Episode #88 Featuring Dr. Shivani Gupta! The POWER of Turmeric and the Healing STRENGTH of Ayurveda! Everything you need to know about inflammation and NEW BOOK LAUNCH: The Inflammation Code!!!

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All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast, live on set. And I have been graced with a good friend of mine that came to see me. So first of thank you for coming to see me on such short notice. For sure. But we go back now, good year, and when I met her, I was introduced to her as like a turmeric expert, which goes without saying because she's well known for that. But what I've grown to know is she is so much more versatile than that. And we're going to get into tons of different aspects of what she knows and what she does today, along with the expertise in turmeric, which we're definitely going to get involved in. And she has the only turmeric supplement at this time that I will currently touch or use because I trust it that much. It is the gold standard and that's why it's turmeric gold. But she is an Ayurvedic practitioner. She's a turmeric researcher. She helps women reduce inflammation, balance hormones, boost energy. She has a new book, which is one of the main reasons I wanted her to come here and see me because I want each and every one of you to check this book out. And you will have it readily available soon because it's releasing in February. It's called The Inflammation Code. But she is just a wonderful woman. She's well-respected in the biohacking space, but all spaces of naturopathic medicines. So without further ado, Dr. Shivani Gupta. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course. Thanks for coming to see me. So we actually recorded, what, four months ago probably, and I told you, I said, no, no, no. We got to get something new to talk about your book. And because, you know, in-person interviews are always a lot better and the virtual thing is fine, but I find the in-person to be far more impactful. And so I definitely am glad that you took the time to come here and see me. For sure. Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about your expertise before we get into everything else. Because, you know, I talk to a lot of different people and they have certain expertise in certain areas, but it's kind of wide and broad. But you specialize in turmeric. And one of the things that I've learned about that is there's a high misconception, misunderstanding of what it actually does, what it's used for, which I want you to touch on. But why of all the things in the world that you could specialize in? Why that? When I was studying ancient Ayurvedic medicine from India, which is this whole system of medicine that's over 5,000 years old, I was sitting in the herbology class. And the professor started explaining all the benefits of the spices. They were like, coriander does this, and cinnamon does that, and cumin has these properties, and fennel, fenugreek, just kind of going down the list. And the adaptogens from Ayurveda, like ashwagandha, which is really popular right now. And when they got to turmeric, I was so shocked. They were like, turmeric is anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, all these benefits, like 50 benefits. And I thought, there's no way that's true. Because if that was true, we would be using turmeric every single day for everything. Every doctor's office I go to, instead of saying take NSAIDs for 10 days, they'd say you can take turmeric for that. And so I was really inspired because I was like, if that is true, we have something here that could change the whole planet. And so I started my PhD dissertation just hoping to understand, can this spice truly have applications in Western medicine that we can use it as a solution instead of all the things that give us side effects? That's great and commendable. Love that. And thinking about being an herbologist and discussing all of those different herbs and then you pick that specific one. Yeah. There has to be a reason for that. Yeah, I'm glad I did. I think we are ready right now for medicine to really open up and change. And so it's one of those well-studied herbs and spices that has room right now to really get out there. So you brought up NSAIDs, which I would like to discuss about. And I'm not asking you to talk about how horrible the pharmaceutical industry is because we already know it. I'm just kidding. But I'm not going to go there. What I would, though, like a perspective on is similarities there between, say, an ibuprofen is a popular one. The problem with these is not that they don't work. It's the side effects and the cumulative use, which a lot of people don't understand. And so what I would like you to touch on maybe is some of the side effects of longer-term use or even short-term use of NSAIDs, maybe some examples of sites from ibuprofen and then talk about how we could alternatively use turmeric in place. So when it comes to turmeric, turmeric is so beautiful because it impacts the major inflammatory pathways. So NF-kappa B, interleukin-6, TNF-alpha. And because it affects those master switches of inflammation, it then impacts another hundred pathways of inflammation in the body. It's almost like you turn on the light switch of inflammation and curcumin from turmeric knows how to go in there and turn off the light switch, which is huge because oftentimes most of us are brewing this chronic low-grade persistent inflammation that's like a fire. It's causing damage. So what we're trying to do here is use a natural solution to get that down. Now, when we use ibuprofen, NSAIDs, things like that, whenever you go to orthopedics or to the doctor and you take it for pain, it can cause GI bleed. It causes GI upset. A lot of different side effects that we don't want to have. But the problem is most people in pain are just popping it every single day. I see it in my family all the time. They're like, oh, I'm just tired. I'll just take two of these and I'll be better. I'm like, it's not an anti-tired pill, guys. You're suffering from chronic joint pain, stiffness, and these things. And instead of addressing that root cause of inflammation, you're going in there and popping a pill just to negate it. But what if you instead reach for natural solutions and then it affected all those pathways? So what I've seen over the last 10 years working with turmeric and working with doctors is it goes after the major pain, like back pain, hip pain, like the major stuff. Then the medium stuff. And then the smaller stuff. They'll be like, my gingivitis is gone. My allergies have gone down. I'm not getting headaches every day because those inflammation symptoms crop up as stiffness. You wake up in the morning. Everything hurts when you get up. Fatigue, right? As we're aging, we're like, we're tired. That can be root cause inflammation, headaches, bloating, digestive issues. Sometimes it's all subtle things. But the moment I say to myself, God, I think that this is just aging. The moment I have that thought, I go, no, that's inflammation and you need to pause and you need to address it. What changed? Is it diet? Is it sleep? And so that's why I wanted to put a whole book together because over the last 10 years, people are using turmeric and it is super effective, but there's also a lifestyle we can do. So one of the things that I have always learned with the NSAIDs, and I went through this year phase because I'm a runner and I was having like severe bone and pain in the ankle and foot. And I started doing like 800 milligrams three times a day for like a year because by the time that you're trying to deal with the pain, but then you start to understand the effects it has on your liver and your kidneys and everything else. and how detrimental it can be. And they just give you those like candy and your insurance