Exploring Longevity Medicine and Personalized Health with Dr. Anil Bajnath

If you could live longer would you? In this episode, Jeanne Collins sits down with longevity expert Dr. Anil Bajnath to unpack the science behind aging and what it truly means to optimize your health at a cellular level. 

From the 12 hallmarks of aging to cutting-edge precision medicine and regenerative therapies, Dr. Bajnath breaks down complex concepts into practical understanding. 

This conversation empowers listeners to think differently about their health, emphasizing data-driven decisions, personalized care, and the daily habits that contribute to long-term vitality. If you're ready to take ownership of your health and explore what’s possible beyond traditional medicine, this episode is a must-listen.

More about Dr. Anil Bajnath:

Anil Bajnath, MD is a physician, entrepreneur, and innovator focused on the intersection of healthcare, technology, and longevity. With a passion for optimizing human performance and advancing modern medicine, Dr. Bajnath is dedicated to helping individuals take control of their health through data-driven, personalized strategies. His work centers on preventative care, metabolic health, and leveraging emerging technologies to improve patient outcomes. Through clinical practice and thought leadership, he aims to redefine how we approach long-term wellness and performance in today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/anil-bajnath-md-mba-ifmcp-abaarm-61204432/

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Transcript

Introducing Dr. Anil Bajnath

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Building the Best You, a destination for you to reimagine what is possible in your life and then create it. Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Gene Collins, and today we are talking about something that matters to everybody. We are going to talk about longevity. Today we have Dr. Anil Bajath. I'm probably not pronouncing that right. So we're just going to call him Doctor because you have a beautiful name, and I know I'm not pronouncing it correctly, but he is an expert in longevity. And one thing I love about his bio that came to me is that he loves to combine the intersection of healthcare, technology, and longevity. And I went to his website. There is so much information on his website. It is so cool. And I want to just make sure I'm going to read this. I don't normally read, but I want to read this before we start talking. You are the founder and president of the American Board of Precision Medicine, and you founded the Institute for Human Optimization. Just so I make sure you get all the credit and all that will be in the speaker notes too. So, Doctor, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, thank you for having me.

What Is Longevity Medicine

SPEAKER_01 1:10

It's great to have you. So, can we start off with something super simple? What is longevity medicine?

Precision Medicine and Molecular Profiling Explained

SPEAKER_00 1:19

That's a great question. I think that, you know, with the evolution of all these different modalities and philosophies that are out there, longevity medicine is uniquely different than I would say integrative medicine and functional medicine because it places emphasis on targeting some of the molecular mechanisms behind aging. So if you're to look at, for example, you know, I think your audience might be familiar with the concept of integrative medicine that takes into account maybe a lot of Eastern philosophies and traditions, whether it's traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, herbal medicine, homeopathic medicine, the next step up would be looking at like functional medicine. And functional medicine is leveraging essentially this root cause analysis, the functional medicine matrix, looking at the ATMs or antecedents, triggers and mediators influencing, you know, somebody's kind of clinical presentation. The next layer up would be adding additional filter of looking at the 12 hallmarks of aging, which are influencing somebody's potential for longevity or health span over lifespan. And there are 12 identified distinct molecular mechanisms that are mediating the biological aging process. I could try to name all 12 for you in your audience, but um, you know, that's uh some mental gymnastics. But it's it's basically looking at uh the genomic instability, telemaritrician, epigenetic alteration, loss of cardiostasis, decreased nutrient sensing. There's loss of macro autophagy, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, dysbiosis, chronic inflammation, and I think I'm missing one. But those are primarily the 12 hallmarks that are mediating the biological aging process. And I would say where longevity medicine excels or is a little bit different than some of the functional medicine models, is that not only are you targeting those molecular mechanisms, but you're also leading into therapies that might be a little bit non-conventional, whether that's peptide, stem cells, exosomes, some of the regenerative modalities, different interventions like therapeutic plasma exchange, which is where you pull the blood out, you filter it, and you're putting some albumin in there as an exchange to uh create a kind of a more of an antioxidant-based environment. So, yeah, I think, you know, the there's different layers to all of this. And then where precision medicine is different from all of this is the narrative around multiomic profiling. And that's what I do in my office is a combination of like precision, longevity, functional. And what makes precision medicine uniquely different than the other modalities is that precision medicine is defined by the National Institute of Health, is the interface of biology, lifestyle, and environment. And to me, that just sounds like really good medicine, right? Yeah. Adding to that conversation is the molecular profiling that precision medicine leverages, which includes this narrative of looking at genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbiomics, exposomics, and all these different molecular signatures that are influencing somebody's kind of health trajectory.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Wow. Okay. All right. I have so many questions. Lots of icks on there, right? I didn't know mix. So it sounds like at its most simplistic form, longevity medicine is really looking at the cellular level. And then I'm assuming depending on what you find, you are finding ways to treat those cells, either removing the bad cells or helping those cells repair so that they don't degenerate as quickly as they might, in like plain English. Did I get that?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah. I think that's an accurate way of explaining it.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah. Okay. All right. And most of it, the only thing that you said that I feel like people might have an indication that they have is inflammation. I think most people will know if they have chronic inflammation, but everything else that you mentioned from those 12 markers feel like things that we wouldn't even know are happening in our bodies. Is that correct? Or are there signs and symptoms that people might have that would indicate some of those things?

