The Holistic Doctor's 3-STEP HACK For Optimal Physical & Mental Health!

Dr. Darshan Shah 0:00 For every 10% of time that you spend sitting, you have a 10% increase in all-cause mortality.

Jay Shetty 0:05 That's crazy.

Dr. Darshan Shah 0:06 Yeah. Sitting for more than an hour at a time is literally what's killing most of us right now.

Speaker 0:12 He's a world-renowned surgeon.

Jay Shetty 0:13 Entrepreneur and founder of Next Health.

Speaker 0:16 Dr. Darshan Shah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 0:17 Western medicine is so disease-focused and so reactive that unless things are really bad, there's nothing they can offer you. The patients I was seeing, they're like, "How come no one told me this?"

Jay Shetty 0:28 Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments, and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

Speaker 0:50 The best-selling author and host.

Jay Shetty 0:52 The number one health and wellness podcast.

Dr. Darshan Shah 0:54 On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty 0:57 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Our mission here is to make the world happier, healthier, and more healed, and we do that through introducing you to experts, stories, scientists, researchers, and doctors who have insights that can, we can all apply and improve our day-to-day life, or maybe even the way we think and live. Now, today's guest is someone that I've been working with personally for quite a few months now, if not a bit longer than that, and he's someone that I'm excited to introduce you to because he has so much great insight, and I love the way he approaches some of the challenges that we're all facing in our daily lives with our health and wellness. Today's guest is Dr. Shah, Darshan Shah, MD, a health and wellness specialist, board-certified surgeon, published author, entrepreneur, and founder of Next Health, the world's first and largest health optimization and longevity clinic. With expertise in all body systems, Dr. Shah has performed over 15,000 surgical procedures, including trauma surgery, general surgery, and reconstructive procedures. As a health and wellness specialist, Darshan has advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their wellbeing and extend their lifespan. Please welcome to the show Dr. Shah. Dr. Shah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:18 Thank you so much for having me.

Jay Shetty 2:19 It's good to have you here.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:20 Yes, yes.

Jay Shetty 2:20 Yeah, I was thinking about it. I think we started working together probably just under a year ago it feels like.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:24 It feels like about a year.

Jay Shetty 2:26 About a year.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:26 Yes.

Jay Shetty 2:26 Yeah, about a year.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:27 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:27 Yeah, about a year. And I remember we got introduced through my health coach-

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:32 Right

Jay Shetty 2:32 ... I believe. I think, I'm trying to, now I'm, like, trying to piece it together.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:35 Yeah, connect the dots.

Jay Shetty 2:36 Yes. So-

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:36 I think it was your health coach, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 2:37 Yeah, so Mona Sharma, who I've worked with for quite a few years now, she introduced us.

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:41 Right.

Jay Shetty 2:41 You have this incredible facility. I know it's definitely in LA, 'cause that's where I go. Where else do you have it?

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:47 Yeah. [laughs] So yeah, we have three locations in LA, one in New York, and one also in Hawaii right now-

Jay Shetty 2:51 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 2:51 ... in, in, uh, Maui, which is, sadly right now they're going through a lot. But, um, and now we're actually franchising all over the world, so we'll be in Dubai. Um, we will be in Canada, Australia, and all over the United States here pretty soon.

Jay Shetty 3:04 And talk to me about this transition

Jay Shetty 3:06 that you made very early on in your journey. Or not early on, actually. Sorry, more recently.

Dr. Darshan Shah 3:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 3:11 More recently you made a shift in your career-

Dr. Darshan Shah 3:14 Right

Jay Shetty 3:14 ... because you went from practicing as a doctor traditionally to now building Next Health. Talk to me about that transition and also about why you did that, and what was the reasoning behind it?

Dr. Darshan Shah 3:26 Yeah, I think, you know, most physicians never anticipate a complete 180 transition in their career, especially after you've, like, dedicated 25-plus years. But I felt a real need to do that, and it was mainly because of my own personal health. So what happened was, um, I started off as a surgeon. Um, I then also went into the entrepreneurial side of surgery and bought surgery centers, and I started hiring doctors as well. And so I was spending half my life being a surgeon, treating patients in the operating room, the other half of my life running the business, and the other half of my life [laughs] you know, trying to maintain my own health and my own, um, sanity. And unfortunately, that last part of my life just kind of fell through the cracks, right? And so what happened was I found myself 15-plus years into my career as probably the most unhealthy person in the building that I was working in. I was, uh, 40 pounds overweight, and you know, weight doesn't really matter for everything, but for me, that really led to, uh, tons of health challenges, such as I had high blood pressure, and that blood pressure was not getting any better despite being on two medications. I was pre-diabetic on diabetes medications, and I was not able to move very well. Like, all my joints ached because of an autoimmune disease starting. So, you know, I was 15, 16 years into my career, and I was like, "I'm getting really, really sick." And, um, at that point in time as well, I had my first child. And, you know, having your first child is often, like, a time in your life where you sit and reflect. And I was actually doing the math u- utilizing studies that say, like, if you have this hemoglobin A1c, this level of high blood pressure, this level of obesity, how long are you gonna live? And as I was doing the math, and I came quickly to the realization, I was a little bit older when I had my first child, I was 40, that I would not live to see him potentially graduate from college. And to me, like, that was a major kind of punch in the f- gut, right? [laughs] Like, what am I doing to myself? And so that kind of started this thought process and this transition in my life where I said, "I need to make some massive changes here, and I need to do it quick, because I need to be alive for this kid," you know? I did what a lot of people do. I said, "You know, I need to find the best of the best doctors." So I went to Beverly Hills. I researched all the best concierge medicine doctors. You know, I hired an expensive concierge medicine doctor. I said, "Your job is to get me healthy." Went to his office and, um, you know, paid a pretty penny for this too. Wasn't cheap. [laughs] He did a bunch of tests on me, and he found out that, yeah, I was pre-diabetic, and it was getting a little bit worse, and I was hypertensive, and I need to be another blood pressure medication, and probably the reason I was having difficulty moving and, you know, being- performing all the activities in my life that I wanted to perform with vitality was because I was depressed. So then he added an- a anti-depression medication to my list of meds. My list of meds grew from eight medications to 12 medications, and that's all he told me. He just prescribed me four or five more things. There wasn't even a mention of, "Do you go to the gym? Do you, how do you sleep? What's your stress level like?" Not even a question about that. And I thought to myself, like, there is something really wrong here. And, and this was the world that I grew up in, right? This is the medical training that I grew up in the med- in medical school. When I did med school in, back in the 1990s, you spent one day of one class talking about nutrition, maybe half a day of another class talking about sleep, but it was mostly about sleep disorders, right? Uh, like sleep apnea and things like that. I did not have the knowledge, so how could I expect this guy to have kno- the knowledge, right? I mean, the, Western medicine is so disease-focused and so reactive that unless things are really bad and we can't prescribe you a pill or a surgery, there's nothing they can offer you, really. Right? And so I saw, like, a massive flaw here, and I decided that moment in time, like, I need to learn for myself how to do this right. So decided to hire someone else to take position in my office that I had and just take some time off and educate myself. And so that led to six months to a year of going to every conference I could find, and this was, like, eight, nine years ago. When I have a struggle, my first instinct is to educate myself. Learn, learn, learn. And so I went to every conference I could find. I went to, like, physical therapy conferences. I went to, like, how to become a personal trainer, registered dietician courses. I went to all these conferences, and I learned so much, and then I kind of stumbled into the field of functional medicine. Have you heard of functional medicine?

