The Holistic Doctor's 3-STEP HACK For Optimal Physical & Mental Health!

for every 10% of time that you spend sitting you have a 10% increase in all cause mortality that's crazy yeah sitting for more than an hour at a time is literally what's killing most of us right now he's a world-renowned surgeon entrepreneur and founder of next Health Dr Daran sha Western medicine is so disease focused and so reactive that unless things are really bad there's nothing they can offer you the patients I was seeing they were like how come no one told me this before we jump into this episode I'd like to invite you to

join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier healthier and more healed all I want you to do is click on the Subscribe button I love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started I can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the bestselling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with J shett hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number health and wellness podcast in the world

thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow our mission here is to make the world happier healthier and more healed and we do that through introducing you to experts stories scientists researchers and doctors who have insights that we can all apply and improve our day-to-day life or maybe even the way we think and live now today's guest is someone that I've been working with personally for quite a few months now if not a bit longer than that and he's someone that I'm excited to introduce you

to because he has so much great insight and I love the way he approaches some of the challenges that we're all facing in our daily lives with our health and wellness today's guest is Dr sha Daran sha MD a health and wellness specialist board certified surgeon published author entrepreneur and founder of next Health the world's first and largest Health optimization and Longevity Clinic with expertise in all body systems Dr Shai has performed over 15,000 surgical procedures including trauma surgery general surgery and reconstructive procedures as a health and wellness specialist Daran has advised thousands of patients

on how to optimize their well-being and extend their lifes plan please welcome to the show Dr sha Dr sha thank you so much for having me it's good to have you here yes yes I was thinking about it I think we started working together probably just under a year ago it feels like it feels like about a year about a year yeah about a year yeah about a year and I remember we got introd uced through my health coach I believe I think I'm trying to now I'm like trying to piece it together y connect

the dots I think it's your health coach right SOA Sharma who I've worked with for quite a few years now she introduced us right you have this incredible facility I know it's definitely in la because that's where I go where else do you have it so yeah we have three locations in La one in New York and one also in Hawaii right now in Maui which is sadly right now they're going through a lot but um and now we're actually franchising all over the world so we'll be in Dubai um um we will be in

Canada Australia and all over the United States here pretty soon and talk to me about this transition that you made very early on in your journey or not early on actually sorry more recently yeah more recently you made a shift in your career right because you went from practicing as a doctor traditionally to now building next Health talk to me about that transition and us to about why you did that and what was the reasoning behind it yeah I think you know most Physicians never anticipate a complete 180 transition in their career especially after you've

like dedicated 25 plus years but I felt a real need to do that and it was mainly because of my own personal health so what happened was um I started off as a surgeon um I then also went into the entrepreneurial side of surgery I brought surgery centers and I started hiring doctors as well and so I was spending half my life being a surgeon treating patients in the operating room the other half my life running the business and the other half of my life you know trying to maintain my own health and my own

um sanity and unfortunately that last part of my life just kind of fell through the cracks right and so what happened was I found myself 15 plus years into my career as probably the most unhealthy person in the building that I was working in I was uh 40 pounds overweight and you know weight doesn't really matter for everything but for me that really led to a tons of health challenges such as because I had high blood pressure and that blood pressure was not getting any better despite being on two medications I was pre-diabetic on Diabetes

medications and I was not able to move very well like all my joints achd because of an autoimmune disease starting so you know I was 15 16 years into my career and I was like I'm getting really really sick and um at that point in time as well I had my first child and you know having your first child is often like a time in your life where you sit and reflect I was actually doing the math utilizing studies that say like if you have this hemoglobin A1c this level of high blood pressure this level

of obesity how long you're going to live and that's I was doing the math and I came quickly to the realization I was a little bit older when I had my first child I was 40 that I would not live to see him potentially graduate from college and to me like that was a major kind of punch in the gut right like what am I doing to myself and so that kind of started this thought process and this transition in my life where I said I need to make some massive changes here and I need

to do it quick because I need to be alive for this kid you know I did what a lot of people do I said you know I need to find the best of the best doctors so I went to Beverly Hills I researched all the best concierge medicine doctors you know I hired an expensive concierge medicine doctor I said your job is to get me healthy went to his office and um you know paid a pretty penny for this too it wasn't cheap he did a bunch of tests on me and he found out that

yeah I was pre-diabetic and it was getting a little bit worse and I was hypertensive and I need to be another blood pressure medication and probably the reason I was having difficulty moving and you know being performing all the activities of my life that I wanted to perform with Vitality was because I was depressed so then he added a anti-depression medication to my list of meds so my list of meds Grew From eight medications to 12 medications and that's all he told me he just prescribed me four or five more things there was even a

mention of do you go to the gym do you how do you sleep what's your stress level like not even a question about that and I thought to myself like there is something really wrong here and and this is the world that I grew up in right this is the medical training that I grew up in the in medical school when I did med school back in the 1990s you spent one day of one class talking about nutrition maybe half a day of another class talking about sleep but it was mostly about Sleep Disorders right

uh like sleep apne and things like that I did not have the knowledge so how could I expect this guy to have the knowledge right I mean the Western medicine is so disease focused and so reactive that unless things are really bad and we can't prescribe you a pill or a surgery there's nothing they can offer you really right and so I saw like a massive flaw here and I decided that moment in time like I need to learn for myself how to do this right so decided to hire someone else to take position in

my office that I had and just take some time off and educate myself and so that led to 6 months to a year of going to every conference I could find and this was like eight nine years ago when I have a struggle my first instinct is to educate myself learn learn learn and so I went to every conference I could find I went to like Physical Therapy conferences I went to like how to become a personal trainer registered dietitian courses I went to all these conferences and I learned so much and then I kind

of stumbled into the field of functional medicine have you heard of functional medicine and I'm sure you have you had Dr Heyman on here is one of the fathers of functional medicine my favorite people in the whole world but learned from him and others about the root cause of illness and it was incredible like within eight months I was able to like completely turn my health around and as I was doing this the patients I was seeing I was helping them do the same thing and they were like how come no one told me this

and so that's what kind of started my new career in medicine and I said you know medicine is fantastic if you're helping sick people become unick you're treating cancer you're treating diabetes but it's also to me exponentially more fantastic when you're helping the other 90% of people who aren't sick stay healthy and never get to that point in the first place and so for me it was just kind of bringing all that together and really providing a place for people to go when you're not yet sick like when you not yet need to go to

the doctor the hospital where do you go it's not just the gym right there's much more you need to do there a lot more work to be done and that's what I dedicated my new kind of my new life and medicine to is creating that place what are those key pillars or the core areas of next Health based on functional medicine that you're measuring and that you think we all need to be aware of when we're looking at that 360 degree look at our health right right so you know this is where I think you

know I have this conversation with all my patients we sit down and we say look there's an overwhelming amount of health information out there and a lot of it is not based in science there's a lot of like majoring and minor things right there's a lot of focus on like what's the best superfood or you know what's the how much caffeine should I have per day but like in reality what I tell people is let's break this down for you um into the main components and over time let me educate you on the main components

of Health but let's not major in the minor things let's focus on the 20% of the information that's going to give you the 80% of the result right like what are the key two or three things you need to know on each aspect of your health to create a major difference and that's the pretto principle which is where can you expend the least amount of energy to get the most amount of results and once you get that right you can absolutely go down the rabbit hole further if you want to so we start off I

have this thing called a wellness wheel I call it there're 12 points in the wellness wheel we start off with the basics nutrition sleep and exercise but then we move on to gut health immune system Health hormone Hormone Health heart health and brain health and so then we spend a lot of time talking about each one of those individually and in each one of these categories what I do is I try to frame it as this it's a three-step process and the first step is number one how do we make sure you're not dying from

this right how do we make sure your nutrition is not killing you like you're becoming a metabolic disaster with diabetes or how do we make sure that your immune system is healthy enough to prevent cancer how do not die basically the second part of it is how do we improve your health span how do we keep you as healthy as possible for as long as possible and then the last part is what's the advanced science out there in the longevity world that we can um Implement into your life once we've make sure you're not in

trouble and then you've mastered how to take care of your health span yourself how do we then start applying these um these new techniques this new science so a lot of people come to us and they want to jump straight to like how do how do I do nadiv how do I do hyperbaric oxygen therapy I'm like no no no let's hold on on a second let's make sure you're not eating Ultra processed food first because that's what's going to make the biggest difference right so that's kind of how we frame it and it's um