SPEAKER_00 5:41

There's, you know, if you were to look at the signs and symptoms of somebody, you know, there's multiple different hallmarks being activated that's influencing their disease process. So by the time you have a sign and symptom, there's this whole back-end circuitry that's taking place that's influencing that clinical presentation of a sign and symptom. And arguably every single disease process, whatever it is, neurodegenerative, cardiometabolic, you know, diabetes or neurodegenerative like Alzheimer's, has a multitude of those hallmarks that are influencing that pathophenotype.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Got it. So is there, as you mentioned, Alzheimer's, do you see a common trend in the people who come to your office and seek your help in terms of what? I don't want to say what's wrong with them, but yeah, like why they're there, you know, is there a common theme as to why they're there, other than just we all kind of want to live longer? And, you know, for people that have money, this is something to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

That's a great question. And I think everybody, you know, with with the new era of precision medicine, we're gonna start seeing that everybody's flavor of disease, you know, they might have a disease nomenclature, ICD 10 label associated with their disease process. But what we're identifying is that their flavor of disease or pathophenotype is different, uniquely different. Essentially, you know, when you start peeling back the molecular layers and the precision diagnostics, we see that certain individuals might have, you know, a whole host of, like, for example, dysbiosis in the mouth, high amounts of tryponemia denticola, which is a spiroketal bacteria that migrates to the brain and causes neuroinflammation. It accelerates neurodegeneration as the white blood cells try to go and attack those bacteria in the brain and produce hyaluronidase and collagenase, which weakens the brain tissue to go and fight that infection. Or they could have a high amount of neurotoxins in their system. We measure mercury and other heavy metals and different mycotoxins, microplastics, all these different things that are, you know, kind of bioaccumulate in the different tissues and could influence their clinical presentation. So once we start pulling back and identifying these different molecular layers, we start seeing that the narrative goes beyond beta-amyloid and tautangle protein, misfolded protein accumulation in the neurons, but a whole multitude of different insults that are influencing their clinical presentation. Not to mention that there's, you know, these polygenic risk scores or other genes that are associated with the potential of influencing their predisposition towards that disease process, whether it's whatever it might be. So connecting those molecular dots from genome to phenome and looking at all the different layers is what I do in my clinical practice to just really identify what's really, you know, the ATMs, antecedents, triggers, and mediators influencing their disease uh presentation.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah. Okay. I have a very personal question because you mentioned the word mercury. So we're gonna go off on a little side tangent here. Just to use me as an example. Okay, so I am someone who, based on recent blood work, came back with a really high mercury score in my blood. Little bizarre. I drink bottled water, it's not from my well. I do eat fish, but not that much fish. I don't eat any red meat. So let's say someone comes to you and they have chronic issues of having a high level of mercury. Where do you go about identifying what's causing it? And then also the impact that that might be having on my body as a whole. I'm just using me as an example, if that is a realistic example.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So, in a scenario like this where it's not glaringly obvious, you know, oftentimes we have two main sources of mercury. The first one that I often see is when individuals have silver fillings in their mouth and that mercury vapor, that you know, organic mercury vapor is just like constantly inundated with it, bioaccumulates in the body, in the tissues. And then the other source, like as you alluded to, is going to be farm raised fish, you know, and seafood tends to have a higher concentration of that. There's a test from a company called Quicksilver that identifies, you know, the differential between organic and inorganic mercury sources. And then once you, you know, kind of reverse engineer and try to identify, mitigate, and eliminate those potential toxic sources, you know, the protocol for detoxifications could be highly individualized because the question then becomes, you know, is to chelate or not to chelate. And I'm not a huge fan of uh aggressive chelation therapy. I think there's ways to gently chelate. And then, you know, there's other methodologies out there that could be used to help, you know, with the removal of this from the system, whether it's forms of blood filtration mechanisms, sauna, lymphatic mobilization, ozone sauna, you know, oral chelators, intravenous chelators. It just depends on the person's kind of dynamics because it's there there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration before, you know, pulling the trigger on an intervention. So it's gonna be essential to go in there and reverse engineer and try to identify, again, the sources of these ongoing exposures so you could mitigate, eliminate it from, you know, your your exposomic you know, bubble, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate the doctor advice. That's really helpful. But what it also makes me wonder is for your patients who come to you. So I'm just gonna use myself as an example with this mercury issue. I would have never, ever, ever known. I have no idea how long I've had this. I would have never known had my functional doctor happened to prescribe some blood work somewhere along the way that made this come up. And so now all of a sudden I have this issue. So I wonder for the people who go to see you, do they have a moment in time when they're working with you when they're like, where they feel like, oh my goodness, I knew none of this about myself and I feel kind of broken. Does that happen a lot as you start to peel back the onion of what's really going on with our bodies?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

