Biology is Now an Engineering Problem with Dr. Darshan Shah

Board-certified surgeon, longevity specialist, and Next Health founder Dr. Darshan Shah — named Longevity Doctor of the Year — sits down with Almost Forever hosts Renee and Melanie to make the case that the sickcare system is built to save your life, not keep you healthy, and what to do about it. Dr. Shah walks through the 10 to 15 biomarkers everyone should be tracking and why 50% of people don't know they have heart disease until their first heart attack. He also opens up about his own turning point and purpose that changed everything. Plus AI in healthcare: digital twins, the Yamanaka factors, and why the smartest minds in tech believe biology is about to become "an engineering problem" we can finally solve.

In our Mailbag: which peptides are worth using, whether cold plunging is bad for you, why Dr. Shah does a quarterly Prolon 5-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet, and whether those mushroom coffees are really doing anything.

Myth or Method: Fluoride in your water — a necessary mineral for your teeth, or a neurotoxin we should be filtering out? The dietitians dig into dosage, the 2024 research, and who should be most cautious.

 Chapters:
0:00 "Our whole mission is to reverse chronic disease — and keep you so healthy you never get one in the first place."
1:04 Myth or Method: Is the fluoride in your water helping or harming you?
14:00 Meet Dr. Darshan Shah — Longevity Doctor of the Year, Next Health founder, MD at 21
16:04 Inside Next Health: the "Apple Store of health" built to reverse chronic disease
17:28 Making prevention accessible — the $99/month membership and using your HSA
19:24 The 10–15 biomarkers everyone should track (and why your doctor doesn't)
23:45 Why 35% of executive physicals uncover a hidden, life-threatening condition
24:33 Heart disease: why 50% don't know until their first heart attack — and the $150 scan that catches it
28:07 No Next Health nearby? How to understand your own biology
33:53 The longevity hill he'll die on: a daily routine — and how it took him from 5 chronic diseases to Longevity Doctor of the Year
41:11 How AI will personalize medicine and end one-size-fits-all care
44:45 Digital twins: predicting what a therapy will do to you before you try it
47:11 The data gap for women — and why he donates his own health data
51:20 Biology as an "engineering problem": Yamanaka factors, AI, and the future of therapies
1:03:06 The future of human doctors in an AI world
1:06:14 The one thing Dr. Shah says AI should not do — yet
1:08:57 What's next: Your New Health OS and Next Health's global expansion
1:10:33 Mailbag: Which peptides should you actually use — and how to source them safely
1:14:32 Mailbag: Cold plunge vs. cryotherapy — and why it's different for women
1:18:46 Mailbag: How to explain autophagy (and the Prolon 5-Day FMD) to your partner
1:22:47 Mailbag: Are mushroom coffees and functional-mushroom drinks worth it?

Guest Bio: Dr. Darshan Shah is a board-certified surgeon, longevity specialist, and the founder and CEO of Next Health, a health optimization and longevity center with locations across the US, Canada, and Dubai. A health-tech entrepreneur who earned his medical degree at 21, Dr. Shah was named Longevity Doctor of the Year for his work making preventative, root-cause medicine accessible. He is the host of the Extend podcast and the author of the forthcoming book Your New Health OS, a guide to using AI and your own biomarkers to take control of your health. His mission is simple: reverse chronic disease, and keep people so healthy they never develop one in the first place.

Listen to the Extend podcast with Dr. Darshan Shah wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more and grab his free biomarker guide at drshah.com, and find Next Health at next-health.com.

Have a longevity question? DM us @prolon on Instagram and you might make it into our mailbag!

Learn more about Prolon's 5-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet and longevity lifestyle products  at prolonlife.com. 

Almost Forever is brought to you by Prolon, powered by L-Nutra, the longevity technology company. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or a substitute for professional healthcare services. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, exercise, supplement, or health routine. Guest views are their own and may not reflect those of Prolon or its parent company L-Nutra. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Our whole mission in life is to reverse chronic disease and keep you so healthy you never get one in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Today we have a great conversation uh that we had with Dr. Darshan Shah, who is the longevity doctor of the year. So you can imagine he's got some good stuff to talk to us about.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yeah. He's just such a lovely, a lovely individual, a human being. He's so smart. Y'all, he was the youngest doctor ever. He graduated with his MD at 21. Yeah. And he's still just like skyrocketing.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Man, he's a he's an incredible person. Not to give too much away, let's let's shift gears a little bit into today's myth or method. What do you think? It's it's a controversial one.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

And honestly, it's been it's been controversial for a long time. Like literally I wouldn't say it's like trending now, but it's something that I think people So it is actually trending now. Oh again, it's having a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, it's having a resurgence. I would say like they still don't have clear cut answers.

unknown 1:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Okay, so what are we talking about? Yeah. Yeah, let's let's back up. Um we are talking about fluoride in water and just fluoride in general. Like it's it's in toothpaste, it's in mouthwash, it's definitely in our water, at least in most of America today. So should it be? Is it is it bad? Um why are we why is it in our water? I think there's a lot of questions that we could really unpack here. Uh so you know what what are your initial instincts? Well, before we dive in, fluoride is a mineral.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

So one of one of our minerals that we get that are is is specifically important for hardening enamel, like in our teeth. We need our teeth to be firm and solid so that we can chew our food and you know, all of these good things. Um so it's a it's a mineral, I think, just to set the stage. It's a mineral, but because I think for a long time um fluoride uh was needed that we actually did manually add it into water, and I think that's probably in my view, that's one of the more controversial components to the fluoride conversation, is that so much of us are getting this fluoride through the water sour through our water sources and also in toothpaste and and all of these other things. So it's compounding. And we don't when we talk about minerals, we we're not talking about needing that much. I mean, you know, for visualization, it's it's I think all of our minerals more or less would fit into a teaspoon of what we need in a day. Yeah, and I mean necessary, first and foremost.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Fluorate is a necessary minimum amount. Yeah, for sure. And necessary for especially our our and and maybe we shouldn't say necessary, but it is very helpful for our teeth, for uh limiting cavities, for uh our enamel, and that is and the the finding that it was so beneficial for for that specifically, and the finding back when it was originally added that so many people had dental hygiene issues. Okay, well let's just put it in the water and it will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Similar to the B9 folate conversation, because not to determine us, but we can make a lot of impact at a global scale by making sweeping changes to our food supply or and or our water supply to help support people with um deficiencies. And one of fluoride was one of those things that our government should chose to come in and and make a uh a sweeping change to. So now folate and folic acid is is you know uh fortified in so many of our cereals and breads and things like that. So that that um deficiency, which can otherwise cause neural 2 defects, is not as common anymore. So there are benefits to making these widespread um governmental level decisions on some of these things. Totally. Okay. So that's the good.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, that's the good. Now the the problem is still d debated in some amount, but the important thing to discuss here is dosage, right? So so fluoride, we know in high enough concentrations is actually quite problematic. I don't like using the word poison because I think it's like it feels very, very scary, but it is essentially. Like once it gets to a high enough amount, it is very problematic to our health. What kinds of things can people see in toxic loads? So the biggest one that we're we're there's two big ones that people are are talking about. One is neurotoxicity. So for our brain health, essentially, like killing neurons. And then the other one is thyroid health. So those two things are especially problematic with high doser or higher dosages of fluoride. You you probably also like when you go to the dentist and they do the fluoride treatment, they're always like, please don't eat or swallow or whatever, right? Because there's there's concerns with higher amounts of this stuff. So now the question is, okay, so if in high amounts it's problematic, but in low enough amounts it's really helpful to our t to our oral health, should we just be putting it in the water like blanketly? And the other I think the other important question is, are there people who are maybe more sensitive or where this could be more problematic in even some of the smaller dosages that are in our water? So the the CDC has a recommendation it's about 0.7 is like the the number that they're looking for. And we're seeing that there may be problems at around like the 1.5 mark of fluoride in water, uh, especially for women who are pregnant and their children. Um and in fact, there was a study that came out of Canada in like 2024 that showed that in these moderate amounts of fluoridation in water, of like closer to that 1.5, there was a drop in IQ in the children of the women who were drinking that water of about five points.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Aaron Powell And I have a follow-up question for you, my science queen. Were there any confounding factors from that study that we need to? Because my question is, were these women in socioeconomic conditions that made it more prevalent, or were they getting breakfast regularly?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Of course, there's always going to be like limiting. This is nutrition research, right? Especially especially epidemiological research and things like that. Right. What we were looking at is um in in individuals that were in areas that had higher fluoridated water, right? So it's not like in lower income areas that's where water is higher fluoridated. That's it's not it's not designed that way.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Well, meaning if if you're tracking if you're tracking cognitive function, there's other things that could impact cognitive function outside of that, right? That you can't always rule out when you're doing a study like that. That's my point. You know, they're you know, the nutritional component and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Aaron Ross Powell But you know, you've so so then the U.S. toxicology uh uh group came together after that study was published in Canada. They actually When was it? This is 2024. Okay. So super. It's recent. It's recent. This is trending. Yes. Well, I mean it's been two years. So I don't know if you're using your trends from two years ago, we should uh slightly concerned. But anyway. So the toxicology group c comes together, they're like, okay, this information is important. What are we gonna say? And they say that there is potential for fluoride to be toxic. And so now, you know, then of course that creates a little bit of um fear and mayhem. And I think at this point, where we're at is there are groups that feel very, very strongly that people should be able to decide if they want to fluoridate their their water, but or also just like use fluoridated toothbrush and toothpaste.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

