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

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We've spent trillions of dollars creating the most advanced medical system in the world here in the United States, right? The problem that I recognized was that entire system was never really built to keep you healthy. It's a sick care system. It's not a healthcare system. Unfortunately, we've outsourced our health to the medical profession. We don't know what our biomarkers are, right? We have our doctor pick the biomarkers and tell us whether something bad is going on or not.

You know, when I think about our average lifespan, it's probably somewhere around 78 years old in the United States. Now, other country, you know, you go to Okinawa and other areas, it's, it's longer. But when I think about that, and I believe the Bible talks about we're designed to live 120 years— yeah, there are scientific studies saying, hey, we should live about 120 years— what are the biggest causes of premature aging today?

Even if people are living to 80, they're spending that last 20 to 30 years frail, not being able to recognize their family members, and multiple chronic diseases.

Yeah.

So even though we've extended life, I would say almost artificially, with all of these medical treatments you have. People don't have the health span too.

That's right, that's right.

We know that you can live to 120 years old being able to do all the things you want to do and enjoy life. So the question was, why are we aging so fast? I think there's probably 4 main causes.

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What if you were aging twice as fast as you thought? You know, many people today don't realize how their mitochondria in their cells and their organs are actually aging too quickly. And today I've brought in one of the world's leading doctors when it comes to longevity. It's Dr. Darshan Shah. He's opened multiple clinics across the world. He's a longevity expert, and he spent his time as a surgeon for many years but has now turned one of the leading voices in the longevity space. And today we're going to be talking about everything from peptides, the right type of peptides to slow the aging process and heal your cells. We're going to be talking about balancing your hormones. We're going to be talking about a lot of advanced therapies like stem cell, red light therapy, hyperbaric chamber, plasma exchange, and so many others. And so if you're a person that wants to add years to your life and life to your years, you're going to enjoy this podcast with my friend Dr. Darshan Shah. Darshan, hey, thanks Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

So excited to be here. So honored to be here, actually. Thank you for having me.

Well, it was a pleasure meeting you in London.

Yep.

I know we got to do dinner together and hang there a little bit, which was great. And I've just been so impressed by what you've done with your clinics. You founded the Next Health Clinics. Yes. And, you know, I've had several friends— we were talking about Gary Brecker earlier and others— who have gone to your clinics to get everything from plasma exchange to ozone to different types of IVs and therapies. What got you into this field? Because I know you were a surgeon before.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, did surgery, trained medical school in Western medicine and spent a lot of years in the hospital doing trauma surgery, taking care of people in the emergency room, ICUs. And, you know, thank God we have that system of Western medicine. If you get hit by a bus, you need like stage 4 cancer excised. We've spent trillions of dollars creating the most advanced medical system in the world here in the United States, right? But the problem that I recognized was that that entire system was never really built to keep you healthy. It's a sick care system, it's not a healthcare system, right? I think we all kind of intuitively know this.

Yeah.

But we blame that system because the chronic disease epidemic in the United States is out of control right now. Yeah. And we're not finding solutions there. But once you realize that that system was never built to reverse chronic disease, to keep you healthy, then you kind of get this aha moment. And I had the same aha moment myself because 10 years ago I got really sick with autoimmune disease, diabetes, out-of-control blood pressure. I was 50 pounds overweight and I, despite having incredible training, you know, I trained at the Mayo Clinic.

Wow.

I did not know how to get myself healthy, you know? And so I decided to get healthy. And so I did a lot of the same things you trained in, functional medicine, nutrition, exercise, and It was like a miracle. I, in 8 months, got off 10 different prescription medications.

Wow.

Yeah. And I was like, this is how I want to be practicing medicine. So 10 years ago, I started a new clinic focused on health. I call it a health optimization and longevity clinic. Our main goal is if you are diagnosed with a chronic disease is to reverse that chronic disease, get you off your medications, but also A lot of people are suffering with functional medicine issues, gut health, maybe hormonal issues. And once again, Western medicine never addressed those kind of things. So we also focus on functional medicine and really getting people to feel great again. That's the goal of our clinics.

Yeah, it's so great. It's so powerful. You know, one of the things I know that you've done and I've heard you speak on is, is blood work and testing.

Yeah, 100%.

And one of the things that I think is the most outdated part of all western medicine is a lot of the bloodwork panels that people are doing, because I know my focus is trying to find what's the root cause, what are things upstream? And I feel like a lot of the things that they're testing for today are so downstream. It's like you're, you know, we find something when you're incredibly ill already and sometimes it's too late or it's much harder to reverse now. What do you think some of the worst markers are that are almost useless today that, that are, that a lot of people are getting? And then what are some of those markers that you really like to do with your patients that are maybe different than the conventional testing?

Yes, it's such a great question that you put it that way, because I remember for years people would come to me, um, when I was doing surgery, and we check a CBC, a Chem 7, and a PT/PTT. Now, these are standard blood tests in Western medicine, and basically, if your Chem 7, which is your electrolyte levels in your blood, is off, you're like knocking on death's door.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If your CBC is off, like, you're bleeding to death. And those are just markers to make sure you're not dying from something at that moment. Yeah, there's zero to do with health, you know. And so, um, I think, you know, what we do in functional medicine is we test for things like inflammation, metabolic health, cardiovascular risk, even vitamin deficiencies and abnormalities. Those are the kind of tests that are really what people should be getting on a yearly basis as early as in your 20s, you know? And I think that what we do at our clinics, and I know you do this with your patients, we do comprehensive testing to make sure you're not headed towards disease. Like, we want to catch stuff decades before you get diagnosed with a disease, and that's where we focus our energy.

Yeah, you know, I love that. And you know, it's even surprising to me personally that, like, I've done blood work, and sometimes stuff shows up in me that I'm just surprised about. I'll give you an example. Like, I did blood work, so I came off about 3 years ago, I had a spinal infection, didn't walk for a year and was really sick, and I had to take antibiotics for a month, and didn't want to, but I had to. It was one of those situations. And so when I did post-blood work a little later, two things really showed up on me that were really deficient, and number one by far was vitamin B2, and the second was mitochondrial dysfunction and health, and I think those two are obviously very related. And I was just, I was really tired, I was fatigued,. And even though outside of that, I would say I felt fantastic. I just had this low-grade, just very, just tiredness. And I literally started taking a B2 supplement.

Mm-hmm.

And I felt fantastic. Yeah, absolutely fantastic. And there's a lot of people out there that have a single biomarker, a single nutrient. It could be selenium, it could be B2, it could be, uh, you know, vitamin D of course, or magnesium.

Right.