There's always, you know, this uh sense of maybe frustration because, you know, a lot of my patients are very health conscious to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

That are, you know, seeking my services. And then, you know, I have patients that make their own deodorant and make, you know, that are incredibly conscious about the sourcing of their foods and their water and their air and all these different things. And while we start seeing kind of ongoing active exposure that's, you know, of these environmental toxicants, it it's it's a little defeating. But, you know, I structure this, especially in my book, you know, as a means of doing what I call biological audit in my practice, where we we get this data and information to establish this baseline. Once we do this audit, the intention is not to be deflating, but more empowering in our journey towards self-actualization. Because once we know kind of all the different factors that we're kind of dealt with or we're grappling with, we are better prepared to make very informed clinical decisions about how to identify these issues and have a therapeutic order that is best suited for you and your DNA blueprint and your biomarkers and all the other factors that are influencing your health expression. So, you know, I actually um I have this e-course. So as we're waiting for the data to come back, um I give my patients access to a few different e-courses that I put together that number one explains this information because for a lot of people, you know, multi-amic profiling is very overwhelming. This isn't like, hey, I'm gonna look at a CVC, CMP, maybe an A1C, vitamin D, and a TSH with a reflex T4.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Which I know what that is, actually. Not everybody will know, but those are thyroid markers. I actually now know that. I didn't know that six months ago, but now I do.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, and those are just very basic standard labs that you're, you know, most PCPs run, right? And you might be lucky to get a couple of advanced lipid markers or whatever, but we're going in, right? And so what I want to do is have a very educated conversation around what we're doing here. And a part of this is what I teach at the university, at George Washington University with multi-omic um kind of profile. But also for my patients, I want them to feel involved in their journey towards self-actualization. So they get a course that's basically gonna walk them through all the different diagnostic tests that we do, right? And kind of go in there and have the tools needed to understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, and to a certain extent, how to interpret it. So that when we sit down and review all the data, it's not completely foreign to them.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Right. I was just gonna say, and this isn't the simplistic, like, oh, you're 55 years old, but your biological marker says you're 52.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

