147. Dr. David Luu: How AI Is Reshaping Preventive Care

Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained in board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. Today we're joined by Dr. David Lu. He's a pediatric cardiac surgeon, turned tech entrepreneur and longevity leader. After years of operating on children with heart conditions that were often entirely preventable, he realized that fixing broken hearts wasn't enough. He wanted to stop disease before it even began. Dr. Lu went on to found Longevity Docs, a global physician network reshaping how medicine is practiced. And he now serves as global chief longevity officer for L'Oreal, bridging cutting-edge science, AI, biomarkers, and real-world health. His mission is bold, democratize preventive longevity medicine, and train an entire generation of doctors to focus not on sick care but on extending health span. In this episode, we explore why every doctor should be a longevity doctor, why the medical system is failing to prevent disease, and the shift from biohacking to bioliterously, and how AI diagnostics and daily biomarker monitoring will transform the future of healthcare. Dr. Lu lays out what needs to change from medical training to workplaces to society itself to help humans live longer, healthier, and smarter lives. Dr. Lu, thanks so much for coming to Los Angeles and doing this with me. Dr. Shah, it's a pleasure. I'm so excited to do that. You're all over the world. It's just so incredible. As the leader, I look at you as a leader of this longevity movement with the doctors. You've brought us all together. You've really created a mind share of physicians that are in this space that I think is so needed, right? The longevity conversation has been biohacking. It's been nutrition. It's been all these things. Bringing the physicians together to finally start talking about it has been massive. So I thank you for that. Thank you so much. I thank you, you, for the support. The first day you were here to all of our conference, speaking, educating, sharing your story. What's amazing is uniting all those physicians. We trained. We started medical school to become doctors and to focus on longevity. Hopefully people live longer and better. So I'm really excited to be at service and then for this mission. I think, look, that's going to be a transformative evolution of modern medicine. Your vision of bringing us together, it came at the exact right time because we're at an inflection point. To your point, we all trained in medical school. We all did our individual specialties. You did pediatric cardiac surgery, one of the most difficult specialties imaginable. And you saw the light of how we need to really rethink how we practice medicine. And you switched your career just like I did. And then you had the vision and force had to bring all the doctors that had done the same thing. We interviewed five doctors today already that all changed their lives from traditional Western medicine to functional medicine, longevity medicine, whatever you want to call it. So we're at this pivotal moment in this longevity space. You talk about this a lot. What do you think is the future? Well, first of all, why don't we start at where are we now and where are we going in longevity medicine? Yeah, I think what I like is telling a little bit of the evolution. Like you said, we were both surgeon. And as surgeon, we're here to understand the body. And we see the inside. That's really interesting. The surgeon is the only doctor who can really look at the inside by opening the body, understanding how he works. And so I can tell you as a heart surgeon, we were opening the art, the art. And then we were witnessing the lesion. And so understanding how the body can change over time and sometimes prematurely was, I think, a wake up call for me. And so I tell you, one day, I think it was in 2014, I was in Mauritania. Mauritania is a country in Africa. Mauritania. Mauritania. Right? The city's knock shot. Look at the desert. The hospital, just imagine the hospital, we're operating kids there. The third world country. Yeah, like really developing nation, no operating room for cardiac. So we bring the whole team. We do a week. We operate probably 10 kids. They all go to find. And at the end, on the Friday, you have this family coming, they say, Doc, we need you to see this little girl. I think you can help her. So I said, yeah, okay, why is she? She's not at the hospital. So I have to drive. I thought it was like 20 minutes taxi. I have to drive two hours in the desert. Wow. I thought I was getting kidnapped at that time, to be honest. So I got there and this little girl, probably 12, sit on the floor, the parents, the grandparents, everyone's there. And they'd show me an X-ray, a chest X-ray. And I see this in large heart. And I know it's too late. I know it's too late. And we know in those countries, most heart disease and that affect children are prevented really. They are rheumatic heart disease from a strep infection. You can treat that with antibiotics. That costs nothing. And so I decided because no doctors can drive two hours in the desert, we decided to create mobile clinic. And so at that time, we find a portable echo. Those companies were doing smaller one and point of care testing. And then we plugged that with telemedicine and satellite communication to do virtual consultation. And it was preventative telemedicine at the last night for heart disease. So we're sending all those images back and then the doctors could say, yeah, we can operate. So we're sending teams and train the doctors. So I think that really started there. It's like this little girl called Miriam was really my inspiration to start going to closer to doctors, closer to patients. When I came to New York, came back to New York, I talked to a lot of friends, said, why don't you do that in New York? We have the same issue. We die from heart attack. So we started to do those screening at Equinox 2014. Before the longevity, it was already something that we were doing here. So you were screening people for cardiac disease. Cardiac disease. We were doing cardiac echo, CIMT, heart aneurysm, et cetera. And so we did that for line companies, gyms, lawyers office. It was kind of corporate longevity. So that was the beginning. Fast forward COVID. COVID, my wife got COVID really early 2020. And so started to, she was in the room, everything was really highly secured. And so I started to monitor her with devices. And so pulse ox, we didn't know exactly what it was. And so that was the beginning of understanding that we could monitor patient in a different way using technology. But you know, small wearables that can indicate different variation in a continuous way. And so from there, I started a longevity practice with one doctor. And obviously it was hard to