And they feel so sick because of it. And have you experienced that or seen that often? You know, pretty often in patients you've, you've, you've worked with?

All the time, you know, and it's like one of these things where usually the conversation comes up around supplementation and, you know, people have heard maybe from their doctors even that you're just taking supplements is a waste of time because you just pee them out, you know, and you look at their blood work panels and their vitamin D. I just saw this yesterday, vitamin D level of 15.

Yeah.

I mean, in the toilet. I'm like, you need to be on a vitamin D supplement. Yeah. And the minute I put someone on a supplement for vitamin D, vitamin B12, of whatever have you that you find in the markers, like you said, not only do they start feeling better, but you and I both know chronic deficiencies of vitamins over years and years add up to a much higher risk of chronic disease, right? And so we need to address those sooner rather than later. What I tell a lot of my patients, like symptoms like tiredness, brain fog, people ignore those for years, you know, before they realize that they need to treat something. And that ignoring the symptoms for years can lead to chronic disease so much quicker.

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about it. You know, one of the other things I've noticed too, even within functional medicine, is you get a vitamin D test back and sometimes it's just you're not taking enough vitamin D, but sometimes it's a liver issue. Your body's not creating enough bile and it's not absorbing enough fat. And that's where I think having a really good practitioner is so valuable to know, okay, we gave you vitamin D, it only creeped up a little bit even though we were giving you 20,000 IUs a day and you've been out in the sun, there's an absorption issue here. So we need to start focusing on maybe taking Tudka or Ox Bile or, or, or lipase and change your diet as well and do some things to really support the facilitation of liver health. And so there, there's so much that really goes into helping somebody get well and having, having great practitioners you work with.

Yeah, you're so right about that. I mean, you know, I talk about supplementation as a kind of a temporary cure for the most part, just to get you back up to where you need to be. Yeah. While you're fixing all of these like digestive issues, etc. And look, maybe you don't need to be on the supplement forever, right?

Yeah.

Vitamin D is a classic example. This Sometimes people can keep their vitamin D levels once they organize their diet, they organize their sun exposure, they can stay at a pretty good level. But sometimes you just can't, you know, like we live in modern society in 2025. We spend a lot of time inside right now, you know. And so it's sometimes needed to get yourself to a level that will keep you healthy for the long term. Yeah.

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Okay, so plasma exchange is a therapy that's actually FDA approved since 1970, but like a lot of great technology is locked up in the hospital system, right? And so, um, what we've done is bring it out of the hospitals into the clinical practice where In the hospitals, you use it for like acute poisonings or acute autoimmune crisis. And what happens is you hook yourself up to this machine, you have an IV in one arm, it removes the blood from that arm, and it puts it through basically a giant centrifuge. So if you've ever seen like PRP, where you take a vial of blood and you centrifuge and it separates the blood, red blood cells in the bottom and, um, a yellow plasma on top, we're doing that for the entire blood volume. And so why do we do that? We do that because inside of your plasma is where a lot of the toxins live, right? So when you separate your blood volume, 250 cc's at a time in this circuit, what happens is we can take that entire plasma volume that you have, it's about 3 liters, and put it in a bag and basically throw it away, okay? So it's like an oil change for your body. In your plasma, you have inflammatory cytokines, you have high levels of any toxin, maybe heavy metals, maybe you have toxins from mold. Maybe you have toxins just from environmental exposures. Maybe you have autoimmune disease and you have immune complexes in your blood. All of that stuff lives in your plasma. And basically what this treatment is doing, it gives your body a break. You know, our body is constantly trying to eliminate these toxins, but sometimes the overload of toxins in our bloodstream, we just can't keep up with. Yeah. And so this gives you that time period where you can kind of catch Yeah, I've seen it particularly—

there are a few people I know that were exposed to mold, exactly, for instance, and seeing the sort of results there. Yeah, because I mean, this is something— I mean, I'm just, you know, and you're seeing the same thing. I'm seeing more and more people with mold issues, right?

Me too.

More and more. I mean, it's— and I think a lot of these infections too, they're co-infections, right? It's like somebody has Epstein-Barr and that was activated by long COVID or mold, and then they have Lyme disease and all these infections that are just sort of overtaking. The great thing about plasma exchange is you're filtering out a lot of those pathogens. Right, right. By that therapy, which is amazing. You know, you said something that I think is really interesting too. You brought it out of the hospital system. Yeah. You know, when I was, had my spinal infection, one of the things I was looking for was a hard hyperbaric chamber to get into. Do you know how hard that was for me?

It's so hard, I know.

It's like, you know, in the hospitals, we're like, oh, do you have an open wound? No, okay. You can't, you're like, we're only doing it for those people. I'm like, but there's research on brain trauma and strokes and autism and chronic infections. Like, that's— I read these medical journals saying that if I got in a hyperbaric chamber every day, it would cut down the antibiotic time by like 70%.

Yeah, so true.

And, and I was like, well, I've got to get in the hyperbaric chamber every day. I had to go to Sarasota, Florida. Like, they didn't have them in a number of places. Like, again, they were, they were— because they were all in the hospital.

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, um, I actually trained in hyperbaric medicine at the Mayo Clinic. That's where I recently—

wow—

I trained for surgery, and we would put all— so many of our patients in the hyperbaric chamber, especially after spinal infections, spinal surgeries, because they just healed so much faster. Yeah, and their infections cleared so much faster. And so one of the first things I did when I started Next Health was I actually bought a company in California, in Los Angeles, that had hyperbaric chambers. Beverly Hills Hyperbaric. I bought— oh wow— because I was like, I'm going to start offering this to more people than just people that are really sick. All they did was charge insurance after you were sick, and insurance rarely paid for anything. And I knew, just like you knew, hyperbaric oxygen works post-surgically for any type of surgery, but also even if you've suffered like stroke, maybe you're suffering from even chronic infections, it can really be helpful. So now at every Next Health, we have a hyperbaric chamber. So, you know, we— you're wearing Nashville, and we have one right down the street. We're going to put 2 or 3 in all of our locations here, and we really want to bring these technologies out of the hospital system to where people can benefit when you're not in the hospital.

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I mean, you know, hyperbaric chambers to me are one of those things that just almost everybody can benefit from. I mean, it has so many benefits, longevity benefits too. I mean, there's another one. And so— so it's powerful. You know, I'm opening up— my, my brother-in-law's and I are opening up a clinic that is south of Nashville in Franklin. Amazing. And South Franklin, Tennessee. And very similar thing, it's like we want to be able to offer things like hyperbaric because, you know, uh, and I would love for you to speak to this, like, what is hyperbaric? What do hyperbaric chambers do exactly?

