Robert Lufkin 00:01
Welcome back to the health longevity Secret show and I'm your host, Dr. Robert Lufkin. Regenerative plasma exchange is showing some remarkable results. What can it offer for patients to prevent or treat Alzheimer's disease and even overall longevity. David hos a MD is a doctor, teacher, author and innovator. In his practice, he strives to be a super generalist looking at the human body as a whole and applying curiosity to identify and treat the root cause of a patient's disease. After receiving his medical degree from Vanderbilt University, he trained at the Mayo Clinic and is now double boarded in family and integrative holistic medicine. He serves as lead faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine. As founder and medical director of the Maxwell clinic, he works to help his patients uncover the root cause of their illness and achieve better health. And now, please enjoy this interview with Dr. David Hossein MD. Hey, David, welcome to the show.
David Haase 01:12
Hey, look, the left man Good to see you.
Robert Lufkin 01:15
Good to see ya. For you. Please call me Robin. All right, right. Yeah, it's, we I know we share a passion for looking at the human body as as a whole in order to understand diseases, and we have so many things to talk about with Alzheimer's disease, other other health things in even longevity. But before we do that, I wondered, this is the first time you been on the program. I wonder if you would mind just telling our listeners, when you first became interested in how you got interested in this fascinating area?
David Haase 01:51
Well, yeah, it's, you know, when it's always hard to know those those points in time, right. But I grew up as a farm boy in South Dakota. And so I have a very practical mindset out, you know, results are the only thing that matter is something you'll hear us say, at our clinic a lot. And that, and I think it really hit the bug really hit me when I was at Mayo Clinic during residency. And I realized this kind of flash one day, wow, everything we're doing, which is really important is being trained to diagnose and treat disease, to name it, to blame it to tame it, you know, to say, Wow, this some something has kind of fallen out of sky and hit you on the head. And now us in modern medicine need to find a small molecule that's a blockbuster that's going to take away your symptom, take over change the number or do fix you from the outside in. And instead, I went Wow, everything I knew from farming is that, you know, crops are grown from the inside out, they come up from the soil with a sport of the sun and the water. And, and in human to, you know, just like, plants grow, we grow health every day, we actually have to repair and regenerate every day, we have to create health from the inside. Matter of fact, aging is really every period of time in which you degenerate more than you regenerate. And that's, so I think what hit me is like, wow, here's all this great basic science, I love PubMed. I love the love nerding out over molecules and metabolomics and all these other nerdy things. But if you reorganize that information, instead of trying to just make classifications that sometimes devolved down just into billing codes, and instead really try to understand the complexity of this human that's in front of you engage and say, Hmm, why are they not expressing the best version of their genetic potential? And what are the multifactorial causes that are behind that? And and then how can we start to engage that person? How can we start a relationship, you know, journeying alongside of with that person so that they can both understand why they're maybe not enjoying the health status that they desire, but also know what to do about it? And then, and then try some stuff. And, and I think what it would really turn me on was the fact that people got better. And and from things that I was just told that we just need to treat the symptoms for and yeah, that's that's what really, it was. Early patients successes that went Ha, I can't ignore this. I really have to continue to ask better questions so that we can potentially get better answers.
Robert Lufkin 05:00
Yeah, I think you and I, both from the, at least training in the, you know, the traditional MD sort of medical system. I mean, I got the feeling that I was I was on a fire department. In other words, we were, we were called to put out fires different places, and we run around and you know, like you say, you know, tackle a certain disease and then go to the next fire, but not taking the time to tell the people in the house, not to leave candles burning, not to play with matches and everything, and then just, you know, going around waiting for the next fire. But yeah, you're, you're doing so many so many amazing things in your program. And I can't wait to get into that. But before before we do that, maybe just take a take a broad overview, I love your approach to disease and and maybe start with with Alzheimer's disease, because that's, that's an interest for a lot of our audience here. And it's just struck me that unlike other chronic diseases, what is it about Alzheimer's disease that has failed, despite arguably the greatest minds in science and medicine and almost unlimited financial resources in the last 20 years being applied to this disease? And unlike any other chronic disease, there hasn't been a single, a single drug that has been discovered that will have a significant effect on the symptoms, let's say, yeah, why is that?
