191. Dr. Darshan Shah: How to Reverse Aging with Plasma Exchange and Stem Cell Therapy

21:09Gary Brecka:I think we ignored these 110 trillion little organelles for decades. And now we're realizing that as the powerhouse of our cell becomes metabolically sick, Like the cell follows. And as the cell follows, the organ system and the organism follows. And it's so fascinating now that we're down to this little organelle, this little battery house, and trying to find ways to service this and maybe even increase its density, proliferate these, as a way of helping the body function better. And it reminds me of the fact that most of the really good anti-aging medicine is really just trying to get back to what God gave us and less of what man makes us.

21:55Right, right.

21:56Gary Brecka:Because the greatest pharmacy is right here. I always say, you know, we're all born with a hundred billion dollar pharmacy. It's living in your gut, you know? I'll sell you mine for 25 million right now. Yeah, exactly. We're all born with it. We just have to use it right and give it the substrates and the tools and the environment it needs to give us what we need back. and then you can avoid all the pharmaceuticals, you know? Yeah. So somebody that's beginning this journey, you know, it sadly can be really confusing. I mean, if you get online right now and start Googling around, you will get paralysis of analysis, right?

22:30Gary Brecka:It's like trying to buy a stock chart with 50 different charts, one time you buy, sell, hold. And I think people get paralysis of analysis. They don't know what works, what doesn't. So somebody that has the basics covered and by the basics, I mean, they're paying attention to their sleep, they're eating a whole food diet, they're getting a decent amount of exercise, right? And it may be a psycho biohacker. They got a good handle on basic biomarkers or taking some supplementations. Where do they start this next level of their journey? So we have this entire program laid out for our patients and I put it together when I first started my clinics and it's worked extremely well for thousands of our patients right now.

23:13And we call it the wellness wheel. It's basically a wheel of 12 aspects of your health divided up into four categories. What you just mentioned was lifestyle medicine, right? Love that word. Yeah. Nutrition, metabolic health, exercise and movement, and sleep and recovery. Those all come first. If you don't do those three things first, everything else is harder to make any gains on, right? Second aspect of our program is preventative medicine. That's where we focus on heart health, brain health, and your immune system, which prevents you from cancer. With preventative medicine, there's incredible diagnostics right now that we can detect heart disease, Alzheimer's, and other brain cognitive diseases, and also cancer very early.

23:54So then we check those three boxes for all of our patients. Then we move on to my favorite topic, which is functional medicine, right? Functional medicine is focusing on gut health and optimizing that, optimizing your hormone health, detoxifying your system, and getting your mental health and stress management right. And so that's what Dr. Hyman talks a lot about in his books. And he and I work very closely together. Once you get to that functional medicine part of it, I say it's my favorite because not only does it help you reverse and prevent chronic disease, but getting those right, you start feeling great.

24:29Right. You feel vital again, you know.

24:31Gary Brecka:I try to set that hook for my clients early on, like, you know, dietary and lifestyle and supplement changes. is, you know, I try to give them a win out of the gate so that they really subscribe to that journey, right? I mean, that's what we did with Dana White. You know, we had a fascinating conversation before we came on the podcast and you were talking about the new Pronovo scan or it was Pronovo, right? Yes. That is scanning the brain and looking at the hippocampus and the possible early signs of shrinkage in the hippocampus being the leading indicator for things like Alzheimer's, dementia, early onset cognitive decline.

25:13Gary Brecka:Because, you know, I feel like the majority of these diseases we don't start to address until not only do we have them, but we're pretty far progressed. That's the problem, right? In the disease pathway, because, you know, you can't find your keys in your wallet. And then, and then you find your keys and, but they're in the refrigerator. Then you start parking in the neighbor's driveway. And then finally a spouse or a loved one goes, we need to get this checked out. And then bang, you've got early onset dementia or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or what have you. And now that, that process has taken hold.

25:51Yeah. Then it's hard to right the ship, right?

25:54Gary Brecka:Right. And, and now you're on the hamster wheel too. You're on the pharmaceutical hamster wheel. A lot of that is disease maintenance and symptom management. But I was really fascinated by it. So, you know, in stage two, when you look at some of these diagnostics, talk to me a little bit about the shrinking hippocampus. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what you're referring to there is preemptive diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease before it's too late. And there's a couple of incredible innovations in that field right now. One is we can use artificial intelligence and look at the hippocampal volume. The hippocampus is the memory center of your brain.

26:30And before you start losing your memories, your hippocampus starts shrinking. And then we can compare that volume through an MRI of the brain to people that have normal cognitive powers in your same age group, right? And so then we know that your hippocampus is maybe a little bit smaller than somebody else. And then we can start taking proactive steps to reverse that tie, to right the ship. Because like you said, the earlier you right that ship, the easier it is to sail it in the right direction, right? And it gets too hard when you've already been diagnosed with full-blown Alzheimer's. Now, there's another test.

27:06I don't know if you know about this one, the PTAL 217 test. Have you heard of this? No.

27:10Gary Brecka:Is this a genetic test? No. This is an incredible blood test that measures a protein biomarker of Alzheimer's disease. Wow. Because there are genetic markers for Alzheimer's. There's ApoE, which is a genetic marker, right? And that gives you some indication of your risk of Alzheimer's. So if you have two copies of 16X and one copy is 4X, your genetics are never your destiny, right? You can still, even if you have two copies, you can still prevent Alzheimer's disease. You just have to be intentional and diligent about it. You need to look at all the root causes of why we age and and don't have longevity and work on all of them.