It is so uh yeah, I think a lot of the biological aging clocks and things that are out there in tools are um BS, right? Try not to curse, right? I think that I've seen huge swing ranges. Individuals that have either aged or reversed their biological age by like many years within a few days due to some of those different signatures. So to me, you know, given the, you know, how malleable and you know pliable they are in regards to uh shifts, that's not it, it's good. I do think that do you need impasive aging, which is third generation biological aging clock, probably has the greatest utility clinically in regards to application. You know, that's that's cute. That's good. You know, that's the speedometer of aging, right? I think that one has the best evidence behind it. But there's a lot of these other kind of biological aging uh proxies that are being used right now. And I think that um most of it's just bullshit, you know, and that's it. But when it comes down to what we do here clinically, we're actually gathering your DNA blueprint. We're, you know, for my sick patients and mystery illnesses, we're even looking at your RNA signature, your transcripto. We're looking at proteomics and all the different, you know, proteins that are uh kind of upregulated or downregulated based on, you know, the central dogma of biology. So in biology 101 in high school, you learn there's some this concept of central dogma, which is DNA into RNA and R in RNA into protein, right? And uh that is basically what governs, you know, transcription, translation, and how we give rise to structure, function in the body. So we measure all that stuff and we put it all together on top of the microbiome, on top of the metabolomics, and all this other, these different molecular layers. And oftentimes we see this really interesting translational process of specific upstream, downstream factors that are influencing your clinical presentation. And we use that information to reverse engineer. And in my book, we have this um concept of biological 401k, right? I believe we all have our biological 401k health savings account for which we're making daily deposits and withdrawals and different forms of bioenergetic, epigenetic currency, you know, diet exercise, uh, sleep, nutrition, meeting and purpose, relationships, connection, all that stuff plays a very important role into our savings account. And we're also making withdrawals, you know, when we go out and party and we make poor decisions or whatever the heck it is, you know? And um, we're making those withdrawals. But ultimately, you know, our ROI is going to be or our return investment is going to be essentially, you know, culminating health span over a lifespan in the different forms of, I would say, these uh bioregulatory resilience factors, right? And as we have different, you know, resiliency in these different governing domains, that's kind of what we're trying to make meaningful investments into, whether it's having the immunological competency to deal with viral threats from little kids, because these kids are just carrying all sorts of viruses. And if we we we lose that adaptive capacity, we're going to be more susceptible to illness. Whether it's our neurocognitive capacity, our mobility resiliency, we have all these different regulatory domains that um kind of further defined by the World Health Organization in terms of intrinsic capacity. You know, so the uh the WHO gave rise to or gave a categorization to five different forms of intrinsic capacity that we all have that kind of ties into this narrative of longevity, but I think it goes a little bit further than that, it could be broken down into multiple subcategories. So I don't know if what I'm saying is making any sense, but it makes sense in my crazy brain.

Personalizing Treatment and Prioritizing Health Goals

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, I know, I know. It's making lots of sense. Like as you're saying it, I'm just thinking to myself, like, wow, there's so much that we can learn about our bodies that I think most people don't know. And information is always power. And I focus a lot on this podcast about lifestyle and, you know, nutrition and lifestyle and your environment and so many of the things you talk about. I have so many guests who come on and say, you know, alcohol is terrible for you and don't eat meat and all these things, right? So I think it's really fascinating that there's so much information that's out there. So, but I'm wondering when when you do a biological audit and all this information comes back, how do you help your clients decide? Okay, what do we do? Like, what do you do? And also, what do you prioritize? Because you might not be able, I'm guessing, you might not be able to fix everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

I I fix nothing, right? My patients fix themselves, right? I am just, you know, a I don't treat it as a doctor-patient relationship because that's very autocratic and authoritative. It's more so I want to be your health like kind of coach, so to speak, coach athlete kind of narrative. And I'm gonna, you know, lay out all the information and variables that we have in front of us, and we're gonna choose certain things that need to be prioritized, right? So I I do leverage AI, you know, in uh my practice, very um unique company that I've been working with to kind of aggregate the information. And now I don't always agree with AI's um kind of interpretation of certain things and the recommendations and protocols, but I do think that precision medicine is going to be AI first because by definition, multi-omics is at least three molecular layers and 5,000 data points. And I don't think a single person has the interpretive capacity to uh really, you know, do it all, right? So I do think aggregating this information, identifying your goals and priorities that are not generic. A lot of people are like, oh, I want longevity. Well, what the hell is that? You know, like do you need you know, vitality? What is that? You know, is that uh better sex drive? Is that better cognition? Is it play playing with your grandkids, you know, and and you know, growing old into your elderly and, you know, unencumbered by disease or dysfunction. It's very ill-defined. So, you know, having some realistic, um identifiable targets to augment, um, you know, that uh trajectories could be important. We're able to identify multiple different things. And oftentimes it's um it's putting it together in a comprehensive framework. And depending on patient the patient. Yeah, I have, you know, some patients, like my my guys are like, I want to do everything right now, right? They're like, just give it to me. And then, you know, some of my ladies are very like, you know, pragmatic in the sense, hey, let's let's focus on one thing or two things, and then let's dial. Totally fine with that. So it just depends on the situation, but a lot of it is going to be identifying this these different environmental and genetic mismatches and having a very important kind of personalized protocol that is very end of one, very evidence-driven. Everything we do is data and evidence-driven. Everything.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah, which is super important. And even I want to make this comment just because not everyone knows this, and you can clarify this for me if I get this wrong. But when you talk about using AI, you're not talking about going to Chat GPT. So medical doctors have their own database of data to which you are using an AI platform to help you mine the research. You are not talking about taking results from tests and plopping it into Chat GPT. I just want to make sure I clarify that for folks because I think sometimes Thank you for doing that.