David Haase 06:33
Yeah, well, how would a great question see, with better questions come better answers, right. So you know, why, why haven't we gotten results? And I love the statement, you know, the way we see the problem is the problem. And and so we're if we think of Alzheimer's as a disease, like, oh, let's pick let's pick a disease like pneumococcal pneumonia. Okay, here we go. Somehow that individual develops one bacteria has a party in a lobe of your lung, and we can do microbiology and say, Oh, it's that one bacteria in this place. And if we give this antibiotic, you know, reliably in a couple of weeks, you're going to be really okay. And well, but, and so, the the wonder drugs of medicine, penicillin, anti inflammatories, they have lured us in kind of, called us with the sirens call to believe that the solution to our problems is, is a pill is is bringing a some molecule to actually it's a well, most of our pharmaceuticals are well dosed poisons, right. That's why we need licenses to prescribe them because there's a therapeutic window, you know, within a certain frame within a certain domain that they have some degree of safety. A lot of a lot of these bills, oftentimes there's negative consequences, right. And our medications are actually named that they're named anti this blocker, that inhibitor, they're stimulator, you know, stimulator of that. And as a result, they're designed to actually thort the system, they're actually there to say, Whoa, you know, the car sliding down the hill, let's slam on an emergency brake. And good. We're really thankful for every tool that we have, okay, I don't I don't, I don't have any prejudice against any tool that's out there. I want the biggest toolbox possible so that we have the right tool for the right job given the person in place, right. But Alzheimer's is not like that. Alzheimer's is not a simple disease. It's not a single insult or injury or causation. Alzheimer's is a multi system in stage failure. And and it is where we have multiple intersecting problems, cause combining to cause a degenerative process. I like to think that we should stop saying that person has Alzheimer's disease, and instead say they are Alzheimer's. Right there, they they, they don't have dementia. They are dementing. dementing literally means unbreaking. And so now we go like wow, it's a verb. It's not a noun. Okay, it's a verb, how do we change the expression of that verb? New if we if we do that, we become really curious about systems, what are all the interlock in systems that are causing the production and accumulation of phosphorylated tau and amyloid beta, which are markers of the disease and then can become mediators and perpetuators of the disease? But it's not it's not the reason for it, right? And so, what are the vascular the metabolic the mitochondrial the toxic the inflammatory the structural co existing causes that are causing this Alzheimer's thing to move forward. And I think if we step back and look at it from a personalized systems medicine viewpoint, we get the opportunity to ask better questions, say have for this individual, what are the major factors that are causing them to Alzheimer's more aggressively. And if we change that perspective, we have a huge number of opportunities that all of a sudden appear to us, and especially like with your work with metabolic disease and being such a great advocate for, you know, the most, how much we can do to change our trajectory of health and disease. Wow, there's so much opportunity to change the trajectory of a common systems failure. Oh, and the last thing I want to say there is that, wow, we wait to diagnose a problem until we have so much brain death that this individual is disabled. I mean, that is an absolute idiocy, okay. And denial is our number one comorbidity when it comes to dementia, you know, denial that you're slipping a little bit, if you think you're slipping a little bit, you are, okay. I mean, because you know, yourself, you know how your brain works. And if you're having a subjective awareness of a slippage going on, you have a slippage going on. And that means there has been neuro degeneration of some sort. And I can say that with confidence, because basically all of us are on a pathway of neuro degeneration of about 30 on, it just depends on how fast that slippage is going, and how what type of accelerators are going on. So yeah, if we view Alzheimer's disease as a systems problem, and really a system of systems problems, then we have a whole opportunity for changing the trajectory of that degeneration, and slowing it, stopping it and possibly even reversing that degenerative process.
Robert Lufkin 12:11
If Alzheimer's is, as you say, the cognitive impairment is relatively late sign and we, you know, we deny it as humans do, we tend to deny things, especially a bit effects are the real soul of our existence, which is our cognition. We lie to ourselves about it. What can people do to to catch Alzheimer's disease at an earlier time? And I mean, people say that, you know, the disease exists 10, even 30 years before cognitive impairment is diagnosed clinically, what can people do to to start thinking about it earlier? Or look at it earlier?