find the second one. But think about it, 2021, everyone called us and say, hey, I don't want to die. That was really the beginning. I am sick. I want to prevent this. I don't want to die tomorrow. And so I think it was really this wake up call of evolution where healthcare was never sexy. Prevention was something no one wanted to hear about. But when COVID hit, everything grew up. Everyone wanted to improve their health, optimize whatever they had so they didn't get sick. So from there, you know, started really a small WhatsApp group that we, I mean, you were one of the first joining and then we called longevity docs today. And so now longevity docs is a larger movement than this WhatsApp group. Like 1000 doctors in it now? I think we have. Yeah. 1000 doctors, we applied to join. We validated close to 600, meaning every single one of them. I probably met 500 of them personally on the Zoom call. And that's what you were asking, is there a shift in medicine? I think yes. Yes. I think when you start medical school, you want to keep people healthy. You love what you do. You love anatomy, physiology, biology, and some of us, right? We love surgery and adrenaline of this. And so I think a lot of doctors right now, I trying to get to the point like, am I doing my job, my profession, my vocation, right? By staying in the hospital, you know, seeing a patient every, you know, 10 minutes, providing care for people that could have prevented. So I think, you know, it is a good time in history. Everything is aligned. Like the mindset is aligned, the culture, the consumer is asking the capital, you know, they're investing in longevity because they know that's going to be the future and technology is ready. Yeah. Right? But I do think that, you know, we're going to have another major, massive shortage of doctors because I had Dr. Elizabeth Yerth on this chair earlier today, Dr. Abidu, same story, you know, surgeons and also Dr. Yerth was a pain management doctor, sports medicine, and saw the light. We all were treating so much disease and we're like, why are we not preventing this from happening in the first place? Right? And if you really think about it, there are very few true preventative doctors, right? Very, very few. There needs to be one for every sick care doctor that there is, I think, right? And so there has to be a large number of doctors that are really going to need to go out there and truly practice this new field of not just preventing disease, but also optimizing your health, which is a whole other kind of a category of science, right? It's completely different, right? For example, we talked about with Dr. Hussein, the glyco-calix and nitric oxide. You don't even talk about that in preventative medicine or disease care because it's too late. By the time you get there with a heart attack or, you know, even preventing cardiovascular disease which is too late, you've already gone years and years. And so I feel that there's going to be a brand new field of medicine that develops here, right? And so it's going to be very interesting to see how many doctors can actually practice this because it's going to need to be a lot. Yeah. And so, I mean, look, my dad is a physician. And he was a acupuncture and professor of acupuncture. So when he started in the 70s, everyone thought he was crazy, right? And he said, it doesn't exist, et cetera. So he fought a lot to make that a specialty for doctors in Europe. Now fast forward, preventative medicine. We used to say, we shouldn't get, we shouldn't do mammogram, we shouldn't do a calcium score. And remember 20 years ago, calcium score for the heart was on something. Cardiologists didn't want to do that. So I think everything is changing. And the thing that I think is more interesting right now is we went from population health. That's how prevention works, right? Is it a good investment for a nation to do a screening, larger scale screening compared to end of one prevention? Like you said, I think medicine was always focused on understanding the disease. So we were trained on the physiology, the evolution of the physiopathology of the disease. What I think is changing or changed for the past 20 years is the discovery of the mechanism of aging, the Yamanaka factor, for instance, right? The hallmark of aging that's been published. And so we understand right now, there's not only a disease, this is an evolution of the body of our biology for mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA mutation, right? And epigenetic change, inflammation. So if we target that as part of longevity medicine, this is what is really new is longevity medicine is going to target really the root mechanism of aging to prevent the disease, but as well to optimize health. So now I think about that. Like if we go a lot earlier in the mechanism of your, how your brain function, how you cardiovascular respiratory system can be boosted, I think it's another game. We're not into reactive care, just thinking, let me recover a preventive disease. Let me optimize my health so I can live to my full potential. Right. Right. Absolutely. It's so exciting. And you know, one of the things you always say is every doctor should become a longevity doctor, right? And so that's, I've heard you say that a few times. When you say that, it sounds like the optimal situation, obviously, but physicians will need training in how to do this, right? So what, there's a lot of doctors that listen to this show. How should they think about how to learn about longevity medicine? Because I could tell you in my practice of medicine, in my surgical practice, I learned everything I needed to in medical school by deep knowledge of what I needed to know on how to treat disease with surgery, but I got zero training in the science of health and longevity, right? And so I feel like there's, and that's still happening today in medical schools. People are not learning about health maintenance, disease avoidance, and longevity. How does a doctor think about what they need to learn and how would they learn it? And I think what is really interesting, if you go back in time, how did we learn? We learned from our peer, right? We learned from other doctors. He wasn't an institution. Learning was transmitted. It was a legacy. From surgery you were operating. It's not in the books you learn surgery, not in a library. You go to the OR and you have a mentor. It's hard, right? And they tell you, no, this is wrong. Do it again and do it again. But they trust you and they trust that in the future you're going to be an amazing surgeon without the mentorship and you will transmit again and again. And so what I like about what we created at longevity doc is this movement of generous doctors who are really sharing every single day without thinking about a personal agenda and just because that's their