is like from the heart. This is, this is amazing product. I'm, you know, when I find something that really works, like I always want to share it. That's kind of like the, the foundation of our, my whole business is really is just like trying to connect people to good things. So I'm just, I'm really thrilled that you have made a product that's so efficacious and, you know, like doesn't disappoint and it's done so thoughtfully, especially with like a holistic and scientific lens.
59:32Thank you. Yeah. It's a merger of, you know, science, beauty, and overall wellness. Like even the betaine hydrochloride that we put in there to increase the absorption of micronutrients was an ingredient that was specifically put there from a holistic standpoint that other, you know, other supplements don't have is a new betaine would help with overall hair, skin, and nails. So yeah, we're really proud of the results. And again, super honored to be working with you and Goop on this product. Thank you. And I had, I had so much fun on this podcast. I can't believe the hour went by so quickly, right?
1:00:09It was like 10 minutes. I couldn't believe it.
1:00:15Thank you so much for being here today. The connection between what we put into our bodies and how we feel, not just physically, but mentally, is critically important. And the work you're doing at WellBell is really making a difference, at least in my life, for the health of my hair. If you want to learn more or try WellBell for yourself, you can find it now in Goop stores and at Goop.com. Thank you all so much for tuning in and see you next time. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
From the publisher
In this episode of The goop Podcast, Gwyneth Paltrow sits down with Dr. Dan, Harvard-trained functional medicine expert and Co-Founder of Wellbel, to explore the connection between brain health, nutrition, and how we age. They discuss how hair health is a reflection of overall wellness, the role of supplements in optimizing beauty from the inside out, and how small, intentional choices can have a profound impact on how we look and feel. From unpacking the science behind holistic wellness and the truth about GLP-1s to sharing practical tips for managing stress and navigating misinformation, this conversation sheds light on how small steps can lead to big results in both mental and physical health.
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