we go down each one of these categories and talk about what's going to make the biggest difference for people fantastic I think this is I wanted to lay that out for people because I wanted people to understand a you've been on this personal Journey yourself there's a professional shift here as well because you can see the kind of challenges that come with traditional medicine and how functional medicine is the future even though it seems like it's rooted in ancient times or an older method that's coming back and then looking at these key areas and that's

what I want to dive into with you today if that's okay AB love to touch on all these areas because I'd love to give people whoever listened to this episode whether you're watching at home or whether you're you know cooking right now whether you're listening with a partner or whatever it may be I want this to be the episode that you come back to to learn about these areas of your health so you can become more proactive not reactive and get focused on the areas that need help so absolutely yeah let's dive into let's first

start with nutrition because I think that it's such a big area of our lives and I think it's one of those ones that everyone will say hey I was put in for surgery but I was never really told to change my diet or even even when I went last year like you helped me through my you didn't perform the surgery but you helped me through my hernia surgery and I've spoken that on the podcast a couple of times and I was never told to change my diet however by by the doctors you did tell me

and so did Mona if you had not told me that it would have been a lot harder to even recover so even though it wasn't integral to the surgery it did affect the recovery and so let's talk about nutrition it's such a big part of our life let's start with what has gone wrong with our food like what what has changed about our food that it's almost like a surprise to us today that what we eat is affecting how we feel yeah it's it's really multifactorial but it's all happened in the last 50 or 60

years you look at like obesity rates heart attack rates diabetes rates the last 50 years just exponentially increasing and I think it's a few things that happened one was there was a little bit of a panic back in the 50s that we weren't going to have enough food to feed everybody right so the government start putting into place subsidies and laws and bringing corporations together to start Mass producing food and that mass production of food led to over farming of soil packaging foods to make them last longer but then also you know you have these

packaged foods are not that inspiring so how do you make them taste better you make them hyper palatable and then whenever you involve Corporate America in anything right what's the goal of Corporations to make a profit how do you do that by making things cheaper and making more of them right so now you have these Giant Food conglomerates like making tons and tons of food as cheaply as possible and that means using chemicals it means using dyes it means hiring scientists make it hyper palatable so even though normally you're you know you would eat this

thing and your body would be like what is this you know this is horrible and you your body were able to sense how bad it is for you now you can't because the scientists have made it taste good right and so you have this massive um kind of explosion of ultr processed food an entire Supermarket you look at the square footage of a supermarket only the outside of it is dedicated to fresh food the entire middle is frozen processed boxed canned food right and we have so much of it in our society right now that

that's really what's caused a lot of the problems in addition to that we have food coming from all over the world to us so it's being shipped to us it's being stored it's being preserved it's um being grown in soil that's over fed and so we kind of come to this disaster point where most of the food that we see that is being supplied to our population has become full of toxins and basically not healthy for you so really we have to really really look at and take a step back how do we eat 50

years ago and how can we go back to that type of eating pattern yeah and so I think that's the hard part right like you just said that when you go into a grocery store you're seeing that the majority of it is taken up by processed foods people are thinking well how do I what do I eat because it's almost like we've got so used to eating out of tins cans boxes packets it it almost even takes a second to think of what food isn't in one of those or isn't refrigerated or isn't Frozen or

whatever it may be like what would you say taking your 020 Principle as you were mentioning referring to before what is that thing that we can do 20% because I think when we think about food it just feels so big and overwhelming and then the stress of cooking with our busy lives and working and coming home late from work and trying to eat something quickly like what's the what's the quick win or what's the small win that we can make yes absolutely so so the 20% here is working really hard to eliminate that ultr processed

food okay so really focusing on how do you get fresh organic food into your body as much as possible and I can tell you if you only make this one change that's all you need to worry about you don't need to worry about your protein content and your micronutrients like all of that will come with just switching from Ultra processed food to organic fresh Whole Foods and then if that's the only one thing that you do you you've had a massive wind that's going to give you the 80% of the result because it will force

you to learn how to make good food quickly because we're all busy right so how do we make how do we make a quick protein shake or how do we make a quick salad and still get the nutrients in that we need to and not feel hungry once you start doing that you find that your hunger goes down just exponentially you don't need to eat as often and you kind of eliminate you know snacking is such a huge thing now it's almost like we're taught that if you're not snacking you're not going to have enough

energy for the day and that's only because we're snacking on processed food in between eating processed food right so so so really once you start eating whole food again you can even a lot of people just stop even eating one meal a day they go straight into lunch and dinner I eat protein every morning for my meals I I I need to have protein in the morning most people do and we could talk about fasting later too and kind of the change in thought around that but making that one change is going to give you

80% of the result in in my opinion and my experience talking to hundreds of people about this over the last year or two and then there's two or three things you can do after that once you got that down but that would be number one for sure what are two and three okay so number two is managing your glucose response curve talk about this yeah exactly so the scien has come extremely far in this and what we know for a fact is first of all we know for a fact that metabolic syndrome diabetes is rampant

and is just getting into more and more communities throughout America all the time and that's because of things like we talked about snacking Ultra processed food Etc but it's also just people have forgotten how to eat in a way that keeps your glucose curve under control now when I say glucose curve that means that I'm talking about like actually measuring your glucose all the time and seeing when it goes up and when it goes down and so there's a device now that you can buy it's called a continuous glucose monitor have you worn one of

these yet I haven't but I've seen them yeah I think my wife had one ah fantastic it is a game changer as far as I'm concerned I mean I don't recommend a lot of like you know technology and things until it's like really proven and vetted but I really feel you this is something we've used for diabetics for years now but finally people are starting to use it in their regular day life and you don't have to wear it forever I just wear mine for like six weeks and I found incred incredible amounts of information

about how to eat so for example one thing is you know we all sit down and we start with chips or bread right it's the absolute worst thing you can do you want to start with your vegetables first that puts fiber into your body and slows your digestive tract and then you do your protein and fats and last is the carbs okay because that'll slow the release of glucose from the carbs that's one of the things you learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor you also learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor what foods shoot

your glucose through the roof versus you know RIS or anybody else's right and it's different like if you eat a banana it could shoot your glucose to the roof and your friend no problem at all and that's because your microbiome your metabolism is different than every single other person so you can personalize the foods that you eat to keep your glucose level steady and if you keep your glucose level as steady as possible day after day after day and you know you can cheat it's not like people don't cheat we all like to eat a

dessert every once in a while or but it really makes you cognizant of what's Happening internally and you know we live our life not being cognizant of what's Happening internally until we feel really really bad this really teaches you like how your body is reacting to the food that you eat so I recommend all my patients you know six weeks of a continuous glucose monitor really learn how your glucose curves reacts to certain foods there's a really good book out there it's uh called the glucose Revolution it's very well written you can read it in

like 3 4 hours about how how to manage your glucose curve I love that book I give it to all my patients as well and um I think you learn a lot so number two is managing your glucose curve well that's fantastic you know what I love talking to you because you make it sound so simple and accessible like whenever I talk to you I find it so easy to understand what I need to do why I need to do it why it makes sense and I don't need to be as well versed in what

you're talking about as you are right and it's not overly technical in a way that I can't wrap my head around it so I love how practical you just made that especially how we eat what's on our plate because I think so many of us spend so long trying to figure out like oh maybe I shouldn't eat that and I shouldn't have that and it's actually the order can make all the difference and now everyone who's listening or watching make sure that you don't go and start with the the bread or the chips and you

know get the crud instead right exactly exactly that's why they serve it first well now I guess they serve chips and guac first too but uh what was the number three so number three and number three and number four it can be switched around based on your particular dietary pattern but I would say number three is making sure you have adequate protein intake and a lot of people they diet and they not just cut back on the you know the carbs they eat the fats they eat but they also cut back in the amount of

protein they eat and you lose weight on the scale but you're losing more muscle mass and you're losing fat and that's a travesty because you need your muscle mass to support not just support your bones and give you strength but it's also one of the biggest organs in your body that's preventing you from going into diabetes cancer and dementia so preserving muscle mass is key so I have all of my patients buy this really cool scale that I like it's called the inbody h2n scale h20n scale and it's a scale that you step on but