There's lots of other ways to get fluoride other than just your water, yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Right. Exactly. And don't just like put it in the water and now, you know. Now it's hard to get away. The people who don't want it have to filter their water, right? And so, you know, uh and the people that I again would say should be potentially the most uh abundantly cautious would be pregnant women, right? Because of the research that we saw come out. Filter your water. Um and there are a lot of filters that that will filter out fluoride, and you can just like Google it and it's no problem. But it's like who bur who bears the burden? Is it the people who don't want the fluoride and they have to filter their water, or is it the people who don't have access to fluoridated toothpaste and don't have the information and and and education to, you know, have the careful oral hygiene to protect their teeth? Like who who do we have to protect more and who do we have to protect more?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Or is it um, you know, I think I tend to veer not to not to politicize myself, but I tend to because we have made such advancements in uh dental health in general, I think that we do a much better job. I used to work at Head Start as their lead dietitian. Um we do they have to have dental education sessions with teachers and children. It's it's ever you know, we do a lot better work now to educate people on what to do. Um I tend to veer on the camp of let people add it in. There's so many other ways other than blanketing the water. Um but how do you feel?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I I lean towards the same. Um today, like given that we the the water is fluoridated, that's just the way it is. And in most places, which although I think Utah last year decided, at least a couple uh counties or or cities decided no, we're not gonna do this anymore, and they the government decided that's not the case. And I think we're gonna see more of that happening. But right now, given that most places do still have fluoridated water, there's a couple things. You can go look and see what the amount of fluoride is in your water based off of where you live and make a decision from there. State online. County-based, yep. Um two, if you don't want any or if you want to uh at least decrease it, I filter my my water from at least tap water, or I I use non-fluoridated. Non-fluoridated oral care. Yeah, exactly. Sure, or or or pulse it. Well, I actually do use fluoridated oral care because I try and limit the fluoride in my water. Um and when the dentist asks me, do I want that tr fluoride treatment, I say, yeah, sure. But I I don't get it from my drinking water. Um but that's like an as a again, abundance of caution just with information that we currently have. What do we call this, myth or method?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

I I I don't know. Um there's a reason it's important. Um and I think that the jury is still out. Or I I I mean, the jury is a little still out for me. I think I think we haven't made a sweeping um other than Utah, a sweeping change at a governmental level. Um so it's hard to we're still kind of at odds with we not I mean, how many people I feel like even filtering your water in a bigger way has is only just now becoming more of a relevant and prominent thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Trevor Burrus, Jr. But it's so important that we have this education now, right? Because if you're filtering your water, now you know, especially if it has a fluoride filter, okay, you're not getting that. How else are you protecting your teeth? And if you're not filtering your water, you know, making sure that you are aware of how much you're getting and being just cautious that way, especially if you're pregnant. Yeah. I think that's kind of like that sums up. That's my method.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah. And and I also think the the in important component here is vitamins and minerals work very differently in the body. Um minerals are, which fluoride is a mineral, it does not leave the body as easily as vitamins do. So we have to do a lot more when you are in a toxic load of something like zinc or copper or manganese or in this case fluoride. There's a lot of different modalities and methodologies that need to be put into place to get it out of your body. It's not just something, oh, I can leave it, or you know, for vitamin D, for instance, which is a fat-soluble vitamin, you can stop taking it for a while, and eventually your body will probably regulate, right? You don't have to do too much. Minerals will stay in your body unless you do something about it, and usually things like sweating and sauna and you know, other binders can can be supportive for that too. But it's important to realize that it's not as easy to get rid of. Yeah. Yeah. They're a little, they're a little bit um harder in that way. So and and this is education. Remind everybody, you're here to give you information that is actionable and also to give you um to with information comes empowerment to make decisions that are that are better for your health.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah. I think with this, with this myth or method, I think more than anything, it's it's that. It's just this is the information that we have right now. Uh, and make your make your own choice.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

It isn't a myth that it's a problem in toxic quantities, and there are methods to change it. So it's a myth and a method. Here we go. Yeah, exactly. Um we have an incredible episode with Dr. Darshan Shaw upcoming. He, like we said earlier, is incredible, so stay tuned for an dynamic conversation. Aaron Ross Powell I was waiting for you to say incredible again. Incredible, it is incredible. Wonderful. We are honored to have Dr. Darshan Shaw with us today, who is a board-certified trauma surgeon, one of the leading longevity specialists globally. Um, you're the founder and CEO of Next Health, which is a longevity optimization uh practice. You uh hopcast called um Extend. And you also have an upcoming book coming out called Your Next Your Next Health Optimization, I believe, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:28

It's called Your Health OS, yeah. Your new health OS.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Amazing. We it's truly an honor to have you here. We we couldn't be more pleased.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

Thank you. It's so great to finally put some faces to the email names.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Finally, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

And I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Well, we're also lucky because Dr. Shaw, you work with us uh more like professionally outside of the podcast as well. And so I've had the opportunity to, yes, harass you via email many a times to just you know pick your brain and do and especially as it relates to what you're doing with Next Health, because you guys are just blowing up.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Thank you. Yeah, we we have 15 locations now. We'll have like probably 25 by the end of the year, and we're just gonna keep going. You know, we we love it. We have locations all over the United States and Canada and and uh actually Dubai as well. So yeah, we're we're international now.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Aaron Powell I mean people love it. And that and you're making, you know, a lot of these things that seem, you know, difficult to find relatively easy outside of your door, you know?

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Yeah. We're trying to make it so much more accessible. You know what I found was that I hear about a lot of things, like on podcasts, about you know, for my Instagram feed. And when I was going through my own health journey, I didn't have a place to go to like do all these things. So I had to piece it together in LA that takes hours and hours of driving, you know? And so I just wanted to put it all under one roof and make it like guided for people, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

It's a playground for me. I was gonna say for for both of us. Uh can you, for our listeners who maybe aren't as familiar with Next Health, explain what people get when they come to visit your practices?

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Yeah, so basically I'm a physician and you know I've always had the typical physician office. And I just remember even me walking into my own office, I would just feel like, ugh, like I don't want to be here. You know, it feels like a doctor's office, right? So I'm like, how do we do this completely differently? And it's basically the anti-doctor's office or the opposite of a doctor's office right now. It's a place you want to be. It's super inviting, it's warm, it's beautiful. There's things you can actually do right there. Um and so a lot of people call it like the Apple store of health and wellness.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

And basically It's also light and bright like an Apple store.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Yeah. Yeah. So you want to be there, and we want people to come in every week to do all the different therapies that we have. Um basically what Next Health is at its core, a health optimization and longevity center. That's what we call it. Our whole mission in life is to reverse chronic disease and keep you so healthy you never get one in the first place. It means starting early, it means monitoring frequently, and it means doing things on a regular basis, like making good habits that lead to an accumulation of good health over time, which is the opposite of what we're doing right now in society, which is doing, you know, eating ultra-processed food, sleeping five hours a night, going out late and drinking alcohol and eating all the things, those accumulate into chronic disease, right? And we want people to accumulate healthy habits that turn into a lifetime of health.

unknown 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Well, I'm I'm gonna go right into something controversial here. Yeah, sure. Because I'm a big fan of Next Health. I'm I'm a user myself. Um and I I will say it's it's not cheap. It's not cheap. So how do we make this type of access to these incredible preventative tools, you know, to everybody? And and let me also just add, like, you guys have these super cool executive physicals. Those are like $15,000. And so like, how do we how do we bring this to everybody?

SPEAKER_03 18:02

So you know, one of the biggest goals I have is to bring it to everybody. And so recently we just launched a much more affordable membership. It's $99 a month. Oh wow. And then you get access to our medical providers. Yeah, that's good. We do quarterly testing on you, and you can use some of our devices. So at least you get someone checking with you, checking on you, looking at your blood work, educating you, and then you have someone you could reach out to. So then our team is always there for you in for $99 a month. And I think it's a game changer for people. We have so many people taking advantage of this. And obviously, like, you know, insurance should cover this, but they don't. But the nice thing is we can get it covered by your HSA plan. Yeah. And so, yeah. So a lot of people have, you know, $100 a month that they have locked away in their HSA plan. So it's a really good use of it because it gives you a medical provider and testing and some access to technology that you wouldn't normally have.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

And also these are these are preventive uh preventive type of labs that could be saving you lots of money in the long run, but if you catch these things early. Um I I'm curious to know uh based on your experience, what uh types of labs you think are most useful to people to catch some of these and I everyone is is unique and personalized, obviously it's not, but do you have do you have some tried and true you must get this type of exam, you know, as a baseline measure?

SPEAKER_03 19:24

So first of all, let me just kind of like say laboratory work, there's thousands of different blood markers and urine markers and genetics that you can get, right? And traditional medicine is focused on diagnosing you with a disease. In fact, there's really important markers that are available that because there's no pharmaceutical agent to treat that marker, doctors don't check it. But that's a problem because you can affect those markers with your lifestyle, okay? So if you really look at what are the most important markers that you should measure, they're actually pretty different than what your traditional like primary care would measure, okay? And there is some overlap. But what I really look at is what are the root causes of why we get disease in the first place? Okay, so these are metabolic disease, inflammation, high levels of cardiovascular risk, and hormone dysregulation. Those are like four of seven categories that we look at. So to answer your question, some of the most important markers to check early and frequently are hemoglobin A1C and fasting insulin for metabolic health.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Um, by the way, just for our listeners that may not be familiar with those, are measuring primarily your blood sugar.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Exactly. How your body is handling blood sugar, okay, from day to day. And what happens over time, hemoglobin A1C is a perfect example. That's a three-month average of your blood sugar. And that creeps up over decades. So 5.2 is normal, 5.7 is prediabetes, 6.5 is diabetes. That's how doctors diagnose you with diabetes and start putting you on medication, insurance starts paying for the medication. But like I said, it takes decades to go from 5.2 to 6.5. So why would you not want to know early when you can reverse it by changing your lifestyle? So that's one of them. Um and then on the inflammation side of things, we have highly sensitive C reactive protein. That's a measure of how hard your immune system is working. When it's over one or two, it means you're in a chronic inflammatory state, and you want to do something about that. Usually it's coming from the gut, and we want to help you fix your gut. Thirdly, we talked about hormone deficiencies and dysregulation, like we were talking about earlier. This is happening younger and younger in people's lives. And we need to know like what is your testosterone, what is your estrogen? These are really important markers for both men and women. Way before you're talking about menopause or even like menopause, which is andropause. You should measure as early as you can and make sure these are staying at an optimal level.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

And are you with specifically those hormone tests, are you looking at people's change over time? Is that as important as just that static number? Or what are you seeing there?