mission. And so I think that's why they attract each other. That's why we come and we join each other and get united. I think there is a lack of education today, but I hope hopefully we'll become the norm in the future. So what we did because we started to unit them on a WhatsApp group, then during conferences, because of this lack in this white space, we decided to create our first certification. And so it's 100 hours doctors creating it for other doctors. And what I think it is really interesting is it's accessible anywhere in the world. So you don't have to attend an Ivy League school, right? You don't have to travel and ask for permission, right? To empower yourself to have the knowledge. So we go from the biology of aging to the new interventions to the cutting edge biomarkers. And we even discussed the new technologies, right? They are accessible today. And then obviously some are controversial because they're not yet 100% validated. So we talk about the evidence of it. And so we give the doctor the tool so they can decide. Yes. And his own recommendation is really 100 hours of guidance from the clinical part of longevity medicine to become an independent longevity physician, which means creating your own practice, which you know it's pretty hard when you come from a healthcare system. You haven't learned anything about sending up your practice, MSO, a PC, the legal aspect of it, the technology you should use. We always have a DMR at the hospital. Right now you need a dashboard to look at all your data, technology. How do you hire? How do you brand, market, price? And obviously how do you do that in a really ethical way? And I think that's the limit today of longevity medicine, right? How can we make sure we implement strong principle? And first do not arm, do not wait for the disease to appear neither. Exactly. I love, you know, Hypercredits is our logo. You remember, it's like we put new glasses on it, so it's modern. But you know, first do not arm is really the off. But at the same time, things evolved, you know, in millennials. We evolved to we cannot wait until the disease, cardiac disease is 100% preventable. Yet 20 million people are dying every year. I don't want my dad to wait, don't want my kids to wait. Right. Right. So waiting until disease develops, you are doing arm. Having microscopic biological harm that you're allowing it to progress and not doing anything about it. So it's critical to absolutely start early and start sooner. So I'm 52 right now, but I'm still pushing all of my limits. I'm running long distances. I travel across many time zones to support my work. And I just want to live my life to the fullest. Being active as I age isn't just about willpower. It's about supporting my mitochondria, the powerhouses of my cells with the energy that they need to recharge my muscles and recharge my brain. My topure is a supplement that I take. It's backed by solid research showing that it can boost cellular energy, increase muscle strength and support overall healthy aging. Personally, I take my topure every single day. This helps me continue my active lifestyle, whether it's a high intensity workout or keeping up with my kids. So if you are looking to support your body and want to feel younger from the inside out, my friends at Timeline are offering you a 10% discount on your first order. Go to timeline.com slash dr. Shaw to get started. That's timeline.com forward slash dr. S H A H your future self will thank you. So when I talk about the field of longevity medicine with younger doctors that want to go in the field, one of the first topics that we talk about is getting the basics down. Nutrition metabolic health, exercise, movement, sleep, stress management, emotional health. Like I feel like those are all things that we were not taught in medical school. Zero hours. You know we said that, Eric Burden, he said, you know how many hours I've been trained? Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. One. Lifestyle, you know I know you love your pyramid. Level one is really the fundamental. Right. Like no one can start in longevity medicine and thinking about the future therapies and you know, gene therapies and stem cells, etc. I think that's what gets the end line on the media and that's what people love to talk about. But longevity first start with the lifestyle. And so if you look at all those hallmark of aging, those are the pathways are really impacted by you know everything that we discussed. We won't get into the details but you know the movement, the stress mitigation, healthy nutrition and environment. Right. Your environment, your community is really important. But now level two, like you said, it's the integration of all those different parts. The root cause of disease as functional integrative medicine. How do you integrate novel ways of treating? And I think there is a lot of new research undergoing on geroprotective drugs as well. Right. And I think in the future, in the next few years, maybe two or three years, hopefully earlier, we're going to find the validation, the clinical validation, right? With clinical trial that says some of those molecules that are already available on the market are cheap, right? Can protect us from aging. Exactly. If we reverse that, we're not sure yet. Nothing is yet on the market. But we can include. My advice to all the docs and even for, you know, is like do not die. Yeah. It will extend to 20 years. Right. Because that's where innovation is going to come from. Yeah. Absolutely. A lot of people just came back from the Buck Institute. I've been talking with them about the conference and people more than ever now are really seeing that there will be innovations coming in the next few years during our lifetimes that will dramatically change how we think of disease and possibly even think about our upper limit of aging. I think, look, you were a pioneer. I remember passing by your first location and I was like, wow, I was already a big fan. I was like, wow, this guy nailed it. Because remember at that time was 2017 or something? Yeah. 14, I was already thinking like we should come and do all those tests, et cetera. But I think what you manage doing is first of all is being led by your physician. Right. So longevity medicine has to be led by clinical leadership and with a doctor is trained in longevity medicine. I think that's number one, to keep the credibility and the safety. I think that's really important. But now you cannot advance without innovation. Exactly. Right. The innovation is going to make it more convenient, more affordable, more accessible, frictionless. And I think you made it so cool. Right. You enter, it looks beautiful, people are great. And number three, I think is information. And that's what you do every day. Right. And I think this combination is something that we