EPI 236: The Most Important Blood Biomarkers You Should Be Tracking Regularly (Your Doctor Probably Isn't Testing Them). With Longevity Medicine Specialist Dr. Darshan Shah

Welcome back to another episode of the Peak Performance Life podcast. Today, I am very excited to have a very special guest. His name is Darshan Shah, MD. He is a health and wellness specialist, a board certified surgeon, published author, entrepreneur, and founder of Next Health, the world's first and largest health optimization and longevity clinic. He has expertise in all body systems and has performed over 20,000 surgical including trauma surgery and complex reconstructive procedures. But as a longevity medicine specialist, he has advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their well-being and extend their health span and lifespan. Dr. Shah, thank you so much for joining us here today. Talor, it's so great to be here. It's an honor. Thank you. Oh, it's an honor to have you. Would love to start with a little bit of a background of how did you get interested into the work you're doing today? Yeah. So, you know, I've been a physician for 30 years now, since I was 21 years old. And when I first became a doctor, I was really young. I was really intrigued with surgery and specifically trauma surgery, because people come to the hospital, they'd be really messed up from a car accident or someone shot them or something. And I just loved the ability to make a massive change in the course of their life by taking to the operating room and saving their life. And this was my first career in medicine, was doing trauma surgery. And I did that for many years. And then I decided, you know, I wanted to learn something new. And I went into reconstructive surgery, specifically cancer reconstruction. And that was really rewarding. And, you know, it was a little bit better in my schedule, because I didn't have to go to the emergency room every night when trauma is usually happened. And so I didn't major 12-hour surgeries in reconstruction. And what happened during that time period, when I was a busy surgeon, I was operating five, six days a week. I was also running a business. I had a surgical center of business is I personally got very sick myself. And I gained 50 pounds. I became what I call a metabolic mess. I had diabetes. I also had high cholesterol levels, lots of inflammation. Everything was going wrong in my system. I also was not doing anything for my lifestyle. I wasn't exercising. I wasn't getting my 8,000 steps a day. I was eating the garbage that they feed you at the hospital. And I just got really sick with multiple medical conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune disease. And I decided I needed to get healthy. And what I discovered was that everything I learned in medical school and intense training during my residency programs, none of that was to promote health. It was all about how to take care of disastrous mess situations that we get ourselves into as humans, like, stage four cancer, needing cancer removal and reconstruction, getting hit by a car, right? That's what that system was made for. It was never built to reverse chronic disease or keep you healthy. And so I had to go out there and relearn everything. So I went out and got my nutrition degree, got my degree in exercise physiology. I then learned functional medicine, which is this new type of medicine that completely changes a paradigm about how do we prevent chronic disease and get people to stay healthy? And that's what I implemented in my own life. And I just said, you know what? If I can change the trajectory of my health in eight months and completely get off my prescription medications, get rid of my autoimmune disease, get rid of my diabetes, anyone can do it. And so I just said this kind of medicine I want to practice. And over the next five years, I quit surgery and I started a new clinic, Next Health, in this entire science of health optimization, we call it. Now, when you optimize your health, you're not just avoiding chronic disease. I mean, that's fantastic. No one wants a disease. We're also reversing chronic disease for people. So getting them off their medications, but we're making them feel incredible. Like they feel like they have energy. They feel like they want to go to the gym. They're building muscle. They're keeping fat off. Their brain is not foggy. All of that happens when you're optimizing health. And that's where I am right now. Speaking about this, we have about 20 locations all over the country, all over the world, actually. And yeah, it's going to be the rest of my career. Amazing. What an inspiring story. I love the fact that not too many medical doctors would embrace functional medicine and move into this new health optimization type of framework. They kind of get sucked into their work and they're so busy sometimes and they pick their head up and it's 30 years later and they're still kind of treating the effect rather than the cause. So I love that you're kind of moving over. You yourself are your first customer and experiment and it works. And now you're spending each other. How about your first patient, right? Yeah, it's your own first patient. Yeah, that's awesome. Now, I know you have a lot of biomarkers that you like to check with patients. A lot of these biomarkers are probably not stuff your traditional doctor would check for, right? Tell us a little bit about those. And I know you even have a free resource for people, which is great. Yes. Okay. So one of the key things that I discovered was I was going to one of the best doctors in town, right? Like I'm a doctor. I found the best doctor I really trusted and he was checking blood tests on me. And I just assumed that he was checking all the right things, right? We all do. I think we all go to the doctor and assume