Understanding Regenerative Therapies

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yeah, this is not Claude, not ChatGPT. These are very HIPAA compliant, well-constructed and developed LLMs, LRMs, you know, large language models, large reasoning models that are non-hallucinatory, that is uh going to be very dialed in and targeted to the clinical decision-making process. It's it's and the what I love about it, it's transparent in the sense of okay, A plus B equals C, and this is a research of data to identify the mechanism of action, the genes that are involved, the biomarkers that could be correlated to it, and the research and evidence for the rationalization of the protocol. It's it's next level. So I love it. That's why I started the Board of Precision Medicine because I wanted to go beyond, you know, the classroom at George Washington University. I wanted to go beyond my clinical practice and have a larger impact on society by training the doctors of the future to start leveraging this information here today. Because if you're not doing this, I mean, we're we're practicing very reductionistic medicine. Um I did a webinar yesterday for a company about the AI technology. It's very interesting because ACCAAJA just updated their clinical guidelines last week, America College Cardiology and Heart Association. And, you know, whether, and I I'm not like anti-statin, I'm not anti-you know, drug or intervention. And I don't think everything's going to be cured with citrus bergamot and red yeast rice. I'm sorry, you know, polycosinol is great and all what, you know, and I leverage all those things, but we have real individuals suffering from, you know, these familiar hypodisliperemias, and these dyslipidemias really take a toll on your potential for longevity. And if you're not using pharmacogenomics in your practice to further restratify these individuals to predict clinical response, we're missing the boat, right? We're completely missing the boat. So I I could get into the whole lipidology thing, but I'll save you that boring conversation.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Okay. All right. Well, then I am going to ask you about something that I know a lot of people hear about and is a little bit of a buzzword. And so I would love you to talk about what it is, which is regenerative therapies. What are those?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

So regenerative medicine is just basically being able to provide your body with the tools and resources needed to regenerate, right? Um, it's almost like wolverine getting dumped in that bath of whatever and coming out like ultra wolverine and healing from all their uh injuries. Yeah. Unfortunately, we don't have that bath yet. You know, I'm hoping for one of these days we're gonna have the dunk tank, you know, that's just gonna regenerate you, but we're we're just not there yet, right? Um, but regenerative medicine is a very interesting, I don't want to say it's new and emerging because it's been around for a very long time. And it's leveraging different technologies, whether it's lasers and shockwave and fiberacoustic modalities to go in there and break up scar tissue and stimulate um cytochrome C oxidase for mitochondrial enhancements or planting seeds of regenerative um signals, whether it's PRP exosomes or stem cells. And I like to tell my patients, you know, hey, before you even start, you know, thinking about regenerative medicine, you got to do all the gardening first, all the internal medicine work that needs to be done to prepare the terrain microenvironment needed to essentially be receptive to those seeds of regeneration. And additionally, you don't want to plant these seeds of regeneration in a bed of senescent weeds or zombie cells because it's gonna get hijacked and go in the wrong direction. So there's a lot of terrain-based, you know, work that needs to be done to ensure that the body is well positioned to be placed into a state of regeneration.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah. Which is really important because I'm sort of wondering as a consumer, if someone's out there and they're sort of googling about regenerative therapies in their near them, what are things that they should be asking of doctors that they would consider going to to make sure they are not doing what you said. They're not doing the therapy, but yet not fixing the soil. What are a couple of things that someone should ask of a medical practitioner?