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Trending is the most important thing. Everyone's bioindividual, which means looking at one snapshot, that might actually be like the right place for you. And we don't know unless we look at trends, okay? And so um we like to measure these, we call this the baseline blood test, it's about 50 different markers in it. We measure that every quarter on all of our members, and we look at the trend line, where are things trending? Now, is more than just blood tests, we're also looking at physical measurements such as your body mass um measurements, like your skeletal muscle mass, your body fat. We're looking at your grip strength, for example. There's different measures that we're also adding to this kind of like suite of testing that we do every quarter for our members.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Your strength is important. Also, it seems like I think for those watching um in our world, in the functional medicine world, there are differences between um the ranges that a Western doctor lab might give you. There are much wider ranges that are looking at everybody in the population, versus what it seems like you guys are doing very well is narrowing that down into the what the functional ranges are of those particular, meaning what are what are the even narrower optimal ranges? And if e you might not be out of range from a Western perspective on some of these markers, but if you track them over time and see the trends inching in a particular direction, you can make change quicker and faster and and more effectively.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Yeah, Melanie, that's think that's exactly what we're doing. Like we want to know when things are headed in the wrong direction. I always say like if the Titanic gets there. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If the Titanic had gotten one degree in a different direction, it would have not only not hit the iceberg, it would have ended up in a different continent, right? And so like it's just about micro changes that happen sooner rather than later. That's all you gotta do. And you don't know unless you know by looking under the hood by checking these markers.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I love that analogy of the Titanic. I will be stealing that one. Um in my pre-sear show research, I did find a stat that I thought was really interesting about what you guys have found with your executive physicals. Thirty-five percent of patients who have previously undetected potentially life-threatening conditions were found. Yep. That's right. One out of every three, yep. Which is a huge number.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

So basically what we're saying is that people who have gotten these tests come out finding something actually pretty huge that they're these are exec physicals, which are pretty in-depth.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Like we're doing MRIs, we're doing some pretty significant testing. So what are you finding? Are these like these are life-threatening? What are these common things or maybe not so common things that you're you're finding?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Aaron Powell Yeah, I mean the common things are what we find commonly. So if you go to the CDC's website, they will list for you the top ten causes of death from both men and women. They're pretty much similar. Number one is heart attack, right? The saddest statistic about heart attacks is that 50% of people don't even know they have heart disease until their first heart attack. And 50% of those people die from that first heart attack.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

That seems uh crazy.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

But is it because like no one's going to the doctor? Unfortunately, like the way we think about how we should prevent heart disease and how to diagnose it is still stuck in 1980. We look at risk factors. So we're like, oh, did you have a primary degree relative that had a heart attack? Okay, that's a risk factor. Now, what's your cholesterol level? That's another risk factor. And that's it. And if you have those two things, then we're like, okay, let's watch you carefully and let's treat your cholesterol with a statin. That's how things are done. Right. The reality is we've been able to look at your heart to see what's actually going on for decades now. We can do what's called a coronary calcium scan, which is one of the scans available in our executive physical, to tell us whether or not your your blood vessels are getting blocked by these things called plaques, right? Right. Now, what's important to realize is plaques is more than just high cholesterol. There's inflammation, there's how much wear and tear is on your arteries from high blood pressure, overtraining. Like, you know, people that you would never assume are at risk for heart disease, athletes, are some of the people with the most amount of plaque in their arteries. Yeah. It's from wear or tear from over te overtraining with their arteries, right? So my my point is like you have to look at the heart. And these scans have been available for decades, but we don't use them on people. Another reason that is really Is that a cost thing? Yes. It's a cost thing because insurance doesn't pay for it. Right. So it's cost about it only costs like $150 to get one of these scans. If everyone knew about it, they'd be doing them because why would you want to like wait till you have a heart attack, right? Right. Or why would you want to even be put on the statin if you have no heart disease and you only have a slightly elevated cholesterol? That's the other thing, right? So it goes both ways.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

And especially when it's impacting so many people. Like it's it's almost a crime that this isn't getting covered. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Yeah. I mean I mean dietitians aren't also covered and must be diagnosed, so it's uh another crime. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Exactly. It's it's just mind-blowing, right? It's wild. And then people always ask, like, you know, why does insurance not cover this? How are we going to fix this? And what I always tell people is, look, like we built this trillion-dollar incredibly advanced system for a reason, is to save our life, and we need our life saved. It's not to prevent disease or to reverse chronic disease. And so just give up on this system trying to cover it. Okay. There's HSA plans that are like a move in the right direction, but that's about it. And so what next health is is a creation of a new system that is focused on your health that we're trying to, you know, make as big as possible so that we can reduce costs so more people can have a new system that is health focused. And then this other system, which is hospitals and insurance, that's there for like if you have a heart attack, if you get diagnosed of stage three or four cancer, if you get hit by a bus, that's great. That's thank goodness we have that system.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

If you have an acute care that needs immediate action, we have we have a system for you. Exactly. We live in the chronic care 90% of the time.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

Yeah, we wait for chronic care to then turn into a bad problem, and then that's where people end up finally using their insurance. But you have to think about creating a new system or participating in a new system like we have a next health that will prevent you from ever getting that in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Aaron Powell So what about the pe the the unfortunate few that don't have a Next Health in their city? What would you recommend for them?

SPEAKER_03 28:07

Aaron Ross Powell So number one, what I would say is understand your own biology, right? And so how do you do that? Understand what are the some of these critical biomarkers. There's only about 10 or 15 of them. It's not like there's hundreds of them. And so what I want people to do is, you know, just like if you're a CEO and you're running a business, there are things called KPIs, key performance indicators, right? If you're an influencer or if you're a podcaster, you're like number of listeners, right? Or if you own a business, you're like, what's my revenue, what's my profit? Like you're following numbers every day of your life anyway. Follow some for your body. Okay. Know what they are. Know what your hemoglobin A1C is, know what your HSC, HSCRP, APO B. So I have a guide for people. Um, if you go to drshaw.com/slash biomarkers, you can download a free guide for what are these top 15 biomarkers, what's the optimal range, like you were saying, Melanie, and how do you get it back into optimal? And that's what you have to do. Yeah, just ask your doctor for them. You can go to any lab and get them for like less than 100 bucks. You can just walk into a lab and say, I want these 15. They're like, okay, 100 bucks, and I'll get them to you. There's a lot of online services now that do this. So you know, anyone can do this now.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

My follow-up question has to be, because I know, I know you work with function health without your association with them. Do you think that that's necessary?

SPEAKER_03 29:25

I think that's a good thing to do once a year. Like you don't need to do that every quarter, you know. But once a year is not enough to m watch what your biology is doing because you want to tackle it before it takes a yeah, and you want to know if you're doing the right things before another year goes by, right? A year is a long time. All of those markers are great, maybe once a year, to really understand kind of like big picture, like diagnosing everything. But and you know, some people want to do it twice a year. It's just completely up to you. That's a lot of blood that's being taken. It's not as easy.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, and it's expensive, right? So like if if somebody's like, oh, I don't know, like, is this where I should be investing my health dollars? You know, I've I've budgeted this much for my health, and hopefully people are putting a nice chunk aside to help with preventative health. But is that what you would say, like make sure that you do one of these a year? Or do you think it's like if you can do it once a year?

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I would say you know the price has been driven down by just the scale of it. It's $365 a year now.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

So, you know, it's a little bit more affordable than it used to be like $600 or something like that, right? So I would say if you can afford it to do a big panel once a year. Yeah, if you can.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I get nerdy on them. I just like to see how I do like year over year.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There is only but you also care. I mean, obviously you're a longevity expert yourself and you care about those biomarkers. I think the the thing that is interesting to me is why would you and hopefully you're not, but you can't use laboratory testing like any other biohack type of uh you know optimization tool. You have to actually do something about it. It's like it's it's information that then leads you to taking an action. Exactly. So what what would you say in your practice is the action or or a a primary action that you have people start from? I mean, it's because I'm sure you see a range of people, the the the real biohackers and then people that are really maybe new to this world. So what what are some of the things that you you like to address?

SPEAKER_03 31:19

Aaron Ross Powell Well, and this is where it's so important to find a practitioner that'll work with you on this, that really understands functional medicine, that really understands like what's a priority and what you need to really focus on. So what I would say is it's very individualized, right? So say we'll keep going back to hemoglobin A1C. If your hemoglobin A1C is off and you're trending in the wrong direction, we are for sure gonna pair you with a nutritionist, for example. We're also gonna have you potentially get a continuous glucose monitor, right? I think those those, you know, metabolic disease is such a huge foundation of chronic disease that you have to attack it early and soon and get into good habits around getting that treated. Otherwise, you will end up with diabetes and you will end up with a higher risk of Alzheimer's and heart disease, all of it, right? So I would say those are some primary actions we take, and we take this on a lot of people because 90% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Like 93, I think.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

It's it's like it's crazy. Yeah, it's just the top killers of Americans in Western cultures are preventable through diet and lifestyle. And no one's we're always still trying to get to that quick fix pill or or supplement or whatever to to fix it. But it gets back to the basics. It really, really does, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Yeah, like we were going back to like what are the biggest killers? Like they're all stuff that's preventable with with lifestyle, right? And so it's like I think number two is Alzheimer's disease, third is cancer, specifically late stage cancer, there's liver disease, kidney disease. All of these things will take your life. But these are all chronic conditions that occur over time, right? And they're highly preventable for the most part.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Alzheimer's and um heart disease are both like very tightly tied to glucose imbalances. So it's not glucose, they they told they coined Alzheimer's as type three diabetes because it's so closely linked to glucose irregularities and imbalances. So it's not just, you know, you have you're testing your HBA1C to prevent diabetes, you're also optimizing your, you know, the prevention of these other brain-related conditions, heart-related conditions. It's so closely linked.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

We did totally jump over our very first question that we like to start with. That's true. Let's go back and dove right on in. Yeah. Because we we got so excited. Um so the first question that we like to ask our guests is what is the longevity hill you will die in? What that means is what is a message that you think isn't being shouted loud enough, isn't being listened to enough that that you really want the world to hear?