they're checking things to make sure we're going to stay healthy. The reality is what they're checking in those blood tests, they're not to see your state of health. They are to see if you have a disaster going on in your biology and you need to get diagnosed with a disease, right? And a lot of times they wait for symptoms to occur before they test anything, right? And so what I quickly realized is that we have as a population outsourced our health to the western medical system and we've trusted them to be able to, you know, once a year doctor visit that for most people is like 15 to 20 minutes. I just talked to another physician. They said that they're teaching physicians now in medical school how to have the eight minute doctor visit, how to get everything in in eight minutes. It's crazy. You can't do that. And so what I discovered was that number one, I had to take my health into my own hands. How do you do that? You understand what are those biomarkers that really make a difference. Number two is what are the biomarkers? And number three is how often do you have to check it? And this is where it's very different. There's blood tests that can tell you if you're in a bad state of health decades before you get diagnosed with the disease. Those need to be checked a lot more frequently because you can make adjustments earlier and then you want to do it all yourself because no one's going to care more about your own health than you do. And it's definitely not going to happen in a 15 minute doctor's office once a year, you know, kind of a thing. So I think that if everyone were able to get blood tests done, my preference is quarterly, but at least every six months. And you know what those five or 10 tests are, combine that with a few other biomarkers that we have available that are not blood tests that we can talk about. And then you can completely change the direction of your health from an internal biology perspective, right? I think a lot of people, they know that they need to keep fat off, gain muscle. But then what's next? There's so much more that we can understand about our bodies. If you know what these markers are. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know inflammation is a huge one as well, right? Some people might even have good muscle and low fat, but if their body's inflamed, they're always in pain, they're having different issues all the time, that's definitely a big one. So maybe, yeah, talk about that one as well as other, like what are the actual important biomarkers here? I'm sure people are wondering. Yeah, so tell us, since you mentioned inflammation, let's start with that one. Yeah. The critical biomarker here is one called HSCRP, highly sensitive C reactive protein. This is a marker that goes up in your bloodstream anytime you have inflammation going on. And what happens is this marker is almost never measured in traditional medicine. We measure it every quarter on our patients because we want to know right away, are you developing inflammation? Do you want this marker optimally to be as close to zero as possible? Definitely under 1.0. About, I would say 50% of the people that we see in our practice for the first time that get this biomarker, it's elevated way past two, sometimes it's five, six, eight, 10 really inflamed. And they don't even know it. Most of the people don't even have symptoms, believe it or not. And so that's where we talk to people like you have chronic inflammation going on. We got to figure out where it's coming from. And then we go looking for it. 90% of the time it's in the gut. It's poor gut health, it's leaky gut, it's poor oral health. Your mouth is the first part of your gut. And once we can find what it is and correct those issues, we get their HSCRP down to zero. And so that's a critical biomarker of health is making sure you're not inflamed. The next one I like to bring to your attention is one called hemoglobin A1C. This is a measure of metabolic health. And we know, you know, your metabolism is extremely important to keep under tight control because the longer you live with a metabolic health issue, the higher your chance of getting Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer. And it is a core fundamental aspect of our health that we need to make sure that we have it under our control sooner rather than later. The reason we have such a huge amount of cardiovascular disease, you know, number one cause of death in America is heart attacks is because people live with poor metabolic health for decades. Right. And so hemoglobin A1C is a three month average of your blood sugar. And you want this as close to 5.2 as possible. 5.7 is when you diagnose pre-diabetes and 6.5 is diabetes. It takes decades to go from 5.2 to 6.5 decades of snacking, of eating carbohydrates alone, of sugar intake, you know, all of this stuff leads to poor metabolic health. And we know in America right now, 90% of people have some degree of metabolic health problems. I found myself, you know, I had diabetes when I did started, but it's not that hard to turn it around, you know, you can turn it around pretty quickly. And so that's another one that I really like is hemoglobin A1C. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. So you were able to turn hemoglobin A1C around and were you able to essentially reverse your diabetes for the most part? Completely reverse my diabetes. Yep. Wow. And so, you know, when you go to a traditional medical doctor and they start prescribing you medications for diabetes, things like metformin, even insulin, they're even told by the medical authorities that do consensus statements that don't get them way down past 6.0 or 6.5. They want to just get you in that disease range that, you know, the medicine that we know has effect, but no side effects. So you have to go beyond that. You have to get back down to normal. And you can only do that with lifestyle changes and really understanding how to change your, you know, glucose levels. Have you ever wanted to continue as glucose monitor by chance? I did for a couple of weeks. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very eye-opening. Very eye-opening. How your habits, your sleep, even the way you eat foods and certain foods can really affect your glucose levels. So whenever we see someone that has excuse me, excuse me, I'm in the dry Denver air here. So that's been air. You're good. Whenever we see someone whose hemoglobin A1C is above 5.5 or so, we highly recommend they wear continuous glucose monitor for two to six weeks and learn about their metabolic health and what affects it. What other biomarkers do you think are very important? Yeah. So I'll give you one more blood test. You know, so many people focus on cholesterol levels, LDL, total cholesterol. I don't think those markers matter as much because they don't capture the full story. The full story by a marker of your cholesterol is one called ApoB. ApoB takes into account all the damaging forms of cholesterol. So I encourage people to really shift their mindset around their cholesterol into cholesterol by itself is not going to cause heart disease. It's cholesterol combined with poor metabolic health combined in inflammation. So knowing what your ApoB is is critical because if you have any inflammation, if you have any poor metabolic health, then you want to keep your ApoB also under good control. And so those three biomarkers together, I think those are my three most important ones. And then there's other biomarkers as well that you can measure at home. There's not a blood test. For example, I have all my patients get a bioimpedance scale. This scale tells you your skeletal muscle mass and also your fat mass. I think measuring your weight, it's so 1970s. It's like a garbage measurement to me. I don't even look at it anymore. I'm looking at your skeletal muscle mass because I know if I can get you into a normal range of skeletal muscle, your metabolic health is going to improve, your fat mass is going to come off, and naturally you're going to be healthier. And so anyone can do this with a bioimpedance scale. My favorite one is Renfo. There's also InBody. There's Whithings. There's so many on Amazon. You can buy one for 25 bucks. Another one that's kind of an advanced one I really like is a Grip Dynamometer. This is just a simple device that you can buy on Amazon for like 15 bucks. And it tells you how strong your grip is. And this is a proxy for your upper body strength and your overall body strength. And I can't tell you the number of people that come to our office that their grip strength is lower than the 50th percentile. And they're surprised because they're even going to the gym and their grip strength is not good. And so it's so critical to maintain your strength throughout life because this is what's going to prevent osteoporosis. We know that your muscles when they're strong, they keep you out of a wheelchair, they keep you out of the dementia hospital, they keep you away from the hospitals treating cardiovascular disease. Your muscle is a critical organ of longevity. And so understanding how good your muscle is doing by using a bioimpedance scale to measure your muscle mass and a Grip Dynamometer to measure the strength is incredibly important. Yeah. Yeah. This is great stuff. I'm really glad you mentioned as well about the cholesterol and ApoB. It's interesting because the traditional doctors don't even measure to my knowledge ApoB. They just measure your cholesterol numbers, which like you said, you know, I think a lot of people have shown now that, you know, people who are on a really good low carb diet could have really low information be really healthy, but their cholesterol is high. Does that mean they're going to get heart disease? Well, if their ApoB is good, if all their other biomarkers are good, probably not. Right. But I think there's a lot of people who just go to their traditional doctor, get the traditional cholesterol numbers, which like you say, are not anywhere near as important as the ApoB. And then they get prescribed statins. And from what I've heard, statins could have, you know, some negative side effects for a lot of people. Exactly. And so this whole culture that we've developed over the last 15, 20 years of just flinging statins and prescriptions that people without checking and understanding what the biomarkers are really telling us. And then not even using lifestyle as an intervention, you know, is just crazy to me. And so, you know, I don't think doctors have any ill intent by prescribing the statins. They just know that they have 15 minutes once a year to help this person. And prescribing lifestyle interventions, there's like a 10, 20% chance a person's going to do it. They just, you know, they all that you have as a hammer, the whole world becomes a nail. And so, you know, you just start giving people statins. There's so many other things that you can do prior to prescribing the statin. Number one is get your metabolic health in order. Number two is get your inflammation to go away, right? And this brings up another critical, I'm so glad you mentioned this, because it brings up another critical test that's rarely utilized in medicine right now, because insurance doesn't cover it. And that's the calcium score. It's the CT of your heart calcium score. Have you had this done, tell her? I haven't had that. I don't believe I had that done. This is not a blood test. This is like someone with a machine, right? Yeah. Yes. So this is a scan that you can get from any radiology center. It's a quick scan of your heart. It's 15 minutes long. It's very low radiation. And it tells you if you have hard calcified