27:44But P-TAL 217 is incredible because this is actually a blood biomarker that's highly correlated to the scans of the brain that tell us whether or not you have Alzheimer's. So this, and actually as a level, it goes from like zero all the way up to, you know, hundreds. And so the higher your level, the more likely you are to have Alzheimer's disease. But what's really great about this biomarker, it can tell us decades before you have Alzheimer's if you're, go ahead and track. Decades. Decades. and you can track your interventions and see if they're working because you can see the biomarker actually come down.

28:15So Dr. Dale Bredesen, he wrote the book End of Alzheimer's, incredible guy. He's one of the main scientists talking about this. And it's truly an incredible world we live in right now. So somebody has this protein,

28:27Gary Brecka:let's say they have the ApoE gene and they have a predisposition, one or two copies. And obviously that raises a level of concern. And then they do this protein test. What are they going to get from this protein test? And like, what are kind of some of the actual steps they would take? Yeah. So they're going to get a number or a level. It'll tell them how far along you are in the disease progression towards Alzheimer's. And what you want to start doing then is putting into place lifestyle changes. A lot of the ones, you know, we talk about eating whole foods and staying away from seed oils and processed food and getting better sleep and exercising more and having less sedentary time, obviously.

29:03But then there's additional things that you need to do to reverse this. And one of the biggest reasons people develop Alzheimer's disease is a massive amount of toxic exposure as well. So you want to test for heavy metals, mold, Lyme disease, et cetera. Those can also increase your risk of Alzheimer's. Plasma exchange has been shown in a really great research study called the AMBAR study that Dr. Kiprov did to actually slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease by removing a lot of these toxic substances from your blood as well. So there's a lot of things you can do that are free and a lot of things that you can do that might cost a little bit of money, but you can absolutely arrest the process and turn it around.

29:43Gary Brecka:Wow. You know, I've met people in my travels, you know, from all over the world that have had all kinds of conditions that have now gone into remission. And what's amazing about a lot of these conversations is I had a woman, for example, I spoke at a conference. She was not a client of mine, for the record. But I had seen her at the same conference almost two years earlier. And she had just begun to lose sight almost completely in one eye because of multiple sclerosis. And we were having a conversation. She found a great functional medicine doctor. and this functional medicine doctor didn't believe that she actually had multiple sclerosis.

30:27Gary Brecka:He said, I'm not going to accept the diagnosis until I do mold mycotoxin, heavy metal virus, and some parasite testing. And lo and behold, she had severe heavy metal toxicity, which had flown under the radar for years, probably why she was unresponsive to therapy. and she had a, I want to say it was chronic Lyme, either chronic Lyme or chronic West Nile. And she got those addressed and within six months, her eyesight was fully restored. And now they've recanted this diagnosis of MS diagnosis. And I think a lot of time, you know, and I'm not a physician, you are, I'm not licensed to practice medicine, but I think a lot of time just looking from the outside in and watching 150 ,000 clients come through our clinic system and just reading medical records for so many years.

31:20Gary Brecka:I think what happens very often in medicine is someone is diagnosed with a condition and call it whatever you want, an anchor diagnosis. Once that's in the medical record, as they get passed from doctor to doctor or specialist to specialist, no one ever really goes back and says, I wonder if Dr. Shaw did, He says she has rheumatoid arthritis. I want to look at the SED rates and the rheumatoid factors and all these other things. And so once you are diagnosed as that patient, you are kind of always that patient. Absolutely. And there tends to be this kind of continuity of care where we take whatever disease we're told the client or the patient has, and we just sort of continue along that path.

32:08So true.

32:08Gary Brecka:And this is purely observational and don't have a clinical study to back this up. But I would say if you were diagnosed with any kind of severe condition, I would first go look for these kinds of pathogenic invaders, your toxicity level, your heavy metals, your mold mycotoxins, viruses. You know, where do you fall on that? Right. I'm 100 % believer in that. And, you know, when I trained in medicine, this was 30 years ago now, how I'm aging myself, but it was a while ago. Well, you look great, man. Thank you, man. But 30 years ago, and this is still true today, medicine is trained in silos, right?

32:48And so the problem with that entire model is it doesn't take into account the effect of all these systems working together and pathogens affecting multiple systems at the same time, right? So no one's really looking at what could be affecting the brain and the joints and the gut. No one's looking at that. Yeah.

33:08Gary Brecka:You've got a GI for this. You've got a rheumatologist for that. You've got a therapist or a neurologist for that. That's exactly what happens. Super bifurcated, right? Right. So there are certain categories of diagnostics that people need to do when they have something that's bad or they're not recovering from, and they're just frustrated. and these indolent infections, you know, molds, Lyme disease, heavy metal toxicity, gut health issues, leaky gut. These are all diagnoses that were never considered until we got to root cause medicine, functional medicine, where we're like, wait a minute, all these systems function together and there's these root causes of disease that can be leading to all of this.

33:47So let's look for that stuff. And so, you know, thank goodness for Jeffrey Bland, Mark Hyman, and these guys really bringing that to the consciousness of medicine. The problem is functional medicine is not taught in medical school. So once again, the Western medical system has its role, right? You have people, thank God they're rheumatologists and there's neurologists.