didn't think about 20 years ago. I think that's healthcare leader will never train to educate. No. Right. And so we have to love doing it. Right. You have to love sharing and listening and researching every day. And you're doing an amazing job doing that. It's not easy. Right. So. Absolutely. I think to your point, I think we were actually educated to keep the patient uninformed. Right. I think the patient was given very little access to their own data. A lot of knowledge was gink, you know, there was a lot of gatekeeping of knowledge. A lot of people thinking that the layman could not understand. Right. There's this whole term called the layman. Let's put this in layman terms. Right. And the reality is people understand. You have to explain it to the level that you've learned it and let them take the knowledge and understand it. Right. And just like you said, you know, the podcast that we're on today, Extend Podcast, this was, came out of like the necessity to educate the public about the things that you and I talk about every day because they need to learn about their own biology. Right. Without learning about your own biology, you can't really understand how the different inputs affect it. And I think every doctor should be an educator. Exactly. Right. And they should follow your, your, your footsteps. You should train them on being able to educate. And being in front of the camera is not, is not easy. No. Right. Making sure that you can really summarize your thought and being accessible for everyone. Right. So I think at the era of social media, it will become a responsibility to educate. Yes. Absolutely. Kind of a public health mandatory service. Yes. Right. If we don't do it, other people will do it. Non-specialized, untrained and with a different agenda. Well, we've already seen this happen. Right. The original biohackers have massive social media platforms where they talk about some of these therapies sometimes too soon, sometimes when they're unproven or they make claims that are absolutely not founded by any science. Right. And unfortunately, these are the people that have had the biggest voice because they're the ones that have the time to do it. They weren't seeing one patient every five minutes in the clinics. Correct. But so I think we have to move like, you know, I'm really, I'm really grateful for the biohacking community. Sure. Absolutely. And they're really, you know, a lens of, they're the pioneer, right? And they try them themselves. They really look at how can they understand better because I think we lacked the information. Yeah. Right. And so a lot of people wrote a lot of pages on this movement. And I think we have to be grateful about that. We kind of all are a little bit hacking our health. Absolutely. But I think we should move right now to next, we should elevate biohacking to bio literacy. Right. Right. Biohacking is really testing. Okay, that's fine. You can do it, you know, in a safe way and in a cheap way. It shouldn't be super expensive neither, right? But at the same time, I think bio literacy should be the foundation of biohacking. Do not try anything if everything, if you don't understand the basic. So I think at the era of information, if the doctor is not informed, literate and cannot educate, which means translate the biology, the symptoms, the treatment in a proper, simple way. I don't think this type of physician will have a future. Right. Absolutely. And I think I will be bald. I think AI could replace doctor. A lot of people said the human touch is important. Yes, it is. Maybe doctor will evolve in a different, you know, position. But AI right now is probably better at scanning a lot of different images in radiology, right? In pathology as well. In testing right now, everyone is uploading like the younger generation, they're uploading charge, PT. Absolutely. Why they would see a doctor. And so I think we have to have a wake up call as physician. If we think we have the, that was all power. It doesn't happen anymore. Right. Right. No one wants to see a white coat. Right. They want to answer fast, cheap, without a paternalism. Exactly. And that's why I see the young generation of physicians, they are so excited about it. Finally, they said, that's why I started medicine. And that's why you're starting, I would say, an older generation like us saying, that's so exciting and now we can educate. We understand the science. There is the technology to tackle it. Maybe in the future we could have better intervention. And then the consumer, which is not a patient anymore, is coming before it's too late. I think everything is aligned for once. It's a crazy time period. It's an incredible time. Right. Physicians are so excited. And there's nothing to educate them. When courage even university to embed longevity as a curriculum, they should educate. I think Malaysia is doing that already. Singapore is doing it. So it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It means that some nation or some academia are going faster. Yeah, they are. Right. Exactly. Well, and then the Walton family just opened a school in a medical school where the foundation is training in nutrition and functional medicine, et cetera. So I'm really excited that even newer medical schools are now starting with a foundation of functional medicine rather than it being completely ignored. It is absolutely a necessity. Necessity. So that's, I think, the first step. And look, you're talking about the Walton family, which is the Walmart empire. And so I was talking with the retailer yesterday, including Walmart. What I think is really fascinating, they are, first of all, they are pharmacy. They deliver food. Now, I mean, there is a way, and I think they already discussed that it can come with the blood work. Yeah. I think they were going to put clinics inside. They had. But think about the future. You upload your blood work, and then you get the food court recommended for your blood work, for the condition shipped to your home. So I think that's the future. So now think about the relationship with the physician. How do we reinvent ourselves? If we're not in control of the prescription anymore, you have major platform right now where you can buy your medicine, right? And you can buy your medicine without seeing a doctor or your PCP. So you were asking how many doctors need to be trained. And I met the math, right? If you want to see, and if we look at, let's say, let's go back. If longevity medicine is personalized, evidence-based, outcome-driven practice of targeting this root cause of aging. So you don't see a disease, right? To produce more vitality and even longevity. We focus on health span, not only lifespan. If you think this is longevity medicine, you cannot see a patient every seven minutes or 10 minutes. Right? Even an hour every six months. If