plaque built up in your heart. Now, this is critical because a lot of people are just thinking, you know, if my ApoB is under control, if I'm exercising, I'm not going to have heart disease. It's not true. I can tell you, we've seen so many people with advanced heart disease with this calcium score that have a normal ApoB, that don't have inflammation, that don't have poor metabolic health, and they still have heart disease. And the reverse is also true. We see so many people with high cholesterol levels that have zero heart disease in this scan. So you don't know until you look. And the way you look is by getting a quick scan. This scan, you can get it for less than $100. And it will tell you, and I recommended to any person who's 40 years old, men or women, to just take a look. And if your doctor won't order, you can call the radiology center and just get it yourself. And it gives you a score from zero to a thousand. You want it as close to zero as possible. If it's over 100, that's an indication to do some deeper analysis, to see a cardiologist, and to really make sure you're stopping heart disease and you're reversing heart disease. And you can do that. You absolutely can reverse heart disease. I'm a living, breathing example of that. You know, I did this scan of my brother, who's when he was 40 years old, and he was about to hike Kilimanjaro for his 40th birthday. And we canceled the hike because he had advanced coronary artery disease that could have potentially killed him if he went for this strenuous hike up Kilimanjaro. So these kind of tests and modalities are available to everybody. And we're just under utilizing them right now. Amazing. This is great stuff. And I think you have a free resource, right? Where you talk about the biomarkers and kind of go through them in more detail? I do. It's at drshawdrshah.com slash biomarkers. And it's a free PDF. You just put in your email, I'll send you the PDF. It'll go over the ones I talked about just now with you and a few more that I think are important. And you can even bring the guide to your doctor and say, I want you to buy, I want you to order these on me. And they should do it because these are tests that insurance covers. But if they don't do it, then argue with them. And if they still don't do it, that's an indicator to me that maybe you need to find a doctor that is bought into some of this prevention mentality. And then also, it's a great time we live in right now. You can get these online. You can get these at your local laboratory, go to Quest, go to LabCorp. They'll do these for you. You might have to pay some cash for it. They're less than $100. And you get a really good analysis that you can use yourself to understand using my guide. And now we have another great tool, chat GPT, or any of these AI modules. You can just upload your PDF results to that and I'll give you a kind of a game plan about what is not good right now, what to think about with your lifestyle, what to talk to your doctor about. Nice. Do you like any of the online kind of blood testing services out there? Yeah, I like function health a lot. I actually have a you have to go to the lab for that and twice to get all the blood biomarkers, but they give you a good set, a huge set. I don't think you need that huge set every quarter. I think maybe once a year, function health is a great idea. I also have a take home, sorry, an at home kit that you can do to get the critical biomarkers. And so if you get my biomarker guide, it can tell you how to order that too. It's called the bio kit. And you just as a simple device you put on your shoulder, collects about a cc of blood and then you send it in and you get your biomarkers. That's awesome. I saw that device a while ago. I didn't know that it was like in market now and being used. It's working well, huh? Yeah, I mean, if insurance would just send one of these to every person that's insured by them once a quarter, it would totally change the landscape, you know. Unfortunately, as we know, our insurance system is really broken right now. And so they don't do it, but we've tried to make it as affordable as possible for people and all this stuff is getting cheaper and cheaper. And I just think that sooner people get in the mentality of, I call it becoming the CEO of your own health, you know, as soon as you get into the mentality of running your health like you would a business, where you check your numbers frequently, you make minor adjustments, sometimes major adjustments throughout the course of your health journey, just like you would for your business, you're going to have a very successful health journey, just like doing these same things where your business can make it very successful. That's right. Absolutely agree. Would love to talk a little bit about you improved your metabolic health, you improved basically reverse diabetes and improved your heart health, everything. What are some of the core principles? Maybe we can go from like basics nutrition stuff, and then maybe we can also get to some fringe biohacks stuff. But what are some of the things that people should know about? Maybe they're listening right now, they're like, okay, I know I need to you know, get getting better health this year. What in terms of nutrition, what would you say? Yeah. So with nutrition, I think there's, I talked about the Pareto principle, right? Because do you have the Pareto principle is? Yeah, the 80, 20. 