34:05Gary Brecka:Very good at interventional medicine, crisis medicine. I mean, we're probably the best in the world. Best in the world, right? I mean, the stuff we do for people, save lives. But if you are frustrated with the typical, you know, referral to multiple doctors and you're not getting anywhere, you're getting worse, Just absolutely, one needs to see a functional medicine doctor, bring it all together and just press the reset button and see what else could be going on. Yeah, and I think when you look at human physiology and the effect on methylation and all of these other multifaceted systems, very often, you know, it looks like if you think about all these spokes on a wheel and they all have a hub, you know, very often we're out there chasing the spokes of the wheel.

34:43Gary Brecka:This person has a mental issue. They have an autoimmune issue. They have an inflammatory issue. They have a gut issue. They have a cardiac issue. And it's not like the whole world went to hell in a handbasket at one time. You know, very often one thing goes wrong that causes everything. And if we can find that thing, that underlying chronic viral, that severe heavy metal toxicity, that undiscovered, you know, mold toxicity, which I hear a lot of folks online talking about how that mold is just completely made up. And I'm telling you, it's not. lot. Everybody has mold and, you know, human beings have had mold for centuries and we've never gotten sick from it.

35:24Gary Brecka:I find that to be patently false. And so, you know, getting back to, you know, the one thing that could have potentially caused everything, I think it's such a message of hope for a lot of people. Hey guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks. Now this is for distance athletes, HIITS cardio exercisers, people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely. And A-game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins. It has all of the electrolytes, the entire suite of B vitamins. Before you freak out and read that it has 21 grams of sugar, which it does, the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey, my preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise.

36:01Gary Brecka:It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits, and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising intensely, A-game is your choice. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. It really is. And, you know, I could tell you at our clinics and, you know, just from patients I've talked to, when you completely figure something out for someone and reverse the entire destiny of their health and their, and some of these people, they, they are so sad and depressed over what they're going through that they just don't want to live anymore.

36:38And you find out that one thing and you treat it within in six months, I mean, it's a game changer for people. So, you know, like I always say, you know, if you're frustrated with what's going on right now, you have to take your health into your own hands, become the CEO of your own health, learn about your biomarkers, learn about your disease, and start getting a team together of people to figure this out.

36:59Gary Brecka:Yeah. You know, I think the pandemic, if it did have any favors, and it's hard to think about the pandemic doing its favors, but I think if it did, it sort of woke people up to their own wellness and said, you know, Well, I need to become a little bit of a citizen scientist, take this kind of into my own hands, and go on this journey on my own behalf. So I want to move on to the next level. You know, there's a lot of talk and I think a lot of misconceptions, misunderstanding about stem cells, exosomes, what I would call these biologics, that can have phenomenal impacts in the human body. And, you know, I for a while was the health services director for the NFL Alumni Association of Athletica.

37:47Gary Brecka:So we saw lots of repetitive use injuries, you know, like knees, hips, shoulders, rotator cuffs. And our physician did a lot of intra-articular injections with a lot of stem cells, exosomes, other biologics, and saw some phenomenal results. The one thing that we did notice was that when you put even great biologics into an unhealthy biome, people that had severe insulin resistance, really elevated hemoglobin A1c, high fasting glucose, super high inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, or their liver was under stress, or their kidney function was low, low EGFR, some of these other conditions.

38:29Gary Brecka:they had demonstratively worse outcomes or by worse outcomes. I mean, they just didn't have any resolution or the benefit. So I wonder if you might just talk a little bit about stem cells to my audience. And what is the difference between, I mean, not all stem cells are created equally. No. Right. They come from amnion, corian, umbilical cord, Wharton's jelly, you know, blood, cord blood. They come from all kinds of places. First of all, do you guys use stem cells? We do. We do use stem cells. So you're a believer? Yes, absolutely. And what type of stem cell and why? Where do they come from? Right.

39:07So, you know, the whole stem cell world, because of the FDA has severe restriction on the United States, it has not allowed the stem cell science to really proliferate as it should have. Right. And you can get all, you know, you can get...

39:20Gary Brecka:I think that might change, you know, under Bobby Kennedy. I think a lot of these... Absolutely. I think it's changing. The ceiling might get raised a little bit. well, we should do what Japan did. Japan, you know, they recognized the value of stem cells and they just created a new body to deal with regenerative medicine, a new governing body to deal with regenerative medical science that was separate from the FDA. Because the FDA is great at, you know, evaluating chemical compounds for drugs, but they're not great at looking at regenerative therapies. And you could argue, you know, not to get conspiracy theory on it, but stem cells can put a lot of these pharmaceutical companies out of business, right?

39:51Because they have so many varied applications. And so, yes, I was just talking to your people here about stem cells. You have to be extremely careful where you get your stem cells from. We know some common friends that have had lots of problems with stem cells.

40:04Gary Brecka:I know people that have had, call it miracles, happen. And I know people that have had debilitating, even life-threatening types of infections. And these were very well-credentialed clients in and of themselves. Some of them icons in our industry. uh two of them that come to mind readily so talk a little bit about the stem cells where do they come from where are they harvested what are some of the applications that you find that they're a really good fit for so there's a couple different places you can get stem cells from in general terms one is from your own body right yeah host derived yep exactly and so you can get either your blood stem cells live in your blood they live in your bone marrow they live in your fat and you could take those stem cells and then you can multiply them and give them to your give them back to yourself where you need them.