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Well, it it depends on the clinical presentation scenario, you know, managing expectations and outcomes. I don't think that, you know, we're completely there yet in the US in regards to our stem cell therapies that kind of matches what's being done overseas. But I do think that we're, you know, Florida leading the charge just um opened up, you know, kind of stem cell medicine in in Florida to be more accessible to a wider array of stem cells. I'm really excited about the potential for muse cells coming from Japan to be accessible here in Florida soon and Texas to follow. It just depends on what we're talking about. So it's understanding what modality we're talking about, and you know, what is the realistic expectations, you know, from this? Is it going to regrow my articular highly cartilage in my knee needed to go out and golf again? Maybe. Right? So the three main questions are I think, you know, what are the realistic expectations of the intervention and modality that's being used, the pros and cons associated with it, the risk-benefits, alternatives associated with it. I would also say, hey, you know, what the hell are we using? Are we using autologous versus allergenic tissue? Right? That's a very important question because philosophically, certain people have, you know, different belief systems and values that might prohibit them from wanting to do donor tissue. Okay, so if they don't want to do donor tissue, what are our autologous options here, right? You know, PRP, uh V cells, you know, regenerative proteins is on the fence, you know, peptides, right? Um, so it's just really, I think, you know, asking the right question of where that individual is philosophically in regards to their belief system and their orientation towards uh allogenic versus patologist, donor versus self. Right. Um and then how do we prepare the soil and terrain? What's the protocol leading up to this? Are they just gonna inject me with a bunch of stuff and then call it a day?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah. Right?

What Are Zombie Cells and Why They Matter

SPEAKER_00 30:24

When you go to these stem cell clinics overseas, it's you're it's an immersive experience where you're there for at least a week or two prior and you're beginning the, you know, the prep work months ahead. Right. So that that prep work is essential. You know, you go down there, you're getting certain IVs, you're getting certain, you know, you're involved with hyperbaric oxygen therapy ahead of time because there's studies show that there's actually um really significant mobilization of hematopoietic stem cells, you know, erotologous hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow into circulation with hyperbaric medicine um prior to injecting other stem cells. So, you know, there's all these little things that you should be doing ahead of time to again prepare the terrain for those um seeds of regeneration.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you so much. Okay, so I do have a question. You mentioned this word a couple of times, and I'm curious what it is. What are zombie cells?

SPEAKER_00 31:22

So zombie cells or senescent cells are basically the cells that have breached what's called the Haflick limit. This was discovered by Dr. Haflick in the 1950s, where he was studying fibroblast cells in a petri dish and looking at their replication process. And what he noticed that once they hit about approximately 50 cycles of replication, they stopped replicating and got locked into the G1 phase of cell cycle arrest, and but were still metabolically active, spewing out these proteins. And that's known as SAS protein signaling, so that's an associated secretory phenotype. And these these proteins were actually very pro-inflammatory due to where it's air and damage accumulated over, you know, that replicative process and cycle. And these zombie cells are known to be essentially very involved with um inflammatory signaling and accelerating the biological aging process by zombifying other cells or transforming other cells into zombie cells through that sass pertinent signaling. So they're this is one of the targets in longevity-based medicine is addressing these zombie cells and removing them through um different forms of therapy, whether it's acidolytics, which are drugs and medications that have been shown to lysoden synolytic, lyce the um the zombie cells. Some of the research out of Mayo Clinic uh with Dr. Kirkwin's lab has been leveraging a cocktail disatinibic quercetin. De satinib is a chemotherapeutic agent that has uh basically been traditionally used for CML, chronic myeloginous leukemia, and quercetin being a flavonoid from citrus. So he's got some very interesting protocols around using synolytics for targeting these zombie cells. And some of the research um has been conducted uh in multiple labs now, uh, from eddy everything from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, diabetic kidney uh nephropathy to Alzheimer's. So those are like some of the synolytic agents that are out there that are going there that are used in what's called a hit and run fashion, where you pulse these drugs for like one to three days after maybe some intermittent fasting or a little bit of fasting. So you're upregulating that AMP kinase, mTOR inhibition signaling to kind of turn on the recycling system of the body. And then you're hitting them with like a synolytic to just clear out those zombie cells. And that could be done, you know, different times of the year, quarterly, whatever it might be, so that you know, we're addressing multiple hallmarks there: cellular senescence, disabled macrootophagy, and um stimulating um cellular renewal. So that those are synolytics. And then there's like cinamorphics, which um are like rapamyosin. And rapamyosin is, you know, a drug that was originally used to prevent graph versus host disease in transplant patients. It was originally discovered on Easter Island in the soil from a bacteria. And what we have found is that it's a very strong cinnamorphic agent when used in low doses, meaning it attenuates that SAS protein signaling and drives down some of those inflammatory signals. Um, so in my practice, I like to measure that stuff, right, to determine its outcome, right? And, you know, if um we see these molecular signatures of like SA beta galactosidase or P16 and P21 and all these other surrogates of proxies of zombie cells accumulating in the system through sheer decision-making process. Again, some people don't want a chemotherapeutic agent. They want like the natural stuff. All right, cool. We got access to that too, right? We determine what the best protocol is for them to help with the senescent cell removal.