80, 20. Yes. Because there's so much information out there and people get so hung up and all the little things like, what should I eat? What should I not eat? I think if you look at the 20% of the information that moves the 80% of the needle for you, it's going to be one thing. And if you do this one thing, it will change your relationship with food and your metabolic health instantly. And then I almost don't care what you eat and putting your body after that. We can make adjustments into that, you know, later. But the one thing everyone needs to do is just cut out ultra process food. We know that ultra process food for every 10% of caloric intake you have over your daily caloric requirements of ultra process food, you're adding 15% chance of all cause mortality. All cause mortality means dying of all the things, the top 10 things that the CDC says that will die of in their report every year. Heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, cancers, all of it. And so just eliminate ultra process food. Once you do that, whatever's left is going to be a lot healthier for you. Yeah, 100%. Now, for people listening, I don't think a lot of people may not realize like bread is most of the time an ultra process food, right? It is an ultra process. Yeah, exactly. I mean, pasta, right? Pasta. When you when you take wheat and you completely strip it of all of the nutritional value and you bleach it, and you make it white, that's ultra process. And that has tremendously poor effect on your gut health, effect on your brain health, even your inflammation, all of it. And so really trying to minimize the ultra process bread and going, if you do need bread, go to like the whole grain type of situation, really minimizing the amount of those types of carbohydrates you're putting into your body are extremely important. Other ultra process food is everything in packaging, everything with an ingredient list that you can't pronounce the ingredients in there. Seed oils or ultra process too. All of these things are negative affecting people's health. Yeah, yeah. It's yeah, a lot of people I think when they hear ultra process, they just think, oh, that's just like desserts or sure, you know, stuff. And you know, I've heard people say, Oh, I don't really eat ultra process foods. And then we go to the restaurant and they're, you know, eating the bread basket right away in the beginning. I'm like, I'm not sure you understand fully what what this actually is. So yeah, package meats are really bad for you as well. So any any type of package meats you want to make cold cuts and charcuterie boards stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So getting really clear on what ultra process food is, I think is very important. A friend of mine wrote a book on this. That's so good. It's food. What the heck should I eat? Dr. Mark Hyman wrote that. It's a quick read. You can read it in a couple of days. And man, it totally educated me with one read on how food has really led to the chronic disease epidemic that we're in right now. But it's also the solution that can be medicine. It can reverse chronic disease. Just got to put the right things in your body. Yeah. Yeah. The seed oils, like you mentioned, too, is another really big one that's really tough, especially if you eat out a lot. I'm kind of the guy who the waiters probably find really annoying because I'm always asking like, what oil is that cooked in? Can you make sure they only use olive oil or butter? I'll tell them, you know, something like that. But yeah, it's just it's so prevalent everywhere. I mean, you know, we had we had a taco people over for a soccer party for our kids. And, you know, I'm like, okay, yeah, they're just having carne asada or whatever. And then I look over and they got this big thing of oil and they're just squirting it all over the vegetables and cooking it up. And I'm like, Oh, man, no. And then like, and everyone afterwards, everyone's like, Oh, I don't feel too good. And it's like, Yeah, you know, this is this is the problem. A lot of times we just don't realize it. But yeah, yeah, hopefully you ran out the time after you ran out to the taco people and gave them a bottle of coconut oil, avocado oil, or olive oil or something instead. That's what I want to do. Yeah, I'm gonna actually do that because we have another one coming up. And I'm, I think I'm going to do that. I was telling my wife, she's probably a little embarrassed. But yeah, yeah, we just buy the right oils. And if we ever have someone come over to cook something, we're always like, here, use this instead of what you brought. That's the way to do it. That's smart. Yeah. And this is also why I try to eat at home as much as possible as well. Obviously, there's a few select restaurants that we know about that we kind of regularly go to. But the more you can eat at home and avoid these, you know, oils and ultra processed foods, I think the healthier you're going to be. Yeah, look to Lord, I think awareness is critical first and talking about it with your family. And then everything in moderation, right? Like I think right now, and we know this, as data shows this 80% of people, more than half of their diet is composed of ultra processed food is mainly a lack of awareness about how it's affecting our health. What is the definition of an ultra processed food? And then you just start cutting it out slowly and making good choices. You know, I would tell people like, get a box and just throw all the junk into the box that's in your pantry and just, you know, donate it or something. But, you know, just redo your pantry. That's step one, you know, and that's even if you hire nutritionists for a day, you can hire nutritionists for a day now for like 100 to 200 bucks, they'll come to your house and educate you and go through your pantry and your fridge with you. And I think those are like little things that you can do that can make a big difference because, you know, once you do that one time, you learn and hopefully you modify your habits and then those habits last to last a lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard you also talk about kind of toxins, kind of hidden toxins and eliminating those from the body as well. What