you also grab under these handlebars and it tells you your skeletal muscle mass okay so you can not just track your body fat percentage but also your skeletal muscle mass and obviously you want maintain your skeletal muscle mass especially the older you get so the closer you get to 40 and 50 you need to have a big store of skeletal muscle mass because it's going to decline we all start declining after the age of 50 and it takes a lot of protein and a lot of strength training to make up for that Decline and you

want to maintain that skeletal muscle mass number one thing to do is have one gram per pound of body weight of protein per day broken up into three to four divided dosages okay so you do that you step on this I like weighing myself every day I it gives you that accountability Factor um and you can track the data and make sure you're maintaining skeletal muscle mass and if you need to decreasing fat mass now one gram per pound of body weight like people don't really know like how what is that really so look it

up most people weigh you know somewhere around 150 pounds look up 150 grams of protein look that up on Google and you'll see all sorts of infographics and it's it's a lot of protein it's not a small amount of protein and if you're vegetarian or vegan you can still do this but you're going to probably need a little bit more because only about 80% of that is bioavailable protein so you want to maybe even increase a little bit more and once you see that infographic once you see or just even like buy a little scale

and measure out 150 grams of protein see what it is you're like oh wow I am really not getting enough protein day to day you know I've been thinking about that a lot later myself I've been looking at that and Ry and I were talking about it I was like yeah I'm not sure I'm getting as much protein as I need to be getting and I'm obviously plant-based so that was something that we were diving into what are the best plant-based sources of protein that you're seeing and that actually add up to that amount not

I know what the sources are but it's almost like how do you get that much of it yeah I mean you know you know what the sources are like beans and Grains and all but also I myself and all my vegetarian and vegan friends I recommend you know PE protein powder it's really good it goes down easily put it put it like you added to like your oatmeal and other other things that you're eating and and you'll you'll start building up you know and look the idea is not to get from like 10 grams of

protein a day all the way to 150 grams you build up slowly over time and you see what kind of works for you all of this needs to be individualized and that's why I like having like that data point which is the bioimpedence scale that inbody scale because you can see like oh wow my skeletal muscle mass is going up I'm doing good now like here's where I need to be right so you can really personalize it for yourself okay fantastic this is this is already helping me I I'm like listening to everything you're saying

this is It's So relatable and so so actionable immediately which which is fantastic and I love the and I keep keep please keep sharing like the tools or the the gadgets that we can have or websites or books because I want all of our community to feel really supported and go okay that's what I haven't read yet or absolutely and I have no Financial like hookup with any of these companies I'll tell you if I do but this is the stuff that I love and I've seen my patients really take to as well so I'm

going to I'm going to blurt them out and I think it's Fant do your research you know but yeah let's talk a bit about supplements and Vitamins because I think that there's a lot of like mixed messaging out there about what's needed how much of it's needed some people are like well none of it really gets absorbed and does it make a difference and there there's always a debate about it how do you go about figuring out what someone needs as an individual as opposed to just taking what everyone's taking because you keep hearing about

it everywhere yeah that that's such a great question and we can't even talk about that Jay without talking about number four on the list which was vegetables all right and I'll tell you why so the fourth thing which is as important as protein is getting enough vegetables in your diet on a daily basis so do you know how much that is by chance I don't I mean I have a lot of vegetables right but I have no idea so you're going to have to tell me right it's so lot a lot of people really know

like what's the right amount and really the amount of vegetables you eat has a lot to do with the amount of fiber intake you need which 90% of America doesn't get enough fiber and fiber is a critical ingredient of our diet secondly that's where most of our micronutrients and phytonutrients are as in those vegetables thirdly they just keep you full and satiated all the time as well so getting enough vegetables in your diet is extremely important the number that I've seen in a lot of um fit and nutrition gurus talk about is it's a big

number it's like 800 gram of vegetables which is about you know a quart of vegetables right so once again get your scale and measure this out and see what it is it's it's not a small amount it's like two full salads a day but that's kind of what we need to work up to so if you're doing that the need for supplementation is minimal To None actually I'm not a big supplement Pusher I'd much rather people get it in your diet the reality of the situation is however it's really hard to get that much protein

and that much vegetable product into your diet right and of course we can talk about vegetables without talking about making sure you're buying organic you know you're buying as local as possible um and if you can't go to ewg.org environmental working groups website they'll give you a list of what are the most toxic vegetables and the least toxic out there right now so look at that website and I'll give you the list so if you're not getting enough uh vegetabl intake into your diet the next step is to add some supplementation to that the most

common supplements I recommend for people are vitamin D um we don't get enough sunlight to produce it we're not getting enough in our diets so most people do need some vitamin D it needs to be dialed in based on a blood test so you do a blood test I like the vitamin D level to be around 50 to 80 and the vitamin D form that I like people to take is vitamin D3 K2 the K2 is also another vitamin added in it prevents over absorption of calcium with the vitamin D and deposition of calcium in

your blood vessels so vitamin D3 K2 then fish oil supplement as well for the vegetarians and vegans out there there's some great nonf fish sources of fish oil as well so I would do that as well magnesium is something that we're all very deficient in so I would do magnesium as well and then creatine believe it or not it's amino acid that has a lot of research behind it do you do creatine yeah fantastic yeah 5 to 8 milligrams every morning just put a scoop in your coffee and mixes in with anything I think that's

another really interesting good one and then I kind of then you know kind of do it based on what I ate the day before right so if I got a couple good salads in fine I don't need to do anything else if I didn't I'll take a packet of ag1 which is like a phytonutrient powder which I really like Andor a multivitamin sometimes as well I'll do that too and then protein powders are pretty much always staple for me as well that's the other supplement that I use you're just putting that onto other stuff yeah

putting that onto other stuff putting that into a shake you know shakes are very convenient there's a really good protein powder I like called super gut it's actually a resistant starch and a protein powder and fiber all in one like bag and so super gut is a fantastic like rescue product I have like if I've been on a plane for eight hours or something you know and I just come home and just take that and I get my nutrition in and that's pretty much it you know there's other things you can do like if you're

having trouble sleeping there's ashwagandha there's glycine if you're having trouble with stress ashwaganda is another good one for that but then I'm really selective about which ones to use yeah yeah great those are fantastic that's a really good breakdown for anyone I mean I remember when I first started measuring that with Mona is like my vitamin D which you would never have known if you met me or saw me was 10 and it was just like I was living my life like I was on planes I was giving Keynotes I was I was healthy I

was energetic whatever and she was just like I don't even know how you function I was out of 10 it was like it was and I was unaware how old were you when you do this this is oh this was like a year and a half ago two years ago yeah like it was just interesting to me because the only thing I could feel is like I was feeling a bit of fatigue and that was the only thing and that's why I think that the reason why I'm raising that for my audience and Community here

today is don't take it for granted and don't assume that you might be like I don't need any of these V supplements it's like it could be the tiniest thing that you're experiencing as a symptom it's important to take it seriously because you don't want to be at a 10 you bring up an extremely good point a couple points I want to make here one is you have to become the CEO of your own health and what I mean by that is a CEO manages a business by looking at numbers on a daily basis right

most people manage their health based on a feeling that they have symptoms that they have they're not looking at numbers so becoming the CEO of your own Health means knowing what are the key kpis of your health there's only about 10 of them skeletal muscle mass being one of them body fat percentage being another vitamin D level being another you got to keep that dialed in right because the other point I want to make with you is that when your vitamin D level is low like at this age and you don't take care of it

for 20 to 30 years that's when the lack of vitamin D leads to the higher risk of Alzheimer's leads to the higher risk of heart attack leads to the higher risk of hormone problems it all started 20 to 30 years before when you barely felt it you see what I mean so looking at those numbers 20 to 30 years ahead of becoming sick is the key to becoming CEO of your own health and then making all those diseases a non-issue making all the things that people die of a non-issue fantastic yeah no I cann't agree

more and I'm so glad you made that connection because I think it often when you find it out long term you then feels like a surprise right but actually it isn't if you're looking at the numbers and I think we just haven't been trained to look at our health in terms of numbers like you'd measure your height growing up or you'd measure your weight growing up but those are such poor indicators of Health in and of themselves without looking at all of these other metrics that we're talking about here today whether it's your glucose levels