will make you pay a buck for them. Right, right. So one of the things I think people don't understand is a lot of those medicines are derived from something natural anyway. Correct. So I guess my problem is when people start throwing stones at something natural, it's like, well, where do you think that those drugs come from? True. What do they derive from? True. I mean, willow bark is where Tylenol is derived from, right? So a lot of times we are taking natural things, extracting something out of them, but we almost take that process so far. And then, like you said, it's like a sledgehammer for the body. Yes, it knocks out pain. I've had plantar fasciitis before. I went to orthopedic and I said, you know, I've got this pain. It feels like I'm walking on glass every day. What do you have for me? And they're like, oh, just take NSAIDs 24-7, seven days a week and you'll be fine. And I was like, okay, that's what my doctor said. This was a long time ago. and after the 10 days, every time I ate a meal, I had a stomach ache and I got really mad. I went into the doctor and I said, hey guys, I have put a lot of time and money and effort into having a healed gut. That's how I got into Ayurveda in the first place was I had to heal myself. What just happened? What did you do to my stomach? And they're like, oh, that's just a side effect. It's not a big deal. It'll be gone soon. And I was like, oh, gut damage? Are you kidding? Gut is everything. Gut is mood. It's energy. It's brain. It's immune. Like you can't damage someone's gut and not tell them in advance that that's a potential side effect. Because I wouldn't have taken that solution. I would have asked for a different one. And that's when I thought every doctor should tell us you could take turmeric for that. Because they have that opportunity to open our mind to those other alternatives. We're going there saying, hey, I'm in pain. Can you help me? And so that's been the body of my work. Because you're right. When we're in pain, we need a solution. We need something. Can't function in pain. And that moment got me really passionate about, okay, how am I going to naturally find a way with this plant called turmeric? How do you extract out of it in a way that still mimics mother nature? Because our body can then really absorb it, understand how to use it, and get the benefits. Yeah, but you don't get any benefit from writing a script for turmeric. You're not really trained for that. Right. Right. Yeah. And that's why I don't even sometimes fault the doctors because that's what they're taught and told to do. And if they're paying money to go to school and get trained, they're going to believe what they're being taught. For sure. Yeah, it's what they've been trained in and their standard of care. They're following the protocols that they have to follow. But what's good is in the state of Florida where I live, there are rules now that says you must offer non-opioid alternatives to the patient. Mandatory. And so they're required to have handouts in the office. So what I did was I went into all my orthopedic offices because I know a bunch of them. They all recommend turmeric now, thanks to me. And I stapled my turmeric brochure to their brochure and I printed them out. And then I also put stickers on their post-op sheets so the patient would know, hey, you can take opioids, but you could also take turmeric. And what's interesting is as long as we put the option in front of someone, most of us know nowadays that there's a side effect and that we could try to take an alternative sooner that's less addictive or has less side effect. So as long as the doctor is supporting it and the patient is open to it, everything can change. Well, let's talk about other benefits. I think turmeric is well known, I think, for most for inflammation. I mean, I think that's it. But a lot of these have, you know, secondary and multiple benefits. What's some other stuff that maybe even some may know, but some may not know? Something that might surprise somebody that it could help. For sure. So it's a very powerful antioxidant. As we're aging, we feel like we're rusting. And it reverses the oxidative species in the body. It's reversing the oxidative process and the things that are oxidating the system from the inside. It impacts zombie cells, senolytic cells. So these cells that are aging in the body, knocking around, running into everything, causing more zombie cells, it cleans those out. So I think of turmeric as this ultimate janitor. It gets into the system and cleans house. It goes after all sorts of things, malignant cells, cell apoptosis. So cells that were meant to die and just didn't die, it'll clean those out. It'll go in the gut. It'll support us because it's antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal. So H. pylori, all these different things, parasites, bad bacteria. So bacteria that doesn't belong in the system, it'll cleave those out. But it'll leave in our keystone bacteria and our good bacteria. It'll support our gut lining, anti-H. pylori, anti-candida, all these things. So to me, it's like this ultimate janitor. And the body is doing its best. But the problem is nowadays there's environmental toxins. There's a lot of stressors. So our bodies are generally inflamed, polluted. And if we had a natural solution from Mother Nature that can just come in there and clean it all out, then at least we have that fresh start to deal with things. So you mentioned earlier curcumin. Explain how that plays a role in turmeric's effectiveness. What is curcumin? Because I think it's confusing for some people when they pick up a bottle and it says curcumin on it. For sure. It's super confusing. It took me post-PhD by at least a year before I could understand the labels on the bottle. And I was calling a factory. I was asking everyone. It's really confusing. So out of the entire turmeric plant, only 3% of it is the curcuminoids. The curcuminoids are the ingredients that we know to be the most effective at reducing inflammation. And out of those three curcuminoids, curcumin is the most effective at reducing inflammation. But the problem is the supplement world is unregulated and you can kind of do anything you want. And so most people take that three to five percent and they'll give it to you in equal proportion or they'll play a lot of games with how they extract it. They won't tell you how they've standardized it. The one standardized idea we have in our space is standardized to 95 percent. That's one level that we can use. And in my case, when I found a source in India, they can extract to about 97 to 98 percent grade potency above the standard. And that's what I was going for. I was trying to find an ingredient that could move into an orthopedic office and an ortho would say, wow, this stuff really works. And so you can find that. But the problem is right now a lot of the labels will say curcumalanga which just means the plant name It regular turmeric So there is raw turmeric A lot of people are juicing it They like I love my turmeric ginger shots I don know how they do that It feels like burning hot fire when I swallow it. I'm like, never again. Then there's the dry kitchen culinary spice, which is great. I'm Indian. We use it in our kitchen all the time. But that's not going to move the needle in modern day life for how much help we need when it comes to inflammation. I tell people cook with it all the time. that's great but use black pepper or a healthy fat because that's going to increase that absorption and then move on into the next level which is curcumin to really help you win inflammation so this is how i try to explain it when people ask me because it took me a while too even as like a supplement dude so the easiest way i think for me to to to say is for because since most people know about marijuana is if you take a