David Haase 12:55
Well, I think they just did. So I mean, really getting the message out that Yeah, guess what, we're Alzheimer's and you're Alzheimer's, and I'm Alzheimer's, and we live long enough for either our body or brain are going to give out so I think number one, awareness is the first thing. Second is bravery. Yeah, to say, Huh, you know, if I am having some symptom, I need to pay attention to it. But I think most important is to recognize that because dementia, frailty, and so many of the diseases quote of aging that exist are really not diseases of aging, they're their diseases of this dysfunctional systems as they have accumulated. And so if you have a medical problem, so if a little hypertension, oh, I just got a little hypertension I'm gonna take a pill for that. No, but just definitely take the pill to control the hypertension however, why are you hypertensive? What systems dysfunction is going on at that point in time and address that aggressively get back to a state of health that is as self created as possible. Optimal Health? Okay, don't we're not I'm not ever encouraging somebody not to have high standards for their numbers and their measurements but, uh, you know, if you have an elevated blood glucose, guess what, your Alzheimer's in an accelerated fashion, take care of it then and they're not, don't wait until you start having symptoms. If you're having there's things that are worsening your vascular function, you know, impaired glycocalyx activity in increased inflammation, you know, abnormal lipid panels, all these different things that have a have a component address them now, you're actually an Alzheimer's thing, as you address those multiple factors that you can identify those early dysfunctions that you can't identify and and you should make ideal your standard not just Not having a diagnosis ease. But really understand that ideal function is what we should be shooting for. And anything less than ideal is less than ideal. So, and then outside of that doing neurocognitive testing, is something that can be done in the home, there's a great platform called CNS vital signs, and most doctors can order it for you. We have cognitive screeners that we're going to be making available on our website just to help people to and to have this question how's my brain doing? And I think that we should be looking at doing your vital signs of your brain function yearly, just like we would, or maybe get a bone density scoring scan done yearly, or, or, you know, check your lipids see how is your brain doing, and if it's slipping in a way that you don't recognize slipping, dig in, and dig in from every angle. I'm a big fan of comprehensive evaluation, we shouldn't just you so if we think about, here's a great example I patient in my office last week, and we did a quantitative EEG on her. That's where we do a put a shower cap looking on the device on somebody's head, and we measure all their brainwaves. And we compare those brainwaves against FDA, normalized standardized databases and, and we saw Wow, she has a lot of excess delta and theta waves activity in this brain. It was actually that abnormal finding that is indicative of an early progression in the Alzheimer's dementia process. That led me to ask, Hey, are you having any mental challenge any memory challenges? So well? Yeah, I haven't told anybody about it yet. But I'm a little less sharp than I used to be. And hearing her neurocognitive testing, she's still at the 77th percentile for her age. So here's a person who nobody would think that there's any, you know, she's at the early stages of the M stage. Right? When you start having symptoms, that's the early stage of the end stage. And you have to address address it with that kind of aggressiveness. But yeah, there's there's a whole host of tools to start asking, how does this bring dysfunction?
Robert Lufkin 17:17
Those are great points. I just want to underscore one thing you said that just just it's still amazes me to this day that that that everything is is interrelated for Alzheimer's disease, let's say that elevated glucose, that means you're pre diabetic, also means you have an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, that those lipids that are abnormal, that the hypertension you have, are driven by the same factors and even the calcium score, the CT calcium score of my coronary arteries, the elevated calcium is also an independent risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, as is the bacteria in my mouth, a peach, ginger, valus. And, you know, all these inflammation, inflammation, metabolic factors, they, they if you help one, you'll help the other. So it's kind of a common road to good, good health that that hopefully we can we can all pursue. What do you what are you most excited about David with Alzheimer's disease? And as far as the the treatments and possibilities now what? What, what gets what gets you excited about it these days?