we have 350 million citizens in the US, we need 700 million hours. Right? So I made the math. Basically, you need half a million doctors trained. Today, there's a million doctor license. So it means half of the population should be trained at least to understand what is longevity medicine. Right? And so is it possible? Why not? If half of the population is already a primary care doctor, I think the primary care is the future. Right? Because trusted community will go to the primary care doctor right away. Right. I mean, it'd be fantastic. The only problem is right now, because the system is so set up to have primary care doctors see as many people as possible per day going from 10 or 15 minutes a patient to one hour a patient, the system is not set up for that. Right? Exactly. They don't get compensated for that number one. So that's not helpful. Right? But also number two, people are just really dealing with a lot of chronic disease. So it's going to be a tough turn, I think. It is. But like you said, that's really what it needs. It needs to be happening. But at the same time, evolution happens sometimes in the really, in decades. So if you look at technology, 20 years ago, we didn't have social media, no digital phone, Mac, the portable, some computer only 30 years old, now everything is accessible. So think about what's going to happen in 10 years. AI is going to free a lot of time of doctors because 50% of the time they spend today is administrative, right? To enter codes in an EMR to get a reimbursement, et cetera. So I think there is a way if we rethink the system, and we're thinking the system is maybe building a new system. Sometimes you have to do the house is to broken. That's exactly what I always say about Next Health. We're just building a new system. That other house is built for a specific purpose. If you get hit by a bus, you have a heart attack, you get diagnosed with stage four cancer, you need surgery. Thank God we have that system. But Next Health is basically a new system. Just practice a completely new way, right? And I think the problem is trying to fix something that was built completely differently with financial incentives that are opposite. It's hard to do, right? But I think there's a lot of smart people in this country. This is amazing to see the innovation that happens. I think if that's really the goal, it can be achieved. And again, I think we have to give back like what you said, being the CEO of your own health for patients. So if the patient is empowered, motivated, educated, I think first of all, this is the job the doctor doesn't have to do. And it's not about biology anymore. I think longevity, I call it the longevity architect. You shouldn't build a life that is worth living. So health is only one part of it, right? Where you live is another part. Your purpose, your community, what you leave behind. What do we want to live longer if we don't know what we live for? Right, absolutely. To your point too, like I think there's going to be a massive unburdening of physician time as more patients become the CEO of their own health, utilizing, first of all, learning and becoming health literate, right? Through podcasts, through their own research, through using AI. Secondly, through uploading their own data to AI and getting, you know, I have patients now all the time and friends all the time. They're like, I got my blood work. I uploaded it to AI. It told me to reduce my salt intake, my do this differently, et cetera. And they're not even seeking any interventions for any humans. They're just following the program given to them by AI and they're making meaningful change in their health, right? So this is all happening in the background and that will have a meaningful effect on chronic disease rates, right? I think what is really interesting is we are the era where personalization and access of our own data and understanding is available, accessible and affordable. Yes, absolutely. It wasn't the case, right? I think your Niki G was so hard. Now you can do it at home, right? And all those tools right now have a technology that can measure and bring together so many different data, right? Sleep data, recovering data, fitness data and blood work. Now all of that plus your rituals and your habits can create a plan. Doctors don't have time to do that. So we're going to have to become those guides, advisor, right, to fuel the patient, right? And say, okay, this is what you do if you have a disease. This is what you do to avoid having a disease, right? And so the same way you have an accountant, right, for your business, you're going to have a doctor who will look at you make the money, their content, look at it. Yes. And I think we have to transfer this accountability to the patient, the consumer, the individual. Yes, people need to become responsible for their own health and not outsource it to the medical world anymore because that world was never built to optimize health or to prevent disease or to reverse chronic disease. So people need to take their own health into their hands and understand that those are their responsibilities. And I think once you have that mindset shift, then you can put into place like a longevity plan. You have like a structure for a longevity plan that you talk about with people. Can you go over that structure for us? I hope that structure. So I'll tell you, every first of January, I used to take a next-hand sheet and say, okay, this is how my next year is going to look like. And so I had few columns and one was health. Where do I want to leave? What I'm excited about? Who I want to share the journey with? And so I realized that was exactly what longevity is because you want longevity for two things, time and health. If you take one of the equation, it doesn't mean longevity anymore. No, exactly. If you have time, no health, that's not longevity. You have health, but no time what it is. And so I think if you have those two in mind, how do you build a life around that? So I created a longevity canvas, 10 pillars, really simple. It's like one sheet and you look at first pillar number one. How do I look like when I'm 95, when I'm 75? Next year, how do you project yourself? Like visioning yourself in the future is so important because you are now reverse engineer what you want to be. Right? What is your purpose? What wakes you up every morning? This gives you this drive, this vitality to not only keep pushing, but as well to take care of yourself. It's like being in a plane. You want to take care of yourself, you want to take care of others. And I think there is obviously health. This is a big part of it. I combine health, lifestyle and the environment together. That's the thing we must talk about. You talk heavily. You go deep on the podcast is maintaining healthy biomarkers, cleaning your energy. Environment, your