whether it's your vitamin D levels magnesium Etc you mentioned so many other vitamins and supplements I just don't think we're trained to know where to look and what to look at and there we're basing it on I feel tired today I feel and I think this is something I want to mention as well that the mind and the body are so connected but I think so often our physical challenges we think are a mental challenge so we think we're tired because we have we're not focused enough or we're not excited enough or we're not motivated

enough we make the physical issue a mental issue but it isn't it's purely a physical and I know that because I feel so purposeful and love what I do and I'm so joyful about it and I'm so excited about it it so if my body's not working to the degree I want it to I'm very clear that you can have all the mental stuff down but if you're not taking care of your body it doesn't just you can push it a bit further but that's not going to get you up the hill so no you're

absolutely right there's when your brain starts feeling it usually your body is in big trouble yeah that's when you start feeling it so you know I think your point about the numbers is so it resonates with me because that's what happened to me when I became sick I outsourced my numbers to my primary care doctor and my you know consur medicine doctor and they got my numbers back they looked at them and you know you get these if you've ever seen your blood worksheet like if something is out of range it turns red otherwise it's

all black it's all like a bunch of numbers right and so because things were like barely in the red and not moving they decided not to even talk to me about them right but in reality things were changing for a long time and going in the wrong direction and that's because Western medicine can't really do anything about that number until they can prescribe you a pill for it and that pill only comes when it's disease time that's the problem and I also think people get overwhelmed with the with the numbers because you know most people

you don't know what these numbers mean so what I really try to do with my patients is give them like 10 numbers these are the 10 numbers you need to watch and why and I think that makes it a lot easier for them so I give them a spreadsheet I let them watch their own numbers and I think it's important for them to watch their own numbers rather than Outsource their health to their physician because they need to know what the optimal range is not just the disease range right so let me just give you

one more real quick on the glucose um point because it's a really important one it's a hemoglobin A1c and you probably heard of this before to it's a measure of your last three months average of glucose and you're pre-diabetic when this number is 5.7 and your diabetic one is 6.5 or above my number was 5.7 and he just put me on a medication but five years ago I had measured this with my doctor and it had gone from 4.7 to 5.0 to 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.4 and no one said anything to me you know

and I could have done something about it back then before I had to now it's an emergency right so I think that's another number people should watch uh nutrition wise is that hemoglobin A1c number and I guarantee you if people call their doctors and ask for their latest blood work result it's on there or it should be if it's not on there you have a bigger problem but it should be on there and you'll see kind of where you're at you know a this is fantastic Dr sh thank you so much all right I want

to dive into let's do exercise next you brought that up I want to dive into it and if I if there's any ever time when you want to go bu crochet something feel free you know this is all about giving the most value to everyone who's listening and watching right when we talk about exercise I think everyone's kind of always known their need to exercise one of the things I love before we start talking about the technicality of it you talk a lot about the need for social exercising which I love that because recently I've

been playing so much pickle ball with friends I don't know if youve been playing as well I got to play pickle ball with you I love pickle ball yeah and it's just it is like I have played at this point today I don't I'm not playing today the I played the last five days in a row every day I probably played for an average of two hours a day on average some days were three some days was one and it is such an easy workout because you're just running around you're sweating you're having a good

time with friends you're outdoors and I've I've made it a priority in my life that all of my friendships this year we're going to do something active together so instead of getting together and sitting down and eating dinner even though I love doing that we're actually going to go on a hike instead or we're going to go on a walk and if I don't feel like going on a hike or a walk then at least we're just going to do something active whether it be an escape room so that we're moving around or if it

is that I have enough energy to play pickle ball we're doing that the idea is how can every friendship be based on Fitness that is also fun rather than friendship which is based on us sitting on a couch watching a movie together which by the way I still do as well but that can't be the primary way to hang out such an incredibly good point and um I just spent the last weekend in ohigh with a with some of my friends and literally like we would not sit down until we all hit 10,000 steps you

know for for the day and pickle ball was part of it hiking was part of it and you know the old adage is so true you become the average of the eight people you surround yourself with right and so of the eight people you're friends with like my community of friends we work out together that is our social activity and it's so much fun we find different things to do you know we're lucky we live in the hills and we can hike together we can go to these really fun gyms together but it makes exercise

not exercise I think what happens and why people don't get get enough exercise is because exercise is literally like going to the gym by yourself and it's not inspiring a lot of times when you go to the gym if you don't especially if you don't have a trainer you know and social exercise for me was the cure to not getting enough movement in my day absolutely yeah it's huge and tell us about let's talk about what type of movement is needed because I think again we have so many preconceived notions exercise in someone's head could

be like weightlifting that's what it looks like exercise could be doing a high-intensity workout at a gym exercise could mean a sport what movement do we actually need to genuinely be healthy in a real way because you could be doing any or none of these things and you could or could not be healthy so what is that what do we actually need what do our bodies need I love this question because it's counterintuitive okay so people are always like what do I need to do I go to the gym how many sets and Reps and

minutes on the treadmill do I need and I tell them once again PTO principle all you have to do is move all day long so sedentary Behavior which means sitting for more than an hour at a time for eight hours a day is literally what's killing most of us right now and so what happens is most people have an eight- hour job right out of that eight- hour job they'll sit for two hours maybe get up to go to the bathroom sit down for two or three hours again have lunch where they're sitting so just

sitting for long periods of time increases your rate of mortality exponentially so for every 10% additional time you spend sitting you have an increase of 10% and your all cause mortality and it's like linear wait say that again yeah for every 10% of time that you spend sitting over a baseline you have a 10% increase in all cause mortality big studies yeah it's crazy how much sitting or just moving changes the entire equation so once you go from being sedentary to not sedentary your rate of death from heart attacks from Alzheimer's and Dementia from stroke

from Anything Goes Down exponentially so what I tell people is no matter what every 45 minutes you need to take an exercise snack and this has been proven in research as well every 45 minutes spend 10 minutes getting up and walking around a little bit and and if you do that you've broken the cycle of sedentary Behavior completely so what I do is I have my P buy like a little egg timer like a little metal it looks like an egg and we just set it to 45 put it down and when it rings you

get up walk around and guess what that's the same amount of time needed to break the strain on your eyes to break the stress cycle as well so it's a really good idea to take these exercise snacks when you're at home I'm sorry when you're at work but then also when you're at home people sit down and watch you know TV for two hours so it happens again so that's Step One is don't be sedentary even athletes there's so many athletes that are sedentary during the day like or during the evening that um they're affected

by this as well so focus on that first don't be sedentary then step two on exercise is now what kind of activity can we put in to really start like moving the needle with how exercise can improve your longevity and health span so do you want me to talk about that a little bit too yeah before you dive into that there's something that I'm really glad to hear that because one thing I've been recommending to a lot of my corporate clients is I don't know who invented 30 minute and 60 Minute meetings I just don't

know where that came from we just invent these things where they have to be that long and I've started saying to so many of my clients who are living like I don't live a meeting to meeting life anymore so I get a lot of movement I'll stand up I'll walk over there I'll walk back I'll walk next door I'll jump in a car we'll walk to the meeting so I thankfully have a lot of movement in my day but when I used to work in the corporate world I used to always tell everyone have a

55 minute meeting or have a 25 minute meeting that then gives you an extra 5 minutes to stand up to walk to get hydrated to look out of a window or maybe get some fresh air and then to look out into the distance so that you're not constantly shortsighted I feel today we're constantly looking at our phone at our laptop at an iPad and we're becoming more and more shortsighted and that's why it kind of feels like our mind can feel a bit crowded and clouded and to me just going outside and looking out into

the distance maybe spotting a bird a cloud a distant building it just opens up the mind a little bit and I feel like just shifting it from having 5 minutes off every hour which isn't going to negatively impact a meeting you're not going to achieve anything more in that extra 5 minutes and same with if you took 15 minutes off a meeting maybe if meeting shifted to being 45 not an hour I think you'd achieve so much more in the meeting too because now you have less time and so I just think there's so much

there and I just want to give people more value on that that it's so easy and practical to implement some of this and a lot of it's just breaking these old rules that have just lasted for far too long yeah so true and you must have talked to Google about this cuz on Google Calendar you can program 25 minute meetings did you know that or I didn't know that yeah or 55 minute meetings so every meeting is automatically like cut short by five or 10 minutes oh I didn't know that yeah and then what I