40:53And you can't multiply them in the United States, but you can go out of the country to get the multiply.

40:58Gary Brecka:Is that what they call expand or minimally manipulate? Right. Is that term? Right. Exactly. So in the United States, we need to not manipulate the stem cells. In other countries, they can, and they put them into petri dishes and then they expand the cell lines. Okay. So say you extracted a million stem cells, you can then expand it into 10, 100 million stem cells. And that's what they can do. In this case, if they're derived from the host, those are your own stem cells. So they can either tap your bone marrow, like your hip or - Or your fat, like a little liposuction. And for the most part, you can take those stem cells if you don't expand them and you can put them back into the host, right?

41:37Gary Brecka:And joints, knees, hip, shoulders, rotator cuff. And people do that. People do that a lot. And people even do that with PRP. They'll just take even the plasma from your blood and they'll put it into your shoulders. and your knees, we do that therapy as well. And that's also helpful. The problem with your older stem cells is that they're older, right? They don't have - They're the age of the host, right? It's the age of the host. So I'm 54, so they're my age. I mean, right? Your age, right. And especially if you're unhealthy to begin with, they have the same health qualities as your overall biology, right?

42:05So if you are, if say you have diabetes or you have inflammation, your stem cells are not going to be healthy. So you're just injecting unhealthy stem cells back into the joint. Yeah, they can't do anything powerful there. That's probably what you guys are seeing there in your clinics with the NFL, right? Now, you can get also stem cells from basically donated blood or placenta from babies that are just born, right? Now, this is where it gets a little bit hairy because you need to make sure that the sores, the baby -

42:39Gary Brecka:They're not actually from the fetus. No, they're not from the fetus. They're from the umbilical cord or the placenta, right? Yes, totally illegal. Yes, because I think there is also like people get online, there's all these sinister things that they're ground up fetuses or that they harvest the fetus and make the stem cells. That would be very unethical and immoral. But these are placentas and umbilical cords that are otherwise going to be discarded. They're going to be thrown away. So they're donated for science. And then they actually harvest the blood or they harvest other parts of the umbilical cord or even the placenta.

43:11and then they take those, purify them, test them, and then inject those. Now, these have a lot more power behind them because they're younger, they have more exosomes, and they haven't been exposed to a lot of inflammation in their life.

43:25Gary Brecka:Yeah, they're in the early stage of life, right? Brand new, right, exactly. So that is important to understand the sourcing of these, but it's also important to understand that when you take these cells and you multiply them in a Petri dish, it's a Petri dish. It can grow infections. It can grow other bacteria. And you can inject those into people. And that can get you into trouble as well. So you have to be really cognizant about the lab that's getting these, right? And also, obviously, you want to make sure the mother and the baby don't have any other infections. They don't have anything else going on in their biology, viruses, things that are being tested for as well.

44:01So as long as you're sourcing your stem cells responsibly, you're dividing them responsibly.

44:06Gary Brecka:you know, a lot of countries like Panama, they have excellent labs that can divide the stem cells, then you're going to be safe. And they could have massive amounts of applications, not just joint injuries. People are looking at stem cells IV to create regenerative effects because the stem cells can hone in on where you have inflammation. And they can go to those tissues and encourage healing of any area of inflammation, you know, wherever you might have about liver, bone, anywhere. And do they work by, if I did an intravenous infusion of stem cells, let's say what's called mesenchymal stem cells, right?

44:41Gary Brecka:From umbilical cord blood or Wharton-Shelley or what have you. You put these into the body. What I find fascinating is they get into the bloodstream and how do they know where to go? Yeah. They have an incredible ability to hone in on areas of inflammation and that need repair. And that's what stem cells are built to do, right? And so they are attracted by cytokines. So cytokines are signals that injured areas produce and the stem cells just follow those to those injured areas and they get there. And then the stem cells have exosomes within them. These are little packets of basically healing substances that get secreted into the tissues, growth factors, right?

45:20And then they encourage the tissues in those areas to heal and the stem cells in that area to divide. Yeah.

45:26Gary Brecka:I mean, it seems to me that if you do the chain of custody and the research on the cell lines first, and you know that you have a sterile product, you know, you have, um, or at least a septic product, you know, that it's gone through the right pathology testing, you know, viruses, bacteria, what have you. It seems like for the, you know, in the grand scheme of things, for the volume of procedures, these are very safe. They can be very safe. Right. Absolutely. And so we've never had, knock on wood, any problems with any stem cells that we've done ever. We source all of our stem cells from the United States.

46:02We follow the entire chain of custody. And they are extremely safe because they're your body's natural molecules and signals that we've evolved to live with for all of humanity.

46:14Gary Brecka:Yeah. You know, I know that there's a concern sometimes that these stem cells could carry the mRNA vaccines, other things, because, you know, these vaccines can become intertwined into the DNA and stem cells have DNA, unlike exosomes, which don't carry DNA. that just carry high molecular rate, hyaluronic acid, growth factors, other really beneficial things. So do you store stem cells that are pre-COVID or is there any way to test to see if maybe that mother was vaccinated for people that don't want to take that risk? You can definitely ask about the sourcing of the stem cells, if they came from an unvaccinated individual or not.