Jay Shetty 8:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 8:03 And I'm sure you have. You had Dr. Hyman on here, who's one of the fathers of functional medicine.

Jay Shetty 8:07 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 8:07 My favorite people in the whole world, but learned from him and others about the root cause of illness, and it was incredible. Like, within eight months, I was able to, like, completely turn my health around, and as I was doing this, the patients I was seeing, I was helping them do the same thing, and they were like, "How come no one told me this?" And so that's what kind of started my new career in medicine. I said, you know, medicine is fantastic if you're helping sick people become unsick. You're treating cancer, you're treating diabetes. But it's also, to me, exponentially more fantastic when you're helping the other 90% of people who aren't sick stay healthy and never get to that point in the first place. And so for me, it was just kind of bringing all that together and really providing a place for people to go when you're not yet sick. Like, when you not yet need to go to the doctor or the hospital, where do you go? It's not just the gym, right? There's much more you need to do. There's a lot more work to be done, and that's what I de- dedicated my new kind of, my new life in medicine to, is creating that place.

Jay Shetty 9:09 What are those key

Jay Shetty 9:11 pillars or the core areas of Next Health based on functional medicine that you're measuring and that you think we all need to be aware of when we're looking at that 360 degree look at our health?

Dr. Darshan Shah 9:22 Right. Right. So, you know, this is where I think, you know, I have this conversation with all my patients. We sit down and we say, "Look, there's an overwhelming amount of health information out there, and a lot of it is not based in science. There's a lot of, like, majoring in minor things, right? There's a lot of focus on, like, what's the best superfood or, you know, what's the, how much caffeine should I have per day?" But, like, in reality, what I tell people is, "Let's break this down for you, um, into the main components, and over time, let me educate you on the main components of health. But let's not major in the minor things. Let's focus on the 20% of the information that's gonna give you the 80% of the result." Right? Like, what are the key two or three things you need to know on each aspect of your health to create a major difference? And that's the Pareto principle, which is where can you expend the least amount of energy to get the most amount of results? And once you get that right, you can absolutely go down the rabbit hole further if you want to. So we start off, I have this thing called the wellness wheel, I call it. There are 12 points in the wellness wheel. We start off with the basics, nutrition, sleep, and exercise, but then we move on to gut health, immune system health, hormone health, heart health, and brain health. And so then we spend a lot of time talking about each one of those individually. And in each one of these categories, what I do is I try to frame it as this is a three-step process, and the first step is, number one, how do we make sure you're not dying from this, right? How do we make sure your nutrition is not killing you, like you're becoming a metabolic disaster with diabetes? Or how do we make sure that your immune system is healthy enough to prevent cancer? How to not die, basically. The second part of it is, how do we improve your health span? How do we keep you as healthy as possible for as long as possible? And then the last part is, what's the advanced science out there in the longevity world that we can, um, implement into your life? Once we make sure you're not in trouble and then you've mastered how to take care of your health span yourself, how do we then start applying these, um, these new techniques, this new science? So a lot of people come to us and they want to jump straight to like, "How do, how do I do NAD IV? How do I do hyperbaric oxygen therapy?" I'm like, "No, no, no. Let's hold on a second. Let's make sure you're not eating ultra-processed food first, because that's what's gonna make the biggest difference," right?

Jay Shetty 11:36 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 11:36 So that's kind of how we frame it, and it's, um, we go down each one of these categories and talk about what's gonna make the biggest difference for people.

Jay Shetty 11:43 Fantastic. I think this is-- I wanted to lay that out for people because I wanted people to understand, A, you've been on this personal journey yourself. There's a professional shift here as well because you can see the kind of challenges that come with traditional medicine and how functional medicine is the future, even though it seems like it's rooted in ancient times or an older method that's coming back.

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 12:05 And then looking at these key areas, and that's what I want to dive in- To, with you today, if that's okay.

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:10 Oh, absolutely.

Jay Shetty 12:10 I'd love to touch on all these areas because-

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:12 Yeah

Jay Shetty 12:12 ... I'd love to give people, whoever listens to this episode, whether you're watching at home or whether you're, you know, cooking right now, whether you're listening with a partner or whatever it may be, I want this to be the episode that you come back to to learn about these areas of your health so you can become more proactive, not reactive, and get focused on the areas that need help. So let's-

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:32 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 12:33 Yeah. Let's dive in to, let's first start with nutrition, because I think that it's such a big area of our lives, and I think it's one of those ones that everyone will say, "Hey, I was put in for surgery, but I was never really told to change my diet."