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Aaron Powell Yeah, Renee, you know, we touched on it a little bit earlier. It is people are always looking for a quick fix, the one pill, the one you know, biohack, like should I go out there and buy a red light bed? It's not that. It really is coal plunge, right? It really is a foundation of a daily habit. Okay. And so um I'm a huge believer in having a morning routine or some sort of routine in your life that covers three basic fundamentals. One is movement, okay, another one is mindset. And thirdly, we want to cover your overall spirit and purpose in life, you know. And so if you can, if you can put those together, you're gonna you're gonna really start your day off correctly. So, for example, mine, what it includes is every morning I wake up, I do a quick 15-minute workout, no matter what. It's usually a strength training workout followed by a sprint. Then for my brain health, I'm doing a meditation breath work session. And then lastly, for my spirit and my purpose, I fill out a journal called the five-minute journal. And that's it. The whole thing takes me 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes a morning. And it's like win every single day that keeps me headed in the right direction. I started off, you know, 12 years ago being 50 pounds overweight with 10 prescription medications and five chronic diseases and autoimmune disease. And I think the one thing that changed everything for me was getting into a daily routine.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Wow. And and my favorite part about your daily routine is that it's like 45, maybe 30 minutes. It doesn't have to be so scary and extensive. I mean, I I I do like my 45 to 60 minute workouts most days, but some days I don't I just can't do it, and then I feel bad. I know. And so like if I just set the bar just maybe closer to the 15 and just just get that in every day, and then on the days where I can do 60, great. I think I think we need to be nicer to ourselves sometimes a little bit with these types of things.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Or count even the small wins, wins, right? I mean, it's and it's actually that's not a small win. Doing a 45-minute preparation for your day is a huge win. But in terms of the workout component or even like a small meditation or just centering, I mean you're doing your s everyone else around you as you go about your day such a service that you're centered and you feel and also you're aligned from a circadian rhythm perspective, right? You know, as as a as a physician, you're I'm sure you know that you're doing something first thing in the morning to get your metabolism right, your glucose, you know, your cortisol is is now lowered, we're good to go. Like all of these things are so important for to jumpstart your day.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Right, right. And so, you know, you mentioned something about circadian rhythm. If you do your morning routine outside when the sun is first coming up or the sun's ready up, you you cover another, you know, basic there, right? Getting your circadian rhythm set. So there's a lot of like what's called habit stacking that can occur here. And to your point, like even the most minimal adherence to the routine is helpful. So even if you do a five-minute workout, that's better than completely skipping it psychologically, maybe not physiologically, but psychologically, right? And so you did it every day, and that's that that's really powerful that you stuck to it. So, what I do if I only have like 20 minutes, I'll scale back my workout and I'll scale back my breath work session. The breath works that I use is 20 minutes long, I'll scale that back to five minutes. Even my workout, I'll scale back to like 10 minutes, I'll do it at home. If I'm in a hotel room, I'll just do push-ups and squats, and at least I got something done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

So it's not the all or nothing you can do midway. That is okay too. Right, right, right. I'm I'm curious, like if you think back to when you were just starting your morning routine. This was, you know, uh, you know, maybe a couple decades ago, it sounds like when you decade, yeah. Yeah, when you were really just trying to bring this into your your lifestyle, what were the hardest things that you remember and what were some of the the ways that you overcame those things?

SPEAKER_03 37:46

I think the hardest thing about it was that I didn't really know what I should put into a morning routine or why I should even have it. And so I read this book called Hal by Hal Elrond called Miracle Morning. So that really like jumpstart me because I just did his morning routine and it worked great. I mean, I was like, oh, this is awesome. And I think the other second thing was what we already talked about was I kind of like felt guilty if I didn't do the whole thing. And then I'm like, wait a minute, I don't need to do the whole thing, you know, like I can start small and build from there and scale back if I need to. And I got that from James Clear in his book Atomic Habits. So I think, you know, those kind of mindsets, like I really believe one of the first things I talk about with all my patients before we dive into nutrition and biomarkers is let's make you an expert at getting habits together in your life, breaking bad habits, putting together good habits. And so there's a whole science around this. Like, and it's not that complicated. Turns out we're just like like dogs and other mammals, like we're Pavlovian, you know? Like you just give us a reward, you start small, you habit stack, you you know, like all those things, and it works. Yeah, exactly. My reward at the end of my morning routine is a cup of coffee. Yes, and that cup of coffee is so good after I've done my morning routine.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, well deserved, too. I also, you know, this is this is a little bit of a squirrel. We do not have to go down this path, but I find you you you peaked something when I I I work with a lot of patients who when they're learning how to unp to dive into a habit, to make a habit a ritual and really it it is comes back to a self-love, yes, you know, worthiness thing. And you mentioned the perfection component. Like so we live in such a age where you do feel like if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all? And I do think that there is like this this mentality with the convenience world that we live in. It's like, well, if I'm not gonna do it 100%, then I don't know, like it's not worth my time. I don't know. It's an interesting, but it does come back to we talked a little bit about trauma before, but um does come back to self-love. But I do think if you if you do pair back and do something, I'm sure that the self-love is cultivated through the act of just showing up and doing something at all. So it's uh it's like a it's a self-feeding prophecy. If you just put a little bit in, even if it doesn't feel 100%, it eventually becomes, well, you know, I deserve to do it just a little bit too.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah. It's also a a practice of self-compassion, of like being able to tell yourself it's okay. You it's you did great just by doing what you did, you know, by showing up.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

Yeah. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There are many days and sometimes weeks that go by that the only self-love I have time to show myself is my morning routine.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

Right? Think about that. If you don't have that time for yourself, how many days go by, sometimes weeks, especially when you have kids and all this stuff? Like you're constantly giving, giving, giving, giving, and you never have a chance to show yourself some attention, right? And so that's the only time I get it. Yeah. So you have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

In your five-minute journal, are you doing a little bit of gratitude in there? Yep. So that have you ever seen the five-minute journal? It's that yellow little exactly. I actually have one. I have I'm gonna go pull that baby out.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

Yeah. So there's visualization, this gratitude, there's like remembering your day. A lot of times we go through days and we don't remember them, and it makes life go back by too fast, right? And so having some time for reflection is also super important, slows time down. So five minutes a day, get that in.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

I love it. Okay. This this is a very it it's it's logical in my brain, but we have a very big jump in our conversation right now. Um we are living in an AI world. So we are going ever faster. We are speeding at at a a pace that we have not seen before. And it's impacting everyone, but it's especially impacting health. I think that the cool part about just kind of taking us back to Next Health, we have access to so much more information at the speed of what it feels like, the speed of light. How is this impacting your world? And are you excited or are you not excited about this journey forward? That is inevitable, by the way. We can't do anything to stop it. It's here.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

No, it is here and it's just gonna get better and better. So I'm super excited. And I say that for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, I'm still practicing medicine, so I see all sorts of people. I see people that are beginning their health journey and don't even know where to start. I have the biohackers that are addicted to their data. I then have a lot of people in the middle that are just like, a lot of people have data anxiety, right? And a lot of people also don't know where to start and they also don't know where they really want to end, you know? And I think what what AI really does is because it's so intelligent, it can customize the way information is given to you to the way you want to consume it. Okay? So let me tell you what I mean by that. So if you're a person that has data anxiety, for example, you don't have to look at your data. You can have the AI synthesize and give you the information so that the AI is doing that for you. Cliff's notes, exactly. Cliff notes, right. Say you're someone that wants all the data. Well, guess what? The the AI will know, number one, that that's the kind of person you are, and say, here's what I want you to do and why. This is the number that we're trying to affect. So I I really think that like, you know, it's hard for um clinicians to do this with every patient because clinicians don't have the time to really and they don't even know sometimes to ask the questions like, how do you want to hear the information, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:10

And maybe they can't also be giving that information that way. Some people just are like, this is the way it is. And some people are those soft, gentle. And and they can't, you can't change who you are all of the time, too.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Exactly. So that's one reason I like AI, is I can give you the information in the way that you need to hear it. Second reason is it can synthesize a lot of information. So, you know, at Next Health, we're using AI to now synthesize vast amounts of data from wearables, from MRI scans, CT scans, from blood work, from genetics, and put it all together. Now, it's so important to have a human in the loop that's looking at what is being synthesized and what the output is, because you always want to make sure that you have a human that is applying the human factor to this to make sure there's nothing glaringly wrong, right? And then what I would say also that The third way I'm I'm really, really excited about AI is the future of now being able to individualize therapies to your biology, right? We have this whole medical system that uses averages, like we talked about with optimal ranges, right? Same with all the pharmaceuticals. They're all based on like these massive randomized controlled trials, and then whatever works for most people, then we start prescribing it. But we know like medicines have side effects on some people too. So we're gonna be able to, on an N of one basis, meaning you're the only person that the AI cares about, individualized therapies based on what's working for you and what's not working for you. And that's what really like accelerates your position is.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

I mean, so this naturally feeds into the concept of digital twins. I'm familiar with it a little bit, but not enough. I think it's super cool. Can you break down what a digital twin is and how it's going to be used in this sense of medicine?