tell people to do too is switch from a regular Zoom account to the free Zoom account because it kicks you off in 40 minutes that's why like sorry guys I got to go I'm running out of time here yeah you might look cheap but it would save your health yeah but um on that one more double click on that point too is that if you do have a life where you have to spend a lot of time at your desk um on the computer on meetings really consider getting a treadmill desk or a walking desk

that's been a GameChanger for me too like I'll I'll get 25 30,000 steps in after three hours of meetings you know it's pretty pretty incredible amount of steps yeah wow that's amazing all right sorry so go for number two on the excise okay so number two I I always think the most important uh thing that you can first start doing in an exercise routine is strength training especially after the age of 40 muscle breakdown is a root of all physical problems and Frailty as we age and so really getting into a good strength training routine

is key and then secondly you want to work on your cardio right and cardio really you need to think about it in two prongs there's anerobic and aerobic and um anerobic is basically you know working really hard and then you have the aerobic where you're not working as hard and you're utilizing oxygen to make energy so the way you do your anerobic I like using hit exercises there anerobic training protocols Sports I guess sports right exactly where you're working really hard you don't have to do a lot of that every week but you you do

need to get some of that in every every week and then I really like what Peter AA says about zone two aerobic exercise like getting 30 to 45 minutes a day into start every other day or so I think that's important but look it's so hard for people to fit all this into their life right so you got to make it as easy as possible so there's like these 7 minute hit routine apps that you can do which are fantastic getting a set of barbells and putting them in your closet or your bedroom so every

time you go there you do 15 20 like you know Arnold presses or something even that as long as it's consistent and done on a daily basis for busy people is going to be extremely helpful I think a lot of people think like it's either go to the gym for an hour 3 to four days a week or just give up completely yeah and nothing could be far from the truth right yeah and you're saying literally having something at your office desk having something in your bedroom just just that little bit of addition to your

already busy life is going to make a difference and we need to stop having this glorified view of going to the gym and having The Perfect Workout routine right how do we get it how do we get how have you found people get rid of that perfectionist mentality when it comes to health because I feel like we also have it with food we have it we we're on we talked about nutrition we have it with exercise where it's like I'm going to eat really help healthy or I'm going to eat really bad like if I

had a pizza too many days in a row I might as well just carry on eating pizza because oh it's not going to matter that I had vegetables for one day although you would argue it does matter and that one day of breaking the cycle is probably useful how have you worked with clients on that mental aspect of it because that's obviously what I focus on in my work so much I'd love to hear about it from yours yeah you know it's there's a lot of science around habit building and routine building um Atomic habits

is a great book that I read there's a couple others that really like it is this kind of like this reward and cycle that you reward yourself over you have to consistently reward yourself on a daily basis for doing the right things and then not punish yourself for doing the wrong things and so I think there's a lot of psychology around that it's it's honestly it's really hard I I mean we find it hard for ourselves too right but I really believe in having a positive attitude about it I think if you come at it

with positivity and say you know what it's fine I messed up but I'm G to do it and you you're just positive about it that in itself is a psychological barrier broken into starting today as a first day of your life to start building new habits again absolutely right absolutely yeah it's uh I think I can't remember who said it but I've heard the rock say it plenty of times he's like it's either one day or day one right and you'll always quote that right it's a mindset like it's either one day we'll get to

it one day I'll do it one day or it's like no today's day one this is the day that I'm going to solve it and start it and I think that's that positive mindset you're speaking yeah exactly uh was there a point three on exercise that you wanted to make I'm sure there's a point seven but yeah was there another one you wanted to kind of we should probably stop there on exercise there's ABS there's absolutely more you can do as you get older you know your audience spans all ages and everyone as you get

older you really want to look at stability and balance so I try to do stability and balance exercises on a daily basis as well things like standing on one foot believe it or not just things like that as we get older we lose that and if you're not training it especially after the age of 50 you're going to keep losing it and then the number one killer of older people is becoming frail falling because they lose their balance and breaking a hip or a bone that's what usually takes out most older people and so you

can avoid that by incorporating some stability balance routines in your life I really appreciate you also looking at it from the perspective of like let's stop there because I I think so often people listen to podcasts or read books and there's just so much information and then that makes us go all right I don't know where to start and so I love the fact that you're like well wait a minute let's just this is step one this is stage two I love that very curriculum systematic based approach to mastering our health rather than starting on

point number seven and then figuring it out so and like what I do with my patients is like we're having this conversation about everything but I'll only give them one thing to do right and like we'll change two or three things and then you come back and we'll do the next thing and then the next thing so let's not worry about how much protein you have in your diet until you clean out your pantry and get rid of all the crap in your pantry right let's do that first and then let's talk again next week

and so we take it at a stepwise approach but if whoever's listening to this you know if you're taking notes don't try to implement all of it at the same time you're get overwhelmed and quit yes absolutely absolutely all right let's talk about sleep mhm so I've generally been a good sleeper my whole life and very grateful for how do you know by measuring as I was going to say by measuring not by how I feel uh by measuring I I wanted to talk about an experience that I had that was bad which was surprising

for me so I was wearing the aura ring for a long time measuring my sleep and I was scoring really well and then during the pandemic we moved home and we were renting a place that was really disruptive at night we'd get real animals in the floorboards in the walls there was lots of noises outside I often because of where we were and there were certain things about it that I was worried that what if someone broke in and you know there were these other anxieties that I had around it and it was the first

time in my life that I think I consecutively had one and a half years of bad sleep during the pandemic and it was really interesting because I was doing my supplements I was eating right I've always meditated I was doing everything and just this one undercurrent man I was fatigued I was exhausted I was irritable like it was so it was so intense because I just wasn't sleeping deeply and I'd often wake up multiple times per night and that wasn't normal for me and I also was wearing the aura ring at that time and it

was my sleep score was just not great and that was actually what forced me to move to this place and and get this home because I was just like I was I was telling rad I was like I need to leave like it was that bad and so I know what it feels like to have good sleep and bad sleep and I think that sleep is one of those areas of our health that we underestimate in terms of how great it can be but I think so many of us struggle with sleep whether it be

anxiety whether it be insomnia whether it be stress and so I want to start off by talking about tracking your sleep and improving the environment that we sleep in at least as a starting point but I do want to get to two and three with you today on your list because I do think there are people who are trying to do all that stuff but there's still something not clicking and I'm sure you've experienced this a million times of clients so let's start at step one and then see where we go from there right so

I agree with you like tracking is a game Cher but I can also tell you that I've had a lot of patients that get super anxious tracking and they live and die by those numbers right so if you're one of those people that the overt tracking of sleep kind of changes your day and changes your perspective on your day only use tracking for a very specified amount a Time use it for when you are very mindfully changing your sleep habits and your routines and then stop wearing it once you got your sleep score up to

a score that you like right I personally I I like tracking my sleep all the time I'm just a real data guy so I like to see it but when I go on vacation now I don't wear my aura ring because I know that the sleeve's not going to be as good sometimes right um so so you know I use it I use it for when I'm being mindful about trying to get better sleep or if something's changed like I notice um I had um and right after Co I had long Co and my heart

rate was racing for months I'm sorry to hear that yeah it was horrible and um um it really affected my sleep but my aura ring told me that this is what's happening this is why you're not sleeping well your heart rate is racing so I think the benefit of sleep tracking is really understanding it's not just the number of hours you're sleeping it's really the sleep pattern and educating yourself on that sleep pattern um Aura does a good job whoop does a good job the eight sleep patress has a phenomenal tracker eight sleep's great is

great I love it yeah and um you know understanding how much deep sleep you need where that deep sleep needs to be in your sleep night and understanding things like heart rate variability and an average heart rate at night is a GameChanger right while you're modifying your sleep environment and your routine so once we get that in place then the second thing we do is we absolutely make sure the person doesn't have sleep apnea all right so for those of you who don't know sleep AP apas that's when you stop breathing at night your body

physically stops taking in oxygen you don't have oxygen in your body for for a few seconds at a time but all night long that affects your brain your heart virtually every organ in your body so many people have sleep apnea and don't recognize it and it's really sad because it's causing basically I tell them it's causing a slow death believe it or not if you have sleep aptia you have to get it treated right away there's lots of different ways of treating it there's Dental appliances there you know that CPAP mask you can wear there's