David Haase 18:24
Yeah, well, there's a lot that actually gets me excited. I mean, I've already talked about my love of systems, because we always want to, you know, finding and addressing underlying causes of illness is amazing. But there's there's one particular therapy that has not gotten anywhere near the attention that it needs to get. And that is actually something I've been trained in which called eight for Rhesus. apheresis, or therapeutic plasma exchange, is a standard medical treatment used to treat severe autoimmune disease and all major medical centers. And what's been noted is that this actually has real strong potential for the reversal of neurodegenerative disease. And this is called, you know, we have been tweaking the protocols. And we're probably the most highest volume of this kind of neurodegenerative treatment plan of any clinic in the nation. And we've been looking at this for several years. And what's been Yeah, so what's amazing, was we actually have a very large clinical trial to back up the work that we've been thinking about for for many more years. And this large trial, it's called the Ambar trial. What it showed is that by utilizing this therapy, this plasmid exchange or Plasma Dilution process, we're able to slow the progression of moderate Alzheimer's disease by over 60% over 14 months. 60% over 14 months, right? The new drug that's been approved is at most 10% over those 14 months. And and this has been done. And what's even more interesting in mild Alzheimer's disease, which I hate even saying the word mild also, that means these people are already, you know, disabled, they're unable to care for themselves fully at that point in time. But in that stage of the disease, there is actually improvement over those 14 months with repeated regenerative plasma exchange. And that is astounding. Okay, that's astounding in itself, but you'll appreciate as a radiologist, they actually did FDG PET scans on these people before and after this trial. And they saw that there were there was less neuronal death in the individuals that got plasma exchange than in the placebo group. And then they look, so not only were their cognitive improvements, but there's also a normalization of phosphorylated tau and amyloid beta in the CSF of these individuals before you know before compared to placebo. So and I don't know if I mentioned this is a multinational, multicenter, randomized, not just placebo controlled, but sham controlled trial, largest study of its kind of this particular field and apheresis. Both were very well done study. And it was amazing, the results were basically buried, nobody talked about it yet. Almost nobody has heard of this study actually being published. And I think it's an atrocity. So, you know, we're, we're really working hard to not just bring this forward, but help other doctors and other centers, you know, bring this type of therapy forward. Because I think it is the greatest hope that we've seen in the process of neuro in the, for the concern of neuro degeneration of any outside in intervention. And every time I talk about this, I always want to say, Man, this is incredibly helpful. But it's a both and from my standpoint of resistance based medicine, you absolutely have to exercise you need to clean your diet up, you have to do all of the other things. Alzheimer's is a full court press condition, and and to say, Oh, this one therapy is going to fix me despite myself, well, I'm going to tell you this one therapy, we we've already believe we've observed that people who have the best lifestyle and the best overall care, and then have this added on top are the ones who do the best, as opposed to thinking that there's going to be some I can I can continue living a crap life and and have a great brain. So
Robert Lufkin 22:47
wow, that's, that's so exciting. So let me understand this. We take the take the plasma from one healthy person, the blood plasma, and then we administer it to an Alzheimer's patient and not quite, not quite. Okay.
David Haase 23:04
Let me let me go. And it's a kind of a common misperception. Yeah, is there there are many different ways that plasma can be used as a medicine. And, and I think we're actually involved in some really exciting research to understand many of these different variables. So excited, I am just geeked out like I can't begin to tell you because we're going to get help you get some better answers on dosing and appropriateness. And anyway, but the so therapeutic plasma exchange is where an individual sitting sits in a chair, and there's too big, too big IVs there in that individual. And out that blood comes out one IV, it comes in, it gets mixed with an anticoagulant, so the blood is really thin. And then it goes through a big centrifuge continuous centrifuge. And the cells with the white cells, red cells, and platelets all kind of go down one tube, and then the plasma, which is the liquid part of the blood that contains proteins and immunoglobulins, but also contains a whole bunch of toxins and cellular messengers that turn on the inflammatory response, all of that goes and gets discarded. Now that that plasma, that protein filled fluid needs to be replaced. So we actually use standard pharmaceutical albumin that then gets replaced and mixed with that blood. And then that gets returned to the patient. We've got several other pieces, several other pieces of the puzzle that we do to decrease side effects and improve outcomes. There's more detail to it than that as we as we've been bringing this forward. But in simply, we're removing the old plasma and putting in, you know, the plasma that's been highly purified, or an albumin that's been highly purified, highly clean. It's not it's not kind of coming from one person to the other. Now, there are some there are some early studies and some work being done with looking at could you actually have improved By exchanging making that exchange fluid, the plasma from young healthy donors, well, there may be some benefit to that. But there's also a lot of known and unknown risks in that domain. And, and I'm very much of the belief and always have been that my first job is to do least harm. I do least harm. So we focus very strongly on safety. And that, especially when we're in these areas that we have to care with care for people as we would want ourselves cared for our parents are our children cared for. And, anyway, yeah. Does that help explain it a little bit more?
Robert Lufkin 25:43
Yeah, absolutely. So what what do you think's going on with that? What is it about the plasma? Have they filtered it? And is it the plasma? Or is it materials in the plasma? Or what do you what? What's the mechanism? Do you think that's what's helping these patients?
David Haase 25:58
Oh, that's a great question. I have, oh, how many hours do we have?