SPEAKER_03 45:01

So I looked into a I looked into digital twins a lot. Um I just wrote up this book called The New Health OS that's coming out in a few months, and it's all about AI and healthcare. And one of the chapters is about digital twins. And here's how to think about digital twins. Once we have all of your information over time, we know how your body reacts to certain interventions, right? So if you say you're you're like, I'm gonna get a continuous glucose monitor and I'm gonna eat carbs at the end of my meal instead of at the beginning of my meal. And then your data will show how that affects your blood glucose levels, right? Once we have this picture based on thousands of data points for you, we also have that same picture based on thousands of data points for you and you and you, and like hundreds of thousands of people. So then what we can say is your biology is very similar to her biology. She tried a continuous glucose monitor. This is what happened when she did it. Here's what could potentially happen with you if you put carbs at the end of the meal instead of the beginning of the meal. And we can we could actually predict a percent of glucose curve reduction based on what's happened for thousands of people with your genetic profile, with your biomarker profile as to what will happen with you. And so what we're developing um is in a next health is our system will have all your data, and then we could type in, I want to put this person in midform and what will happen. And then we could see your nutrition score, your your phys your muscle score, your gut score. We can see how it would change potentially.

SPEAKER_01 46:36

You don't you no longer have to be the experiment. You can be the final you can be the final product. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

I mean it sounds too good to be true. Like this sounds incredible. And what I understand about AI, it's like the data in is what you get out, right? Like w the if it's garbage in, it's garbage out. So do we have enough starting point, end point data today to say, Renee, we do have a person almost exactly like you that is in all of these ways that is going to do the thing that we think you should do and we know how it's coming out. Do we have that information for most people out there today? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

Renee, unfortunately, what I would say we have a lot less data on women than we'd have on men. Right. Who is shocked?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Who's shocked raisering it?

SPEAKER_03 47:20

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. I mean, you know, we have decades of research that were done on young college males that are mostly Caucasian in the United States, you know, because that's what we did the research on, right? And so we don't have a lot of we don't have as much data as we do on that particular group of people. Yeah. However, what I will say is with AI, we are collecting more data and we are able to now apply more and more studies as time moves on as well. So as humanity continues to study and and do research, and as humanity collects more data, we will keep having more clarity on the data. So I don't think it's garbage in and garbage out right now. I just think that we have enough to make predictions and this will get better and better and better as time moves forward.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Absolutely. That's kind of what I'm getting, is like we gotta start somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

And you know, we we're probably, I would say, in the relatively early phase of this. But it's the beauty of AI is that it's so exponentially quick at learning and collecting and using that it shouldn't be too long before we get to a point where we have this information in a big way.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

This actually brings I'm gonna be devil's advocate for a second, even though we know AI is not going anywhere. What would you say to the people? Because it seems like, you know, obviously AI learns, right? As you mentioned, we were all talking about the, you know, the more data, good at data it has, the better it becomes. What do you say to the people out there because I'm I'm inclined, especially because women don't have as much data, and this has been a problem for a long time, that we need to be putting more data in there. We need to be, let's, let's help it out, let's put more data in there. People are nervous. People get very like, you know, uh gun shy about this concept of sharing data, especially as it comes to biometrics. What do you say to people like that? Is that something that you come across in your practice also?

SPEAKER_03 49:11

Yeah, I mean, definitely you want to be careful with your data, right? You want to make sure your data is anonymized, you want to make sure that it's being used for research and it's not being, you know, not being um used in any untoward ways, right? But what I would say is really your data is so helpful to the progression of this new form of medicine that it would be very beneficial for you to contribute to humanity by donating your data. So I'll give you a perfect example. So um, you know the aura ring, right? Obviously. Yep, there you go. Um, you had to click a little on button to share your data with Aura so it can help predict if you're gonna get COVID or not, right? Right. I participated in that study, and thank goodness I did, because two years later, my aura ring told me that I was about to get COVID, you know? And so it's like it can have that immediate of a consequence now. Right. Right? Right. And so I don't know, I mean, I don't think anyone's used my data for anything incorrect. I I'm sure like you know, Aura is definitely has a massive valuation now because of doing things like this. And I I just feel happy to contribute it to the advancement of this technology, you know.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Call me um irresponsible, but I am so on that same page. I will I'm like g take all of the data I just want to because we also get to learn from it, you know. If somebody tries to take it, I mean, uh I don't know. What are they gonna do with it? I I don't plan on murdering anybody. You know how the people were like talking about giving their DNA to devices and then, well, you better hope you don't get caught doing something because now that everything's also like, well, there let's hope they catch me anyway.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

I was doing something terrible. Um So what what would you say in the AI world is exciting you the most? Like is there is are there some upcoming I mean this world feels like it's so fast that I mean even man, like last year I feel like we it was a completely different decade. But here we are, we're moving very quickly. What it what's exciting you the most from what you I mean, you have this book out, what what is it? What is upcoming?

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Aaron Ross Powell, there's two things that are really exciting. One is how this will completely change individual health care, because everyone cares about their own health for the most part, right? But they don't have access to the tools and the data necessary to really move the needle. Now you will have as much access as you want and is really now under your control to get your health going in the right direction. So I think for the first time in history, we're gonna see a reversal of chronic disease trends. I think for the first time in history, heart disease will actually come down in cause of death from number one to maybe number two within the next five years. All right. And that's extremely exciting because it's coming down because everything else is coming down. But we have the most visibility into cardiovascular disease. Okay. And so I think it's gonna it's gonna once you see cardiovascular disease go from one to two, you know we've made massive progress. Okay? Secondly, what I would say is um in science. So in science, we're gonna be able to apply artificial intelligence and um just massive amounts of data collection to move the needle for new therapies that are gonna be coming out. So um the CEO of NVIDIA, who makes all the chips for AI, someone asked him a few months ago at UC Berkeley, a student asked him, like, what are you most excited about in AI? And so my answer is the same as his, because he's the smartest man in the world, so I'll just give him his answer. He said for the first time in human history, we're gonna be able to take biology and use computing power and bring those two things together so our biology becomes an engineering problem, not something that's like, you know, in the ether, like it's so random that we don't even know how it's gonna react, you know? Yeah. Now it becomes an engineering problem. So with engineering problems like building a skyscraper, for example, you can predict exactly what you need to do to keep that skyscraper standing, right? We're gonna have the same level of information and ability to use computing power to affect our cellular biology. And that's incredibly exciting because now we can really push the needle forward at a cellular level. I'll give you one example just real quick. So have you heard of the Yamanaka factors?

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Yes, briefly. But please share with it. We have not.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

I'll give you the quick the quick um two-minute version of the Yamanaka factors that everybody needs to know. This is so important, okay? He will die on the cell as well. So the Yamanaka factors are four proteins that if you put them on any cell of your body, so if you take a cell from you, like a skin cell or a cheek cell, and we put it into a petri dish and put these four proteins in there, that cell can turn backwards all the way to our pluripotential stem cell. These are the cells that make your entire human body, okay? These are your cells in your embryo that turn into you. Okay? So we have these four factors, and Dr. Yamanako won a Nobel Prize for discovering this like a decade ago. So why haven't we able to use that? Why haven't we able to grow organs? Why haven't we able to cure, you know, um uh ALS? Like why? Well, because they only work 0.0001% of the time, number one, and number two, they're really hard to um to produce, right? So using artificial intelligence now in 2026, OpenAI did a collaborative project with some scientists up in the San Francisco area called Retro Biosciences. And what they've done is use AI to reform these four protein factors in a way that, number one, the rate of success is much, much higher by orders of magnitude. And secondly, they're able to be controlled. So these four factors, when you put them together, like you know, you can't control it. You go straight from like a cheek cell all the way to pluripotential stem cell. Now they can control how far back it goes. So we can actually like grow an organ without it turning into a pluripotential stem cell. Okay? So that's massively powerful because now we can control. I want you to become a nerve cell, I want you to become a liver cell, I want you to become a myocardial cell. And this has happened so fast. It's happened in two years. Okay? And they're already in clinical trials in Australia for for multiple disease conditions to use these Yamanaka factors to treat disease. And so this is only possible because biology has not become an engineering problem that we can help use AI to solve.

SPEAKER_00 55:48

That's so cool. It's so cool. But okay, so forgive my very basic knowledge of AI because I'm over here chat GPTing and clotting and whatever. Is that a word? Um, what were these these scientists that were taking these Yamanaka factors and they're like, okay, we need to make them better for our utility? Are they going into Claude and they're like, how do I make these better? Like what how are they using AI to get the answers they need?