surgery but you got to figure it out because no matter what you dos that people could notice right so the symptoms of sleep apnea are number one you wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night or your significant other you're sleeping with tells you that secondly you wake up really tired every morning and you and you have daytime somulin so you're just kind of falling asleep a few hours after you've woken up even snoring very loudly can indicate sleep apnea as well so if you know your spouse whoever tells you you're snoring

really a lot um and then there's a questionnaire you can take online it's a very simple questionnaire called a stop bang questionnaire s o p b NJ just Google that and you take the questionnaire it'll give you a score and it'll tell you if you need to be evaluated for sleep apnea so being evaluated for sleep apnea now is much easier people used to dread going to a sleep lab and getting all the wires put on them now you just wear like a little device on your finger overnight at home and we can get a

good idea if you have sleep apne or not wow and the Sleep doctors are very good at treating this now as well wow and you're saying there's different types of uh therapy or there's different types of treatments for sorry treatments for yeah yeah there's there's stuff you can get from your dentist like a little Dental appliance that pulls your jaw forward there's a CPAP mask there's also surgeries that you can do as well losing weight special pillows propping your BT there's lots of things you can do wow okay yeah that I can't believe that it's

it's so fascinating right again because these things haven't been measured since we were young and because we don't know what to look out for you could be sitting there for months or years going why do I wake up feeling like this maybe I'm anxious maybe I'm stressed and that could be a part of it but there's something else going on as well yeah I can tell you how many people that I simply asked a few questions I just asked you and they're like yeah I have that yeah I have that it's like a revelation and

they're 55 years old and they have sleep apnea they've had it for 25 years so it's really sad how underdiagnosed it is and how incredibly treatable it is and that could change the trajectory of your life you know because once you treat sleep apnea your metabolism actually gets under control and you start losing weight you start having less glucose spikes you start um eating better you you feel less brain fog and then you also prevent Al sleep apne is one of the main risk factors for Alzheimer's disease so you prevent Alzheimer's too so once again

is knowing early and treating Things Early what if someone's they they're okay just about getting to sleep but that they wake up multiple times when they're sleeping what have you found to be useful for someone in that scenario of you treated worked with anyone who has that I've just met so many more people these days that not telling me they can't sleep they're saying I can sleep but then I'm waking up and then waking up and these aren't people with kids or anything so this is like a you know it's just how they're feeling three

main reasons for it I normally see one is noctua where they have to get up in the moment night to go to the bathroom and so there's medications and exercises you can do to treat that the second reason is going to bed with anxiety and stresses on your mind so what I tell people to do is number one no electronics and maybe even no TV before going to bed because that can keep you thinking but keep a notebook by the side of your bed if you're one of these busy people that you have so many

things going through your head write them all down and then you'll at least you know download that on a piece of paper and hopefully get it out of your head but the third thing that I find that really does this too is eating or drink drinking a little bit too close to your sleep you have this kind of glucose surge that happens after you get to bed and it just wakes you up to yeah so really making sure there's three to four hours between your last meal and going going to bed is key yeah and

I'm I'm so glad you brought up the devices and conversation because I was talking to a lot of people when when people have been saying to me Jay I'm experiencing anxiety one question that I often ask people is what did you watch last night and there are some people in the world who can watch the craziest scariest eeriest things and not feel anything and there are people who watch those things and it puts these Cliffhanger chemicals as I like to call them into your body which constantly puts you on that Cliffhanger which keeps you up

that makes you wake up with this state of fright I was just at we went to watch Oppenheimer a couple of weeks ago and we were watching the trailers and The Exorcist trailer came up there's another ex movie and Ry just sat there like this if you're not if you're watching sorry if you're listening and I'm closing my eyes and my ears and Ry literally sat there like that and she was like just tell me when it's done cuz she doesn't want to watch it and that that trailer was far too long for a trailer

I felt like it told me the whole movie one of those trailers so fori she knows that she's aware of that and so she won't watch and consume content like that I can watch it and laugh it off and be fine and it won't affect me unless I'm watching it every day and I think it's so important that we we check ourselves that way because you're just making it harder for yourself in a way you don't need to right absolutely I'm one of those people I can't watch horror movies anymore it just affects me way

too much it sticks in my head I actually become a scaredy-cat at night and I can't sleep so I just don't even entertain the thought of watching like even a trailer I'd probably close my eyes with that trailer that trailer was haunted that was like do not watch the new exus trailer if you want to sleep at night that like it stayed with me for a while but uh no that's great anything else on sleep that you feel as as that one two three as we're going and yeah so number one is sleep apnea make

sure you don't have it as you're tracking your sleep two and three are fix your sleep environment and fix your sleep routine so your sleep environment needs to be like how our ancestors slept when they were cavemen a cold dark cave right so turn the temperature down in your room what even better than turning it down in your room as buying like an eat sleep or something that keeps your bed cool itself but it should be somewhere around 65 degrees dark like totally dark like even the little red lights and alarm clock cover them with

black electric tape and put them in a different room and then quiet and most people can't get it fully quiet or some people like the quiet even becomes like it becomes noise to them so a sound machine like a white noise machine is very very effective in improving your sleep and what's really cool about doing these things is you can do like one thing and see how it affects your sleep score and then a week later buy a white noise machine and see what happens to your sleep score like you might not feel it physically

the next day but your tracker will tell you like you went up from 85 to 95 just by buying a white noise machine and I've seen it happen over and over again so your sleep routine what I like to tell people is your sleep routine actually starts the moment you wake up and there's probably like only 3% of people that the moment they wake up they actually go outside to expose themselves to Sun right most people just they go from being inside to going in their garage getting in their car going to work parking in

the garage right like no one goes outside anymore in the morning I make it a point to take me and my kids outside first thing in the morning expose yourself to sunlight that sets your craan Rhythm your melatone is going to start secreting like 14 hours afterwards that's key sleep routine starts first thing in the morning and then you know how the iPhone now has like a sleep alarm right so like it's not an alarm clock to wake you up it's when you need to start preparing for sleep so when that alarm goes off two

hours before sleep all the lights turn off as much as possible switch on some you know Soft Orange Colored bulbs instead and just start winding down your brain you know a big part of that is avoiding electronic devices absolutely yeah great advice no great great advice and all things that I've been practicing I used to I used to worry about sleeping at 65 degrees because I think it would feel cold and what I always remind people is you still have your duvet you still have your blanket over you like you don't you don't have to

be cold uh you can still wear pajamas right like it's just cooler in the room and that's been done wonders for my sleep even for sleeping in longer and and being more comfortable the cave like Darkness has always been a a big win for me and and huge and I think that the we've always tried to have very early dinners and that's been such a huge thing of like we try and eat dinner like 600 6:30 p.m. just so that when you're in bed at 9:30 that it's you know easier to go to sleep but

right all things we've had to work on over time and adjust and figure out and it's not always perfect and you know it's yeah and part of like the eating dinner earlier thing too is our caveman ancestors didn't eat after it became dark right and so it's really food is another item that sets your circadian clock almost as much as light does as well so that's that's a key factor eating earlier but yeah it's all little things and one at a time and you know you're not going to change everything overnight it might take a

year but it benefits you for the next 50 yeah right absolutely absolutely I want to dive into so there's a few areas left and I I want to take bits and pieces of all of them I don't want to do all of them but I want to dive into gut health just because it's so I didn't realize for years I was having gut issues because I just didn't know it what they even meant I didn't know how to know I think today now people are much more informed I'm talking about like 10 13 15 years

ago when I didn't feel it was in the Zeitgeist to the conversation as much uh how can someone be conscious and aware if they're not already that they may have leaky gut that they may have gut issues that they're not fully conscious are aware of or they're being negligent I was one of those people who even if there was some discomfort I would just write it off because you're young and you're fit and you're healthy and you don't care about it too much what should people be looking out for yeah no that's that's a really

good point and um once again you know by the time you become symptomatic from some of this stuff a lot of damage has already been done for a long period of time right and so what I look at here is another one of those biomarkers one of those CEO of your own health type of things which is biomarker called HS CRP highly sensitive C reactive protein this is a marker of inflammation um it's a very simple test that every doctor lab can do we've been doing it for like 50 60 years in medicine but it's

a marker of inflammation you want this number as close to zero as possible but a lot of times it'll go up to one two three or four and usually that comes from some sort of situation going on in your gut so your gut is the biggest organ in your body protecting you from the outside environment most people think it's your skin but your gut actually has four or five times the surface area of your skin does and so when that barrier to the outside environment is disrupted toxins from the outside environment filter into your bloodstream