Robert Lufkin 26:03
Because, you know,
David Haase 26:05
you know, in my practice, you know, with our with some of our patients, we're diving into whole genome whole metabolome whole transcriptome, volumetric MRI quantity, we really love the data. And it's, you know, you know, why is it what, and trying to figure out who's going to benefit most from these procedures, and, and who should get treated sooner than waiting until they actually have memory loss? All of those are important questions. But um, you know, when I think about how we approach the treatment of this disease, it is starting early, it is starting. It is, is starting in a way that is safe. One of the miracle things about plasma, when we really recognize that this is working, we have to ask, Well, why is it work? And it goes back to lifestyle medicine, because what is plasma? Plasma is the great interface. Plasma is the interface between what we eat, and our blood, what we put on our skin, and our blood, and what we breathe in and our blood. And that blood then goes to our innermost parts and tissues. So when we're removing the plasma, we're affirming that junk, you know, dirty plasma, is there are things in there that are perpetuating illness, and those could come from the gut, from the air from the what we put on our skin, or what's produced inside of us. So the whole, the whole, you know, so there's so many things that are actually being removed. Let me ask you this, what is the number one antioxidant that is in your bloodstream? And I'm going to give you a little pimp question, just like we do with medical students. So it's unfair, it's unfair of me, right? But what's the number one antioxidant? When I know I'm just telling the audience is unfair to do to somebody? But yeah, number one antioxidant in your bloodstream?
Robert Lufkin 28:04
While I'm still learning this with people I know. Glutathione is a great and a toxin. But the antioxidant would be would be red blood cells, right?
David Haase 28:14
So yeah, glutathione is, is a really important antioxidant. Super important. About 15% of it lives inside your mitochondria, but not a lot of it in your bloodstream. It's actually albumin. Ah, okay, albumin, the protein albumin that floats around your blood sugar. And then a second place is uric acid, which is amazing. You know, low uric acid is actually a predisposing factor for Parkinson's disease, which is interesting. But if you're out albumin has a whole bunch of sites on it that soak up free radicals that basically is a sponge, it's going through your body as a sponge, and it's cleaning stuff up. So the more inflammation you have in your body, which is fire at the level of cells and tissue, the more oxidative stress you make, which is really fire at the level of molecules. And and so albumin is kind of that wet blanket that you throw over the fire and it and it gets damaged. It gets glycated so sugars attached to albumin, and yeah, so sugars attached to albumin oxidative molecules attached to albumin. There's a whole host of toxins that go on there and and be ama beta, or beta amyloid has a relationship with albumin as well. So the idea was, it's like well, wait a second. We know that the CSF of Alzheimer's patients screaming back up in the blood of Alzheimer's patients their albumin is more oxidized than in the albumin of usual of healthy patients. But if you look at the CSF at the at the fluid surrounding the brain The albumin in the CSF of Alzheimer's patients is amazingly more oxidized than the CSF of a healthy person. So the question was, it's like, wow, maybe the albumin itself is toxic. Let's remove the old albumin and decrease the injury pattern. And maybe basically put in this massive antioxidant sponge, you know, that can clean up the body, and can help remove toxins and such. Now, that's one theory. But there's so many things in plasma, we have a huge cytokine reservoir. So we have observed some really interesting changes in body wide cellular behavior, when we do plasma exchange. Because the really interesting part about all this, the really interesting part is what is plasma exchange doing at the level of longevity. Because remember, Alzheimer's is an age related disease and aging is more degeneration than regeneration. Turns out in the animal models that basically gave rise to this whole hypothesis, that if you put old stem cells into a younger environment, or even just a cleaner environment, those old stem cells start to act younger again. And they start to do more repairing, no matter where they are, if they're in the skin, and the liver and the kidney, in the olfactory bulb, and the hippocampus, in the bone in the immune system. In animal models, we've seen upregulation and improvement of the stem cell function in all of these organ tissues, with the equivalent of this plasma exchange process. And, and it's been fun to watch our patients actually start to like, look younger. When when it was very funny, one of our early Alzheimer's patients that came in for plasma exchange, he was going through the process, and after his 12th Exchange, because we are going after it very aggressively, not only did he say, you know, I, my brain is functioning as good as I can remember it functioning. His wife said, you know, his, his memories, as good as it has been in the last 12 years, I've known him. So you had a huge improvement, and his mood improved, his energy improved. It was a kind of a little bit of like, Is this for real? And we were laughing about it. And then and then we then his wife said, she says, You know, I'm sick and tired of this, I want to be the one doing this. Because look at his skin, look at his skin. Because it was just looking better it didn't I I'm not really an aesthetics guy. You know, I'm really all I love the brain and I love function. So I was like, yeah, he looks good. But no, he looks great. And I don't like now I can't say that works for everybody. And he was doing everything else, right? I mean, really eating, you know how when somebody changes from a junk diet, to a clean diet, and they start exercising and caring for themselves drinking water, and all those other things. They look younger to right, decrease their stress load that helps do so I I think it's a it's a, I never want people to think that wow, this is the one thing that's going to work. No. The question is, yes, it's very helpful. I think this is going to be a remarkable therapy and already is. But it's it really It's remarkable because the body heals. If we go back to our my, what I said at the beginning is that the body is what creates health and it's our job to remove the barriers that are impeding the body to create health, or add in the resources that are necessary for the body to create health. And, and then guess what, it knows how to do this stuff. And we can have we can have more good days. And it really at the end of the day, you know when when I when I Why do I do this work because a oh my god, I value wisdom. I value wisdom. I think wisdom is our number one resource that we have in the world. It is our scarcest resource, it is our most precious resource. And wisdom is held in elders. And and an elder is essentially an old person or somebody who had a lot of experience with a brain capable of communicating that experience and condensing it down for the next generation. So I I deeply deeply value wisdom as a reason why why we do this work. And and that's that's where we got to where we are.