46:55Now, because these are mostly babies that are the donated umbilical cords, the stem cells of these babies, the babies have not been vaccinated yet. Right. And so we feel pretty safe that there's no mRNA in these particular cells because the donated umbilical cords and placentas, those babies that are just born have not been vaccinated.

47:18Gary Brecka:Right. Yeah. Because, and I think that's, you know, when we talk about different biologics like stem cells versus exosomes, I mean, exosomes are these nanosecretions. what they call them secret tomes uh they're secreted from stem cells and what i find really fascinating to see this gets back to just the fascination with the human body and this hundred million dollar pharmacy you're talking about you can take stem cells from my understanding and you can bathe them in certain media and solicit a response um and kind of target direct the response meaning what kind of exosomes they secrete. And you can get exosomes targeted at skin regeneration or hairy growth or inflammation or tissue regeneration.

48:09Gary Brecka:And that to me is really fascinating because you're taking a live tissue product and you're manipulating it in a way, you're exposing it to this media that causes it to secrete something. It's almost like you're going to the pharmacy and you're writing this script for, hey, I want something for collagen, elastin, fibrin in the skin. Okay, we're going to put the stem cells in this media. It's going to create exosomes that are more geared towards those kinds of growth factors. And like I say, high molecular weight, hyaluronic acid, and some of these other things are really beneficial for skin. And then you apply those topically or to the scalp or what have you.

48:50Gary Brecka:So do you also use the exosome biologics? Yeah, we also use exosomes as well. What kind of applications? So we use them in conjunction with our stem cells. And frankly, exosomes are less expensive. So if people, you know, the price tag on stem cells is too much, then we can use exosomes. But we use them for many of the similar applications of stem cells as well. So, and what do you find that they're really proficient to treating? Like, you know, skin regeneration, fine lines and wrinkles, hair restoration. Great for skincare. You know, we do a lot of exosome injection into the scalp as well for hair regeneration.

49:24they're actually pretty helpful for joints as well. And so a lot of people like them as a substitute to stem cells or as an upgrade to PRP for joints as well. So I think one thing that everyone should know is that stem cells are going to affect differently depending on your own personal biology. I think you mentioned this earlier as well. So if you're going to go in for stem cells and you're looking for hair regeneration or skin, or even exosomes, wrinkle reduction, is really imperative in my view to get the rest of your biology in order, right? Yeah, I agree.

49:58Gary Brecka:This is why, you know, I like this sort of wheel or the sequence of events that you put people through because you're not starting them at the top. You're saying, let's get the root foundation done. Make sure that we've got dietary lifestyle, sleep, you know, whole foods. Let's maybe clean up the blood. Maybe one of these filtration technologies, EBO2 or therapeutic plasma exchange. And if you want to continue on this journey, let's talk about how we can take a clean, healthy functioning biome and enhance it even further. That's exactly right. And that's what I love about this. It's like, I feel like we're just scratching the surface.

50:36Gary Brecka:Scratching the surface right now. Of it. But in your practice at NextHealth, what has been, as an overseeing physician, what's been your biggest aha moment that you see in your patients that are on this journey? What do you find that most people have that they're surprised about? Or what are some of the outcomes that you find really fascinating and exciting for them? When it comes to snacking, masa is flipping the script on what real food should look like. Masa chips are crafted with grass-fed beef tallow, one of the healthiest fats on the planet. These chips are packed with essential vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, and vitamin K2, all of which play a role in keeping your skin vibrant, your immune system strong, and your bones solid.

51:21Gary Brecka:But here's the real magic about masa. Masa's corn goes through an ancient process called nyxstimilization, which makes it way easier to digest and it amps up its nutrient profile. Plus, these chips are low in PUFAs, so you won't find any of the inflammatory seed oils that you find in most snacks. And instead, masa uses pure Redmond sea salt, giving you a natural hit of minerals that keep your cells hydrated and your energy steady. So don't just snack. Reach for masa. It's real food, real health without any of the junk. Grab a bag and I promise you'll feel the difference. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

51:56The thing that surprises a lot of people is when we do total toxin testing.

52:01Gary Brecka:Oh, it shocked me, man. Right? Yeah, we did yours too. Yeah. No, crazy. Yeah, I think that's when we discovered mold, right? And we were like talking about it. Yeah, aflatoxin A, aflatoxin B. Yeah. I had bisphenols, the microplastics, glyphosate. I had the apolittle A. And, you know, I take really good care of myself. Yeah, you're one of the healthiest people I know. Exactly. But we all. I'm going to put my hair for the, and so it means that, you know, the average populace that's unaware of these things. Right. And I don't mean to seem that I'm not average. I'm very average. But the average populace is unaware of these.

52:42Gary Brecka:And I don't think the modern medical system even really looks at or even considers toxicity. Not at all, right? So that's the biggest one. Yeah. Well, that was one of the biggest ones. I think, you know, there used to be three legs of the stool. There's nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Toxins is definitely the fourth leg of the stool, in my opinion. I think it needs to be addressed. and it usually is now the root cause of many people's health issues because most people know how to eat better. They know they need to sleep. They know they need to work out and exercise. Most people get that stuff right as they're going through their health journey if they're trying to fix something, but toxins are not considered.