causing inflammation inflammation is when your immune system is overactive and you not only destroy the toxins but you start destroying your normal brain heart muscle bone cells all of it so you need to know when you have inflammation going on in your body the first way to tell is by this blood test and then probably after that blood test has been elevated for months and years is you finally start feeling it in your gut so if you get this measured and you have this a little bit too high then you're starting to looking at your

gut as a primary source secondary source would be your oral health believe it or not like yeah I talked about that that's really that was yeah go for it yeah there's a huge association between poor oral health dementia and heart attacks as well and that's because a lot of inflammation takes place in your mouth if you have cavities if you have gingivitis Etc so you know if your inflam inflammation levels are high need to go see the dentist make sure your your oral health is okay but then you need to start treating your gut here's

where a functional medicine doctor can be extremely helpful because they can really sort through like what is going on with your gut do you have leaky gut why do you have leaky gut you know 10% of the population has gluten sensitivities 7% is dairy sensitive or probably even more these are just you know these are just estimates and once you start eliminating those inflammatory foods the toxins in your food from your diet your gut starts to heal and we can put you on a gut healing protocol reduces inflammation and inflammation is the root cause of

all the major diseases once you treat inflammation your chance of getting all the other diseases are much less right so you got to focus on your gut and so this is where you know I tell my patients like look it's not just about sleep exercise and diet now we need to start talking about gut health like that's another thing we need to talk about and so hscp is the biomarker for that measure that and then of course if you're having symptoms bloating diarrhea constipation definitely need to go get that checked out yeah it could be

so easy to just kind of feel embarrassed about it or be negligent of it or to just kind of brush it off to the side but I can't tell you the number of like men and women that I see that are like don't want to talk about it because they're just like doctor you know like I have a lot of gas yeah they're so embarrassed about it but it's like let's double click on that we need to figure that out right yeah and it's just and it's just it's almost like it's it's weird what we've

been taught to like be ashamed of in society when these are like really normal natural things that we all need to be massively aware of it's interesting how the most important things in society become the most taboo to talk about you know we're talking about health right now money is another one in in a different way or like even like relationship challenges or things that are vulnerable have become this thing of like don't talk about it it's it's weird strange sad right yeah it's really sad yeah it's really sad like so well hopefully I mean

stuff like this podcast you bring it to light people start talking about it and bringing it more into mainstream conversation is so important yeah I think that's what's needed I mean I know for a long time like I didn't know who to talk to about things because you just don't hear it right and I think when people are talking to their doctors also having Physicians who we feel understand this language and that's why I think with you saying that we need to become the CEO of our own health I think we've always wanted to Outsource

it to a doctor or to a healthc care professional whatever it may be and the truth is no one's going to care about it as much as you absolutely and so it has to start there so this I want to focus on this one because it's so interesting so you obviously talk about heart health as one part of your Wellness wheel and it fascinates me because even when I've seen it on your Wellness wheel a million times when I've been in and when we know how and the heart is we rarely talk about heart health

and if we do we kind of do it in a soft way we don't really talk about it from a scientific point of view and you talk about how important it is to know our levels at 25 years old is it APO apob yep a right yeah so walk us through that and understanding what that is what it means and how do we know right exactly so I think everyone's heard about like watching your cholesterol levels right okay so right now what happens is you get your cholesterol levels measured sometimes in your 30s if you're

lucky usually doct to wait to your 40 and unless it's like over a really high number no one's really going to do anything about it and then people will start talking to you about your diet and managing your exercise you know exercise more eat better eat less fat eat less cholesterol then you just kind of let it go until all of a sudden it's an emergency for you to get on a Statin you know and I think it's kind of 10 15 20 years too late at that point in time right the damage has already

been done um if you do cardiac testing you'll see that there's already blockages in blood vessels at that point in time and most of the time these are not diagnosed until people have their first heart attack no one even looks at the blood vessels until you've had a heart attack and it's really sad the way this whole thing goes and it's especially sad because heart attacks and strokes can become like an orphan disease like a disease that never affects us if we just do it right and this is where I think medicine has made like

a tremendous incredible amount of knowledge has been gained and this is where I try to really encourage my patients to really partner with their medical doctors and really get this treated so when I say know your apob level I love apob it's a new new type of cholesterol measurement kind of lumps together all the bad forms of cholesterol which I even hate saying bad cholesterol but it lumps that together the dangerous forms and knowing what your apob B level is when you're 2025 that's kind of the Baseline where you want it to be right so

as this starts creeping up you want to start doing things about it with your exercise diet sleep gut health all of that matters but then when it gets to a certain level that's a little bit too high that's when you want to start doing cardiac testing and diagnosis so this really great test that can be done now CAT scans of your heart that can tell you 20 30 years ahead of time before you have a heart attack if you have a BL blockage and we have great Therapeutics Now to turn back the time on these

blockages to get rid of these blockages to prevent you from having a heart attack I can't tell you the number of patients that we've had in our clinics that we've done this scan on preventatively and how many of them at had to go straight to the emergency room to get a blood vessel opened up you know double clicking on this just because I think is really important for your audience to know ail B and there's another one everyone needs to get measured when they're young is LP little a or even young or old if you've

never had it done got to measure LP little a LP little a is a genetic form of cholesterol that can't be treated with diet nutrition and um exercise or cholesterol lowering medication traditional ones and if you're one of the you know few percentage of people that have it you'll still get massive blockages in your arteries at a very young age so most people don't check that until it's too late as well and we can treat that now as well so LP little a and APO B two tests everyone need ask her doctor about that's fantastic

I'm so glad you're like giving us a vocabulary of knowing what to check cuz I think otherwise you know I know I just got up to my doctor and be like well how how healthy is my heart and they're going to be like you're fine like you know and it's and I think that's the challenge we don't really have a vocabulary or we don't know the exact tests and checks that need to happen and again I think you've given us so many across the board and I just hope everyone who's listening or watching like please

please please go and check these things out because I just want you to live a healthier longer happier life and you know so much of this could either make it easier or harder right absolutely and I think you know there's different types of people some people like you like you want to know and you want to know as soon as possible because you want to make sure you get it treated or take care of it before it becomes a big problem and so those are the type of people I think will take this information and

really run with it then there's another type of people that will take this information bring their notes to their doctor some of their doctors will say okay let's check it some will be like no you don't need to do that and they'll be like okay I'll just leave it which you know it's fine but I really encourage people to become the CEO of their own health become more aggressive and proactive and learning and tracking these things and pushing your doctor on some of this stuff and then you have a group of people that just like

didn't want their head and they're saying like I don't want to know until it's a problem tell me then which there's not much you can do about that except you know take care of them yeah absolutely absolutely we've talked about brain health before on the show but I wanted to talk about cancer yeah and the the reason why I want to touch on that obviously is because I think the rates are just going up and up and up I've lost two people in the last four years three people in my entire life people that I'm

like very close to this does not include your auntie your mom's friend like you know like not even just like looking around the whole space but like people that I'm directly close to and all from different causes all from different reasons it's something that I think you know that we all have a fear around because you just hear it so often and everyone's going through something like you talk about Cancer's biggest enemy is being diagnosed at stage one but that whenever I've had friends or people I love we always find out at stage three or

four so how do how do we get that what do you need to do so cancer Diagnostics literally in the last five years has become incredibly revolutionalized and there's two tests that have done this um one is a test called the full body MRI like the pros scan which what we did when I think yeah right exactly yep you you you did the full body MRI and that happened because we've always had MRI scanners but now MRIs are becoming more ubiquitous and cheaper these are no radiation scans of your entire body and they're getting quicker

too so we can do the whole body in like under an hour I always say if Steve Jobs had one of these he'd still be alive today you know so it's a scan that scans your whole body for not just tumors but also other anatomical abnormalities that can kill you like aneurysms in your brain or your aorta so I think that's a very useful test it's controversial because you do find a lot of Us's called incidentalomas These are incidentals that you end up chasing down a rabbit hole as far as what is that thing over

there but if you can tolerate a little bit of you know having Diagnostics done and a little bit of stress while you figure out what those things are you'll know a lot more about your body in enough time to take care of an issue so that's one technology the second technology which is truly revolutionary is the liquid biopsy this is the gril the gallery gril test and um this is a blood test that you can do and you just send in a vial of blood they check it for little fragments of DNA from active tumors