Robert Lufkin 34:41
That's yeah, that's a that's a beautiful, beautiful thought. And as you were talking about the albumen and longevity just occurred to me we had on the program we were interviewing a a professor from the University of Zagreb named Gordon louts and his specialty is like hands and all that is like ads. But I know you're interested in biological clocks and all that. And one of the things he's done is he's looked at glycation. glycosylation not but I like constellation of albumin as a marker for chronic disease and aging. And he's developed even a biological clock called glycan age where it looks at the albumin. So like you say, at some level, the albumin is fundamentally tied to these chronic diseases and, and even longevity itself as well. And he's showing that the glycan age clock where you collect it with a blood sample is similar performance as a biological clock to you know, Steve Horvath epigenetic DNA methylation clocks, and, and and some of those as well. So it's, it's a really exciting area to look at there. Yeah, we,
David Haase 35:59
we've we've been tracking via that mechanism through it a more advanced protocol than Horvath initially initial work to a true age, looking at about 850,000 DNA methylation sites, looking at the methylation age clock, we've been looking at telomere changes using life length out of France, which does a great, you know, telomere testing is a challenging place to work, great data, but average telomere length doesn't tell you as much as you'd really want to tell you. And so we've been tracking all of these, and that's some we're getting, we're looking forward to publishing our results. So it's been very, very encouraging.
Robert Lufkin 36:43
Oh, yeah, I can't wait, I can't wait to hear about that. Now, your, your you offer a wonderful program, where you're based there i It deals with patients with cognitive decline, and as I understand even even healthy people who want to improve their life, and maybe even extend their longevity, and and maybe you could talk a little about what you're doing down there.
David Haase 37:12
Absolutely. So yeah, we have a Maxwell clinic in Nashville, Tennessee. And, and I have a real passion for clinicians. I believe that, you know, a tremendous amount of healing comes from a great doctor patient relationship, you know, being known, being heard, and being engaged and, and, and so we have a wonderful group of clinicians here in Nashville, you can look us up on Maxwell clinic COMM And we do a whole person care. And Cognero cognitive decline is part of a whole person care. You know, I think that's one of the things we also, you know, sometimes people get programmed to death, right? Oh, we have a program for this over a fixed your thyroid, oh, here's your joint pain over do that, you know, it's a person. And if you look at them as a system of systems, you have to nail the fundamentals, do the fundamentals really well. And then just continue to be curious in that process? So, yeah, we're very proud, we've been actually pioneering a program called Maxwell brain, which is a large platform that very soon clinicians across the United States can use to help identify what are some of those underlying causes of cognitive decline that are present, and be able to have a prioritized list of how do we address those problems? And, yeah, it's, it's a great joy of mine, I love the practice of medicine. And, and I love and we're looking for physicians that love practicing medicine too. And, and really want to want to want to really, though, the, there are people who are just called to this right, that you couldn't do otherwise. Right? And, and to, you know, have somebody else take care of all the paperwork and help bring you patients that actually want to get better. You know, that's, that's what my endeavor is at the present time in that domain. Yeah, it's really fun. I have the greatest team here. I just love my people. And, and to see how each of them, I'm most proud of the fact that so many of our employees get healthy while they work for us. You know, that's, that's one of my greatest joys is to see somebody just start to trend that direction because of the environment that they're in. So I just want to give a big shout out and big, big hug and love to all my, my amazing team at Maxwell clinic. So that's great.