cannabis plant and you take a THC percent. So the THC is like the potent aspect of the plant, right? Or the CBD now, but back then it was always the THC. So that's kind of in relation. That's how you could look at it to make it easy for everybody to understand. But it does make it easy to understand because when you look at those bottles, admittedly for me forever, I'd look at this and I'd be like, what? And what's the difference here and which one do I want? Yeah. People texted me photos of bottles forever. Yeah. And I would say, you know, I don't have a way to judge everyone else. Right. Like who made this? Is it a multinational conglomerate that's global that doesn't care about us? Is it 20 bucks off Amazon? Because that will tell you. Exactly. And that that's where I was going to go next with it because you covered because I was going to ask you about the ingestion methods and the difference between just having the herbs in the kitchen and how it would relate to actually supplementing. And I'm sure that it does give a little bit more efficacy if you do eat some and then take a supplement. But as you said, it doesn't replace or fulfill the need. So obviously then taking a supplement would be the best way to ensure that you're getting the needed amount per day, correct? Yeah. I mean, using kitchen culinary turmeric is great. Food is great. It's always good, but make sure you have black pepper or a healthy fat. When I cook with turmeric, I know there's no way on earth I'm going to get enough to significantly win at inflammation. That's why I take a thousand milligrams a day of curcumin supplementation just to ensure that I've hedged my bet. Because I know between my diet, which I try my best, my exercise, which I try my best, stress, which can run pretty high in our lives. It's like an endless battle against inflammation that we're dealing with. And so for that reason, I lean on turmeric. For some people, they might like using other supplements. But for me, turmeric is like the one that to me is an insurance policy. I'm at least winning at inflammation. Then I go down the line. It's like vitamin D, probiotics, and everything else. You said 1,000 milligrams? Is that what you said? So two capsules a day. Two capsules a day, 1,000 milligrams. Okay, perfect. When it comes to inflammation, we keep talking about that. And I've talked about it a lot. But could you explain how detrimental inflammation is and how many people in general likely suffer from it in one way or another. And touch on when we say inflamed, what does that mean? Because some people think when we say inflammation, all it means is like you got injured playing a sport or, you know what I mean, or you got like a nagging back and it's inflamed. But talk about the significance here. You know, in the ancient wisdoms in Ayurveda, we talked about our health as the goal is body, mind, and spirit and alignment. What does alignment mean? It means our physical body is at ease. We feel good. All systems are running well. Mental health, we want everything at peace and at ease. And that's how we have our spiritual alignment. So when I look at inflammation, I look at it as friction. The body is trying to attack whatever it thinks is the enemy. It's like, oh my gosh, she drank out of a plastic water bottle and that person had Cheetos and that person had a Coca-Cola. Like anything that's a processed food or high sugar, high toxic burden, right? And we're all going to do some of that. None of us is perfect. I'm always honest about my junk food that I love and the things I do love. So whatever it is you're doing, unfortunately, the body doesn't know what to do with some of those ingredients sometimes. When my kids tell me, oh my gosh, aftercare gave me Oreos, mom. I'm like, Oreos? Really? That is not even a food. That should be told in a toy store. Your body literally doesn't know what to do with a lot of the foods you're eating nowadays because it didn't come from the earth. So what does the body do? The body says, you know what? That looks like an enemy. I'm just going to send an inflammatory response to go figure out what to do with it. A lot of times I think we park it as fat in the body. I was told once, when you see a shelf in your body, that's food storage. Because you ingested something and the body doesn't know what to do with it. That's true. And until you pause and really detox, you're not going to let it go. So we talk about inflammation as forest fires and fires in the body, and we usually experience it in our joints. But you're right. We're all trying to say the same thing, which is the body's reacting or overreacting to everything in its stimulus, whether that's external or internal. It's what you ingest. It could be environmental toxins around you. It could be your skincare makeup. but also one big point I made in my book was it could be your mental stress and so I was writing my book on inflammation I was like guys inflammation is key over almost I think the statistic is four out of five of us three out of five of us are suffering from a chronic inflammatory disease so the numbers are high but we're still not addressing that root cause yeah and so from the ancient wisdoms we talk about it as gut health and sleep and circadian rhythm and all those things. And my final point was, and I thought of this word as I wrote the book, mental inflammation. I was finishing the book and I thought, how am I going to share with people that the sheer stress we put ourselves under will cause the physical inflammation that's going to kill us anyways. And it's interesting, right? We're in the health and wellness space. And if you ramp up the schedule too far. You can feel it. There's a tipping point where all of a sudden the body's like, I'm going to give you a lesson. This is headaches. This is exhaustion. This is fatigue. This is brain fog. And then what's good is when you're in the health and wellness space, you know how to cross right back over the line because we're so good at our self-care and everything. But most of us are actually living across the line and not pausing enough to come back into balance. And so that's the key I'm trying to teach. And I always say when you're stressed out, be honest and answer this question and sit there and think about it because a lot of times when people ask you stuff, you can be real quick to answer. And I always stress, just think about this closely when I say this and it says, what did stress actually solve? So if you sat there and got super stressed, How did that contribute to you rectifying the problem or did it add to it? Right. Right. So I'm super spiritual. Like I was listening to father Mike Schmitz last night and he said, when you are stressed, you're basically saying that you don't trust that God's going to take care of it. Yeah. And when he said that, I sat, I was actually listening to it when I was working out and I just got chills now because I was like, huh, wow. And it's, and then I thought about it and I said, but that's true because that's what you're doing. and I think one of the things that I have really focused on now is the mind and body connection because I think that what you do is tremendous and I don't have a background in in Ayurvedic but what I have really shifted towards now is understanding that I can make you as fit as I want I can balance your hormones I can make you eat right I can make you train right but if you're messed up here. It just doesn't matter. It's true. It's so true. And I think one big issue we have right now is as a society, we are allowing so much to come inundated into our mind. And Ayurveda really teaches that you should stand guard at the door of your mind. And I think about that a lot. Like this week, I'm on the road for a whole week. And my first thought was like, oh my gosh, How am I going to work out? How am I going to eat