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:49 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 12:50 Or even, even when I went last year-

Dr. Darshan Shah 12:52 Yeah

Jay Shetty 12:52 ... like, you helped me through my, you didn't perform the surgery, but you helped me through my hernia surgery, and I've spoken about it on the podcast a couple of times, and I was never told to change my diet. However, by, by the doctors, you did tell me, and so did Mona. If you had not told me that, it would've been a lot harder to even recover. So even though it wasn't integral to the surgery, it did affect the recovery. And so let's talk about

Jay Shetty 13:19 nutrition. It's such a big part of our life. Let's start with what has gone wrong with our food. Like, what, what has changed about our food that it's almost like a surprise to us today that what we eat is affecting how we feel?

Dr. Darshan Shah 13:32 Yeah. It, it's, it's really multifactorial, but it's all happened in the last 50 or 60 years. You look at, like, obesity rates, heart attack rates, diabetes rates in the last 50 years, just exponentially increasing. And I think th- it's a few things that happened. One was there was a little bit of a panic back in the '50s that we weren't gonna have enough food to feed everybody, right? So the government start putting into place subsidies and laws and bringing corporations together to start mass-producing food. And that mass production of food led to over-farming of soil, packaging foods to make them last longer, but then also, you know, you have these packaged foods are not that inspiring, so how do you make them taste better? You make them hyper-palatable. And then whenever you involve corporate America in anything, right, what's the goal of corporations? To make a profit. How do you do that? By making things cheaper and making more of them, right? So now you have these giant food conglomerates, like, making tons and tons of food as cheaply as possible, and that means using chemicals. It means using dyes. It means hiring scientists to make it hyper-palatable. So even though normally you're, you know, you would eat this thing and your body would be like, "Well, what is this?" You know, "This is horrible," and y- your body will be able to sense how bad it is for you. Now you can't, 'cause the scientists have made it taste good, right? And so you have this massive, um, kind of explosion of ultra-processed food. An entire supermarket, you look at the square footage of a supermarket, only the outside of it is dedicated to fresh food. The entire middle is frozen, processed, boxed, canned food, right? And we have so much of it in our society right now that that's really what's caused a lot of the problems. In addition to that, we have food coming from all over the world to us, so it's being shipped to us, it's being stored, it's being preserved, it's, um, being grown in soil that's over-farmed, and so we've kind of come to this disaster point where most of the food that we see that is being supplied to our population has become full of toxins and basically not healthy for you. So really, we have to really, really look at and take a step back, how do we eat 50 years ago, and how can we go back to that type of eating pattern?

Jay Shetty 15:49 Yeah, and so I think that's the hard part, right?

Dr. Darshan Shah 15:51 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 15:52 Like you just said, that when you go into a grocery store, you're seeing that the majority of it is taken up by processed foods. People are thinking, "Well, how do I, what do I eat?" Because it's almost like we've got so used to eating out of tins, cans, boxes-

Dr. Darshan Shah 16:06 Right

Jay Shetty 16:06 ... packets. It, it almost even takes a second to think of what food isn't in one of those-

Dr. Darshan Shah 16:11 Right

Jay Shetty 16:11 ... or isn't refrigerated or isn't frozen or whatever it may be. Like, what would you say,

Jay Shetty 16:16 taking your 80/20 principle, as you were mentioning, referring to before, what is that thing that we can do 20%? Because I think when we think about food, it just feels so big and overwhelming, and then the stress of cooking with our busy lives and working and coming home late from work and trying to eat something quickly, like, what's the, what's the quick win, or what's the small win that we can make?

Dr. Darshan Shah 16:38 Yes, absolutely. So, so the 20% here is working really hard to eliminate that ultra-processed food, okay? So really focusing on how do you get fresh, organic food into your body as much as possible. And I could tell you, if you only make this one change, that's all you need to worry about. You don't need to worry about your protein content and your micronutrients. Like, all of that will come with just switching from ultra-processed food to organic, fresh, whole foods. And then if that's the only one thing that you do, you, you've had a massive win. That's gonna give you the 80% of the result, because it will force you to learn how to make good food quickly, 'cause we're all busy, right? So how do we make, how do we make a quick protein shake, or how do we make a quick salad and still get the nutrients in that we need to and not feel hungry? Once you start doing that, you find that your hunger goes down just exponentially. You don't need to eat as often, and you kind of eliminate... You know, snacking is such a huge thing now. It's almost like we're taught that if you're not snacking, you're not gonna have enough energy for the day, and that's only because we're snacking on processed food in between eating processed food, right?

Jay Shetty 17:45 [laughs]

Dr. Darshan Shah 17:46 So, so, so really, once you start eating whole food again, you can even, a lot of people just stop even eating one meal a day. They go straight into lunch and dinner. I eat s- protein every morning for my meals. I, I l- I need to have protein in the morning. Most people do. And we can talk about fasting later too and kind of the change in thought around that, but making that one change is gonna give you 80% of the result, in, in my opinion and my experience talking to hundreds of people about this over the last year or two. And then there's two or three things you can do after that once you got that down, but that would be number one for sure.

Jay Shetty 18:18 What are two and three?

Dr. Darshan Shah 18:19 Okay, so number two is managing your glucose response curve.

Jay Shetty 18:23 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 18:23 Okay?

Jay Shetty 18:23 Yeah, we can talk about this. Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 18:24 Yeah, exactly. So the science has come- ... extremely far in this. And what we know for a fact is, first of all, we know for a fact that metabolic syndrome diabetes is rampant, and it's just getting into more and more communities throughout America all the time, and that's because of things like we talked about, snacking, ultra-processed food, et cetera. But it's also just people have forgotten how to eat in a way that keeps your glucose curve under control. Now, when I say glucose curve, that means that I'm talking about, like, actually measuring your glucose all the time and seeing when it goes up and when it goes down.