Robert Lufkin 39:47
Do you do you? Do you take patients who are interested in Alzheimer's prevention? Is that part of your program or is he absolutely or further along?
David Haase 39:57
No ABS Absolutely. Alzheimer's prevention. You know, is is for everybody. Right? I mean, there's not a patient who walks in our door that we're not doing Alzheimer's prevention with. I mean, I mean, you're it's kind of funny. It's funny, we think about that, right? It's like, well, yeah, you laugh when I say that, because right, you know, it's, uh, it's, you know, it's, uh, you know, the, as a cause of death, it just goes up and up and up. And you in order to treat it? Well, you want to prevent it. You know, so yeah, plasma exchange is a wonderful therapy. And we have people flying in from all over the United States to work with us for that. But, but we very much don't want to have to get there. Right. And that's, and so absolutely,
Robert Lufkin 40:45
yeah, so it's almost like Alzheimer's, it's almost like there shouldn't be programs on Alzheimer's prevention, because it's, it should just be what everybody does automatically. Sadly, that's not the case.
David Haase 41:00
Right? I mean, our goal, our goal should really be, you know, in my mind, it's vibrant health and longevity to 120 and beyond. I mean, if we should have that, you know, how do we have more good days. And if our, if our goal really is that fullest expression of our genetic and spiritual potential, if that that's really what we're shooting for, then that's going to transform healthcare. And I'm really not here to treat one patient at a time, it's time to change healthcare, we really and when we do that one patient at a time, and and as every patient stands up and says, Yeah, that's the care I deserve, that's the care I want, you know, I'm going to be part of the solution by supporting what we see as better health care, as philanthropy comes forward and supports research into personalized systems medicine, as we really start to wrestle with this. This goal that we're treating sacred humans, you know, every person walks in the door, they're a soul. And, and if we step back, and we see them as that, Man does life get easier. And also, you know, the compassion becomes much more easily as well. And right now, physicians are, as you know, as a profession, we're near the number one, there's like, we have the highest rate of suicide of any prevent any profession, right now, physicians are hurting tremendously, because of kind of getting squashed from all sides not being able to practice their art in the way they feel ethically. Good with. And so we all get to be the solution together, patients, clinicians, and you know, all of the wonderful technologies that exist, and so we should do so with humility. But we should not we should be courageous, you know, when something like this shows its face and says, Well, you know, if this plasma exchange done correctly, done safely, you know, with all the appropriate safeguards, etc, you know, I didn't feel it was ethical for me not to be providing this, even though it's expensive, it's challenging, but it is it is absolutely transformative.
Robert Lufkin 43:20
No, patients obviously would, would, would have to be able to travel to you for the plasma exchange, is there a way that they can get into your program remotely? Is there any sort of tele medicine service where they
David Haase 43:32
do most, most of our COC? Yes, we do most of our care, local, I mean, we really focus on being a center of excellence here in in the Mid South. And but we do have telemedicine patients, for something as challenging as cognitive decline, you really want to have a local resource. And and you will, and I say that, you know, looking at the Institute for Functional Medicine is a good place to start. There's a group of people i fm.org, that have a lot of people that are, are interested in whole person care, and in reverse, and cognitive decline. I think that's excellent. I think there are, but we're always we're always open to starting that process and moving people forward. Absolutely.
Robert Lufkin 44:18
And before you mentioned that, local referring doctors could access your program as well. So could a patient go to their local doctor and then refer her or him to you? Yes, for some sort of training or affiliation so that your, your work could be delivered locally, and through them something like that? Is that available? Right, that
David Haase 44:42
that that that program is growing right now? Yes. And let's see. So we're, you know, it's, it's a, it's an amazing opportunity, but it needs to be done well, it needs to be continued to be studied. We're harvesting the data from all of our patients so that we can continue to improve the care we deliver. And I think that's a, that's a really important factor of this, that's we don't have everything figured out. And we've done, we've done as many as anybody has. And I would still say that humility, and a deep focus upon the person and their individual needs is always what's going to be at the center of health care, but especially here,
Robert Lufkin 45:24
yeah, that's, well, as an expert in this area of thinking of the human body as a as a system and the diseases, we've talked about everything and the benefits of various lifestyle approaches, and the way we live our lives, I, I always ask our speakers. And towards the end, if you feel comfortable talking about your own, any how you live your own life, what lifestyle choices you've made, then he would share those with us. It's oftentimes very empowering for people to hear someone like yourself, saying what you actually do.