Right, they have two mechanisms of actions primarily. Number one is they force kind of oxygen into the tissues under pressure. So basically we have like 2 atmospheres of pressure. So it's like, um, being underwater and you have much more pressure and that forces oxygen into tissues. What it also does is create a little bit of oxidative stress that allows your cells to reset and your mitochondria to reset as well. So both mechanisms work really well. And then thirdly, what we do is we give people hyperoxygenated oxygen to breathe while they're in the chamber as well. And so usually you'll have a mask or nasal cannula and you're getting additional oxygen too. So all 3 of these work synergistically together to all the things we talked about, help improve wound healing, help improve your longevity, all of it.

Yeah, you know, this is a quote from many years ago from Otto Warburg, but he said, you know, the cause of cancer is lack of oxygen in the cell. I don't know, Joanna Budwig, you know, she was a, if you're familiar, she did something called the Budwig Protocol. It was a cancer therapy where she mixed flax meal and something called quark, like a cottage cheese-like substance, and she believed those fatty acids, the phospholipids specifically, would help, it basically was a meal to help heal the cell membrane. Oh, amazing. And so when you helped heal the cell membrane, it would allow greater oxygen exchange, part of her theory. But my point there was, is that, you know, two of the leading people in the, you know, in the 1900s when it came to cancer therapy were both like, hey, if we want to heal cancer, you want to heal the body, that oxygen exchange is absolutely critical, critical in getting more oxygen in the cell. And so hyperbaric chamber is really great for that as well. So my point was, it's beneficial for so many things. I know my mom had cancer, and part— one of the things we've done for her is, you know, got her in a hyperbaric chamber regularly. So anyway, just, just so many benefits there. Yeah, I'd love— absolutely, I'd love for you to talk about ozone. This is another therapy that I know you're using very frequently.

Yeah, we use EBOO at our, um, at our clinics, um, which is awesome.

The difference between like the standard, the 10-pass, and the EBOO, maybe just for everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Standard ozone, you can get— basically what you're doing is you're exposing your blood to ozone, right? Oxygen, um, O3 gas. And, um, what that does in the standard therapy is you just have a certain amount of blood volume that you are exposing yourself to. Sometimes you can even— some people even inject it, et cetera. But what the 10-pass does is that you do this for about 200 cc's of blood 10 times. You're getting a much larger volume of blood exposed to ozone. And what the ozone molecule does is it actually attacks infectious organisms and and basically kills them, right? And so, um, there's very few therapies that directly kill infectious organisms, especially for chronic infections like Lyme, mold, etc. And it can be really, really helpful for actually eliminating those organisms.

Yeah, it's so powerful. I've had so many Lyme patients I recommend to do ozone. You know, the, the one, the one thing though I will say for everybody is that it's really good to work with a practitioner if you're doing things like plasma exchange and ozone, because if you have too many pathogens built up at one time, you really need to ease your body into it, or the reaction is severe. So you just— it's not like— because some personalities are like, give me it all at once. We're like, no, we really need to ease your body into this. Yeah, as part of the—

as part of the healing protocol, you see some pretty, pretty bad reactions on people that go right into it full bore, and they're not, you know, they're not prepared, um, both nutritionally, mentally, for the treatments, etc. So you have to work with a practitioner that really understands how these things fit together.

That's so great. I, I want— I want to walk you through— I want to go through just a few different conditions and health issues, and, and for— and I'd love for you to share the therapies that you found to be the most advantageous.

Sure.

And it could be everything from certain type of diet, uh, supplements. It could be a, you know, a more advanced therapy like we're talking about.

Yeah.

When you see patients with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's thyroiditis, women specifically, What are some of the therapies you've seen the best results with for them?

So, you know, I, I would say that Hashimoto's thyroiditis is basically due to an overactivation of your immune system, right? So anything that is anti-inflammatory is going to be super, super helpful while you're also getting treated for the actual thyroid disorder, right? And so dietary changes really help. Um, most of the dietary changes focus around eliminating gluten from your diet. Some people need to eliminate dairy from their diet. We actually measure food sensitivities. We what we call the Wheat Zoomer, Dairy Zoomer. And so we really try to use a really good focused elimination diet on our patients. Yeah, I've also seen plasma exchange be very beneficial because it removes those autoimmune antibodies from your plasma that are circulating. So that can be really helpful. We also use, um, hyperbaric oxygen for people as well. Um, anything that's anti-inflammatory can come together to really help reduce Hashimoto's.

That's great. How about low testosterone in men?

Ah, great question. So whenever we see, you know, so one of the things that we try to empower our patients with is we mentioned blood tests earlier, and testosterone is a perfect example. Most people live a very, very long time with a low testosterone and they don't know it, right? And so what we really try to empower our patients with, no matter what age you come in, it doesn't matter if you're in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, is we get a full baseline biomarker panel, and one of the blood tests there is testosterone. And the critical thing to realize with testosterone is your testosterone levels decrease over time, but they also go up and down based on what's going on in your life. If you're having a stressful month, maybe you're traveling a lot, maybe you are not getting good sleep, your testosterone levels are going to tank, right? So just because you have a low testosterone level at one specific blood test, it should be an indicator that you have to get your lifestyle in order. So lifestyle is number one, right? And so, uh, strength training, getting good sleep, eliminating processed foods from your diet, stress management techniques, all of those can help your testosterone level improve, right? Now there's certain supplements that can improve your testosterone level as well, so we try things like ashwagandha and other supplement, vitamin D optimization first as well. Now look, that is not going to work for everybody, right? And so, um, it's critical in my opinion, and then we do this for all of our patients, is is we check quarterly, and then if you're still low despite getting all your biomarkers in order, and, um, we've done all the right things and you're still not feeling good and you're still low— and low to me is, for most men, anything 300 or lower is really low— yeah, um, then we recommend testosterone replacement therapy. And we know testosterone replacement therapy, if you look at all the latest research, is preventative to Alzheimer's, as preventative to cancer, as preventative to heart disease for most men. And so not only will you feel better, but you're going to prevent chronic disease. And so we have a really good discussion around testosterone replacement therapy, and there's different ways of doing this. There's ways to stimulate your own testosterone by using medications like enclomiphene. There's ways to replace your testosterone through either injections or pellets. We don't really like the creams too much, But, you know, people sometimes want to stair-step into it with the cream. So it's just, you know, you just got to have the talk and discussion. Once again, like you keep saying, is work with a skilled practitioner that has all the options. And the other thing I think is important with testosterone replacement too is, you know, I think there's a tendency now to just think that it's super simple. They can go online, buy some testosterone, fill out a form, and start injecting it. Yeah, that's available to people. But if you're doing that without the big picture context of what's going on in your overall biology, and you're not monitoring your cholesterol levels, your metabolic health, etc., while you're on testosterone, you're not doing yourself any favors.