53:24And then when we measure them and we show people they're heavy metals or mold, it's a big surprise. But the good news is there's things you can do about it, right? And so a lot of what you talk about is reducing your exposure. That's the Pareto principle, right? That's the 20 % of actions you could take that will get you 80 % of the result is reduce your exposure. And then on top of that, we can do some things to detoxify you like Eboo, Total Plasma Chain, but even sauna detoxifies you. Even high-intensity treatment training. Glutathione. Glutathione, right? IV therapy, right?

53:53Gary Brecka:Sauna, they don't have to be the really expensive treatments. You know, I think that has been a big aha moment for me too. Someone just forwarded me recently a post-mortem study, and I've only cursory read it, but it was looking at the post-mortem autopsies on MS patients. And at least in this study, 100 % of these multiple sclerosis patients had parasites. And sometimes when you think about lesions in the myelin sheath or on these nerves, um you wonder well what could cause these legions and all of us have parasites i mean sorry guys everybody listening to this podcast right now has parasites you've got good ones and bad ones right uh you know sometimes you know i think as our immune system gets less and less um accurate and maybe you know more and more fatigued um these little things slip by you know circulating tumor cells slips by uh in the dna methylation process you know an old virus like a monovirus starts to raise its ugly head as Epstein-Barr or you had chickenpox as a child and now you have shingles.

55:01Gary Brecka:And I think a lot of people don't realize that very often some of these ailments that we suffer from are not things that are happening to us. They're actually things that are happening within us. Absolutely. Right. And clinics like yours and I think functional medicine in general is really trying to strengthen the body back to the point where it can do its job on its own. Yeah. We We haven't even talked about gut health yet. That's the other number two. Let's get into that one. Yeah. That's another. So we measure a serum zonulin level. And also we do stool testing on most of our patients. And especially if they're having any sort of weird symptomatology.

55:36Serum zonulin. A serum zonulin is a marker of, it's actually the protein that holds our gut cells together, our enterocytes. And when the enterocytes separate from each other, this protein gets released. It ends up in your bloodstream. and that's how you can know if someone has leaky gut or not. Yeah. So it's an incredibly useful biomarker of leaky gut. And then you can actually follow the levels as you heal someone's gut as well. Wow. And so we do this testing on our patients and it's a game changer.

56:03Gary Brecka:So that level should be zero, theoretically, right? And I think it's fascinating that we only have a single cell layer that really truly is separating our inside environment from our outside environment. You know, I like to think of our gut as being actually outside of the body. Yes. It runs through us. Yeah. It's the size of a football field. Yeah. But like a pipe, you know, it's contiguous with the side of your cheek, you know. And, you know, when you get internally, you only have a single cell layer really protecting you. One cell layer. Yeah, that's just incredible. So think about all the ways that that could go wrong.

56:40Gary Brecka:Absolutely. And then all of the consequences it could cause. What does a gut healing protocol look like? Your gut has, you're right, one layer of enterocytes that you have, but you also have another layer of your microbiome. And your microbiome is also working hard to protect you from the outside environment, keep toxins out, and help you absorb nutrients, right? Now, if your microbiome is off, your enterocytes then start separating and you get this leaky gut. So a gut healing protocol involves, number one, getting your microbiome healthy again, right? Okay. And then number two, it involves giving your enterocytes what they need to regenerate themselves.

57:20So they need collagen. They need glutamine. Your enterocytes also need a break from substances that cause them to get inflamed. So they need a break from like gluten. Some people have dairy as well. We do a lot of gluten sensitivity testing, dairy sensitivity testing. And we figure, I can't tell you the number of people we find that have gluten sensitivity. It's almost everybody. It's kind of crazy. And so I think you give your gut a break from all the things that are damaging it. And then you give it some of the substrates it needs to heal. And you, at the same time, help your microbiome be healthy by taking in more fiber, by eating, you know, fermented foods.

58:00And then you can heal your gut over time. So bone broth is also extremely useful in healing the gut. A lot of collagen.

58:07Gary Brecka:Yeah. I do a lot of kettle and fire bone broth. I love kettle and fire. I love those guys too. Big shout out to Justin. What's up? but you know I'm a huge fan of that I actually use it to get into and out of a fast yeah I find that just going cold turkey into a fast for me is a little bit harder so you know in the day before I'll I'll have a bone broth at noon I'll have a bone broth at six o 'clock at night which really helps you get through that first 24 hours and and it's very satiating is this for your water fast when you're doing a longer term water fast. And then days two and three, when I'll do these fasting challenges, then we'll switch to just a mineralized water in the morning, maybe black coffee.

58:48Gary Brecka:If, you know, a lot of people can't just cold turkey on coffee, but black coffee or teas. And then just with no cream or sugars or anything, obviously. And then easing into that last, that second and third day. And I find that that gets 70 % of the people, a hundred percent of the way, right? Does that statistic even make sense? Did I make that up? It makes sense, yeah. It's only Ron Burgundy and Anchorman-y. So 60 % of the time it works every time. But, you know, then it's just not too much too fast. Sure, sure. Because especially people - That's a great tip, yeah. Especially people that have poor insulin regulation because that drop in glucose and the drop in insulin just drives hunger.