well? Eating is really hard on the road for seven days in a row. Oh my gosh, like airplanes, those aren't good for you. My mind just started going down a long list. I could almost start to see the reels that I had seen about how bad travel is for you. Oh, microplastics, water, the water's not filtered. Like you could go real down that rabbit hole. Then I paused. I said, what are you doing this for? You're doing this to impact. You are choosing to go on a book tour. That's the point, right? So can you have the faith that you are doing this for good and not add friction and stress just because you consumed enough content to convince you that travel can be detrimental or horrible and horrific to your health? And so part of our own internal coaching needs to be that understanding that mental inflammation will kill you too, just like physical inflammation. And so are you willing to also stand guard at the door of your mind and just cut off content that doesn't serve you? What are you filling your mind with? Is it TV? Is it social media? Is it TikTok? Is it bad, negative content? because that's what the algorithms are programmed to show us is what we're going to watch. And our brain in survival mode is going to tend towards that content. And Ayurveda teaches us that that's going to knock out what we call our agni, our digestive fire, our mental fire, our inner peace. So if you think of it that way, that helps you kind of set that guideline for yourself. That's well said. And I used to do that a lot where I'd go, oh, I'm dreading doing this. I'm dreading doing that. And then, you know what? Ultimately, it dawned on me two things. One, every time I said that I ended up like enjoying the heck out of what I was doing. And two, I started to think, well, what if I didn't have those opportunities to do? I'd be sitting here feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the hell was going wrong with my life. Correct. So now it's like, okay, maybe I need to rest a little more or maybe I need to do this or that so that I feel good enough in the process. But why am I telling myself that I'm dreading this or I don't want to do this when in reality, It's what I wanted the whole time. It's true. It's true. I think it's weariness. Yeah. I think we get tired and it's not enough sleep. It's not eating well. It's true. You're kind of used to your optimal. I know for me, I know when I feel amazing. And then anytime I push too hard and work, it slides. And then you feel like. And what's interesting is as we age, we're getting more inflamed naturally. So about two years ago, I was presenting at A4M, this conference that we have in Vegas in our longevity space. And when I was preparing for that talk, it was a whole talk on turmeric to hundreds of doctors. So I spent a couple months building this slide deck, pulling all the new science on longevity and curcumin. And it was super fascinating. So I was like, okay, curcumin affects our sirtuins, our telomeres, all these aging, it affects senolytic cells. Like the fact that it is so powerful for all that piece of longevity is cool. And then for brain health, It affects Alzheimer's. It affects neuroinflammation. Tau tangles. Like the science is so cool. It causes neurogenesis, new brain cells. It causes mitogenesis, new mitochondria, which to us in the longevity biohacking space is a really big deal. And we are chasing those two things specifically with a lot of different supplements and solutions. I love them too. The NAD, everything we can do we're into. but the fact that a simple plant from Mother Nature will give it to us is really exciting to me and that Ayurveda has been right the whole time about its herbs and spices and adaptogens. But when I was in that presentation, what I found most concerning to me personally was as you age, you will get more inflamed inevitably. As you age, you will have more oxidative stress inevitably. If that decomposition of the body that will lead to ultimately death. And so I already knew that inflammation was a problem because in my family, everyone's diabetic. Okay. So the last quarter of life looks like heart attack, stroke, leg amputation, Parkinson's, dementia. It's bad. And it's what drives me to try to teach everyone, guys, inflammation's a problem. Are you paying attention? Do you know your last quarter of life can be spent in and out of hospitals just suffering when you worked your whole life to accomplish what? like in my family they achieve success and then pay this price that i cannot tolerate for people to pay right the fact that we're going to inflame as we age to me is fascinating because then we're it's almost like you're going to have a decline and you're trying to prop it up and so how are you going to prop up at least the inflammation piece of aging that's where turmeric plays a role that's where our lifestyle plays a very big role i love that i i hate the the term oh it's inevitable it's inevitable certain things are going to happen this is true but it's not just i get this oh well we only live once so and then i always follow it so take care of yourself so that as you age you can enjoy it not that you do whatever the hell you want in your younger years and then below the actually it was going to be the best part of your life right when you're supposed to be enjoying what you worked for and looking back on what you did and i think for me once i lost a valuable time that I realized I couldn't get back, then that kind of hit me. But I think part of the reason now for people like you and I is to deliver that message. Take care of it early. Start addressing this early. Take it serious now so we can mitigate some of the things that will happen, but they don't necessarily have to happen that way. Exactly. Right. So I think that when you talk about this, this is one of those things that you can start doing early and be preventative and then continue to take because you can take this forever can't you i mean yeah i mean it's tumor right it's from mother nature it's known to be safe the only contraindication we have is it has a blood thinning effect okay it's a vasodilator good when we're talking about hair skin and nails and blood flow in the body yeah we take nitric oxide right now in the biohacking space for blood flow yeah and tumor can give you that as well um but you know if someone's on a blood thinner they should not be making a very strong tumor supplement can you take too much good question so the science shows that you can take up to eight grams a day safely. At that point, it's going to cause GI upset. Well, sure. You know, that's a lot of tumors to drop into the system. It is a pretty warming spice. But we haven't found any real upper limit other than that. So are there any circumstances where you would go a little bit higher than the norm or perhaps even put somebody on lower than the norm and still get the right benefits from it And if you had to go higher what would be something that would cause like that spike in a dose for somebody for a given time So a lot of people reach out to me because I've been answering the 800 number for the company until pretty recently. So now they email in and my team connects us and I'll call them back and I'm always like, what is the issue? What's the struggle? And then I can customize for them. Yeah. So it'll be usually around pain. They'll say, you know what? I'm at like an eight and I'm taking two a day, can I take like four? And I'm like, yes, depending on the person, depending on the issue, I want to talk to them first and understand what's happening. But a lot of times I can kind of guide that. So I myself go into almost a triple dose when I need an immune support, like when my kids get sick or anything like that, I'll just increase my dose tremendously for a day or two and then step back down from it. Okay. So that's one of the things