Yeah.

So I think doing it with a skilled practitioner, once again, is critical.

Yeah, yeah, that's good to hear. You know, my, my philosophy when it comes to hormone replacement therapy for men and women has, has always been also with sort of the, the understanding of, of Eastern medicine. And the way that they would explain it is, one, when you take exogenous hormones, we know your body stops producing it. Yes. Okay, or it decreases the amount significantly. And so in Chinese medicine, they would say though, that stops the flow of qi in that area and would have some sort of negative side effect. For women, they would absolutely say it increases the risk of certain types of cancer like breast. For men and testosterone, it's a little bit different. All that being said, That's why I really try and focus on dietary therapy, supplementation, even things like peptides first. But I do want to say this, when I look at some of the research and I've worked with people who we've— I have had recommended at some point to do hormone replacement therapy, it tends to be because I found that if you have a man who is not— testosterone's in the tank. Yeah, let's say it's 150, it's somewhere it's low. They're not motivated, they're tired all the time, they're moody, they just sort of like lack that. Versus if they did get on testosterone therapy, they start lifting weights. Yeah, they start having confidence again. Those things, that, that mild, that minor side effect that's likely happening from the lack of what I would call blood flow or movement in that area in the testes, some of that area is going to be outweighed by the fact that now they're going out there and lifting weights and doing things in confidence and that sort of shift that happens. So I always like to share sort of my perspective on that too, because I do think hormone replacement therapy can be great for people. But I— the thing that I just have a hard time with is that— and this is not what you do at all, right? But a lot of— the majority of these clinics out there today, it's come in, here's your testosterone shots, exactly, here's your hormone. They're not changing diet, they're not recommending supplements, they're not doing anything to keep them on a lower— it's like the highest dose possible immediately. It's just not—

and they're not monitoring. That's right. Like, you know, it's It needs to be in— look, we're all born with testosterone as one of our hormones, right? There's other hormones like cortisol, there's thyroid hormone. There's so much interplay between all of these different body systems that if you're just looking down one hormone and just doing that and not even monitoring anything else, you're causing other problems. You don't even know it. And so I think it needs to be done in context of your overall body systems for sure.

Yeah, yeah, I, I love that. Um, let's talk about mitochondrial health because this seems to be—

my favorite topic—

this seems to be at the center of longevity. Such an important discussion. And so, uh, I would love to hear from you, what are mitochondria? Why are they important for longevity? Why are they important for health?

Yeah, great. I love talking about mitochondria, and many people will be surprised to hear that mitochondria are little organelles inside of our cells. Now, When our— when we started off in evolution, our single cellular organisms did not have mitochondria in them. Single cellular organisms made energy through glucose, right? And we know that when you take in glucose and you don't have aerobic respiration, you can only make a few ATP molecules, which is energy. The mitochondria then came into the single cellular organisms as a separate organism, basically, and they started living symbiotically together.. And why do they do that? Well, because mitochondria can take glucose and make 32 ATP from it, much, much more energy. And this allowed the single-cellular organisms to become multicellular. So it's part of evolution. And mitochondria actually has its own DNA because of this, right? So you have the nuclear DNA, mitochondria has its own DNA. And so mitochondria are basically now the powerhouses of our cells. They're a separate organelle that now lives synergistically within our own cells, and they work together to allow all the cellular processes to occur that make us human. And unfortunately, mitochondria, they get tired over time, right? So over time, as we age, we have mitochondria not functioning as well, but also you have less mitochondria inside of your cells. It's just normal aging process. Yeah, but the, the normal aging process right now is massively accelerated because our mitochondria are working really, really hard to keep our cells' energy up, to detoxify ourselves. We're exposed to so many toxins now that our cells are working overtime, so our mitochondria are working overtime. So we have to do things to keep our mitochondria healthy. And if, if they're not healthy, we need to also help our mitochondria turn over. And turnover means that the old mitochondria need to be kind of eliminated and new mitochondria need to form. And so mitochondrial health is, um, not just a buzzword in my opinion. It is one of the core reasons that we age, why we're not feeling good. And if you learn a little bit about what can get our mitochondria healthy again, to turn over again, you can really accelerate your health journey.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know, when I started studying the mitochondria— and I'll say this too, like, I know, you know, you talked about evolution. I know I have more of a creationist point of view But with all that being said, I think that, you know, the fact they're kind of like bacterial in nature.

Yeah.

I mean, they're microbial. I mean, that's, that's crazy.

It's crazy, right?

You know, and they operate, you know, there is, when we were going through COVID and a lot of people were getting issues like long COVID, I started reading up on this, you know, things like cell danger response and how the mitochondria are sending these flares and acting and how they're part of the whole, the whole process as well. But mitochondria really are, amazing. You know, when, uh, if anybody out there who is interested in ancient forms of medicine like Chinese medicine, like Ayurveda, I really think mitochondria are the closest thing we have to, uh, what we would call sort of chi within the body in terms of producing ATP, what's actually producing that.

And so it's, um, and if you really dive into like what mitochondria do, I mean, they're actually using light light to create some of the energy, right? And so our body is using light inside of our cells to help create energy, and it's just mind-blowing. And like, you know, you look at the ATP synthase, the little, um, the little, um, protein that's in the mitochondrial membrane, it actually turns like a motor. Yeah, it's mind-blowing how this thing works.

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

Brain fog.

There you go, brain fog is another one. So, so, so there's some examples of things, but practically what are some things that people can do to really sort of recharge their mitochondria?

Yeah, great question. So what I would say is your one key fact that people should know is that your mitochondria actually like little bursts of stress. Not, not psychological stress, physiological stress, right? So going into an all-out sprint, okay, like a high-intensity workout can help you to recharge your mitochondria and turn over the ones that can't produce enough energy. If you can't— if a mitochondria in a cell cannot produce enough energy for you to go into an all-out sprint, that mitochondria is turned over and a new mitochondria is made. That's a more youthful mitochondria. Them. Other things that work similarly is hot and cold exposure. So doing a cold plunge, uh, doing a sauna session— those little bursts of stress for a specific time period can help, um, your mitochondria become healthier too.