59:35Gary Brecka:And then you're just bingey. in the middle of fast, which is kind of the worst thing for it. But bone broths are excellent. What kind of gut healing protocols do you put most of your clients on? Is it probiotics? Do you ever use things like BPC-157? Absolutely. So oral BPC-157. We also do IV glutamine as well. And then those are the supplements to the actual, you know, dietary program that we use as well. And so we always tie them with a nutritionist if they need help as well to really modify their diet. And then, yeah, those are the big highlights pretty much. Yeah. And then also probiotics? And also we use probiotics later on.

1:00:25We try not to put too much into the gut at the same time.

1:00:28Gary Brecka:Right. And then after we start seeing some healing and we try to rebuild their microbiome And this is also really important for people like on GLP-1s, right? One of the main reasons we have this massive deficiency of GLP-1 in our population is because ultra-processed food has destroyed the bacteria that make GLP-1 nor help us make our own GLP-1. Wow. Yeah. And so anytime we have someone on a GLP-1, we also start them on probiotics to regenerate that bacteria that can help us make our own GLP-1. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about being on GLP-1s forever. Right. I don't think you need to be.

1:01:04You just have to use the time that you're on GLP-1s to regenerate your bacteria in your gut that help you make the GLP-1.

1:01:11Gary Brecka:Yeah, and you know, a lot of GLP-1 responds to nutrient density. Absolutely. You know, so when we eat non-nutrient-dense foods, and in some of the studies that compared ultra-processed diets to whole food diets, you see that, you know, Mark Hyman talks about this all the time. you see that the people on ultra processed foods have a tendency to dramatically overeat. And even if given the same caloric density, one is a whole nutrient dense food and one is a highly processed food that the highly processed participants, you know, had a tendency, I want to say it was either 500 or 800 extra calories a day, but those will add up fast.

1:01:49Gary Brecka:And they got hungrier faster. Right. Um, they also got hungrier more frequently, um, and they felt less satiated. And a lot of times are, you know, again, back to pharmacy, the pharmacy responds to nutrient density. If your brain is like, Hey, we don't have, right. I don't have the raw materials I need. Just get put more in, putting more in, keep shoveling more in. And it's, it's not ringing the bell because you're not actually giving your body the, the, you know, the nutrients it needs, right? Nutrients it needs. And guess what's coming. So the big food companies have reengaged with the food scientists to make new chemicals and new foods that they can add and make their foods GLP-1 resistant.

1:02:30Wow. Yes. So I just read some articles on this and it's kind of in secrecy, but some got leaked that the food companies have been engaged to start making GLP-1 resistant foods. So now you'll be on a GLP-1 and you'll eat this processed food and the GLP-1 won't work and you just keep eating it. So what I tell all of my patients is, look, it's insane. I mean, this is a multi-billion dollar industry.

1:02:59Gary Brecka:That seems so intentionally sinister to me. Yeah, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. And these companies are going to do what they need to do to maintain their value, unfortunately. And so what I tell all my patients is, look, I understand you need this GLP-1 right now, but we're going to use this time to not just regenerate your gut bacteria, but to completely change your relationship with food. Yes. And I think that's key, right? Yeah. And then you, I imagine you titrate them up and you can titrate them off. Exactly. Which, you know, physicians in my previous clinic have done that with clients.

1:03:34Gary Brecka:I mean, I know that everybody's supposed to be on these for life. I mean, look, the American Pediatric Association has approved these down to age nine. Yeah. And I understand that there's a push to get that to age six. I mean, can you imagine starting on a GLP-1 when you're six years old and still being on it when you're 50? It's crazy. That is mind-numbing to me. Yeah, I mean, it's just a massive subscription revenue for the companies that are making these GLP-1s. And we always have a goal with our patients that this is when we're going to get you off GLP-1. but you have to have that clear off-boarding program.

1:04:08So it involves probiotics, nutrient-dense food, changing relationship with food. And a really good tool that we use on that too, Gary, is a CGM. It really -

1:04:17Gary Brecka:Constant glucose monitor. Continuous glucose monitor, right. Oh, continuous glucose monitor, yeah. So that they actually get an idea. You know, those are pretty fascinating because you start to see some of the magic in the human body. I remember when we started using those too, I would get calls all the time and someone would say, I woke up in the morning and I haven't even eaten. I started moving around and my blood sugar rose. and I was like good that means your liver is working you know. Means you're alive. Yeah yeah it means you're alive but they're like how's my blood sugar going up I'm not even eating I literally didn't even have water and I was like you know we store glucose in the form of glycogen and and obviously one of your liver's roles is to take this stored glucose this glycogen and then turn it back into glucose when you need it for fuel.

1:05:00Gary Brecka:So this gluconeogenic process is what you're seeing. And it's, that's really amazing that you're seeing that even in patients or clients that are on ketogenic diets. They'll see these same kind of weird rises in blood sugar. And I'm like, well, you know, your liver is actually converting it back into sugar and putting it in your blood. Excuse me. That's how dependent we are on, on, and how crack addicted we are to sugar. And back to your previous point, you know, I've read several articles on, you know, labs around the country that are specifically looking at ways to stimulate dopamine receptors and dopamine agonists in the body so that you get not just a flavor reward, but you get this sort of emotional reward from food so they can get addicted to this dopamine cycle specifically designed to great addiction.

1:05:59So you don't just like the food, you're addicted to the food, right?