are some common toxins that maybe people aren't realizing are getting in? Yeah, we do a full toxin test on all of our patients of next health. And we man, we discover so much stuff. And I would say I like to break it up into categories for people when I talk to them. There's toxins in our environment. Those are in our air, water, food and what we expose our skin to. Okay. So in our air, we know that there's a lot of air pollution. But here's the part that's not intuitive to people. Most of that air pollution is inside our home, not outside of our home. Okay. And so inside the home, these pollutants get trapped, they're off gassing from our furniture, they're coming in the shoes that we wear from the outside. And they're in the chemicals that we used to clean our homes with. And so opening your windows in most places actually gets the air to exchange and it makes your indoor environment less toxic from an air perspective. I also like to use a Pareto principle here. I tell people, where do you spend the most time indoors? And they say, well, obviously my bedroom where I spend eight hours a night in my office where I spend eight hours in a day. I was like, those two environments get a high quality air purifier. Now you've used a Pareto principle, you're breathing purified air and it's going to be a lot better for you. Yeah, I got an air doctor running behind me right now. A lot of people don't realize that as well. And I see that especially, I have two teenage daughters. Unfortunately, I can't get them to give up all their perfumes and sprays and things that they like there. But I'll open the door sometimes and I'll smell, I'm like, oh my God, we got to open a window in here. And you know, a lot of times two people don't realize, for example, if you're cooking steak, all of a sudden this smoke is going in the air. Like I come home sometimes, the whole house smells like steak. And I'm like, I got to open the windows in the doors. And, you know, I'm like telling my wife, please turn the fan on full blast when you cook. We got, we can't, we're, you're breathing in this smoke. That's not fresh air. That's not good for you. Part of our routine for cooking all the time is just opening all of our windows. That's like what we do every time we cook because you're right, all that stuff is not good for you. And it's, it's nice to, you know, if you, if the weather's bad outside, obviously you can't, but if the weather's even pretty good, open the windows, it'll save you from a lot of that. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned your daughters in the perfume. One of the things that you can do as a family, which I think is a game changer is get an app like Yucca or Think Dirty and go start scanning some of these things. You scan the barcode with these apps and it'll tell you how toxic it is. And what's really cool about that is actually suggest replacements for you that you can use. So then you can like just be like, oh, I'll try that replacement. Nine times out of the 10, the replacements actually cost the same or even less sometimes and the expensive brand stuff that you're using. It actually works better and smells better. And so we've done that in our family. And you know, once you find a replacement that's you like, and it's non-toxic, you're going to stick with that forever. And that's what we've done with our soaks, our shampoos, our toothpaste, our perfumes, our cleaning supplies at home, all of it. Yeah. Yeah. The same. What was the name of those two apps again? One's called Yucca, Y-U-K-A, and the other one's called Think Dirty. There's also a website called environmentalworkinggroup.com that you can go to and do the similar kind of search and replace. That's great stuff. Yeah. I'm also switching away from all that kind of stuff. I'm aware of what we're using to clean the house, what I'm putting on my skin. I've even recently started moving over to like organic cotton clothes and stuff like that. Like this is an organic cotton polo that I'm wearing now. You know, just because I'm just hearing about all these toxic stuff, polyester, you know, gym clothes that I'm wearing for all these years. Exactly. Yeah. Once you're aware, it's not that hard to choose something that's made out of cotton or wool instead of something that's made out of polyester. You just got to know the polyester was bad for you, right? And you know, you can buy cotton t-shirt for less than the cost of buying one that's polyester probably. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, one thing, a hat that I've used, I've actually interviewed her for my podcast because I just love their products so much as Branch Basics. This is a company that they make non-toxic cleaning products for your home. And what's really cool about it is like, you realize that, you know, marketing has taught us how to buy our cleaning products. They're like, Oh, you need a separate glass cleaner. You need a special cleaner for your furniture, not the one for your floor. You absolutely don't. It's one cleaner, different concentrations. And it's so much easier and cheaper to do it that way. And so, you know, there's so much I've learned that's made my life simpler, not harder. It's saved to be money, not made me spend more money. And it is all, you know, you're checking off so many boxes just by doing these things. Yeah. Yeah. Any other kind of toxins that you're seeing commonly in people and ways that we can avoid it? Yes, I would say, you know, where you drink your water and how you drink your water is very important. So we only drink filtered water in glass bottles. That's just our routine. We have a reverse osmosis system that we've installed under our sink, both at work and also at our home. That's going to get you the absolute purest water. In our reverse osmosis system, actually adds some minerals