in your body okay and so it can diagnose 50 of the most hardto diagnose tumors at very early stages and um right now unfortunately this test is expensive and not covered by Insurance my feeling is as a technology evolves it'll become cheaper and cheaper of course and it'll become the new standard in medicine is to check everyone for this once a year because the reason cancer is so hard to treat is because of being diagnosed at phase three or four when it's some metastatic right and then it's almost it's you have to go chemo radiation

surgery it's so hard but once you diagnose it to stage one it's like it's not even had a chance to get there right so this blood test if you can afford it right now you know once a year I would start doing it for if you can't is gonna get cheaper keep your eye out on it I think it'll get cheaper really quickly as a lot of technology is becoming right now it's G to revolutionize the way we diagnose cancer and then everyone in addition to those you can't just do those each of those detects

its own things right you got to get your colonoscopy do it early especially if you have a family history of colon cancer done too yep exactly yeah very important I was scared for like a week it was like yeah it is scary but the nice thing about colonoscopy is not just diagnosing cancer like if you go in there and you see a precancer you can remove it immediately so it's like treatment as well right and then for men get the PSA test which is a blood test for your prostate for women make sure you get

your mammograms and make sure you get your OBGYN exams that's kind of like the array of preventative Diagnostics you want to do now in the 21st century to you know basically diagnose cancer before before it kills you you know as soon as possible and how how do we cancer proof our body cancer proofing is done by doing all of the other things that we talked about today getting s eight hours of sleep making sure that your nutrition is comes mostly from Whole Foods not processed foods and exercising and not being sedentary the other thing is

eliminating toxins from your day-to-day life and so we can talk about that a little bit if you like how to eliminate toxins so the parto principle on that is realize where do you spend the most time right you spend the most time probably at work and sleep in your bed at night that environment the air in that environment you want that to be as clean as possible so you want to detoxify your air your water your food and chemicals on your skin so air buy an air purifier for each one of those environments if the

air is not perfectly clean for your water um I recommend getting unders sync Reverse Osmosis System in your kitchen um where you drink get most of your drinking water drink it out of glass bottles for the most part and for your food organic or go to that website called ewg.org and finally for the Cosmetics that you use and the stuff you put on your body there's a great app called think dirty and it you can put any product in there scan the barcode it'll tell you the level of toxin and recommend to you the most

non-toxic products you do that you've covered 80% of the landscape like you're you're living in a mostly non-toxic environment I'm sure there's people that have other things that they do but that to me are the keys yeah my wife is my thing to yeah like she can figure she's like she's checked every product she got us to switch to Glass bottled water she put the reverse system in like she's just so on top of all this stuff and I'm like if I didn't have her in my life I don't know what I'd be doing right

now and it's incredible how these and and also you know when someone recommends these things like when my wife first came up with this reverse osmosis water thing I was like come on like do we really need it like you know and and it's interesting how we have such random resistance to a lot of these things we kind of overthink it or we we underthink it where we just go oh well that can't be that such a big deal like I think the whole bottled water thing is now blown up where my wife was talking

to me about it like four five years ago and at the time it was like I could have been a bit like oh no it doesn't matter it's just a plastic water bottle and now you see the research right and so I think it's so interesting how like if you have someone in your life your friends your family who are recommending things to you be open-minded about it you have no idea when it's finally going to be proven and I'm hoping that anyone who's listened to this episode please please please share this with episode with

friends and family members because I think what Dr Sha's done beautifully today is he's laid out step one step two and step three and so whether you're someone who's just getting started in your journey or whether you're someone who's trying to refine it and improve it and enhance it in a deep way you know you've kind of given the pathway for all of those well thank you and you know you're right it's so easy to be skeptical right it's hard to be not skeptical and open-minded and do your research and really dive in but I

mean you do such a good job of you know trying to get people to break through that barrier of skepticism and opening their mind to new possibilities that I think if people were to like just kind of even they pick up one thing and research it on their own you're going to make a positive change right I agree Dr sha you've been incredible today I mean you've given us such a wealth of insight and like I said at the beginning I want this to be the episode that you come back to to go if I'm

looking at my gut health what do I need to focus on if I'm looking at my nutrients what do I need to focus on please please please take a screenshot of this episode right now I want you to make sure that you tag Dr shy andai on social media so that he can see what resonated with you so that I can see what's that one thing you're trying what's that thing that is now your day one not your one day what is the thing that you're putting into practice that is going to shift how you

feel that is going to shift uh how you live your life what is the thing that you've been avoiding measuring that you're going to measure from now on to make sure that you can start taking the proactive steps in in avoiding some of these challenges that you can uh Dr sha I want to ask you the final five of course which we do with every guest uh but I want to make sure that I ask where should people find you where should people follow you where can people connect with your work to continue to be

educated yeah so you know I've been doing this course for my patients now for many years and um a lot of them want their family and friends to do this but they might be living in different countries so I recently started putting the entire course on my Instagram pageant so Daran sha MD if you there like it's all kind of in order we're going to start with nutrition then move on to sleep and move on to exercise Etc and over the course of the year we'll have all the content on there but in a sequential

fashion that's fantastic so Daran Shaw MD on Instagram right is the place to go and follow we're hoping you can upload it to Tik Tok as well so yes yeah yeah we need we need D and shd on Tik Tok too I love it both of them would be amazing uh Dr shot these are your final five we ask these to every guest sometimes a different mocktail of of of them but we need one word to one sentence maximum for each question so question number one what is the best health advice you've ever received get

up and start moving nice all right question number two what is the worst Health advice you've ever received let your doctor watch your blood markers right wow all right uh question number three what is something you used to be skeptical about in terms of health and wellness techniques but now you swear by yeah this whole um field of eliminating toxins from your day-to-day environment I used to think it didn't matter but it matters so much again yeah you think oh air purifier like it's just yeah what are they trying to sell me but it does

make a huge difference right uh question number four what is something that you used to swear by for your health and now you actually think ah no I don't need to focus on that anymore intermittent fasting I know a lot of people will get upset at that answer but I think there's a lot of science to the contrary now yeah let's dive into that let's segue into that for a second yeah so intermittent fasting is great for people that need to start eating less calories on a day-to-day basis it's a good way to manage your

caloric intake but like I said earlier a lot of people end up taking less protein and so they lose skeletal muscle mass and that's what happened to me I was intermittent fasting I started my skeletal muscle mass and my scale started like plummeting and I was like what is happening and it's all because I ad been in fasting so I stopped it so it's really more about what molecules you're putting into your body I think rather than the timing of it and I think um you know you really want to be careful if you are

intermittent fasting that you're still getting your protein intake and you are also not in the category of people that are either pregnant or breastfeeding or you know an athlete I think I seen a lot of athletes actually cause a lot of damage to their metabolism by in aitt and fasting that's I I mean I'm not an athlete but I found that when I was experimenting with it so I do I stop eating dinner by like :0 p.m. and I don't eat until the next morning until 9:00 a.m. so that's the closest I get to it

but I'm someone who needs to eat three meals a day and I don't snack a lot and so for me it's like those three meals are my main meals and I'm very happy with them so breakfast lunch and dinner so I eat breakfast at 9:00 lunch at 12: to 1 and then dinner at 6 and it's like for me that keeps my energy steady I'm not overeating or undereating at any point like it works for me and so I've always I've always been interested in that as well because I I've always found myself feel healthier

happier and stronger when I'm doing that yep and that's the key you have to go by how you feel and and um I think you said another key where you don't have to snack during the day like you're obviously eating Whole Foods and you're eating inadequate quantity where you're not having a snack so that's another key as well yeah absolutely all right Fifth and final question Dr sa which is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be get yourself a group of friends that you are

so happy and proud to be around that you share common interest in where you want your life to go not just where it's at right now it's a great answer everyone that's Dr sha on on purpose thank you so much for listening and watching again I hope that you take away and practi as Dr sha kept saying just one thing from this episode and watch how your life changes again a big thank you follow Dr sha on Instagram at Daran sha MD on Instagram and on Tik Tok soon to come uh make sure you do

that and I hope that you stay happy stay healthy and stay well uh thank you again Dr thank you so much thank you if you love this episode you will enjoy my interview with Dr Daniel aan on how to change your life by changing your brain if we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain you know I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over 100 murderers and their brains are very damaged