Jay Shetty 18:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 18:59 And so there's a device now that you can buy. It's called a continuous glucose monitor. Have you worn one of these yet?

Jay Shetty 19:04 I haven't-

Dr. Darshan Shah 19:05 Yeah

Jay Shetty 19:05 ... but I've seen them, yeah. I think my wife had one.

Dr. Darshan Shah 19:07 Ah, fantastic.

Jay Shetty 19:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 19:08 It is a game changer as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I don't recommend a lot of, like, you know, technology and things until it's, like, really proven and vetted, but I really feel, you know, this is something we've used for diabetics for years now, but finally people are starting to use it in their regular day life. And you don't have to wear it forever. I just wear mine for, like, six weeks, and I found incredible amounts of information about how to eat. So for example, one thing is, you know, we all sit down and we start with chips or bread, right? It's the absolute worst thing you can do. You wanna start with your vegetables first. That puts fiber into your body and slows your digestive tract. And then you do your protein and fats, and last is the carbs, okay? 'Cause that'll slow the release of glucose from the carbs. That's one of the things you learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor. You also learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor what foods shoot your glucose through the roof versus, you know, Raddhi's or anybody else's, right?

Jay Shetty 20:04 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 20:04 And it's different. Like, if you eat a banana, it could shoot your glucose through the roof, and s- your friend, no problem at all, and that's because your microbiome, your metabolism is different than every single other person. So you can personalize the foods that you eat to keep your glucose level steady. And if you keep your glucose level as steady as possible day after day after day, and, you know, you can cheat. It's not like y- people don't cheat.

Jay Shetty 20:27 [laughs]

Dr. Darshan Shah 20:27 We all like to eat a dessert every once in a while-

Jay Shetty 20:29 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 20:29 ... or cook it. But it really makes you cognizant of what's happening internally. And, you know, we live our life not being cognizant of what's happening internally until we feel really, really bad. This really teaches you, like, how your body is reacting to the food that you eat. So I recommend all my patients, you know, six weeks of a continuous glucose monitor. Really learn how your glucose curve reacts to certain foods. There's a really good book out there. It's, uh, called The Glucose Revolution. It's very well-written, you can read it in, like, three, four hours, about how to manage your glucose curve. I love that book. I give it to all my patients as well. And, um, I think you'll learn a lot. So number two is managing your glucose curve.

Jay Shetty 21:06 Well, that's fantastic. You know what? I love talking to you because you make it sound so simple and accessible. Like, whenever I talk to you, I find it so easy to understand what I need to do, why I need to do it, why it, it makes sense, and I don't need to be as well-versed in what you're talking about as you are.

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:24 Right.

Jay Shetty 21:25 And it's not overly technical in a way that I can't wrap my head around it. So I love how practical you just made that, especially how we eat what's on our plate.

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:34 Right.

Jay Shetty 21:34 Because I think so many of us spend so long trying to figure out, like, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't eat that, and I shouldn't have that," and it's actually the order can make all the difference. And now everyone who's listening or watching, make sure that you don't go and start-

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:45 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:46 ... with the, the bread or the chips and-

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:47 Right

Jay Shetty 21:48 ... you know, that's-

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:48 Get the crudité instead, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:50 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's why they-

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:51 Right

Jay Shetty 21:51 ... serve it first.

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:52 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 21:53 Well, well now I guess they serve chips and guac first, too. But, uh, what was the number three?

Dr. Darshan Shah 21:57 So number three, and, um, number three and number four i- can be switched around based on your particular dietary pattern, but I would say number three is making sure you have adequate protein intake. And a lot of people, they diet, and they not just cut back on the, you know, the carbs they eat, the fats they eat, but they also cut back on the amount of protein they eat. And you lose weight on the scale, but you're losing more muscle mass than you're losing fat, and that's a travesty because you need your muscle mass to support, not just support your bones and give you strength, but it's also m- one of the biggest organs in your body that's preventing you from going into diabetes, cancer, and dementia. So preserving muscle mass is key. So I have all of my patients buy this really cool scale that I like. It's called the InBody H2N scale, H20N scale, and it's a scale that you step on, but you also grab onto these handlebars, and it tells you your skeletal muscle mass, okay? So you can not just track your body fat percentage but also your skeletal muscle mass. And obviously you wanna maintain your skeletal muscle mass, especially the older you get. So the closer you get to 40 and 50, you need to have a h- big store of skeletal muscle mass 'cause it's gonna decline. We all start declining after the age of 50, and it takes a lot of protein and a lot of strength training to make up for that decline, and you wanna maintain that skeletal muscle mass. Number one thing to do is have one gram per pound of body weight of protein per day broken up into three to four divided dosages, okay? So you do that. You step on the scale. I like weighing myself every day. I, it gives you that accountability factor. Um, and you can track the data. And make sure you're maintaining skeletal muscle mass and, if you need to, decreasing fat mass. Now, one gram per pound of body weight, like, people don't really know, like, how, what is that really? [laughs] So look it up. Uh, most people weigh, you know, somewhere around 150 pounds. Look up 150 grams of protein. Look that up on Google, and you'll see all sorts of infographics. And it's, it's a lot of protein.

Jay Shetty 23:56 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 23:57 It's not a small amount of protein. And if you're vegetarian or vegan, you can still do this, but you're gonna probably need a little bit more because only about 80% of that is bioavailable protein. So you wanna maybe even increase a little bit more. And once you see that infographic, once you see or just even, like, buy a little scale and measure out 150 grams of protein, see what it is, you're like, "Oh, wow, I am really not getting enough protein day to day."

Jay Shetty 24:21 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 24:21 You know?

Jay Shetty 24:21 I've been thinking about that a lot lately myself.