Anil’s Book and The Future of Longevity Medicine

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Right. Yeah. Lots of options, it sounds like, which is incredible. Okay, so I have a couple more questions before I run out of time for you. You are located in Maryland. Does everyone live near you that comes to see you? Do people pop into town to see you? How does it work?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

So I am physically in Maryland, but I'm licensed in almost all 50. Okay. Licensed in all the good states, right? Okay. Uh-huh. Uh there's just a handful that um I'm working on right now. Uh just a lot of hoops to jump through. So I see people all over the country and the world. Okay. People do fly in, you know, I'm conveniently located next to the airport so that for those coming in by train or plane, you know, private or commercial, uh, we have, you know, increased access to to the practice here in the clinic. Um, but I I do see people all over the country.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Yeah. Okay. Which is super important. All right. Your book, you mentioned your book. What's your book called and when is it coming out?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

So the book right now is called The Longevity Equation. I have it right here, right? Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

It's coming out soon-ish, right? I've been saying this for years, but it's just um, you know, a constant back and forth process with the publisher. You know, in this book, we kind of lay out um everything, you know, kind of my my story, my history, the, you know, the concept behind precision medicine, the board of precision medicine, what I do here in my clinical practice, and all the different tools and technologies that we also utilize here clinically and why they're, you know, should be leveraged in, I think, these practices of the future. Because if you're not best in diagnostics, therapeutics, and technology, we're missing the whole. If we're just dispensing drugs and medications, which are very important to acutely stabilized individuals, I'm not saying otherwise, you know, we would um we we need to leverage all of this stuff to achieve, I think, better health.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yeah, that's which is important. Okay, so that leads me to at a really high level. What does your life look like as a longevity doctor? Like, what are you doing for yourself? Because I would think you could test all day every day and could be a pillar of perfect health, but you also are running a business and you're teaching and you do all the things. So in reality, what does your life really look like?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

So that's a great question because I also have two small kids, three and seven months at the time of this recording. So needless to say, uh bedtime's really early to buffer and augment, you know, the multiple sleep disruptions I'm having at this season of life. But for me personally, I built my practice actually right next to my jujitsu school on the other side of this wall. In front of me is jujitsu school, and uh been training since high school, um, taking a little bit of time off with the kid dynamics here more recently. And then across the hall, um just adjacent to the jujitsu um school is what I call longevity gyms, where I have selfishly acquired all the different tools and technologies I'm offered myself. Um that includes hyperbaric oxygen therapy, whole body photobiomodulation, pulse electromagnetic field therapy, intermittent hypoxic hyperoxic therapy, lymphatic mobilization, contrast therapies, all sorts of lasers. And we have the ability to just walk across the hall and do some things. Um, under my desk here, I usually get at least three to five miles in a day with just walking my walking pad and everything else. I mean, we'll type, talk, and walk all at the same time. But I think that's really important for actually longevity because, you know, from a proper receptor standpoint, you know, enhancing all those different sensations is really good for the brain because typing and talking and walking, it's like uh multiple different signals to keep things really active. So I try to get my, you know, over 10,000 steps in. Um I do intermittent fast on a regular basis. I do break it with like, you know, protein vegetable. My genetics is not uh, I'm Southeast Asian, you know, my name's super Indian, if you couldn't tell. Right. And um, you know, Indians unfortunately don't have the best um cardiovascular dynamics, unfortunately. We have multiple different things uh set up against us uh genetically. So I am on uh PCASK9 inhibitor and um, you know, just always trying to grapple with my uh plaque burden in my heart that I've been tracking for a very long time. So that's always on the forefront, but I can't, I'm not a chickpea curry guy, you know. I I need meat. I like meat. I that's that's it. I just feel better with that. Um you know, I sauna all the time. I would say maybe four to four to seven nights a week. I'm in the sauna for 45 minutes minimum. Kettlebell exercises, you know, we got like I said, the contrast therapy, we got some cold modalities that we're doing here in the office. So yeah, that's that's what I got. You know, but right now I'm telling you, the the greatest threat to longevity is having kids. No, no help nearby. So because of that, we're actually opening up location number two in Florida, uh in Naples, Florida, so we could be closer to our family and have some some level of uh help and support.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