SPEAKER_03 56:14

Yeah. So what they're doing basically is they're utilizing AI to reform these proteins. So proteins are are very complicated molecules. And if you change one little structure on them, they refold a little bit differently, and then they react a little bit differently with your cellular machinery. And that tiny difference makes a massive difference. Yeah. I'll give you another example of that. So GLP1s, right? Semaglutide, truseptide, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And the new retta, they probably started playing around with that too.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

Exactly. So, you know, we make GLP1s. We've known that these things existed in our human body for decades. But the problem with human GLP1s is that they only last a few minutes, okay, in our body. But what an AI model discovered was that there's another GLP1 that's made by the Gila monster that could actually last a week in a human cell. That was discovered by an AI model. Wow. Right. So when it found this specific GLP1 from a Gila monster and said, hey, wait a minute, if you form, if you take this protein and apply it to a human cell, this is what's going to happen differently. It'll last a lot longer. That was the key discovery that made semaglutide. Wow. Yeah. And so that and so this is a very good example of using our natural biological signals, modifying them to do what we want them to do.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. So I mean, it it is still about asking the AI the right question and training the model in the right way to say, this is what we're hoping to find. This is what we know, run with it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 57:45

In some ways, but this is actually a little bit of a different AI model that is specifically programmed on protein folding. And so it's very a mathematical model on what would happen if you fold a protein differently and the different atomic forces that come to play when you change one atom in a protein molecule.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

So it's kind of like a digital twin of the protein molecule where they're like, let's try every version of folding and see what happens. See what works. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Cool. Very cool. You know what? I mean we we've been we are souls living in human bodies and we're perfecting this human body. We're more our bodies are now becoming this, you know, we're engineering and we can fix all these things, and now it's it it reminds me of of when our society discovered farming for the first time and we finally were able to like designate a a certain few people instead of the entire population going finding their own food. Now we have like, you know, a handful of people making their own food. This is feels like that same pivotal moment where all of our time is being freed up. Like we don't have to focus as much in the very near future on figuring out our human body because we're basically in this like, you know, simulated model, if you will, that can figure it out for you. Now we can focus on our soul purpose and like what we're here to do and like making people's lives better. I don't know. It's a very interesting like with all this free we're gonna be having a lot of free time open up to us. I think that's kind of or be more efficient with our time. Yeah. But I mean, if you're think of how much of our energy and our time is spent on our physical experience. I think that's that's that's where my brain goes. It's like we spend so much time aching and painting and taking these things, and we're gonna have so much time opened up because we're gonna in a optimal world be functioning optimally and with m so much more ease. So what are we gonna be doing now with okay, now it's all about our heart and our purpose and you know, living to the fullest. And what are we gonna do with this time? That's where it's like the similar time.

SPEAKER_03 59:49

Yeah, I think about time loop. I agree with you totally. Like I just think that like, you know, you're right, we spend a lot of time worrying about our health. And then when you get sick, you spend all your time worrying about your health, right? Life stops. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right, exactly. Confucius said it, right? He's like um a healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man wants only one thing, right? And then then you end up like your whole life is focused on your cancer or your heart disease or whatever. And it's very stressful and is sad, and we live in a state of like constant fear sometimes, you know, of this? And so you're right. It frees up our mental space to the time is a long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

Yeah. Yeah. No. Just crazy. What are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:30

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

What are we gonna do? Well, I mean, we're right now, everyone is just spending a lot of time talking to AI. So I'm super like I mean, I certainly am. I'm a I'm a very avid user of uh Claude and Chat GPT. I play around with both. I know there's a lot of other models out there, but I'm still like just I'm working on those two. I I started playing around with um the the claw.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:57

Yeah, open claw.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

Open claw. I mean, there's just so much going on out there. So my question is if for for our listeners out there that are using a lot of these tools are like fully free and they're playing around with it, what kind of questions do they do you think that they should be asking those AI bots about their health and how much should they trust that information?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

Yeah. And so what I would say is, you know, giving the AI your health data and giving it context is really important. So you want to upload your latest biomarkers, you want to tell it who you are, you know, what your risk factors are. You want to also um enable the AI with your symptoms as well. And then once you get all that data in there, then you can start asking it questions about you know, what is my metabolic health like, what's my inflammation like, et cetera. So the reality of the situation is if you don't know what you don't know, it's gonna be hard to ask the right questions, right? And so what I what I've done is I put this together, and and we're gonna launch this with the book into a dashboard of your health to tell you here are the things that you need to know about from a root cause perspective, here's what you can do about it, and all you have to do is give it your data. So you can give it your data from Next Health, from Function Health, from everything that you have. You just email it to the system, it'll put into a secure HIPAA compliant box for you, and then you can go in there, it'll tell you what you need to know, how you're doing, and track you over time, including your wearables. And so we're launching that with a book as well, and it's gonna be a game changer for people.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

That's it's so cool the way that we are we're just building all of these agents and these tools that can help us. I mean, at Prolon now we have the the we're building an AI agent that's going to help people ask questions about how to what they should be doing when it comes to fasting, fasting, mimicking, longevity, how they should be doing when they you know, you're going through this five-day protocol. You hit day three and you immediately are like, uh, you know, I I I'm a little bit struggling. Struggling, what do I do? And then you get an answer in your palm. I mean, this is going to completely revolutionize so many areas of health. And I am I'm stoked for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

I have a I have a selfish question for you. Healthcare practitioner to healthcare practitioner. Where do you see healthcare like physical human healthcare practitioners moving in the future? I mean, there's so much that is going to change drastically in the next couple of years for practicing practitioners. So where do you see us living? There is going to be a human touch, I think, regardless. There has to be. But I'm just curious your thoughts.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:31

Yeah, I really think that we are going to finally be able to have the time and the space to do things right the way we want to do them, you know? And so I think right now there's so many patients and there's so much pressure to see them fast and 10, 15-minute appointments, and you know, you really don't get the chance to like really focus. And I I think that, you know, a lot of times you're starting with ground zero with people, and so it takes a lot of time to educate them up. And so people are gonna come in more educated, people are gonna be less sick, and that just gives more space and time for practitioners. Like there's a massive practitioner shortage right now, like orders of magnitude. So I don't think you know practitioners are gonna be out of a job anytime soon. Yeah. It's just gonna be, you know, um a rethinking about the role and the amount of time each practitioner gets with a person. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

Again, it's uh to me, it's all about efficiency. Did you ever read uh Deep Medicine by Eric Topol?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Aaron Powell I I'm reading his latest book, but no, I have not read Deep Medicine.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

Yeah, it's uh I mean it's it's worth reading, but it came out like five, six years ago now. So it's a little bit older, but um that was when I was in my AI time, and I was really interested because he talks a lot about at that time the use of AI for imaging. And so like radiologists were really starting to get a little bit worried because that we were starting to see that the AI was doing better than they were. But really, you know, there was still error in the AI, and you know, grant granted, less than the humans, but the humans still would have to review and make sure that it was done correctly. So like there's there still needs to be some oversight, some sign-off, and so it just means that they can look at a lot more x-rays or whatever they're looking at faster. You know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Yeah. And I think, you know, that there's um something spreading all over the internet right now about this doctor um who runs a big medical system that's like, I'm not gonna use radiologists anymore to save money. And I do think I obviously there's legal ramifications to that, right? So I don't know if you can really do that, but I do think there's a world where radiologists are no longer read it n necessary. Yeah. And I think that's fine, actually. I think it's fine because those same doctors can do something else in medicine that is more valuable than sitting there in front of a screen looking at x rays all day long. Yeah. And I think thank God we've had radiologists for as long as we have. But there's so much use better use cases for human um brain power than sitting in front of a screen looking at TVs all day and films all day.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Yeah. It's crazy, crazy times. I guess uh to flip that question on its head, is there anything that you don't think AI should be doing, at least uh today? Good question.

unknown 1:06:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:25

Yeah, but I I I do think today prescribing pharmaceuticals, I think that's a huge like block. So if you're with an AI and that AI says you should think up you should start taking Prozac. I don't know. Absolutely not. Like don't just order it from some online pharmacy or whatever. Really go see a practitioner before you uh start putting any like you know drugs in your body. So that's one thing. But other other than that, I mean I I do think that like you just have to be a smart human and not just blindly follow any advice. Certain advice is gonna be universal, right? Like obviously, like don't eat ultra-processed food and exercise more. You can't go wrong with that, right? But um yeah, I I mean I just think that that's where I kind of draw the line is actually human intervention needs to proceed like therapeutic intervention.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:11

Do you feel the same way about supplementation?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:14

Uh you know, I think supplementation for sure, um that there's a world where AI can make some good choices, but you always want to weigh the like risk benefit of something. So something is a supplement is risky, which there are supplements that are risky out there, right? You just really want to make sure that you're talking to a practitioner before the before you listen to the AI and that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

Also, the practitioner is now your partner. I think that's the other thing to people forget that practitioners exist because they're a partner in your life to help see you through. And now if you have somebody that is tracking you also, you're not the only one. Like help health is uh one message that I have for for patients and people around the world is like your health isn't in a silo and it should it is it takes a village to keep one person well, and I think AI is gonna be filling in a lot of gaps, but putting that on somebody else and saying, okay, I want you also to keep track of this and to measure it and keep on track. That's a a weight off of my shoulders when I know that I have uh another set of eyes, another pair of eyes on me, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:13

Exactly. Yeah, and I'm I'm a big believer in having a health team. And AI is one member of the team. Yeah. You have a nutritionist, you have your physician, you know, you have a therapist, which I think is also really important, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

And physical yeah, heckness. I love how you pointed at me when you said that. Running the therapist of the mind. No, I need it.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:33

No, but I said that because you know we've been talking about like you know, the traumas that we have. Yeah, yeah. Everyone needs a therapist to like at least get a baseline on themselves, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

So I'm a b I'm a big fan of therapy. Big fan of therapy. We have one final question for you, which is very important. We need to know what's on the horizon, what's coming up for you next. What are you what are you looking forward to for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:57

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, there's a few things. One is um I have this book coming out, your new Health OS, and a new software platform coming out for people to use. Um, and then also that'll be coming out this summer. Also simultaneously, Next Health is expanding to many more cities all over the world. It will also be enabled with this new software platform. So I'm just like looking at continuing to democratize health optimization and health span optimization and reversal of chronic disease. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. We're so grateful to you, Dr. Prevention needs to be for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:34

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. I I I think it's time. You know, I've been in medicine for 30 years now. I was part of the Western medicine system for 20 years. Yeah. And it serves its purpose for sure, but there's 90 percent of people that is not helping. And it's just letting those people sit there, develop disease until it can use that system, and that's so backwards. Yeah. So I'm really happy to be creating something that can reverse that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:59