house, traveling. You say I travel a lot. This is not good for radiation, for sleep deprivation. But it's amazing for community. It's amazing for purpose. It's amazing for growing my knowledge. And so on the other part is how do I invest my time and resources for longevity? So knowledge is one. We know that people are more educated, live longer. And this is really published data. This is incredible. Community, if you're surrounded by the right people, you said a lot. You doxify your environment and include relationship in it. Exactly. Relationships are part of your environment. But they're part of toxic relationships. It's a problem. And I think if you look at that, it's how do you create a canvas of your life? And you revise it every quarter, every six months. And look, and this is free. I think I put it available for everyone. So you have prompts and then you design your own canvas. Now what I think is going to be interesting in the future, you'll be able to embed and I'm working on that on the back end, create your own agent, your own longevity architect that can say now, Gorshan, it is time to take a vacation. It is time to take a break. It is time to spend time with your family. It is time to have an altruistic endeavor. And I think this is important that we get reminded because we are either driven or we have other priorities in life. And so I think a canvas sometimes give you a master plan and you can go back to. And I believe it was great to share it. I shared it with friends. I love it. And I share it on stage. People say, I want it. So I started to redesign it and to make it available so people can play with it and own it in a way that is much more than just biomarker of health. Right. It is biomarker of life. Right. Right. Hi, Dr. Shah here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells, you see, are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery. After sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IMA. IMA powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity. I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. A clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alfalfa, and poc acid. All of these works synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IMA actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IMA had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health. Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IMA. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshaw.com slash IMA or go to imahelth.com slash discount slash drshaw and you can get 20% off with my discount code drshaw. You can also find the link below. I love that you tie in all these other pieces that you don't really consider as being part of longevity, community, friendships, relationships, all of these things that purpose, of course, these are so important and they need to be part of the overall formula. Where can people get this from you? Is it on your website? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's available on the website, drdavidlou.com. Yeah. And on social media as well. And that's incredible that you created this coming from your perspective as you're an extremely successful surgeon. Now you're the founder and leader of a group of longevity doctors. So you truly have the biggest picture view, the most zoomed out view of any of us, really, on longevity and how the future of longevity should look like. And so to put it together on one architecture. No, thank you. I wouldn't say that. I think where you're right is architecture. I like building infrastructure. Right. And so sometime is going horizontal instead of going like a rocket ship vertical. And building an infrastructure, I think, is for the long term, right? It's foundation. And I like to build things that can last, that can benefit a lot of people and impact and reduce suffering. And so you want to do that in a way that is not linked to you. And so the same way with the hard fund, the foundation who created that was 21. It's still going. Right. And it's still doctors getting trained enough to come going, you know, you should come and buy to the cops. I loved it. Yeah. And first quarter next year. I mean, I think when you build things that outlive you and then you just let them go, I think that's the beauty of life. Right. It's just building and give it away. Right. And that's what I believe pillar 10 of longevity. I think that's the ultimate mastery is legacy. What you build for other, there's not linked to you and then you can do be detached too. And so I think a lot of people sometimes say, well, why are you doing that? This is part of my longevity plan. This is what I like. I can live tomorrow. I'd be already proud of my life. And I think, you know, this is, I wish everyone to be as lucky, you know, as I am. And I'm grateful to be at service. So when you are in this position of service, you really have to build strong foundation to be able to deliver. And sometimes, you know, pioneers, not easy, right? It's hard, you know, like for life, you know, you know, it is so hard, right? You get stepped back. People don't like it. They get, you know, you get challenged. People love you. But I think the power of just believing in your vision because of the greatest impact, there's no ego in it. Yeah. I also think that doing hard things contributes to longevity because it forces you to push forward, to use your brain, to think about what you need to learn and then go out there and learn it and solve a problem. These are all things that give you a sense of purpose, but allow you to also use your brain and allow you to keep pushing forward. And those are all pieces of longevity, too. Oh, totally. Totally. I think learning, I mean, we know that learning a new skill every four years, I think. It's not quite as, yeah. Every four years is. So don't call me on that, but I think it improves your, you know, your way of quality of life. I think reduce as well mortality. So that's number one, multilingualism. Right. It was just a study published here, I think, in nature, right? Learning several language and back to your health, right? And your longevity. So I think we are here to learn, to stimulate our brain. So everyone can learn. That's why learning about health is like everything else. Yeah. Absolutely. So everyone should be bio-literate. Right? Bio-educated. And you can become your own, you know, your own guide in your journey. And then you can guide your children and you can guide your parents. So I think it's really kind of an education. You cannot leave the generation non-understanding their health. Like, even social media as part of health, we have to monitor that for kids. You know, that's a wake up call. You know, it's isolation, mental health for the next generation is really, really a big burn. So we have to intervene now. Because