Dr. Darshan Shah 24:23 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:23 I've been looking at that. And Radhi and I were talking about it, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm not sure I'm getting as much protein as I need to be getting," and I'm obviously plant-based, so that was something that we were diving into. What are the best plant-based

Jay Shetty 24:36 sources of protein that you're seeing, and that actually add up to that amount? Not, I know what the sources are, but it's almost like how do you get that much of it?

Dr. Darshan Shah 24:42 Yeah, I mean, y- you know, you know what the sources are, like beans and grains and all. But also, I, myself, and all my vegetarian and vegan friends, I recommend, you know, pea protein powder.

Jay Shetty 24:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 24:54 It's really good. It goes down easily. Put in, put it, like you can add it to like your oatmeal and other, other things that you're eating, and, and you'll, you'll start building up, you know? And look, the idea is not to get from like 10 grams of protein a day all the way to 150 grams. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 25:10 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 25:10 Y- you build up slowly over time, and you see what kind of works for you. All of this needs to be individualized, and that's why I like having like that data point, which is the bioimpedance scale, that InBody scale. 'Cause you can see like, oh wow, my skeletal muscle mass is going up. I'm doing good now. Like here's where I need to be, right? So you can really personalize it for yourself.

Jay Shetty 25:29 Okay, fantastic.

Dr. Darshan Shah 25:30 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 25:30 This is, this is already helping me. I, I'm like-

Dr. Darshan Shah 25:33 Oh, I love it

Jay Shetty 25:33 ... listening to everything you're saying. This is, it's so relatable and so, so actionable immediately, which, which is fantastic. And I love the, and I keep, keep, please keep sharing like the tools or the, the gadgets that we can have or websites or books because I want all of our community to feel really supported and go, "Okay, that's what I haven't read yet," or-

Dr. Darshan Shah 25:52 Yeah, absolutely

Jay Shetty 25:52 ... "That's what I don't understand."

Dr. Darshan Shah 25:53 And, and I have no financial like hookup with any of these companies. I'll tell you if I do. But this is the stuff that I love and I've seen my patients really take to as well. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna blurt 'em out and you- [laughs]

Jay Shetty 26:05 [laughs] I think it's fantastic.

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:06 Yeah. Do your research, you know, but [laughs] yeah.

Jay Shetty 26:09 Yeah. Let's talk a bit about supplements-

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:11 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 26:11 ... and vitamins because I think that there's a lot of like mixed messaging out there about what's needed, how much of it's needed. Some people are like, "Well, none of it really gets absorbed, and does it make a difference?" And there, there's always a debate about it. How do you go about figuring out what someone needs as an individual as opposed to just taking what everyone's taking because you keep hearing about it everywhere?

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:33 Yeah, that, that's such a great question, and we can't even talk about that, Jay, without talking about number four on the list, which was vegetables. All right? And I'll tell you why. So the fourth thing, which, uh, is as important as protein, is getting enough vegetables in your diet on a daily basis. So do you know how much that is by chance?

Jay Shetty 26:51 I don't. I mean, I have a lot of-

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:53 Right

Jay Shetty 26:53 ... vegetables.

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:54 Right.

Jay Shetty 26:54 But I have no idea, so you're gonna have to tell me.

Dr. Darshan Shah 26:56 Right. And so not a lot of people really know like what's the right amount. And really, the amount of vegetables you eat has a lot to do with the amount of fiber intake you need, which 90% of America doesn't get enough fiber, and fiber is a critical ingredient of our diet. Secondly, that's where most of our micronutrients and phytonutrients are is in those vegetables. Thirdly, they just keep you full and satiated all the time as well. So getting enough vegetables in your diet is extremely important. The number that I've seen and a lot of, um, fitness and nutrition gurus talk about is, it's a big number. It's like 800 grams of vegetables, which is about a, you know, a quart of vegetables, right? So once again, get your, uh, scale and measure this out and see what it is. It's, it's not a small amount. It's like two full salads a day, but that's kinda what we need to work up to. So if you're doing that, the need for supplementation is minimal to none, actually.

Jay Shetty 27:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 27:52 I'm not a big supplement pusher. I'd much rather people get it in your diet.

Jay Shetty 27:56 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 27:56 The reality of the situation is, however, it's really hard to get that much protein and that much vegetable product into your diet-

Jay Shetty 28:04 Mm-hmm

Dr. Darshan Shah 28:04 ... right? And of course, we can't talk about vegetables without talking about making sure you're buying organic, you know, you're buying as local as possible. Um, and if you can't go to ewg.org, Environmental Working Group's website, they'll give you a list of what are the most toxic vegetables and the least toxic out there right now. So look at that website, and it'll give you the list. So if you're not getting enough, uh, vegetable intake into your diet, the next step is to add some supplementation to that. The most common supplements I recommend for people are vitamin D. Um, we don't get enough sunlight to produce it. We're not getting enough in our diet, so most people do need some vitamin D. It needs to be dialed in based on a blood test, so you do a blood test. I like the vitamin D level to be around 50 to 80, and the vitamin D form that I like people to take is vitamin D3 K2. The K2 is also another vitamin added in. It prevents overabsorption of calcium with the vitamin D and deposition of calcium in your blood vessels. So vitamin D3 K2, then fish oil supplement as well. For the vegetarians and vegans out there, there's some great non-fish sources of fish oil as well, so I would do that as well. Magnesium is something that we're all very deficient in, so I would do magnesium as well. And then creatine, believe it or not, it's amino acid that has a lot of research behind it. Do you do creatine?

Jay Shetty 29:27 Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Darshan Shah 29:28 Yeah. Fantastic.

Jay Shetty 29:29 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 29:29 Yeah. Five to eight milligrams every morning. Just put a scoop in your coffee. It mixes in with anything. Uh, I think that's another really interesting, good one. And then I kind of then, you know, kind of do it based on what I ate the day before, right? So if I got a couple good salads in, fine, I don't need to do anything else. If I didn't, I'll take a packet of AG1, which is like a phytonutrient powder-

Jay Shetty 29:51 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 29:51 ... which I really like, and/or a multivitamin. Sometimes as well I'll do that too.