That's so powerful. I love that. Yeah, I'm going to let you keep going, but I do want to mention just a few things I find fascinating there. One is, you know, like different organs and areas of the body are more mitochondrial dense, right? We know our muscles and our heart, for instance, are very mitochondrial dense. And so this is where it comes into, like, you know, if you're weight training and lifting weights at the right level and not injuring yourself, you're producing more and more of these mitochondria. So that's a prime example of what's happening. And you can do this by— you can build organs, you can build more mitochondria in every organ cell and tissue of your body, which is pretty, which is pretty amazing. But a lot of people are, you can also overdo it, right? So there's this balance of like, when it comes to hot and cold, I've seen this with cold plunging.

Mm-hmm.

I think that there's a lot of women like with hypothyroidism and those sort of issues doing it too much or too long or too cold. Their body temperature's already very low to where they maybe need a splash of a cold shower.

Yeah.

They don't need to get in 40-degree water for every day for 2 minutes. They're making themselves worse. So, so walk us through that a little bit too, this sort of hormesis and sort of like what's the right dosage, or— and I know maybe it's, it's of course going to be different for everybody, but what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's just very N of 1, like you said. It's, you know, it's really— cold plunging is not for everybody, um, and there are other ways to stimulate mitochondrial, um, neogenesis besides cold plunging. So if you're one of these people, say you're hypothyroid and your body's running cold all the time anyway, Definitely cold plunging is just going to increase your cortisol levels, it's going to create more stress. It's not going to be a physiological benefit to you, it's more going to be a negative physiologically. Yeah, you really got to listen to what's going on with your body. Um, I interviewed someone for my podcast actually, a woman who kind of coaches women through cold plunging and cryotherapy, and one of the things that she really believes is that is checking biomarkers, checking someone's temperature before they go into a cold plunge. And she understands that cold plunging is not for everybody. But one of the things that if you are nervous about cold plunging, this can also be a problem, is, you know, a lot of people go into cold plunge really, really tense and stressed out, right? And when you go in stressed out and you add an additional stress to that, that shoots your cortisol levels through the roof. So instead, what you want to do is learn to regulate your stress. So she She really advocates doing breathwork. That's great. Before going in, really, and then that's so powerful because now you're turning a sympathetic stress into a parasympathetic feeling before you go in, and you're learning to regulate between parasympathetic and sympathetic. And I believe, and I think this is getting more and more kind of in the forefront of what I believe now, is that one of the key problems causing sickness is an imbalance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. We live at this heightened sympathetic state. So using the cold plunge, for example, as one of the ways that you learn to regulate between those two can be really powerful.

That's really smart. I mean, I love that you're sharing that too, because your body's about to go into a stressful situation, right, physiologically. And now you do breathing and you train your body, hey, you can stay calm, you can actually be in a more of a parasympathetic state under stress. In this translate to you're in relationship stress, you're having work stress, you're in a traffic jam. Being able to balance that nervous system, that is a powerful—

It's so powerful, right? Yeah. And like, you know, I think about that too. Like, you know, this is not just going to cryotherapy. This is like you said, like when you're in an emotional situation and just giving yourself that moment to rebalance and to use breathwork, for example.

Yeah.

And just get yourself back into a more regulated state. Doing that over and over again throughout a day can create much better HRV, for example. Um, all of that. And so we don't do that enough, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's so true. You know, we, we started off, I want to jump back here and then we'll come back to some of this too. I, I want to talk about biomarkers again. Yes. We talked about a lot of the biomarkers where you're not really finding things till much later on. Are there some biomarkers you like specifically for, let's say, mitochondrial health or any others that are maybe, maybe that are absolutely some of your favorites you always like to check?

Yeah. Okay. So, um, I actually have about 10 biomarkers that I think everyone should follow for their own biology. I think, you know, unfortunately we've outsourced our health to the medical profession. We don't know what our biomarkers are, right? We have our doctor pick the biomarkers and tell us whether something bad is going on or not. Yeah. And, you know, we need to re-empower our patients, and just people in general need to re-empower themselves with the knowledge of what are some of the key critical biomarkers.

Yeah.

So I'll give you one as an example, and it ties into mitochondrial health, is biomarkers of your metabolic health, right? So your metabolism, I say, lives in your muscle. And why does it live in your muscle? Because most of your mitochondria, like you mentioned earlier, are in your muscle. Your mitochondria is what is using the glucose that we dump into our bloodstream. And when you lift weights or you exercise, you are using more glucose and your mitochondria is using that glucose to create energy. And so if you're not using your muscle and you're sedentary all day long, you have way too much glucose that turns into fat. You're not using it for energy, you're not promoting mitochondrial health. So how do you know? How do you know how much, um, you're, you're able to handle glucose or not? There's a critical biomarker there called hemoglobin A1c. This is a 3-month average of how much glucose is roaming around in your bloodstream. If it's high, you get diagnosed with diabetes, and the number for diabetes in the United States is 6.5. Mm-hmm. The optimal level, in my opinion, is below 5.2, even getting towards 5 as a goal. It takes decades to go from 5 to 6.5.

Yeah.

Right? But most people don't know when they're 5.4 or 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, which is prediabetes. Yeah. And so if you know what your hemoglobin A1c is, you can start making adjustments to get that back into a normal range and then an optimal range, right? And so that's a critical one, right?

Can I tell you one— I'm so glad you said that, and because I totally agree. You know what's amazing though? For most people, it takes them 10 years to get there. If people do the right things, if they took 90 days and did everything perfectly the amount that they can turn back their A1C is really amazing.

It's mind-blowing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can go from like 5.7 to 5.2 in 90 days. I've seen it happen.

Yeah, same. It's amazing. It's amazing. Okay, so number 1 biomarker, A1C. What's number 2?

Okay, number 2 I would say is a biomarker of inflammation, and I can't tell you the number of people that are surprised when their inflammation level is high. This biomarker is hs-CRP. CRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein. It, it becomes higher than 1 when you are inflamed. The optimal is 0. You want this as close to 0 as possible. Once it goes over 1, you need to start doing something to reduce your inflammation. So what could that be? Well, 90% of our immune system lives in our gut, right? Most of the inflammation— if you're going to go searching for where you're inflamed, is probably your gut, right? And so there's probably something going on in your gut. Maybe like you were mentioning, you were on antibiotics for a while. That's like a nuclear bomb to your gut. On steroids, we talked about, um, gluten can be a major problem for your gut. Even alcohol, eating ultra-processed food, all of this can cause a lot of inflammation in your gut. So why does that happen? Well, most people don't realize your gut is one cell layer thick. You have one cell between the outside environment and the inside environment, and that's one cell layer is damaged, you're going to create inflammation. And so that's where you need to go looking and get your gut health optimized. And then if it's still high, another place to look is your oral health. A lot of times we have gingivitis, maybe we've had some dental work and we have inflammation in our mouth, and that's causing inflammation. And then, you know, other parts of your body can also be inflamed, but that's kind That's kind of where you start. But the critical element there is most people are inflamed and they don't even know it. And then when they get their hs-CRP, they're like, wait, what's going on here? Why is this high?