that you use to kind of build immunity, travel, things like that. Exactly. But a lot of people have pain. If it's acute, they'll grow up and then they'll come back down. Does that have any effect on appetite at all or anything of the sort? No, not directly on appetite. I wish it did. I just think of spice and you know, there's potentially there and no, I mean, it can have an effect on insulin sensitivity. It can have an effect on obesity. That's what I was going to get. Yeah. Because if you are struggling with obesity and you're inflamed, the inflammation will keep you obese. It's a catch 22 issue. And so bringing on an anti-inflammatory can really help on the journey. It can function a little bit like a GLP-1, not in the appetite suppression arena, but in that anti-inflammatory help the body release the fat cells that don't belong on us. And then it does help with insulin sensitivity, which is great. We're seeking that a lot in the longevity space right now. Yeah. See, and a lot of times when you say something and people go, well, is that a weight loss thing? And it's like, no, but this is how it directly or indirectly helps you because it takes care of one thing that will it is impeding weight loss which will then allow you to lose weight exactly like with trt and people are like no it's not for weight loss but if your testosterone is well you can't lose weight right right so if we fix that then you can lose like you're supposed to because most people that can't lose weight or can't do this or that there's an underlying issue that if you address it they go to back to normal and be able to do it then they may think that it's just the thing itself that's doing it when it's correcting the problem right correct yeah i mean Sometimes it's thyroid. Sometimes it's warmer. Right. Let's take a step back here and talk about the Ayurvedic medicine or practice or just the theory or thought or the facts behind it because it's intriguing. I know some from talking to you and a couple other people I've interviewed, but admittedly don't know enough and I'd like to know more. I'm sure a lot of people would like to know more too. So can you give the premise of it or the base of it and just expound? Yes. So Ayurveda is this ancient system of health, healing and medicine. It's over 5,000 years old. So just like you have traditional Chinese medicine that has acupuncture and things like that, Ayurveda was running alongside. They're both beautiful ancient wisdoms. Now, typically when someone gets sick and they don't get the answers they want from their Western medicine allopathic doctors, they sometimes turn to the complementary and alternative modalities. Right. So they'll go to their chiropractor. They might find a naturopathic doctor, homeopathic doctor, and they go down the road. acupuncturist much earlier. Usually the last door you find is Ayurveda. But what I love about Ayurveda is it's a preventive lifestyle. It is original, personalized, root cause medicine. If I sit down with a client, I look at them and I say, you know what? I need to understand what your elemental design is. What are your primary elements that drive you? So Dylan, you're like classic Bitta, what we'd call fire, like reddish skin tone. You're so energetic as a personality. So you're all fire. I have some clients who are all air and ether, some who are all earth and water. We really customize everything we teach to the person and what they are and helping them stay balanced. So elemental design is a big pillar that we teach. Then it's circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is something we talk about a ton now in biohacking longevity, but it's from Ayurveda. We taught how to live your entire day as a rhythm, not just sleep. And then we teach that sleeping from 10 to 2 on the circadian clock is the most important time of day because that's the bitta time of day. It's the fire time of day. And your fires come out and clear your inflammation and your lymphatic system. And so most people are pushing their bedtime. Even Fitbit gave a statistic that the average time that Americans sleep is 11.02 p.m. And when I saw that, I was like, oh my god, half of people are sleeping at midnight. That's so bad because it means you're not winning at clearing inflammation out of your system. You're not clearing the glymphatic system or the lymphatic system. And that's a big deal. It means we're all clogged up, polluted humans, which is not going to help us. Boy, I got a lot of work. And that's a hard one because whenever you're in over, when I'm in overactive work mode, I am pushing bedtime, but then I feel it. So then I keep trying to move it back and I use all my sleep. So you're saying 10 PM is when we really need to be getting into bed. I just got told, I don't know if you know Dr. John Kim, but he just put this thing together for me and it says in all capital letters, bed by 10. And I'm like, I'm going bed by two is when I normally go to bed. So here's what's interesting. People who say that they are night owls who go to bed at 2. My sister is like this. I'm calling her out. Don't tell me. People who go to bed at 2 a.m. are actually just leveraging that bitha fire, which normally would detox you. And you're leveraging that energy to use it for your mind and get your work done. And it's totally understandable because it's fun, right? If I keep my brain alive, if I, let me say that again. If I am working and or on social media past 10, past 11, all of a sudden around 11, 15, 11, 30, my brain goes, let's go. Let's work. Let's do things. Come on. Tell your team. And my team laughs because they're like, we know Shivani says all day to sleep by 10. If she's awake and DMing us at 1115, that's wrong. And we're going to call her out on it. So you're just taking the same bit of fire and using it towards your work. You can get away with that a couple of times. It's fine. But it's just not ideal from a health perspective. It's one of those things when you fall into this pattern, it's so hard. For sure. Even at how good the intentions are to get out of it. And I was telling Queenie, my wife, I said, let's do the math and break down. If I was to go to bed at 10 and get up at like six, I'm actually going to be far more productive and have more time to work as opposed to me playing catch up from the moment I get up, having to rush all morning through everything. And even knowing that, it's like, and then I start to think how, analyze this. How, if you take the time of day you're working and then at night, how productive is the day one compared to the night one? It's not even really close. Honestly, the day one's way more productive. Yes. And look at it this way. In the health and wellness world, we know that our job is to win at inflammation. Our job is to clear our lymphatic system and then to support our overall well-being. And in Ayurveda, they teach the circadian clock dominates all. Like out of every health practice, you can have how you eat, how you exercise, all those things, sleep and circadian clock alignment is the most important because we are meant to mimic Mother Nature's clock and we are meant to live in rhythm with Mother Nature. Mother Nature is the ultimate biohack. And so knowing that, that 10 to 6 is really when the sun is down and it's dark out. So we are meant to align to that darkness. And nowadays it's just so easy to stay awake and we're in bright light. And I actually just installed dimmers in everybody's bedroom just so I can walk around and start dimming the lights on my children at night. Because I'm like, you guys can't be on laptops, iPhones, and then bright rooms. It doesn't support good sleep. And now, thank goodness, we're having circadian light bulbs. We're talking about red light. But that shift is really a mindset around, you know, Mother Nature says, if I'm sleeping when it's dark