in the next 20 years, 20 years, there are going to be adults with all the problems that he entails. Yeah. Orsha, you just made it illegal to use social media for 18 years old. Yeah. Crazy. And in some of the countries, they make it as well as an education platform. So we have to have as well, technology is amazing. But without social media, we couldn't connect the same way and educate. So I think we have to be as well intentional and thoughtful and educate, you know, the next generation say, yeah, it is here. There's bad stuff going on. Right? There's the good stuff. And I think you should leverage that. It's like AI, right? It's like, so I always say, embrace the innovation instead of finding it. Yes. Innovation almost always wins. Yes. So you better be on the side of the story and leverage it. Right? And so it's like longevity medicine. That's going to be there because people want it. Because we decided it because patients are tired to suffer and to impact their health and their finance on this. So they want a better way to look at themselves and live their life. Exactly. And, you know, I think also people are tired of spending so much money on a broken healthcare system. The insurance costs are going through the roof right now. I think people want something different. They know they can't even afford to be sick in there. So it's time to obviously find something new. And I think if we can embrace this longevity movement, it will unburden that other system, making it less expensive, hopefully. And people will need us so much. Exactly. And I think that's the type of research we need to do, right? I think research is really important to validate and understand that we, you know, scientists, doctors, policymakers, they want hard data. And I think that's the power of the movement we created with longevity. We are like, you know, up to a thousand people, you know, that can participate in research. They centralized chemical trial, can do surveys, right? It can do population health for population management project. And I think that that changes everything. You know, remember at that time, we were into the research, you had to be a PhD candidate in one lab, in one, you know, in one place. Now everyone can be a researcher. That's what I like about this, like this common sharing processes. With those data, you can come back, right, to, you know, like you say, insurance employers, you know, in the US, the first insurer is the employer. Uh-huh. Right. And so I think the employer, right, true motivation is to have healthy employees. Absolutely. The workforce is so productive, right, and so inspired that it would, you know, they want to produce more. And I think if you look at this, this, you know, through the lens of economics, now you don't understand that it's not about prevention anymore. It's about optimizing human potential. And I think the current society diminished the human potential mentally, physically, and in terms of mindset. I think it's time that we could take over as human before AI does it. Oh, yeah. That makes, that makes a lot of sense actually. I think we're so focused on preventing disease that we forgot about just optimizing human potential. So by doing that, you will prevent disease and you'll have less healthcare expenditure. So this is working on optimizing all of our employees. I think this is, this is really important. And you can play a huge role like doing that. Not only like preventing disease, you know, remember it was like the wellness benefit, you know, obviously it was interesting to have, you know, a few sessions of yoga or a free gym. I think right now, employees are getting smart and they want more, right? They want to be highly educated. They want to push forward. They want to, they want to feel better. They want to take care of their family and they would do it. That would be part of it. With a clear mission of when that is around you with this very, I think that's going to be true in the future. Yes. I completely agree. And it's a whole new way of thinking that it's just now happening live, real time in this moment. So the future of long jabbering medicine is very bright, I think. I think it is real, right? And it doesn't, I don't think longevity belongs to physician only. I think it's going to be ubiquitous. And I hope one day we don't even talk about it anymore because it's so natural and so normal, right? Transportation will embedded, hospitality, housing, urbanism, you know, the food industry, it will textile, it will be everywhere. Everything's going to be built and designed intentionally to help human thrive. And I think if we do that through this lens, think about it in the next 20, 40, 50 years. Look at where we were 50 years ago. In 50 years, no one's going to talk about longevity anymore because it becomes so normal. But we have to play right now a pivotal role. It's a moment where we have to embed in a really ethical, safe, outcome driven way in ways and industry as possible. So it becomes natural. You don't say you have a digital phone anymore. Right? You don't say it's a mic. It's an electricity powered mic. Right? Everything is powered by electricity. Communication is powered by internet. And everything is digitally transmitted. We don't say it anymore. Longea is going to be the same for human potential and not for human life. And maybe the dream of it being ubiquitous and everything is amazing, which is a little bit of the opposite of where things have been headed over the last 50 years with capable of being spewed out, you know, without any casting. I do feel like we're at this transition moment, but hopefully it can happen faster. That's the goal. Yeah, you're right. I mean, look, like I said, every industry has to move fast because of innovation. That's where you start implementing policies and regulation. And sometimes you only understand that 10, 20 years later. And I think this is the problem. We build fast, but we don't monitor. We didn't at that point. And I think if you do it intentionally, outcome driven, you look at the outcome, you don't just build. And so if you do it with outcome in mind and obviously side effect and in countries monitoring, which we can do with a lot of technology, let's say if you build a house and then you monitor, you know, every single chemical in the house, you know, or the smart party called sir, you could do that, right? I do that right. Exactly. We're doing it right. So very. So imagine just having that embedded in you in your buildings. Yes. And it could be interesting to say, oh, by the way, the material we used now impact the biomarker of the roof, the resident. We don't know that, right? At some point, the toilets that exist right now, toilets will measure, you know, your urine and just tool, right? So you can maybe adapt the water in a personalized way. And so that's