That and that one was okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Two is like, yeah, too much.

Closing Thoughts on Making Longevity Accessible

SPEAKER_01 40:29

It's kids are a lot, and you need sleep, and it's really hard to get sleep when you have little children. It's almost impossible. And you know, being in the medical profession, sleep is like the number one thing to helping your body regenerate. And so you very are very aware of the science behind how important sleep is. So, well, Naples is a perfect place for you to be opening another location because there are lots of people down there who would be very interested in your services. So I love that. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Okay, so before we go, is there any, and I'll put in the show notes so everybody can follow you, they can find you when your book comes out. I will make sure if it doesn't come out before this comes out, I'll make sure we bring this back to the surface to tell everybody about your book that it's actually live. But is there anything I didn't ask you that you want to make sure you communicate, either about yourself, your practice, precision medicine, anything you want that I miss that you think is so important for people to understand about longevity?

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah, that's a great question. I think, look, um, I I want to democratize longevity-based medicine, right? And I think getting this in the hands of more people, whether it's physicians or consumers, is gonna be essential. And how do we lead that democratization process? And I think patients need to become more aware about the narrative around, if you want to call it longevity medicine, you know, without the pretentious association, you know, and a stigmatization around it. And I it's gonna come with awareness, it's gonna come with understanding of biology and aging biology and how we could leverage this information into real-world clinical applications. And my my mission is not to be this elitist physician. I'm a I'm a nerd, I'm a scientist, you know, right next to me is my microscope that I've had for the past 20-something years that, you know, I bought as a teenager. And this isn't a matter of just pandering or catering to high net worth individuals, but more so being able to have a healthy conversation and dialogue around these molecular dynamics. And what I encourage my colleagues in the space to do is really it's it really start leaning into these different diagnostic tests so that we could get it reimbursable because there's no reason why these labs are not being a part of the new standards of care. Going to your doctor and doing that profile that we discussed earlier is very good as a baseline, but it we need to enhance the new baseline of the future to leverage genetics and leverage advanced environmental testing like your functional doc did, so that we could basically really get a deeper dive into what's h happening because you're not gonna see it in these labs, right? You know, before you know your thyroid or your hormones are impacted by this, there's years of damage of bioaccumulation that's done. Your body's highly resilient and it's gonna compensate at all costs. So I I really think that's a very important, you know, um statement that I want to make clear is that we need to get this in the hands of more doctors and patients so that societally we could live a longer, healthier, happier life unencumbered by any disease or dysfunction. And um, you know, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Which I love that because I think you're right, because you're talking about being so technology-based and on so much science. There is so much science out there. And so if the science is out there and the tools are out there to help people live healthier, better, longer lives, trying to make that available to the masses is fantastic. And even just from an education perspective, I think a lot of people don't even know that this exists, that it's even a possibility to try to learn more about themselves and that they can take back some of the control. And there are things that they can do to control what's happening, and your body is amazing. I love that you said that. The body is amazing. Given the right soil and the right things, your body can do incredible things. And so I think that's really empowering. So, Doctor, I thank you so much for taking the time. I know you are such a busy man, and I really appreciate it. You truly are so passionate about what you do. I love your knowledge. I love your commitment to the cause. And so, I thank you for sharing. Sharing that with us everyday folk. And I will put everything in the show notes so that people can follow you, find out more information about you. If you're interested, go to your clinic. I think it is really fascinating. The more you can learn about how your body is working and do things to make your body function better, why not? So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Thank you. No, it's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

You're welcome. We'll definitely stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Awesome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Building the Best You. If you are ready to take a deeper dive into transforming your life, check out my Empowerment Fundamentals course on my website, houseofgermar.com. Thank you, and I will see you next week with another inspiring guest.