Jay Shetty 29:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 29:55 And then protein powders are pretty much always a staple for me as well. That's the other supplement that I use.

Jay Shetty 30:00 And you're just putting that onto other stuff?

Dr. Darshan Shah 30:02 Yeah, putting that onto other stuff, putting that into a shake. L- you know, shakes are very convenient. There's a really good protein powder I like called Supergut. It's actually a resistant starch and a protein powder and fiber all in one, like, bag.

Jay Shetty 30:15 Wow.

Dr. Darshan Shah 30:15 And so Supergut is a fantastic, like, rescue product. I have, like if I've been on a plane for eight hours or something, you know, and I just come home and just take that and I get my nutrition in. And that's pretty much it. You know, there's other things you can do, like if you're having trouble sleeping, there's ashwagandha, there's glycine. If you're having trouble with stress, ashwagandha's another good one for that. But then I'm really selective about which ones to use.

Jay Shetty 30:38 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 30:39 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:39 Great. Those are fantastic.

Dr. Darshan Shah 30:40 Right.

Jay Shetty 30:40 That's a really good breakdown for anyone. I mean, I remember when I first started

Jay Shetty 30:44 measuring that with Mona is like my vitamin D, which you would never have known if you met me or saw me, was 10.

Dr. Darshan Shah 30:51 Oof. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 30:52 And, and it was just like I was living my life, like I was on planes, I was giving keynotes, I was I was healthy, I was energetic, whatever, and she was just like, "I don't even know how you function."

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:01 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 31:02 I was at a 10. It was like, it was, I, and I was unaware.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:06 How old were you when you did this?

Jay Shetty 31:07 This was, oh, this was like a year and a half ago.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:09 Oh, okay.

Jay Shetty 31:09 Two years ago.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:10 All right. Wow.

Jay Shetty 31:10 Yeah, like it was just interesting to me because the only thing I could feel is like I was feeling a bit of fatigue, and that was the only thing, and that's why I think that the reason why I'm raising that for my audience and community here today is don't take it for granted, and don't assume that you might be like, "Oh, I don't need any of these vitamin supplements." It's like it could be the tiniest thing that you're experiencing as a symptom. It's important to take it seriously, because you don't want to be at a 10.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:35 You bring up an extremely good point. Couple points I want to make here. One is you have to become the CEO of your own health.

Jay Shetty 31:42 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:43 And what I mean by that is a CEO manages a business by looking at numbers on a daily basis, right?

Jay Shetty 31:49 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:49 Most people manage their health based on a feeling that they have-

Jay Shetty 31:52 Mm

Dr. Darshan Shah 31:53 ... symptoms that they have. They're not looking at numbers. So becoming the CEO of your own health means knowing what are the key KPIs of your health. There's only about 10 of them, skeletal muscle mass being one of them, body fat percentage being another, vitamin D level being another. You got to keep that dialed in, right? Because the other point I want to make with you is that when your vitamin D level is low, like at this age, and you don't take care of it for 20 to 30 years, that's when the lack of vitamin D leads to the higher risk of Alzheimer's, leads to the higher risk of heart attack, leads to the higher risk of hormone problems. It all started 20 to 30 years before when you barely felt it.

Jay Shetty 32:33 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 32:33 You see what I mean?

Jay Shetty 32:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 32:34 So looking at those numbers 20 to 30 years ahead of becoming sick is the key to becoming CEO of your own health and then making all those diseases a non-issue, making all the things that people die of a non-issue.

Jay Shetty 32:47 Fantastic. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more, and I'm so glad you made that connection because I think it often, when you find it out long term, you then feels like a surprise.

Dr. Darshan Shah 32:56 Right.

Jay Shetty 32:57 But actually it isn't if you're looking at the numbers, and I think we just haven't been trained to look at our health in terms of numbers. Like you'd measure your height growing up or you'd measure your weight growing up, but those are such poor indicators of health in and of themselves without looking at all of these other metrics that we're talking about here today, whether it's your glucose levels, whether it's your vitamin D levels, magnesium, et cetera. You mentioned so many other vitamins and supplements. I just don't think we're trained to know where to look and what to look at, and therefore we're basing it on, "I feel tired today. I feel..." And I think this is something I want to mention as well, that the mind and the body are so connected, but I think so often our physical challenges we think are a mental challenge. So we think we're tired because we have, we're not focused enough or we're not excited enough or we're not motivated enough. We make the physical issue a mental issue, but it isn't. It's purely a physical, and I know that because I feel so purposeful and love what I do, and I'm so joyful about it, and I'm so excited about it. So if my body's not working to the degree I want it to, I'm very clear that you can have all the mental stuff down, but if you're not taking care of your body, it doesn't just, you can push it a bit further, but that's not gonna get you up the hill, so.

Dr. Darshan Shah 34:11 No, you're absolutely

Dr. Darshan Shah 34:12 right. There's, when your brain starts feeling it, usually your body is in big trouble.

Jay Shetty 34:17 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 34:17 That's when you start feeling it. So, you know, I think your point about the numbers is so, it resonates with me because that's what happened to me when I became sick. I outsourced my numbers to my primary care doctor and my, you know, concierge medicine doctor, and they got my numbers back. They looked at them and, you know, you get these, if you've ever seen your blood work sheet-

Jay Shetty 34:38 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 34:38 ... like if something is out of range, it turns red. Otherwise, it's all black. It's all like a bunch of numbers, right? And so because things were like barely in the red and not moving, they decided not to even talk to me about them, right?

Jay Shetty 34:51 Mm. Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 34:51 But in reality, things were changing for a long time and going in the wrong direction, and that's because western medicine can't really do anything about that number until they can prescribe you a pill for it.

Jay Shetty 35:02 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:02 And that pill only comes when it's disease time.