Yeah. And that's why you were we didn't even call this out in your bio, but honored longevity dock of the year last year. I mean I mean, again, truly well deserved. So we're we're very grateful to have you here. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:11

Yes, yes. Okay. Now we're going to our mailbag. Okay. So we have we we we prompted you we we have um questions that we have for I mean they could technically be for anybody in the bunch, but we have um our our listeners have sent in questions that they're really interested in and getting answered. So we try to use the last couple minutes of our show to answer these live.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

So, Renee, do you want to kick us off? I most certainly do. Okay, so question number one. Everyone is talking about peptides. I know there are a lot of different ones. How do I figure out which ones I should use, if any? Should everyone be taking peptides of some sort? That's such a loaded question. I know, and there's like six questions in here.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:50

Peptides should be. So I'll give you the two-minute overview on peptides. Everyone needs to know. Number one, not all peptides are created equal, meaning the in quality and where they come from. Okay, so I think we're at a moment in time that everyone knows that they should not be using research-use peptides that are not prescribed for you, that you just buy off the internet. Those come in huge VATs from other countries, and they're just like shoveled into a little vial and sent to you with a sticker. You can get infections, you don't know what's in them, they're not third-party tested, et cetera. So please buy your peptides from a provider that is prescribing them from a legitimate 503A compounding pharmacy. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

503A pharmacy. Can you just ask your prescriber is it 503A?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:36

Exactly. Just say, does this come from a compounding pharmacy, right? And is it third-party tested? Are you very comfortable with the source of these peptides? Now that's step one. Now, obviously, those are for the peptides that are not FDA approved. FDA approved peptides like semaglutide, trzepit, et cetera. Retitrutide is not FDA polluted yet, but it will be.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:57

I think I saw there's only like 80 FDA-approved peptides.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

Those peptides, I think, that you're talking about are the ones that the FDA is looking at allowing compounding pharmacies to make without restriction, right? So there's only a few peptides that are FDA approved. Those are the GLP ones. Yeah. Insulin is another one. There's um there's a couple of others. But those are made in very strict pharma conditions, okay? And so those are going to be for sure effective, but obviously they're also very expensive, right? Yeah. So I would just say just be very cognizant about the quality and the source and make sure you're working with a practitioner who's watching your biomarkers. There's so many online services selling peptides. You just want to make sure there's don't go rogue.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

Yeah, don't go rogue. Don't go rogue. Don't go rogue. Are there any peptides that you know, like we're hearing there's like some big ones that we hear right now, like BPC 157, um the the copper skin health. Are there any of them that you're like this one I feel like has a lot of research and probably should be used more frequently, or all of them really should be taken very cautiously?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:04

Aaron Powell I would say in the longevity doctor community, there's five or six of them that are considered um like core peptides that we're using a lot of. Those are BPC157, damagin alpha, TB500, MOTC, um all of the GLP1 peptides like RETA and um semaglutide and terzepitide. There's also um GHKCU, the copper peptide you're talking about. Those are like the six or seven that I think that are out there that through a combination of the small studies that are done and studies from other countries and also anecdotal experience, we know we have a really good feeling about these, that they're really moving the needle for people. I could tell you, like I use them on myself and my patients, and I see benefits, right? And obviously they don't have the same level of research that pharma agents do, just because no one just you just don't have the money to do that level of research.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

Yeah, and it's new. And they're also, you know, from what I can tell, the the peptides are being used especially to treat specific people. They're not being used to optimize or prevent or et cetera. So you know, we're it it'll be a while, I think, before we have that. So I guess if if somebody wanted to work with a practitioner to get peptides, where would they find the practitioner that would that they can trust? Yeah, I mean there's a next up. This is what we do, right? It's cheated of so good.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:31

Okay, you've got to take number two. I do. There's a lot of pushback on coal plunging. I made a joke about it earlier. Um how does that relate to cryotherapy? Is it also bad? To give you context, there have been some research, some um intel recently that have said that, especially for women, that cool plunging isn't necessarily a good thing. Um cryotherapy does use dry uh cold air rather than a plunge in water. So do you have any any either of you want to take this?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

This is this could be you. I'm happy to I'll I'll top off on what you say. Yeah, because you guys have cryo as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:06

So what I would say is that it's very N of one. Okay. What I mean by that is that there are some people that coal plunging helps them decrease inflammation, gives them a sense of like um euphoria, it replaces caffeine, and they're truly able to regulate their nervous system before they go in, and they use it as a um mechanism for practicing nervous system regulation. What I mean by that is before they go in, they calm their nerves, they get in, do breath work. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

Tap in.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:39

And if you use it in that way, over a period of time, you become a master nervous system regulator, which increases your HRV, right? Yeah. And so those could be all the potential benefits. However, if you're the one that is freaking out for the moment you get in, and when you get in, you're just like, I can't wait to get out of here, and your like nervous system goes out of control, it's probably a net negative than it is for your net positive, right? And so it's really just about um who you are and how you're performing the entire act. It's not just about getting in and getting out, it's what you're doing before and during with your nervous system that makes a huge difference. And it's one more thing, as far as like um cryotherapy versus cold plunging, cold plunging meaning you're using water, cryotherapy meaning you're getting into a chamber, that it's like um there's no water involved. It's just more comfortable to do it with cryotherapy than it is with cold plunge. But it's probably the same group of like potential benefits and negatives.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:33

Yeah. I appreciate that it's like a mental, it's a mental thing. I talk about this with di digesting food. If you go into a meal stressed and chaotic, your digestive system is gonna respond a very different way than if you sit to down to a meal and you've taken a good couple deep breaths and it's quiet and you're relaxed. We talk about this all the time. And so the mental the mental game's big.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:52

Yeah. I I think with cryo for me, I I think there still needs to be more research for us to say with 100% certainty really good or really bad, especially for women, right? Like just to be safe. A couple of things that I have really just like kind of held back on. No cold within four to six hours of a workout, especially muscle building, because we're starting to see some research that suggests maybe it's preventing your gains.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:19

Right? So, you know, wait a little bit after that is one thing that I'm just just out of caution more than anything, without certainty. And then um for for myself as a woman, also, I I'm, you know, I'm a perfectionist, I'm a go-getter, uh Remedy Place and Next Health, you know, there's like max times that you're allowed to go into these things, right? And I go max. I was always like 100% and now I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go three minutes instead of six minutes in the cold plunge, especially because women's body temperatures are just generally they're different. Yeah. You know, and so we can't be using male science to be 100% certain. So those are just like cautions more than anything with the limited research that are out there. And that's more personal than anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:08

So I personally feel great when I go into cryo. I love it. I love more of a fan of a full-body cryo than to go into cold plunge. It's just so much more comfortable. Yeah, it is. So it is night and day.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:22

Dry yourself up.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:25

It's a little it's a lot less messy, I look like. Exactly. Yeah. And you get to listen to music and dance around it. Oh my god, you get mittens to suppose it's a good idea. Yeah. Like cold plunging, not fun. Cryo, so fun. Truly. To me, it's like two totally different things. But anyway. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:44

Question three. That's you. Oh, I'll take yeah. Okay. Um, question number three. I've done the five day a few times and really enjoyed it, but I'd like to get my husband to do it with me next time, and I'm having a hard time getting him to understand why autophagy is important. How would you explain it? Should we also clarify? I think when they say five day, they mean the five-day prolonged fasting mimicking diet, yeah. I'll preface by saying that autophagy is our body's internal repair system. We we evolved as humans to go through periods of uh fasting that has allowed our body to kick in this repair set system that helps um clean up old and dying cell parts and replacing them with newer functioning parts that can have tremendous benefits for keeping our body younger at a cellular level. And obviously, we're all looking for a younger biological age. That's really the health span goal. And most of us are not getting into autophagy because autophagy will not happen if we are in a in a perpetual state of being fed, right? When food is perpetually present, autophagy does not occur nearly to the degree as it does when food is limited or avoided entirely as it is with fasting. So I'm curious to know, longevity uh doctor of the year, um what where does autophagy fall for you in in this?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:58

I mean it's a massive piece of the puzzle. So these are kind of those invisible factors that happen at a cellular level that no one really knows is happening. Um your mitochondria is one of these, right? Your cellular senescence and the number of zombie cells you have is another one of these, and DNA damage. Like you don't know these things are happening, but they are happening. Yeah. There's science, and you have to like just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:23

And even if you're healthy, it doesn't mean those things are it's happening to everybody. Everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:28

It's part of aging, it's part of just being on this planet from you know, it's the from the moment you're born till the moment you die, you will be undergoing autophagy at some point, right? So autophagy is um the like you said, the cleanup of like dead cellular parts. And sometimes your body's able to do it automatically, but sometimes it needs a little push in the right direction to do it. And the way you the the way to think about it is that you you know you you only have a certain amount of like workers in your cellular machinery, right? And if they're constantly building and building and building because you're constantly eating and having to store away glucose as fat, and they're doing all these other things, then they don't have time to do cleanup duty. And this gives them time to do cleanup duty. And yeah, your cells break down. They need to be they the the broken pieces need to be collected and thrown in the trash, right? And so having a period where you're um undergoing cellular renewal through autophagy is critical. And so I think a big piece of the puzzle is doing like a quarterly multi-day fast where your body can get into cleanup mode. You do it every night when you sleep, that's when your brain cleans out it's the toxins that have built up over the course of the day. Your brain needs to do a lot more than the rest of your body does, but your body also needs time periods when to do this. And uh and the prolong fasting mimicking diet can help you do this. You can do a water fast. I personally find it so much easier just to do a fasting mimicking diet, which you know, Dr. Walter Alongo's study is just as effective as a water fast, and uh it's it's a big piece of the puzzle.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:57