Yeah.

Like, well, let's take a look at your gut and let's see what's going on.

That's so good. What's number 3?

Number 3 is a critical biomarker for cardiovascular health. It's ApoB, all right?

Yeah.

So, you know, for decades we've been talking about LDL, and if your LDL is high, you know, LDL, maybe you need a statin. And I just think that's all so flawed. That's like 1980 medicine. Yeah. Yes, your LDL is not the critical biomarker, in my opinion, of cardiovascular risk. ApoB is much, much better. This is a marker that ties in LDL, VLDL, triglycerides, Lp, all of the potential cholesterol molecules that can cardiovascular risk. Now, what's really important to realize with cardiovascular risk is this is not just your cholesterol level. There's many other— yeah— things going on if you're creating plaque in your arteries. One of them is poor metabolic health, so look at your hemoglobin A1c. Yeah. Another one is inflammation, so look at your hs-CRP. Another one is your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is elevated, cholesterol molecules can get into your endothelium and cause plaque. So So, you know, all of these need to be taken in context together, but ApoB is another one that I like to watch, and I like to keep that less than 100 for sure. If you have plaque in your arteries, we aim for less than 80, actually.

Yeah, and feel free to just go through any other. I mean, if you want to go through all 10, we can, or if you want to just go through the 5, or however many, just feel free.

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

That's good.

Yeah, and then we follow hormone levels— testosterone, uh, TSH, uh, T4, T3, reverse T3. So we follow a few critical hormones as well so that doesn't sneak up on you. And I actually have, like, for people— for your audience, I have a tool that they can download from my website, yeah, drshaw.com/biomarkers, and it'll give you a free 10-page guide to what are these biomarkers, what is the optimal level, and why they're important.

Oh, amazing.

And you can just use that and follow these 10 critical biomarkers on yourself Um, you know, outside of blood tests, we mentioned blood pressure. You know, blood pressure in medicine, we refer to it as a silent killer.

Yeah, right.

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

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

It's so easy. I know. Yeah, you just look up a YouTube video on how to do the blood pressure right. And my wife and I actually do this every quarter.

You can get something that does It does it for you the whole day.

Just put it on there. It does 3 of the measurements in a row. It averages them. You do it first thing in the morning, seated, legs not crossed, arm on a table. That's it. Yeah, super easy. Yeah, buy a blood pressure cuff. And this is something you can do as a couple with your wife or your significant other, and just once a quarter. And you should start doing it, in my opinion, even as early as 25 years old, because I've seen 25-year-olds with high blood pressure.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's critically important to get under control. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. Um, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to dive in a little bit about just some practical things people can do and also get your opinion on why many people are aging so quickly. You know, when I think about our average lifespan, it's probably somewhere around 78 years old in the United States. Now, other country, you know, you go to Okinawa and other areas, it's, it's longer. But when I think about that, and I believe the Bible talks about we're designed to live 120 years.

Yeah.

Yeah. There are scientific studies saying, hey, we should live about 120 years. But if you think about that, most people are taking more than one-third off of their life. Some people, if they're dying at 60, 50% of their life, they're aging themselves prematurely.

Yeah.

What are the biggest causes of premature aging today?

Yeah. And you know, I'll add one more thing to that.

Yeah, please.

Which I think is important. Even if people are living to 80, they're spending that last 20 to 30 years frail, you know, you know, not with their, um, not being able to recognize their family members and multiple chronic diseases. So even though we've extended life, I would say almost artificially with all of these medical treatments that we have, people don't have the healthspan too.

That's right. That's right.

We know that you can live to 120 years old, being able to do all the things you want to do and enjoy life. There was a woman that died last year at 117 years old, and she was super active.

That's amazing.

Yeah, there's centenarians all over the world in Blue Zones that have, you know, they're over 100 years old and they are just out there working in the fields, they're dancing, they're hanging out with their family, playing chess. Like, this— we know it's possible, right? So the question was, why are we aging so fast? I think there's probably 4 main causes. One is that we are very, very sedentary in our life. We spend a lot of time not moving. Humans, you know, since the dawn of humanity have walked and roamed this earth, right? We are, we, we are made to walk. Yeah, we, we need to walk at least 8,000 steps a day. The research shows that to prevent mortality from, from being sedentary. So number one is sedentary behavior. Number two, I would think, is we do not live in the rhythm of the universe, and we do not live with the rhythms of the planet. And our circadian rhythms are completely destroyed by, um, living indoors, shift work, lighting, et cetera. All these things that we've destroyed our circadian rhythm with. Yeah. Thirdly, I think, is our level of toxic exposure. Right now we are exposed to 150,000 toxins we were never exposed to 80 years ago. These are just chemicals being dumped into the environment, our our water, our food, you know, our skincare products, all of that. We're just assaulting our system with those, right? And so, and I would say fourthly is our level of emotional stress and not dealing with traumas that we suffer. And the dysregulation, we alluded to this earlier, that that has on our balance between our parasympathetic and sympathetic nerve system on a day-to-day basis so that we are not emotionally regulated and therefore our physiology is not regulated.

You know, I have— I've had quite a few people with cancer come to me over the last— I mean, I mean, really, I feel like it's more and more, but it's just a lot of people for a lot of years. And the thing that I can pinpoint with all of them absolutely is that there has been emotional trauma in their life and they have not fully healed from it. —because there are a few people I could think of, and my mom is one of these people. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer at 41, she was my gym teacher in elementary school. She was a swim instructor. My mom was fit. She was healthy from that standpoint. My mom, we didn't eat that bad. I mean, it was a lot of Midwest food, like casseroles, but it was actually a fair amount of real food. Not to say she didn't drink too much fruit juice, and we didn't eat fast food sometimes, But I had a woman come to me recently and she is in her— she's like 39 years old and one of the most upbeat people, eats like perfect. Like you look at her diet, you're like, wow, that's a perfect diet and really serious cancer. And you just know like there's so much emotional trauma with her mom and her family members and those things. So I just wanted to just reemphasize, I think that it's probably the most overlooked thing in medicine. Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you look at a lot of these ancient forms of medicine, I think they were more aware of the importance of your spiritual and your mental and emotional health. But we had this happen during, you know, the Renaissance, like, like what, what, what's happened in, in the world when you kind of also separate the church and state was, well, your spiritual and emotional health, that's over here, and your physical health is all the way over here, and we don't blend them. Now that's starting to change just really in the last few years. Right. But, but I'm, I'm so glad you said it because I've rarely had doctors come on here. And because I ask a lot of people, hey, what's the root cause of things? And sometimes I'll hear, well, maybe it's stress, but, but that, that trauma piece, that's, that's critical.