and awake when it's light, my entire body will be healthier. I'll have more energy, anti-aging, longevity, all those things. You'll wake up. And I have to lecture myself on that sometimes because it's easy to stay up right now when life is busy. And you know what else? Like on the nutrition side, you'll wake up and you'll see like you're in fat burning mode when you wake up as opposed to carb burning because you didn't sleep enough because the sleep is bad that late at night. There's so many factors. It's just ridiculous. You're stressing me out. Sorry, Dylan. No, it's good because the more I hear this on a personal level, it's a wake-up call. Well, I will say this. I'm going through a book tour, and a book tour is really intense. I would say it's 30% more work than my normal life, which pushes sleep. And then it pushes my buttons because I'm pushing sleep. So I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to teach health, but I'm going to trash my health on this journey. What am I going to do? And so each of us has a button. For me, it causes waking. if I'm not sleeping I am running more inflamed and thus I'm not maintaining weight yeah and so then all of a sudden like okay my wardrobe is not fitting me then I'm willing to make a change each of us has some button that gets a trigger right yeah a trigger I always do this I'm not a morning person but then I think back well yeah I was a morning person this whole time when I was going and everything was perfect when I moved to Maui I was getting up at five and six in the morning and I was going to bed at like 10 11 because you want to get up because it's so damn nice and the air and and then I forgot what that was like when we moved to Las Vegas because I was working all night sure you know and then it just never got back into rhythm yeah well then this this is a curious question because I've I've know several colleagues now that have written books and I've never really sat down and asked what it's like to go on the tours and how intense it is I haven't asked one person and I probably got 25 30 colleagues that have just written books the past couple of years. Tell me what it's like. Oh my gosh. A book is a roller coaster. First, you're going to sit and take everything you know and put it in a book, which almost writing the book was the fun and easy part. Did you write it yourself or have somebody else? I wrote my book and then I had an amazing editor come through and edit it because she's like, you think so fast, you don't write as fast as you think. So someone just needed to smooth my writing out. And I wanted to put like 10 times more knowledge in the book and you're not meant to write dissertations and bore everyone to death with lectures. So she pulled half of everything out of that book and made it much more fun to read. She's like, let's just leave them with what they need to know and not all the things that you think are interesting in the world. Are you physically writing this? Are you speaking it? Or like, what are you doing? I actually sat and typed it out. I flew to Houston where I'm from. My sister made a snack bowl and a tea kettle in a small office and said, you're not leaving this room until you finish. Because I was up against deadline. I flew to Texas twice. My mom and sister watched my kiddos for me and I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I got 50,000 words down in two weeks and then I was done. And then the editor had it. She edited it and smoothed it out and made it make more sense because I was trying to give PhD level nerdy topics to everyone. And then the minute it's done, you're actually stepping onto the marketing journey of the book because nowadays you're not sure. Is everyone going to sit down to patiently read a book. Really, I think most people listen to books on Audible more do than read the physical books. And truly, in the end, a lot of us love social media content. And so a big way to share the book is through social media and through podcasts and all these things. So you start the marketing journey very early and then it just gets really intense right before the book comes up because you're trying to share it the most with the world right when they can order it. So you wrote that whole book in two weeks? Yeah. Wow. Because I had actually every summer I pause a little bit and write. We call summers the Pitta time of year. So because I'm a Pitta and it's burning hot in the summer, I like to stay in. I like to do my creative projects. And I've always wanted to write books to impact the world. That was actually why I studied Ayurveda at the level I did and did the PhD. I thought, OK, I know this science works. I know I want the whole world to understand it. It's a treasure chest from India. I'm going to bring those golden nuggets here west where I live. but how am I going to convey that this is so effective? I'll become a teacher of it. I'll become an author of it. I'll become a speaker of it. And so I had actually written this book twice, two summers before, but I didn't think it was good enough when I threw it in the trash. And so then when Hay House called and said, we're going to let you write a book, I couldn't throw it in the trash. I had to write it and really make it a work of art and then get it to publishing. Wow. So, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and the cost that go along with it and everything. like the ghostwriters 30, 50 grand that it costs to write one of these books. And I'm sitting there asking myself, is that really worth it? For you, is it more the time that it costs you than anything? Or is it a huge investment for somebody that's actually writing their own? No, it wasn't a huge investment. It was more the time. It's more the, how do you take an ancient wisdom that's 5,000 years old and is in like seven ancient texts and simplify it and distill it in way and give it in metaphors that people will understand it and apply it. For me, when I sit down with a client or with my groups, I always am trying to find what's the leverage point that I can find in them to convince them to make the change. So in a book, you have no one in front of you. So you're giving all your client stories, all your examples, trying to show someone how to make this change. Is it a lot of citations and all of that that you have to take and pull from here, here, here, here, and here. It was more citations than my PhD. It was insane. That sounds dreadful. It was. And Hay House came back twice and was like, you need more citations. You need more citations. I had to hire researchers to work with me. And we did pull half all-nighters like you stayed up till two, pulling citations and citations. So yeah, it's intense. I had no idea that a health book required so much references. It makes sense though, because you're making a lot of claims. on a lot of information. The problem is my wisdom is 5,000 years old. So my references are in Sanskrit and I can't read them. So I was really struggling. I might take the James Patterson route and write fiction stuff and do some shit like that. That's too, I dread all of the citations. That's like one of the main things that I don't like about school is that because it's so time consuming. Sure. I mean, when I wrote the book, we were early with ChatGPT. Yeah. ChatGPT is getting better now The little we use it So like you can type something into ChatGPT and it say yeah you pulled two references to say that You saying that from here because you were thinking of that study that you read a long time ago, but you're quoting from here. And so it helps now. Okay, so we've got better tools than thinking of year 2000 college papers, writing those and just how dreadful. Yeah. Man. Okay, so what's the premise of the book then? What's the main subject and what's your goal by writing it? So I wrote the book because I find women