But it does take at least three days usually to get into the type of uh autophagic flux that we are looking for to really clean up. And ideally you're sitting in it for a couple days. So usually that's why the Prolon FMD is is a five-day program to really give you that time to coordinate. So to answer your question, reader, have your husband listen to this podcast and not answer, and hopefully that helps convince him that autophagy is needed and uh you should you should do it anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:26

Well the other thing is your husband will feel amazing after doing it. He'll get past the second day and just be like, oh my god, I'm so glad you told me to do this. I feel great. Let's do it every quarter, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:36

Your brain is clear, you know, and they'll be able to do it together, which will make it even more fun and easy. And oh my gosh. It's like when you do it with your partner or your friends or whatever, it's like way better. Way better with a friend. Way better. Way better with a friend. Do you want to do at least one more? When I go to the grocery store, I keep seeing drinks with mushrooms in them, even coffee. Are these actually good for you? This is a you question.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:57

So mushrooms being very likely functional mushrooms. Right. Different than magic mushrooms. Maybe there's a place for that in your life too, spiritually. Um, but no, functional mushrooms are um things like lion's mane and chaga, re-rishi mushroom. Um these all have incredible benefits, especially neurologically, to help support brain health, to support energy. Um, some of them have uh incredible immune modulating effects and anti-inflammatory effects. These are these are incredible. I I am a huge fan. That that's one of my favorite biohags is functional mushrooms. I use them regularly in my practice. But I love that I love that people are catching on and they're adding it, making it easy for you to access. I think the only issue with finding them so easily in things like a you know, coffee brands is that um it is important. I think one of the messages I'm hearing from you is sourcing is important, um dosage is important. And also finding your functional mushrooms are a little bit different than adaptogens in that you they don't necessarily for adaptogens like you know, the the holy basils and the ashwagandhas of the world, you do kind of have to find your right match.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

You know, some are more stimulating for people, some are more calming for people. Functional mushrooms aren't as I I haven't found them to be as weird, like as personalized. So it you know um, you're exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:22

I feel the same way. Like not everyone should be an ashwagandha and maybe you need to be a rhodiola, right? Like you have to try different ones. I think the functional mushrooms, like people will will probably get benefits from all of them, um unless you like don't like the taste, or you don't like the the you know, the some people just don't like mushrooms the way they smell or anything. I'm a big believer in I'm just hiding them in my coffee, so I have it in my coffee every morning. So brands are catching on.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:49

You don't you don't want to have a mushroomy taste first thing in the morning and let's add it to that. I'm I'm a big fan, but huge I think I think one of the biggest benefits is the cognitive cognitive benefits. It really is helping to create new um neuropathways in your in your brain to help you and give you energy and all of these good things.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:06

Aaron Powell So I'm gonna uh tack on to this this reader's question because reader's question. Viewer's question. Um is that if we if you guys are finding that there is such personalization required for these mushrooms, should we use a should we be? No, it shouldn't like when I'm grabbing something from you know the giant Erwan shelf of thousands of beverages and all of them have different mushrooms, like are there ones that I should be gravitating towards, ones that I should not be gravitating towards?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:38

I'm a huge fan of Rishi and Lion's Bean specifically, although a chaga, I mean chaga's another one, but that's a that's a really famous one. It's a really famous mushroom specifically for coffee replacement.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:54

Exactly. You should have a mushroom.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:56

I don't I don't think so. I don't I mean I I think again, there's there's a there's a there's a handful of ones that are very well known to have incredible, but then they do work synergistically a lot too. So that you'll most things most powders do, or most fun um fruit I like to get functional mushrooms that are already in their fruiting bodies, which makes them more potent. Um that's another reason why I wouldn't necessarily always grab the random coffee brand. I you know, sometimes getting the actual um fruiting body type is better, but um I don't think so. I mean I haven't have you heard of any mushrooms that are particularly the ones to avoid?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:28

Aaron Powell I mean I think I think you know mushrooms are less personalized than other supplements could potentially be. So yeah, you just try different ones and see which ones make you feel good. You know, it's very end of one, I would say, just very like individualized as to how you feel after you try them.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:44

Aaron Powell Right. But they do compound. So it's not something you're gonna take in one time and it's you're gonna immediately see the benefits. It's something that you want to create.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:51

I mean, what I'm hearing with what both of you guys are saying is that maybe it's just better to work with somebody who understands these mushrooms. Find the ones that work for you and have them as like its own additive that you can put in your coffee, as opposed to buying this pre-made thing that somebody has kind of put some random things in there and then you grab it off the shelf.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:14

Aaron Ross Powell And by the way, if you're one of these people that is gonna start taking mushroom supplements, you've already gone down the rabbit hole enough to where you have the big rocks in place, right? Like if you're drinking every night and you're eating ultra-processed food and going to you know fast food once a day, no amount of mushrooms are gonna save you. Like you've got to get the rocks in place first before you start going down the mushroom rabbit hole, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

Exactly. It is a lot of hole to go down. Okay, Allison Wonderland. Um we we're we're gonna we're so thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:50

Dr. Shah, we ask him one more question, which is Is there anything that we missed? Is there anything else that you think that the listeners should want to tell our listeners anymore?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

I would say what I just said a minute ago. Get your big rocks in place, but definitely do that first and then go down the rabbit hole because there's so much good stuff in the rabbit hole. Learn to track your biomarkers, you know, look at um some of the best supplements out there. Do the fasting, you know, on uh like at least try one time, do a five-day fast with Prolon one time. I think it's doing some of these things can really move the needle for you once you've got the big rocks in place, right? And that's where like I think you know, we live in an incredible time now. You have your biomarkers, you have AI, you have incredible books that have been written about health that are so high value for a little bit of time you spend reading it. You have these amazing podcasts, like it doesn't take a lot. Commit 30 minutes a day to your health, and it's gonna massively change the trajectory of your life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:51

I love that you because you know, we hear from a lot of our of our guests, you know, get the big rocks in place or you know, focus on the foundations and all those things, and and we are big believers in that as well. But I also appreciate that you tacked on another little thing, which is that once you have that done, then go play around in all of the other fun things that are out there because those are also, you know, we we probably do have a lot of listeners that have gotten their foundations down, and now it's time to go play in the fun playground of longevity little tidbits and tips and tricks and little things in between. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:27

So you're incredible.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:30

Next you guys are incredible. Your book is coming out soon. Keep a keep a we'll we'll also add it to our show notes, especially when it's up. We'll make sure to update our show notes so people have access to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:40

I feel like there's just so much more to learn in that world too. So we're gonna be keeping our eyes, ears peeled for all things coming out from what you're up to. Where can people find more information if they're curious?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:52

Yeah, so my uh website is drshaw.com and dr s h dot com, and my Instagram is at darshanchymd, and then uh www.next-health.com is our website.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:06

Amazing. And if you're in LA, it's right down the street from where we are right now. In a bunch of other cities. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:11

Like you guys are really all over the states in now, Dubai. Miami, Chicago, Nashville, like all the time. Way to go. Way to go have like a little next health party and aka just let's all go jump in the cryo chamber. And do a dance. Yeah, do a dance. I have I have oops, I did again. It's about a three-minute song. It crushes in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:29

Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. We will see you soon, and thank you for tuning in. Boy howdy. Boy? Boy howdy. Is that how you feel? There's just so much. There's so much. We so we just finished an incredible episode with Dr. Darshan Shaw, who's CEO of Next Health, founder of Next Health, also. Longity Doctor of the Year. Which I really should have led with that, because that's truly incredible. But man, I am of the mentality that the more data you have on yourself, the more empowered decisions you can make, right? And so Next Health is truly making it accessible and easy and possible for people, even at their new price point at $99 a month, to do testing a couple times a quarter and have a practitioner team. And we're not talking about like regular Western uh you know, traditional blood labs, although it does include those two, but we're talking about the the markers that can help you prevent reverse uh chronic disease, right? I mean, he's making this accessible, which that in and of itself is incredible. But then, you know, add this AI component, which we nerded out on.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:38

It's just I'm just so glad we find like we we got to have that conversation because I mean it's it's very topical to what's going on in the world today. We're uh we're being thrown AI left, right, and center. And so we need to be talking about this as as it relates to, I mean, really everything, but certainly for us, longevity and healthy aging. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:58

And he he's he is tackling it head on and he's really he has this this new book coming out, but he's leading the way. And I think I it's it's reassuring to me because I think I live in both worlds where I am like you and I'm give them all my data. I wanna, I want to be optimized. I don't care, this is so cool, which I think is where you live. And I also have my foot in the door of like they have my data, everything's gonna be, you know, it makes me ner this this fear that people have. I I also can tap into that. And I he just made me feel so much more at ease as a practitioner, as a leader, as a, you know, he just yeah, there I I appreciated his the energy and the mindset he has around this very inevitable state of the world where g AI is not going away. It's it's here to stay. Um and it made me feel a lot calmer about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

It's so funny because I felt more excited about it. But it was also, you know, some of the things that he shared uh specifically about how we are learning so much more and we are becoming so like exponentially more aware of opportunities for our health and our longevity through the utility of AI in research, etc. I mean, we are we have so much to look forward to. And uh I I was just really excited about some of the things that he was he was sharing.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:23

Yeah, pretty, pretty epic conversation, and I I feel very honored to be in his company today. So yay, Dr. Shaw. We're if you liked this episode, we're so grateful for you joining in um and tuning into our show almost forever. Um again, we're longevity dietitians and we want to provide you as much information as possible on real, actionable longevity tips and tricks. So if you liked this episode, if you uh liked Dr. Shaw, we'll put all of his information in the show notes. But please follow, like, share, comment, all of the things to help um boost our content so we can share it with the masses. Wow, you you actually got every single one of the things.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:01

Maybe subscribe. Subscribe as well. Yeah. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks for tuning in.