It's critical. It's so critical. And, you know, you've, um, you talk a lot about ancient modalities like Chinese medicine, Japanese medicine, the Bible. My dad was an Ayurvedic physician. Really? Yeah. Amazing. I grew up with Ayurveda. I grew up with a different, you know, the different doshas, right? And so emotional health is a big part of that, is how you relate to the outside world and how's the outside world affect you. It's a, it's a big part of the conversation. So we've known this in all these ancient healing modalities, and then we forgot it, to your point, right, for so long. We separated away from that. And I, I am glad that more attention is being brought towards it. Um, and so what do you do? Like, what do you do about emotional dysregulation and traumas? And I think, you know, number one, um, I think it's number one most important thing is to realize that almost everyone has minor traumas and major traumas in their life, right? And so I just think you, you, you— we've learned to suppress them, and we have to understand that these are affecting our physiology, right? Yeah. So just, just having that admission and then doing some inward-looking work and then understanding what are the tools available out there to help you kind of mitigate the damage that's doing to your physiology. I look at trauma as a toxin, basically. That's right. It's like a mold toxin. Exactly. Just like PFAS. It's a toxin in our physiology, right? And if you got to do something about it.

Yeah. One thing I see sometimes, and I just want to say this, when it comes to people that have— some people are aware that they've had emotional trauma, and I see two things happen, and the third is what people want to do.

Sometimes people just leave it buried.

Yep, I did that for many years. Yeah, and that's probably the biggest thing people do is they just bury it and, and leave it. Um, the second thing is people live in it and wallow in it. Yeah. And never move on from it. They go to their therapist, the therapist makes it worse because We just have them wallow in it and they see themselves as a victim. Right. Still, 20 years later, they're still living in it. No, you need to go to it. You need to process it and you need to heal it. Right. And you need to move on. Now you're the hero. Now you're the guy in the story. You're no longer the victim. And that healing process is so important. And it's just like, it's like this with doctors too. There's some amazing 10 out of 10 therapists that know exactly how to help you heal. Feel and process this and move forward in your life. Just like there's some doctors that can help you do that, but there's also some people that they're, they're, they don't know how to do it. Yeah. Okay. And so this is why, like, I am very, very conscious of like, like if I'm going to a doctor or I'm sending my family members to a doctor, they're gonna be a 10 outta 10. I'm parent, send 'em to Darshan Shaw, send 'em to a good friend of mine, Dr. Gezeghali. Like I'm gonna send 'em to these people because man, a good physician is worth a lot.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, a lot of times, um, people are not ready to deal with their traumas. And so I think there's other tools available to help. In my, in my mind, emotional dysregulation comes first, and then once you learn to regulate your emotions, then you can put yourself in a much better place to dive deeper into your traumas. Yeah. And so emotional regulation to me means, um, I just interviewed Gabby Bernstein. Do you know Gabby?

Yeah, yeah, I guess she is. Yeah, the best.

Yeah. So she taught me about internal family systems, and she wrote this book called Self-Help. And basically it says giving yourself a pause between an emotion and your reaction to it, right? And so that pause, if you learn to live in that pause for a moment, moment and understand what that— what's going on. And what Internal Family Systems tells you is that usually it's something from your childhood that's crying out for help. And looking inward, man, it can really help you regulate. And you feel it. You feel it in your physiology. Yeah, feel your, um, sympathetic system be less on fire and your parasympathetic take over. And it's so powerful.

Once you can do that, it can really You know, I, I think having that, uh, self-awareness and emotional intelligence to be able to do that, it, it is, um, you know, it's even more powerful than having a high IQ, right? It's like, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's so, so important. And I think that, uh, yeah, I wrote about this a book, and I wrote a book, uh, called Think This Not That. And, and I, I really got into this in the book, uh, that it's just so important to be be self-aware and be able to pause and reflect. And what is that emotion? Where did it come from? They must always come from memories. Something happened when you were a child is where it starts, and then it's just continued to just feed and grow and grow and grow until, uh, you know, emotionally it can, you know, kind of take you over and you can react in ways you don't want to react. And, and so I'm so glad you're saying this because it's just so, um, it's so key to all the things we're talking about— longevity Last few questions for you. What are some new therapies that you are getting turned on to now? I mean, I think a lot of people aren't using, of course, it's so funny, some of the things are old and they become new. It's like plasma exchange, okay, that's used for other things quite a few years, and now you've brought it back and really started using it for a lot of people with these different infections. What are some of the other more advanced therapies that maybe you're just introducing in your clinic or you're looking into right now that you think are pretty, pretty fascinating and may have some promise?

There's so much cool stuff out there coming out now. You know, we live in an incredible time where we are making discoveries rapid fire. And so there's some stuff coming in the next 10, 15 years that I think are gonna be a game changer. And so my message to all my patients is just stay healthy and stay alive long enough to see what's coming, you know? But, um, what I would say is the stuff that I'm really excited about at this moment is the focus on stem cells and how we can use them responsibly and use them as a therapy that, um, if done in the right way, it can— they can be very powerful, right? And so I'm really excited that Florida, Montana, Utah, that they've approved stem cell usage now. So we— now we can start really doing the science and really start helping people cool, but also be responsible and make them in a responsible way so that people don't get hurt, you know. And so I'm, I'm really excited about stem cells and specific new kinds of stem cells that are coming out. One, one of them is called Muse cells, um, and you might have heard of them. Yeah. So, and then, you know, peptides. Okay, so peptides also, um, the way I like for people to think about peptides is peptides are very unlike pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are chemicals chemicals that are created that kind of force a specific response in our body, and they have a lot of side effects. Peptides are actually a recreation of natural biological signals, right? These are signals our body has used once again since the dawn of humanity, and we're finally learning what those signals are. Turns out there are thousands of signals that our body uses, right? And once we know what they are, we can replicate replicate and we can use them, but they also need to be used responsibly. Our body is not making these signals for a reason, and you can give someone that signal, but why are they not making that signal? That's what you need to figure out.

What are some of your favorite peptides you recommend regularly for patients?