1:06:03Gary Brecka:Was the commercial, can't eat just one? I mean, why can't we just eat just one? You know, some scientists figured out how to get us addicted to it. So what else is really exciting you about this field of longevity and anti-aging bio-optimization? Yeah. So, you know, there's a couple of things. You had mentioned AI earlier. I think we are headed into this golden age where AI and quantum computing combined with just sheer computing power that we have right now, even before quantum computing, can be used to create digital cellular twins and also create new peptides. Digital cellular twins. Right.

1:06:42Gary Brecka:I'm not letting you off the hook on that one. What the hell is a digital cellular twin? We will be able to replicate a cell within the brain of a computer and test molecules against it at scale. When we can do this, And Stanford just did this. There was a news article yesterday how Stanford created a new GLP-1 that has a specific response just to the hunger centers and doesn't have any response. It doesn't create a nauseating response or some of the other side effects. Wow, or some of the paralytic bowel or gastroparesis. Gastroparesis, that was the word I was looking for. And so they found this peptide molecule with a computer, AI-enabled computer program.

1:07:20And so we are going to develop these peptides, these molecules, rapid speed. And so, you know, that's my other thing is peptides. Peptides are the holy grail of medicine, I believe. These are natural drugs that our body makes and our$100 billion pharmaceutical inside of us, right? That we've made for all of humanity. And so now we're going to discover more and more of these peptides by using computing power. And, you know, peptides are incredibly low cost to make. And, you know, you can get them from your compounding pharmacy, for example, and they have lots of great effects and their side effects are also not as bad as regular pharmaceuticals.

1:08:02So I'm really excited about peptide science expanding and also getting some political power behind it as well. Yes, I'm really excited about that too.

1:08:11Gary Brecka:You know, the whole Maha movement, you know, this opportunity to affect public policy and come top down where you can actually really impact the masses. What would be really exciting is if we saw you know the health care model change there's whole societies in the world singapore being one of them japan being another one where they have actually engineered their health their their health system and they are extending life expectancy their life expectancy is continuing to go up um by now some of these countries it was not by military force but was essentially by force because they would restrict people's ability to access to health care but they would They reward things like walking.

1:08:54Gary Brecka:They reward things like exercise. They reward things like clean diets. They don't have a, let's say, a subsidy program that would cover things like, you know, high fructose corn syrup laden foods, highly processed foods, cigarettes, you know, paint pens, alcohol, you know, and foods with high fructose corn syrup sodas, things like that. They actually cover the kinds of foods that serve their cellular biology. And it's astounding. I'm going to dig more into this because I was fascinated that there are governments out there that are looking at this crisis that don't have a healthcare system like ours that is profiting off of symptom maintenance and disease management.

1:09:40Gary Brecka:They don't have a profit center for type 2 diabetes. They don't have a profit center for cancer. They don't have a profit center for autoimmune conditions. They actually have the opposite. They lose money as a government, right? Yeah, because here we socialize the expenses and we privatize the cost. Exactly. I mean, sorry, we socialize the cost and we privatize the profit. Right. You know, so the profit goes to private industry, but the cost goes to taxpayer, public, Medicare, Medicaid. All of us being into health insurance as well. It's crazy. Yeah. And so, you know, I think the incentives are totally misaligned.

1:10:16And that's why our healthcare system costs is going up every single year. It's$3 trillion. Massive portion of our GDP goes to our health expenses because people make money off us being sick. Yes, so true. And you look at other countries and like, we can't have this much sickness and illness. We have to fix it. We recognize ultra processed food is one of the number one enemies. We also recognize that probably close behind or equal to that is sedentary behavior. And so we're just going to legislate against that. And then people will get healthier. We don't want to spend so much money on this stuff.

1:10:47Yeah, it's not about eliminating free choice.

1:10:49Gary Brecka:He knows about getting poisoned out of the food supply. Well, Dr. Darshan Shah, this has been amazing. I absolutely want to have you back for a series on the podcast. I'm excited about the expansion of your Next Health franchise. Thank you. How does my audience find you? Yeah, so - Or find out more about it next time. Yeah, yeah. Next Health, we're on the internet, next-health.com. Okay. Me personally, I'm on social media at Darshan Shah MD. I have a website, drshah.com. People can ask me questions on my website. I try to respond to as many as possible or also on social media. Yeah, yeah. And those are the main places to find me and I'm happy to engage the audience and help anyone along their journey.

1:11:32That's super.

1:11:33Gary Brecka:Well, I have a VIP group, a community that I'm building. And this is a community that I really pour myself into. We do live group Q &As. We do private podcasts. We do challenges. We, um, I wrote an entire course, I put a course together on becoming the ultimate human and gave it into this community. So we're going to go into a private room now so they can ask you a couple of questions. If you're interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, you can go over to the ultimate human.com forward slash VIP, sign up to be a VIP client. Um, and we will see you in that private room. Um, otherwise I wind all my podcasts down by asking my guests the same question.

1:12:16Gary Brecka:and that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I think for me, being an ultimate human means to feel good in my own skin, have time for myself, time for my family and time for my children and also to wake up every day with a positive outlook on life. Yeah. That's it. So amazing, man. So amazing. Well, guys, VIPs, I'll see you over in the private podcast room and the rest of you guys, make sure that you look in the show notes below, follow Dr. Darshan Shaw, and check out Next Health if you're interested in living forever. And until next time, that's just science.