Jay Shetty 35:05 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:05 That's the problem.

Jay Shetty 35:07 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:07 And I also think people get overwhelmed with the n- with the numbers because, you know, most people, you know, don't know what these numbers mean. So what I really try to do with my patients is give them like 10 numbers. These are the 10 numbers you need to watch and why, and I think that makes it a lot easier for them. So I give them a spreadsheet. I let them watch their own numbers, and I think it's important for them to watch their own numbers rather than outsource their health to their physician because they need to know what the optimal range is-

Jay Shetty 35:32 Mm-hmm

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:32 ... not just the disease range, right? So let me just give you one more real quick on the glucose, um, point-

Jay Shetty 35:37 Please. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:38 ... because it's a, it's a really important one. It's a hemoglobin A1C.

Jay Shetty 35:41 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 35:42 And you, you've probably heard of this before too. It's a measure of your last three months average of glucose, and you're pre-diabetic when this number is 5.7, and you're diabetic when it's 6.5 or above. My number was 5.7, and he just put me on a medication. But five years ago, I had measured this with my doctor, and it had gone from 4.7 to 5.0 to 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.4, and no one said anything to me, you know? And I could have done something about it back then before I had to, now it's an emergency, right?

Jay Shetty 36:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 36:16 So I think that's another number people should watch, uh, nutrition-wise, is that hemoglobin A1C number. And I guarantee you, if people call their doctors and ask for their latest blood work result, it's on there.

Jay Shetty 36:28 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 36:28 Or it should be. If it's not on there, you have a bigger problem. But it should be on there, and you'll see kind of where you're at, you know?

Jay Shetty 36:34 Oh, this is fantastic, Dr. Shah. Thank you so much. All right, I want to dive into, let's do exercise next.

Dr. Darshan Shah 36:39 Ah, okay.

Jay Shetty 36:40 You brought that up. I want to dive into it. And if I, if there's any, ever a time where you want to go back or share something, feel free.

Dr. Darshan Shah 36:45 Okay, cool.

Jay Shetty 36:45 Like, you know, this is all about giving the most value to everyone who's listening and watching.

Dr. Darshan Shah 36:49 Right. Right.

Jay Shetty 36:50 When we talk about exercise,

Jay Shetty 36:51 I think everyone's kind of always known they need to exercise. One of the things I love, before we start talking about the technicality of it, you talk a lot about the need for social exercising, which I love that because recently I've been playing so much pickleball with friends. I don't know if you've been playing as well.

Dr. Darshan Shah 37:09 Oh, I gotta play pickleball with you.

Jay Shetty 37:10 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 37:10 I love pickleball. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 37:11 Yeah, and it's just, it is like-

Dr. Darshan Shah 37:13 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:13 ... I have played, at this point today, I don't- I'm not playing today. The l- I played the last five days-

Dr. Darshan Shah 37:19 Amazing

Jay Shetty 37:19 ... in a row every day. I probably played for an average of two hours a day on average. Some days were three, some days it was one. And it is such an easy workout because you're just running around, you're sweating, you're having a good time with friends, you're outdoors. And I've, I've made it a priority in my life that all of my friendships this year, we're gonna do something active together. So instead of getting together and sitting down and eating dinner, even though I love doing that, we're actually gonna go on a hike instead, or we're gonna go on a walk. And if I don't feel like going on a hike or a walk, then at least we're just gonna do something active, whether it be an escape room so that we're moving around, or if it is that I have enough energy to play pickleball, we're doing that. The idea is how can every friendship be based on fitness that is also fun, rather than friendship which is based on us sitting on a couch watching a movie together, which by the way, I still do as well, but that can't be the primary way to hang out.

Dr. Darshan Shah 38:14 Such an incredibly good point. And, um, I just spent the last weekend in Ojai with, uh, with some of my friends and literally, like we would not sit down until we all hit 10,000 steps-

Jay Shetty 38:24 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 38:24 ... you know [laughs] for, for the day. And pickleball was part of it, hiking was part of it. And, you know, the old adage is so true, you become the average of the eight people you surround yourself with, right? And so if the eight people you're friends with, like my community of friends, we work out together. That is our social activity, and it's so much fun. We find different things to do. You know, we're lucky we live in the hills and we can hike together. We can go to these really fun gyms together. But it makes exercise not exercise. I think what happens and why people don't get enough exercise is because exercise is literally like going to the gym by yourself, and it's not inspiring a, a lot of times when you go to the gym if you don't, especially if you don't have a trainer, you know? And social exercise for me was the cure to not getting enough movement in my day.

Jay Shetty 39:14 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 39:15 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 39:15 Yeah. It's huge. And tell us about, let's talk about what type of

Jay Shetty 39:19 movement is needed, because I think, again, we have so many preconceived notions. Exercise in someone's head could be like weightlifting. That's what it looks like. Exercise could be doing a high-intensity workout at a gym. Exercise could mean a sport. What movement do we actually need to genuinely be healthy in a real way? Because you could be doing any or none of these things, and you could or could not be healthy. So what is that? What do we actually need? What do our bodies need?

Dr. Darshan Shah 39:48 I love this question because it's counterintuitive, okay? So people are always like, "What do I need to do? Go to the gym? How many sets and reps and minutes on the treadmill do I need?" And I tell them, "Wait." Once again, Pareto principle, all you have to do is move all day long. So sedentary behavior, which means sitting for more than an hour at a time for eight hours a day, is literally what's killing most of us right now. And so what happens is most people have a, an eight-hour job, right? Out of that eight-hour job, they'll sit for two hours, maybe get up for, to go to the bathroom, sit down for two or three hours again, have lunch where they're sitting. So just sitting for long periods of time increases your rate of mortality exponentially. So for every 10% additional time you spend sitting, you have an increase of 10% in your all-cause mortality, and it's like linear.

Jay Shetty 40:38 Wait, say that again.