Yeah, so, you know, um, I think that these GLP peptides are very useful if used responsibly, once again. Um, so things like tirzepatide I found to be very helpful, not just for weight loss, right? Obviously Basically, the reason people need GLP for weight loss is because their, their gut is not making it enough anymore, and that's because of poor gut health. Yeah. Once you get your gut health back, which every single person on GLP, we put into place a gut healing protocol so they can start making their own GLP. But what I've also found with GLP is, and this is brand new, is that it can be very powerful in reducing the effects of autoimmune disease.. And so we're using it for a lot of, like Hashimoto's for example, we're using it to decrease the effect of autoimmune disease. Turns out our T cells have GLP receptors on them as well.

Now how much of, okay, makes sense. I mean part of me when you first said that, the thing that came into my mind was how much of that is an effect from being more in a fast, caloric restriction or going lower calorie, but that makes sense. Makes sense. What are your thoughts on— again, you already know the pushback, so I don't even need that. I'm going to ask a question anyways. But, you know, the amount of muscle loss, I mean, there's— it's, it's very high. So, so how do you deal with that as a practitioner?

Yeah, so number one, muscle loss will occur when you take GLP-1s and you just reduce your intake and you don't do anything else, right? Obviously, if you're not taking in protein and you're not moving, you're going to lose muscle just It's like, you know, I used to do surgery and we would do gastric bypass surgeries on people that were morbidly obese, right? And it became a really popular surgery because many people are morbidly obese and they couldn't lose the weight. Yeah. And we saw tremendous amounts of fat and muscle loss in the people that still remain sedentary and the people that would not eat anything, okay, except carbohydrate. Um, and so the ones that built muscle by exercising and by taking in protein as our primary source of food intake, they never lost muscle. They actually gained muscle. And so we— what we do when we have people on GLP-1s is we put into place a very specific protocol to make them gain muscle. So we give them about a gram per pound of protein a day. Yeah, as a core piece of their diet, we have them go strength train 3 times a. And then we also monitor their skeletal muscle mass using a DEXA scan. Yeah. And, uh, we use a bioimpedance scale at home. We want people to monitor their own, uh, muscle mass as well. And you can do that with a special scale that puts an electrical current through your body called a bioimpedance scale. And then we also do vitamin D, we do nutritional supplementation. And what we've found is over 90% of the time, people will not lose muscle being on GLP-1s if done right. The other big problem, which GLP-1s I'll tell you too, is that kind of the dosing algorithm that we're taught.

That's what I was— you beat me to my next question. Okay.

Yeah. So, you know, what all doctors are taught by the pharma companies is start at this dose and go all the way up to this dose. That's right. And that's just the way you do it. That's the wrong way of doing it. You, when you give someone a GLP-1, you go up to the dose that affects next, weight change at a reasonable level so they can keep up their skeletal muscle, right? You can't— you don't want to lose 10 pounds a week. That's way too much. You can't keep up with the skeletal muscle loss. So what we like to do is get people to lose maybe 1 or 2 pounds a week with the GLP-1s, so then they can keep going to the gym and building skeletal muscle, and they don't get that imbalance as well. And so a lot of people like tirzepatide, we'll stop them like 5 or 7.5. They don't need to go all the way up to the 15 milligram dose. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, once again, like everything we've talked about, working with a skilled practitioner, looking at the overall context, following the biomarkers, so important.

Any other peptides you like?

Yeah, I like a bunch of them. BPC-157 is a peptide. It's, uh, you know, it's known as a healing peptide, but also has a lot of other effects. I like TB500, which is an immune regulatory peptide. Yeah. I really believe that immunosenescence, or aging of our immune system, is one of the primary reasons that we're aging, you know? Yeah. We are overtaxing our immune system. You asked me all the reasons why we age. Most of those have to do with overtaxing our immune system, right? So TB500 can reinvigorate your immune system and not just, you know, slow down aging, but also help you fight off infections and all the things our immune system does for us, reduce inflammation, all of it.

So yeah, so powerful.

Yeah. And then for some people, you know, I like to cycle, uh, growth hormone secretagogues. Okay. And some people are really low on their growth hormone levels, and they— I find that this helps to just give them that little edge they need. But I don't use them for long periods of time. We might use like a 3-month course and then stop.

Yeah, yeah, it's so powerful. Yeah, that's so powerful. There's so many more.

I mean, I just like thinking— oh, I mean, you know what's crazy?

I was reading on an article recently just going into like— yeah, I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of peptides, and they're going to be hundreds and hundreds of more over the next few years. So it's, it's crazy. And then you get into the whole bioregulators. I mean, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot. But the future of medicine is bright.

It is really bright. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think peptides is going to be like a whole new pharmaceutical industry. It's going to be a whole new industry, and people just need to be very careful and think about them as, um, as a drug, right? I mean, you need to go with a skilled practitioner. Don't just buy them online. Make sure you have good quality. Make sure you're working with someone that can help you, um, really, uh, create a protocol that's going to work well. Yeah, follow your biomarkers.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. Yeah, well, it's been amazing, Darshan. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to comment. We We'd love to hear what is the biggest piece of wisdom and advice that Dr. Darshan Shah here shared with us today? And where can people find out more about you?

Uh, drshaw.com is my website. Um, and I have tools on there for people. I have a social media @darshanshahmd, and then our clinics are at nexthealth— next-health.com. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, and I have a podcast that you're going to be on called Extend.

I'm excited. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be a good one. I'm excited for that too. Well, this was an amazing, Amazing interview, and, uh, just so grateful for you, so grateful for all the great work you do. And hey, thanks everybody for watching here, The Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Did you know that if you're not subscribed, you may miss out on some of the incredible interviews we have? Uh, we've had a few episodes that have been shadowbanned because we're talking about controversial topics like cancer, like autoimmune disease, and a number of other things.. And so if you're not subscribed, you may not see it. And it's the number one thing you do to support the show. So thank you, all of you who are subscribed, who are on mission with us to help heal people naturally. And I encourage you to keep up with what Dr. Shaw is doing, what I'm doing, because, you know, I think about it like this. You know, if you were to get surgery on your knee 50 years ago, it was very different than what they would do today, going in microscopically and using more natural tissues and things versus literally tearing bringing your whole knee apart. We're going to see this very same thing in medicine today with things like stem cell therapy and a number of things. The amount of preventative measures you can take, the ways that we can do things in the future with tracking your health in real time, it's going to be absolutely incredible. And I know myself and Dr. Shaw are really committed to getting you the best information and how to add years to your life and life to your years. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you on the next episode. Episode. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried.

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