back in to it as well. It's called cloud. And I have no relationship with these companies financially. I'm just recommending what I use. But the cloud RO system is really nice because it replaces the minerals back into and we just drink out of glass bottles. And this is what I think, you know, protects us from heavy metals and other toxins that come in our tap water and our well water as well. Yeah, it's funny because I moved into a new house a little over a year ago and they had an RO system in there. But I was like, wait, what's the remineralizer? And then the guy just came and changed the filters. And I'm like, did you change the remineralizer? And he like, didn't know what a remineralizer was. And I'm like, ah, like I want someone who's a specialist here. So I think I'm just going to order a whole new system where I understand what's going on because I mean, RO is great in terms of purifying the water, like you said, but it also kind of leaves you with dead water if you're not kind of remineralizing it is my understanding. Yeah. And the reality is, you know, we get a lot of these minerals in our diet too. So it's probably not that huge of a concern. But obviously, you know, there's also some mineral powders you can buy now. You can get a remineralizer for your electrolyte, I guess, right? And stuff like that in your drink. Yeah. Yeah. Like I think there's one LMNT that everyone's using. I don't use it because I have a remineralizer. But yeah, I think a lot of these things, you hear about it, you research it, you do it one time, and it changes the trajectory of your life. Okay. So I have another free resource for your people too. Please. How to detoxify your life in 52 weeks. So this is a really cool thing that I put together because I was talking to a lot of my patients about detoxing and they're like, whoa, this is too much to do. I'm like, okay, I need to make this simpler for them. I was like, let me get a guide together. 52 weeks, you and your family pick one thing that you have time for that week. Some of it's super easy like open your windows when you're cooking. But some of it takes a little bit more time and energy and research like getting an RO system. And so if you go to DrShaw.com slash toxins, you can download this guide too, that'll give you that 52 week kind of program. That's amazing. That's amazing. What are there any bio hacks or things that you do maybe in your clinic kind of like advanced super bio hacker strategies that we could touch on? Yeah. So we have what we call the longevity circuit at every next health. So the next health, if you can imagine it, it's like the Apple store of health and wellness. What I wanted to do was reimagine the entire doctor experience. No one likes going to their doctor. I wanted to make it like people want to come see me. So we have all these cool technologies that people can use that's you know, like billionaires have them in their home, but I wanted to make it accessible for the normal person. So we have a sauna. We have a cryotherapy. We have a LED bed and we also have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and we call that the longevity circuit. So what I really believe works is sauna. Sauna is an amazing therapy. If you can find one in your community, please do so. You know, I think there's going to be a day where instead of having like a bathtub in every bathroom, we'll just have a shower and a sauna. I think it's that important. Sauna does a lot of things. It mobilizes toxins from your tissues so your body can eliminate them through sweat and urine and liver. It also has really, really good research showing that it prevents cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease. So I really try to get into a sauna, you know, once a day, five days a week, if I can. Yeah. And so that's one of the things I really like. It's a bio hack, but it's a bio hack that humans have known about for 100 years. Yeah. I like cold therapy. Like, you know, a lot of people are talking about cold plunging and cryotherapy. I don't think it's for everybody. I think it's for the right people. It can really make a difference in your autonomic nervous system if you do it with the right mindset. So getting into a cold plunge or a cryotherapy chamber or even taking a cold shower in the morning, you have to learn to regulate your nervous system. So it's not this massive shock every time you do it. And then that teaches your nervous system how to regulate, how to prepare for the cold shock, how to get yourself through it for two to three minutes, and how to come out of it. And I think that's where the real magic is with cold therapy. Yeah. Yeah. Admittedly, I need to probably do this a little more, but I'm in Vegas, it's, you know, 110 degrees in the summer. So I'm kind of cold plunging a lot in the summer and then sauna and doing more sauna in the winter, but kind of hard to get in the sauna when it's 110 degrees outside. But no, I know I need to do it more. There's so much studies behind it. And I think, by the way, any preference, like have you found in the studies, like is the infrared sauna okay, is dry sauna better? What do you think? So all the studies are around dry sauna. But I think infrared is a great additive mortality. Because then you're like killing two birds with one stone during that time period. So I have both at the same time. And I love that. Nice. Amazing. Amazing. Anything else you do? I've heard you talk about like blood transfusions and things like this. Yeah, tell us about some other friends. We have some like really advanced stuff. We have this therapy called therapeutic plasma exchange. So, you know, I think it's really important to highlight here just real quick. To Laura, like, we don't do any of those technologies on people that don't have the basics right. Like you got to get your