nowadays are really struggling with their health, women and men. So it's for both, but I usually write more for women. And as we're struggling with that inflammation, the toolkit we're given nowadays is eat cleaner, eat better, work out more, get more steps in and go do some HRT and you'll be fine. Right. And it's not that simple and it's not really that basic. I think as women, we need to dive deeper into our wisdom, our true inner wisdom, and understand that we're meant to be living in our circadian rhythm and living according to nature and allow nature to be that ultimate healer. And so the premise of the book is Ayurveda as a lifestyle is the true preventive lifestyle. So circadian rhythm, addressing gut health from the Ayurvedic perspective, understanding that you have a mindful medicine chest, that's all the herbs and spices you could be reaching for. I call them super spices. Because we think of super foods, a lot of times we're eating blueberries and salmon and spinach and all these things. But you could have also reached for ginger, could have reached for cinnamon, like opening up the palate. And nowadays we're living such a protein forward life. Why not add some spices in there and make it a little more fun and diverse and bring some variety in there and not keep it so boring? I think that's part of the problem is things are so boring and plain and simplified. It's hard to stay consistent. It's hard to stay on those plans. And so my goal in the book is to show everyone, here's the Ayurveda lifestyle. You can implant it into your life and then you can maintain it forever and it's free. So living according to nature's rhythm and using everything from nature is much easier. It has no side effects. Yeah. And you've mentioned spices quite a lot. Aside from the obvious, what are some of your favorites or go-to that you recommend that have multitudes of benefits and or taste pretty good too? Like I am not a big spice person. I never have been. But I started to use cayenne pepper like on freaking everything now because I know the benefits. And then I tasted it because I'm not I don't like hot, spicy stuff. And I I can't do a lot of it, but it tastes good on everything. Yeah, I love I love everything hot and spicy. Give me some of your go to. So one of my favorites is cumin seeds. Cumin seeds in Mexican food and taco seasoning, it's always crushed and ground and in your taco seasoning. In Indian food, we take the whole seeds and we heat up any oil or butter or ghee and we put in a pinch of cumin seeds. Let that start to dance and release its aromatics in the pan. And then anything you cook on top of it will be better digested. Okay. Which I love. So beans, lentils, when people say some foods are hard for them to digest, if you just heat it in cumin, it's like a pre-digestive that helps the body absorb and digest. So the goal in Ayurveda is we want to absorb the nutrition from our food. We want to make sure our digestive fire is strong enough to get that absorption. Nowadays, we'd call that digestive enzymes. But in Ayurveda, we called it your fire. And so each thing we talk about is really the end goal is how am I going to help you absorb your food better and get the nutrients out of it. Cumin seeds are great. And if your food is leftover, like we don't like food past a day old. And I know nowadays everyone likes these meal plans and they're doing like meal prep seven days early. I don't do that. I don't do that. We have food one day old max. But if we are reheating food, let's say one or two days later, I always heat cumin seeds first. Put the food on top and it'll make it better absorbed and reduce the gas and bloating effect that the food can have. But cumin seeds is one of my favorites. Another one is coriander seeds, which is cilantro. That's a heavy metal detoxer. And we know nowadays we need to detox from heavy metals and 20 other things. So I love that one. Another great one is fennel seeds. So let's say you're traveling a lot or let's say you're eating out a lot. When you eat out, if it gives you gas or bloating, you can just chew on some fennel seeds and it gets rid of that. It's like a post digestive. That's why when you eat in an Indian restaurant, they've got fennel seeds on the checkout. They already know the drug. With some sugar because they know they're going to give you heartburn. They're going to give you way too many spices for your system. And fennel seeds will cool you down. I love super spices as a strategic solution. What can we have around us? Even cinnamon will help with blood sugar levels. And it's anti-inflammatory. And then you get into adaptogens from Ayurveda. You've got ashwagandha. You've got shatavari. These adaptogens are beautiful. I put them into teas because typically we're not going to find them in the kitchen. But when you have stress and anxiety, they can calm you down a couple notches. Bring cortisol down. If you're depressed and have the blues, they lift you up. Like that's a natural thermostat that has an intelligence in the body. I love ashwagandha and these things. Okay. I'm laughing when you bring up cinnamon and I'll tell you why. You already know my personality and it's like go hard, right? When you like something. And I remember very specifically learning about the benefits of cinnamon. And I used to eat oatmeal every day, literally. And I was like, okay, I can't get these maple brown sugars and all these things. I'm just eating plain oatmeal because I don't want to, now I don't touch oatmeal. That's another story. But I remember getting on the cinnamon kick and I overdid it so bad. Yeah. Like I was loading that thing up and my mom and my wife kept saying, you got to stop. You got to stop. and that shit's, I don't even eat it anymore because I'm scared because it just like, I can't, I don't like to taste anymore, but it is so good for you if you control it. Oh my God, if you would have seen the amount I used to load in there and do it with the protein powder. But yeah, that you can overdo it on anything, I guess is the point. Correct. So you have the fusionary line. I learned about it when I met you and I tried everything and I'm not a T guy at all, like at all. And I like yours and that's rare for me. There's a couple that I will taste of my wife's, but I'm not a big, it's just never been. I'm a coffee guy, but yours are great. So you have teas and then you have the turmeric gold. What's the difference with this gold product as opposed to, because, you know, I always battle this, well, protein powder is all protein powder. And that was a battle I had forever when I was training athletes and stuff. And I'm like, and you know, back then, especially, I think more people are aware now, but that's one of those things. So for people that are going, oh, it's just another tumor supplement and it's maybe more expensive or what. Why? What's so better about yours and why is it gold? Sure. So, you know, years ago, it was the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times that did an article that went and investigated supplements in big box retailer shelves. And when they did that, they found that up to 75 percent of the supplements on those shelves were fake or adulterated and did not have the key ingredients at the level stated on the bottle. And I remember seeing that article and thinking, oh, my God, when I buy vitamin D, I need it to be vitamin D. Are you kidding me right now? I have an immune system that always needs help. You can't give me fake supplements. That's a huge issue. I would be screwed. And so that was so illuminating to me because I realized you can't always trust the supplements you're buying. Nowadays, everyone's buying them off Amazon. They're like, let's just auto ship. It's just easier. No, it's not. A lot of what's on Amazon is coming out fake. And it's even big company supplements. People