David Haase 46:01
Yeah. Oh, it's great. Absolutely. More than happy to? Gosh, where do I start? You know, I like to say, I've been blessed with a lot of learning opportunities with regard to my own health. You know, that's the positive way to look at it. But But I will say, you know, some of the things that have been the biggest tipping points for me is number one, to come to a point of loving yourself. And what is it going to take for you to really view yourself as worthy of self care, self care means you're not taking care of somebody else. And for me, one of the most important things for me was to really examine that and to say, Hmm, you know, I had to deal with some early childhood stuff to see that Did you know, some belief systems that I had to, I was only good, if I could help somebody, right, I was only good if I was good, right? I wasn't intrinsically worthy of love and care and of self care. And, and sometimes we, in this, the drive to, you know, change somebody's diet. And, you know, I'm, I look here at, you know, here's, here's my little packets of supplements I took today, which I think they have great value and the appropriate way and, and I regularly fast, you know, every quarter, I do a five day water fast. And I intermittent fast, frequently throughout the week, I have, I have the benefit of having a great IV suite in my clinic, and I utilize that frequently, in which has helped me tremendously. And I really, I want to keep coming down, I wouldn't I didn't do any I didn't do any of those things, until I dealt with the pain within. And and so we are we are really fearfully and wonderfully made. And if you're not seeking care, if you're stuck somewhere, then you just have to continue to be brave to ask the questions about well, why am I stuck? And and, and it's, you know, I really believe people are good, and they're smart, and they're capable, and they want to do good for them. I hate it when people in the medical world say, oh, people won't do lifestyle change. Oh, they won't. They don't want to change. They just want a pill. You I want to smack them upside the head. I mean, I want to just I literally, you know, want to physically harm those individuals. Because, no, it's amazing. Everybody wants better for themselves. And almost everybody knows that they have a part to do it. And if you're gentle and kind, and loving in the process of bringing that force to them, and you don't go about it from a place of shame and guilt. Guess what amazing things can happen in their lives. Amazing things. So may sound a little cheesy, but it starts with love. Starts with love of self. If you're going to actually it takes a lot of self love for an elder to say yeah, you know what, instead of paying, instead of my estate paying for me to be in a memory care center, I'm going to take that same amount of money and I'm going to apply it toward reversing my cognitive decline so I can be the asset for my grandchildren that I should be right so I can fully be present. And we really, you know, it takes a lot of bravery to move forward in life but if you know it's worth it if you know you're worth it, then it's possible.
Robert Lufkin 49:54
Yeah. Wow. That's, that's refreshing to hear that it's it's beautiful. David how can how can people get in touch with you? We're going to put everything down in the show notes. We're also going to link to your your book curiosity heals to human as well. So hopefully people will take a look at that if they want to hear more about you. But could you just tell us your website one more time so that the listeners can have it? And if best way to follow you on social media as well?
David Haase 50:20
Absolutely. Maxwell clinic.com That's ma X W E ll clinic calm. And you can find me everywhere on Facebook, Instagram, etc. At David hotter. David Hoshea. MD, that's da vi d. H. A S. E. E. MD. And yeah, I'm there. I'm not on social media as much as probably everybody wants me to be. But we're working I like I said, I love patients. And and our work is to improve their health here. If you want to learn more about plasma exchange to go to Maxwell clinic.com, forward slash RPE. That's regenerative plasma exchange. rpe.com.
Robert Lufkin 51:04
Wow, this has been Thank you, thank
David Haase 51:07
you for the opportunity. Thank you for the opportunity for me to share, share some of what we're doing. You know, we we're all on this journey together. I like to say we're all here just to walk each other home, right. And each of us play a part in each other's lives. And thank you very much for this invitation to be with you. Thank you for the work you're doing.
Robert Lufkin 51:27
Oh, thank you. That is so beautiful. I really enjoyed this hour and getting a chance to know you better and and learning about the amazing work that you're doing in your life and and thanks again for being part of this.
51:44
No, this is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking of it because of something you've seen here. If you find this to be a value of you, please hit that like button and subscribe and support the work we do on this channel. Also, we take your suggestions and advice very seriously. Please let us know what you'd like to see on this channel. Thanks for watching and hope to see you next time.