sleep in order. You got to get your nutrition, your metabolic health and your, you know, your exercise and movement routines. Because doing this stuff that's expensive and takes time doesn't counteract any buildup of damage that happens day over day from having poor health habits, right? So first thing we do, we get your health habits together. And we turn around a lot of the chronic diseases. And then we're like, people are like healthy. And they're like, what do I do next? You know, like, I feel great. What's next? Plasma exchange can be a huge piece of this puzzle. So plasma exchange has actually been around since the 1970s, approved by the FDA. We've just been using it in the hospitals only. A lot of great technologies locked up in the hospital, you know, and you can actually use it to maintain optimal health. So what we do is in a two hour procedure, we actually remove a portion of your blood completely. It's called your plasma. Your plasma is a liquid portion of your blood. And why do we want to remove that? Well, it's kind of like doing an oil change. That's where all the bad stuff kind of builds up the toxins, the inflammatory mediators, the malformed proteins, it all builds up in your plasma. And your body's trying to get rid of it through your liver, your kidneys through sweating. But sometimes it just can't catch up. There's too much of it there. And so plasma exchange allows your body that time to catch up. It's a really kind of easy procedure to do. There are risks to any procedure, of course, but this one does have a low risk profile. And in two or three hours, we can totally exchange someone's plasma and replace the nutrients and the albumin with new nutrients and albumin, which is incredibly beneficial. And people can feel a difference pretty quickly there? A lot of people do. Yeah, a lot of people feel very clear the next day. They sleep really good that night. Obviously, it's different for everybody. I don't think a lot of these things that we use in wellness, you don't feel it right away. But you can tell over time, the benefits are building up. Sauna's like that, right? Yeah, for sure. Dr. Shah, this has been amazing. I know we're coming towards the end. Any other final words for people? Yeah, I would say people always ask me, what are the top three things that you would do to optimize someone's health? And I think all those things, the three things I'm going to tell you are free. Anyone can do them. And they're the bedrock. And that is number one, become the CEO of your own health, the boss of your own biology, understand what are the critical biomarkers that you need to follow and follow them. Secondly, is to detoxify your lifestyle. And, you know, just become aware of where the toxins are hiding and how you can do easy things, like opening your windows and drinking out of a glass bottle instead of a plastic one, to really minimize your toxic burden. And number three, become an expert at forming habits. And the best habit that you can form is a morning routine where you check off a few boxes every morning and get that quick win every day, a little bit of exercise, a little bit of mental health, some spiritual work, breath work, and just doing something, every morning for, it can even be 20 minutes, can set your day off in the right direction. I think those are the three most powerful techniques that I have that have really moved the needle for my own health. And I think everyone can do them easily and cheaply and even for free. Absolutely. This has been amazing, Dr. Shah. Where can people, I know you've got like a million followers online. Where can people follow you, find you, watch your videos, maybe social media, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So my social media handle is at darshan Shah MD. And then my website, I gave it to you already, Dr. Shah.com. And then I have a podcast too that I love diving deep into all this. It's called the extend podcast. So please look that up and all the podcast platforms. This has been an absolute pleasure and really looking forward to doing it again sometime. Thank you so much for everything you're doing and all the help you're doing. It's really making an impact. And I'm sure people listening, I got a lot of value. We really kind of condensed into, you know, 40 minutes or so here, the most important aspects of health. And you gave people a really good game plan and really good resources. So really can't thank you enough. And I hope we can do it again sometime. I would love to, thank you so much for having me. Like I said, it was an honor to speak to your audience. Thank you. Take care. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would really mean a lot to me if you would forward this episode along to any friends, family members, anyone that you think that would get value out of it and learn something important. The mission at peak performance is to help people prioritize and transform their health. And so if you think someone will get value, please, please, please do forward this episode along to them. Also, if you could please rate and review and subscribe on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on, we would greatly appreciate that as well. It means a lot. And I want to tell you about a couple of new products that we just released. You can get 20% off your first order at buypeakperformance.com. That's B U Y peakperformance.com. We just released a brand new grass fed beef protein isolate. This is my favorite new protein powder because it's great for muscle building and recovering and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't give the stomach discomfort and gas that a lot of people get from, you know, different types of proteins like whey protein, some types of plant proteins can do the same as well. 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