what I think is going to be the future in a really, really seamless way. I'm going to be able to adapt everything so longevity become ambient. A lot of calling that ambient longevity. Is this around you all the time? Around you all the time. And biomarkers being fed constantly to your phone, maybe, which houses your AI that is constantly monitoring all the biomarkers. Like your toilet even, your environment, your blood tests, your wearable devices, everything's being monitored and giving you real time advice. Correct. And I think, look, today, your data everywhere, right? Big companies get your data, right? We don't know what they do with it, but it's not really for our own health. Okay. We don't really see the impact right away. What I can tell you is there's company right now, and I'm sure you know about that, looking at monitoring for the biomarkers, right at the same time, right? With like a continuous monitor. So if we think about that, we're going to understand the trend and what's impacted. So I think even with ambient longevity, the outcome would be right away. I say, oh, I moved to this house. I changed this bed. I'm using this type of sheets, right? I changed my food, the water is filtered, the light is different. My mind is in the shield, the book I read, right? The information, everything merged together so you can measure your biomarker. And it's only the biomarker of health. The biomarker of life is going to be in horn. And I think we're going to extract it a little bit. We're going to zoom out, right? And we obsess on biomarkers of, you know, like the biomarker of your mitochondria, NAD levels, et cetera, right? Which is great. It's innovation. But I think we're going to zoom out on the true biomarker, right? Of life, then longevity, then healthy longevity, then biology, right? Yeah. I mean, if you look at the research, like the Harvard study that was done following, I think 100 people over 80 years, the true biomarker of health, the social commission. So maybe we should be measuring how much time we spent talking to other people, right? I think it is a really interesting survey. I think some people call it social fitness. Social fitness. Social fitness in a social setting. Social fitness. How do you exercise? And I know you do through your Jefferson dinner, right? And I think it is really important. Yes. Having people that we can have fun to, great fun together, we're on the same journey. We can make fun of each other. That's what I like about, you know, the style of friends, the Caribbean, it's like we make fun of each other. And I think that's important. It's going to have, you know, auto-derivation, right? A little bit of a medi-team, what we do, making fun of ourselves is really, I think it's, it is important not to take ourselves too seriously so we can laugh about it. And I think we don't do that enough, right? We don't... It's laughing. That's another, that's another measurable longevity. I mean, it's laughing, right? And it's laughing every, every day. No, she's not measuring right now, but our phones should do that. No, we should do that. You're right. You are never hung up. This is a great idea. I think it is important. We don't, you know, we're too serious. Yeah, exactly. And it creates great stress. Wow. Well, I love hearing you talk about this because you have such a great view, Paulie, about especially with the level of knowledge you have of the longevity field to really zoom it out for us and really point out what's important. I really want to do your ten longevity billers. I can't wait to download. We could do it together. Let's do it together. We do it together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, why not put it on my website and hopefully that everyone can see where mine is and you can do it. Exactly. Download it, drink it out. Yeah, it is just important. So, for a source of fun, gay, and I even share it with one of my wife and say, OK, this is mine, you know, we should do yours. And I think it's great because now it becomes a sort of family conversation. You know, help is so pride at some times. And you shouldn't because it's community. So you should share, you know, how many times you want to see your baby, your parents next year. Yes. And every time I fly back to Europe, I try to see my parents, even if it's so few hours, when no time is limited. And so I think, you know, my dad, my mom really raised me to become a doctor. I didn't know anything else. You know, they were in the medical field. So you're Marles of El Cofil. She was a pediatric nurse and she was going to a refugee camp. So I was, you know, sometimes following her in the, you know, they had blood people from Cambodia are still remembered, you know, hidden in the church. And then we were bringing food and and so I think, you know, she opened my home inside my dad, you know, we were living in the on top of the his medical practice in the south of France in Nîmes. And, you know, every every time after school, knocking at the at the door to go to the practice of smelling the alcohol, the incense, seeing the patients, a thank you doctor, thank you. You're saying thank you. So I think this is the kind of inspiration we need, right? Make it is inspired by a lot of YouTubers and streamers. I hope it's the it's going to love, you know, seeing, you know, the impact of science, of research, of AI and medicine. And I'm just joking a little bit because the figure we have at that time as, you know, mentors and leaders are changing today. And they are. And that's OK. We have to do that with our time, right? But yeah, so I think we could we could share our words and people can can eventually be inspired. I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you. This is an awesome conversation. Love it. Can't wait for people to hear this. And what how can people learn more from you? I mean, social media, Dr. David Lu and then my website, Dr. David Lu dot com. But I think the most important is really, you know, the mission on longevity.org for every doctor. We welcome every doctor in any part of the world. And we have that we have right now 50 country represented more than 300 cities. So that's the beauty of it. We can call a new or that we can call any doctor in the world and have, you know, someone that can listen to us, refer a patient, ask a question. So for every single doctor, this is my call. Try to be literate in longevity medicine, understand the mechanism of aging. And obviously, you know, if you can help your patient or learn more about the topic, you know, this is this is where you can go. LonginiDogs.org. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So great to see you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your health care provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and is always important to seek their guidance.