are faking them in two seconds and then shipping them to you. I have colleagues and friends who said their own product lines are being faked and sold through Amazon. So we're living in a moment that's a bit crazy. And what's good is there are a lot of supplements that have been built for functional medicine, integrative medicine, and these spaces. And so we do have access to these special product lines built for efficacy. see. And in functional medicine, the doctors know if your product works. In a doctor's office, they know. My orthos know if something works or doesn't. And so when I built my supplement company, I had just done the PhD and everyone kept asking me whose supplement should I take? And I was like, I don't know. I'll go to Whole Foods. I'll go to Sprouts. Like, I love these stores. Let me go see. Even I couldn't tell the difference between those product lines. And I thought, OK, well, I don't know who to recommend yet. Let me figure it out. and I had a group of doctors who said, you know what, if you can actually prove that turmeric's actually effective, which we don't really believe, but if you could prove it, we would use it. And I said, you know what, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to try. And so I visited with a supplier in India who was incredible and they are always pushing the science of curcumin. And I go to India to meet with them and meet the farmers and everything. And they're always like, Shivani, nobody flies here and asks us to do better and tells us they're willing to pay anything. You're the only crazy girl who shows up here and is like, how do I push even farther in curcumin science? Because that's what excites me the most. So I built my formulas. And in year one, I built my company completely backwards. I built it for impact, not for profit. But that was my dream. And when I put it into doctor's hands, they were like, this really works. This is insane. The patients come into our office every month to pick up your stuff. They're not even coming to see us. It's great. Like you are handling our chronic joint pain community. Perfect. Now we can go find the people who really need our help or surgery and we help them. And so that to me was such a light bulb moment because I was like, okay, we really have something here. And so that's the ethos I took. And that's what I've been doing for the last decade. Meeting with doctors. And then a couple of years ago, people were like, well, what about the rest of us? Then I started sharing it online with everybody. That's great. What's in this that's different? So it's 500 milligrams of curcumin. The way that they extracted our curcumin mimics the proportion of Mother Nature. And we didn't extract it in the cheapest way possible just to barely touch a standard. We extracted it with our methods to reach way above the standard. So the fact that we're that 97% and 98% grade potency and the body understands what to do with it increases that absorption. And then we add black pepper to increase the absorption as well. And then it goes in the body. And what's good is I make it in the United States. So I third-party test for microbes, heavy metals, and everything pre, mid, and post-production, which is pretty much going to be the new standard in the functional medicine supplement space anyway. But that's really important, too, because we want the customer to be safe. So many people take a shortcut and they don't test, or they test one and then never test again. No, we touched every batch. How expensive is that? It adds up. Everything adds up. Even producing in the U.S. adds up. Yeah. From the beginning, everyone's like, just make this abroad. Just source from China. What do you care? You don't know what you're getting. I was like, I won't take it. If I'm not willing to take it, I can't make a product like that. I have to make it so I want to take it. I trust it. Very easy to say and very frustrating to hear from people that have never ran a business or just don't care about people. Well, the self-met world is like that. I know. That's why I got out of it. You can make anything for nothing and sell it and people will buy it because they know turmeric's good. but I have met thousands of people who said to me, I take turmeric every day, but I don't feel anything. And then I took yours and I actually felt something and now I can't leave you. I'm like, let me now teach you how to win in inflammation without turmeric. That's what the book is for. You can actually win without taking a supplement. You shouldn't take a supplement forever. That's my job too, is to teach you how to win without the supplement. It's just nice that there's a few people out there that have the right motive. Because I'm telling you, I learned at my early 30s when I kind of got involved into it. And what I have observed and seen has jaded me to no end. But the good thing is, is in our space, there's always going to be bad people. We were talking about that off camera, but there's a lot of people that actually have a good intention. And then the people that complain about the product costing more don't realize it's because you're actually getting what you're supposed to. And that all of the work is being done and paid for that you have to do. That costs a lot of money. It does. It does. To do things right and to take the right path is always going to take a little more yeah it'll take more effort time love support all those things there are no shortcuts and hype is i know that everybody wants to think there are there's not i know every shortcut often leads to a longer more difficult road it's but we're living in a world like that i know everyone's like let's just inject this let's just win yeah i'm like yeah and the basics are still important little hard work concept got lost in translation along with a lot of others. Chalk it up there with accountability, credibility. I mean, I could go on and on and on. That's a whole nother conversation. Well, I can't look at the clock and it's like, well, where'd the time go? Well, we should do it again because I think we got through a fraction of what we probably wanted to, but it was fun and enlightening. And I'm so, I wanted you to come because I wanted to let everybody see what you got going on and see this book. I don't like to bring on everybody to promote stuff but you are not promoting you're helping and aiding so i want to aid in that journey with you and so thank you for taking the time and for doing this because sitting down and doing all that and taking time away from what else you're doing is not easy and i appreciate it so tell everybody the where they when the book's coming out where to buy it and then where they can get this gold standard turmeric and everything else to follow you and I'll link it all for everybody. Perfect. So the book is theinflammationcode.com. My website is my name, shivanygupta.com, S-H-I-V-A-N-I-G-U-P-T-A. And then the supplements are at fusionaryformulas.com. And we made a special code, jamelly15. We'll give everyone 15% off on their first order. There you go. And if they want more info, I'm on Instagram and all the social channels as dr.shivanygupta. Perfect. Well, there you go. I didn't even know there was going to be a deal, but you got one today. So thank you for that as well. Yeah. Well, thanks again for coming and seeing me. I'll continue to help you any way I can. You deserve it. And I appreciate all of it, as I said. And for me, I got a little bit of extra education too, and maybe a kick in the ass to go to sleep earlier. So thank you. Yes. That's a win for me. Yes. I love it. All right, everybody. Well, thanks again. I hope you find this enlightening and helpful, check out Shivani's book and go follow her online. You'll be doing yourself and your health an incredible favor. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.