Dr. Darshan Shah 40:38 Yeah. For every 10% of time that you spend sitting over a baseline, you have a 10% increase in all-cause mortality. Big studies-

Jay Shetty 40:47 That's crazy.

Dr. Darshan Shah 40:47 Yeah. It's-

Jay Shetty 40:48 Wow

Dr. Darshan Shah 40:48 ... crazy how much sitting or just moving changes the entire equation. So once you go from being sedentary to not sedentary, your rate of death from heart attacks, from Alzheimer's and dementia, from stroke, from anything, goes down exponentially. So what I tell people is, "No matter what, every 45 minutes you can take an exercise snack," and this has been proven in research as well. Every 45 minutes, spend 10 minutes getting up and walking around a little bit. And, and if you do that, you've broken the cycle of sedentary behavior completely. So what I do is I have my patients buy like a little egg timer, like a little metal, it looks like an egg, and we just set it to 45, put it down, and when it rings, you get up, walk around. And guess what? That's the same amount of time needed to break the strain on your eyes, to break the stress cycle as well. So it's a really good idea to take these exercise snacks when you're at home. I'm sorry, when you're at work, but then also when you're at home. People sit down and watch, you know, TV for two hours, so it happens again. So that's step one, is don't be sedentary. Even athletes, there's so many athletes that are sedentary during the day, like, or, or during the evening, that, um, they're affected by this as well.

Jay Shetty 42:03 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 42:03 So focus on that first. Don't be sedentary. Then step two on exercise is, now what kind of activity can we put in to really start, like, moving the needle with how exercise can improve your longevity and health span?

Jay Shetty 42:16 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 42:16 So do you want me to talk about that a little bit too?

Jay Shetty 42:17 Yeah. Before you dive into-

Dr. Darshan Shah 42:18 Yeah

Jay Shetty 42:18 ... that, there's something that I'm really glad to hear that, because one thing I've been recommending to a lot of my corporate clients is, I don't know who invented 30-minute and 60-minute meetings. I just don't know where that came from. We just invent these things where they have to be that long. And I've started saying to so many of my clients who are living, like I don't live a meeting-to-meeting life anymore, so I get a lot of movement. I'll stand up, I'll walk over there, I'll walk back, I'll walk next door, I'll jump in a car, we'll walk to the meeting. So I thankfully have a lot of movement in my day. But when I used to work in the corporate world, I used to always tell everyone, "Have a 55-minute meeting or have a 25-minute meeting." That then gives you an extra five minutes to stand up, to walk, to get hydrated, to look out of a window or maybe get some fresh air, and then to look out into the distance so that you're not constantly shortsighted. I feel today we're constantly looking at our phone, at our laptop, at an iPad, and we're becoming more and more shortsighted, and that's why it kinda feels like our mind can feel a bit crowded and clouded. And to me, just going outside and looking out into the distance, maybe spotting a bird, a cloud, a distant building, it just opens up the mind a little bit. And I feel like just shifting it from having five minutes off every hour, which isn't gonna negatively impact a meeting. You're not gonna achieve anything more in that extra five minutes.

Dr. Darshan Shah 43:39 Right.

Jay Shetty 43:39 And same with if you took 15 minutes off a meeting, maybe if meetings shifted to being 45, not an hour, I think you'd achieve so much more in the meeting too, because now you have less time. And so- I just think there's so much there, and I just wanna give people more value on that, that it's so easy and practical to implement some of this. And a lot of it's just breaking these old rules that have just lasted for far too long.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:01 Yeah, so true. And you must have talked to Google about this, 'cause on Google Calendar, you can program 25-minute meetings. Did you know that? Or, or-

Jay Shetty 44:08 I, I didn't know that

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:09 ... yeah, or 55-minute meetings. So every meeting is automatically, like, cut short by 5 or 10 minutes.

Jay Shetty 44:14 Oh, I didn't know that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:15 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 44:15 That's cool.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:15 And then what I tell people to do too is switch from a regular Zoom account to the free Zoom account 'cause it kicks you off in 40 minutes. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 44:21 [laughs] That's smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:23 So it's like, "Sorry, guys, I gotta go."

Jay Shetty 44:24 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:25 "I'm, I'm running out of time here." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 44:26 Yeah. You might look cheap, but it will save your health.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 44:30 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:30 But, um, on that, one more double click-

Jay Shetty 44:31 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:31 ... on that point too is that if you do have a life where you have to spend a lot of time at your desk, um, on the computer on meetings, really consider getting a treadmill desk or a walking desk. That's been a game changer for me, too. Like, I'll, I'll get 25,000, 30,000 steps in after three hours of meetings. You know? It's pretty, pretty incredible amount of steps. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 44:50 Wow. That's amazing.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:51 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 44:52 All right. It's all right. So go to number two on the exercise.

Dr. Darshan Shah 44:54 Okay. So number two, I've, I always think the most important, um, thing that you can first start doing in an exercise routine is strength training, especially after the age of 40. Muscle breakdown is a root of all physical problems and frailty as we age, and so really getting into a good strength-training routine is key. And then secondly, you wanna work on your cardio, right? And cardio, really you need to think about it in two prongs. There's anaerobic and aerobic. And, um, anaerobic is basically, you know, working really hard, and then you have the aerobic, where you're not working as hard and you're utilizing oxygen to make energy. So the way you do your anaerobic, I like using HIIT exercises. There's anaerobic training protocols where you-

Jay Shetty 45:34 Sports, I guess

Dr. Darshan Shah 45:34 ... sports, right. Exactly, where you're working really hard. You don't have to do a lot of that every week, but you, you do need to get some of that in every, every week. And then I really like what Peter Attia says about zone 2 aerobic exercise, like getting 30 to 45 minutes a day in to start every other day or so. I think that's important. But look, it's so hard for people to fit all this into their life, right?

Jay Shetty 45:56 Totally.

Dr. Darshan Shah 45:56 So you gotta make it as easy as possible. So there's, like, these seven-minute HIIT routine apps that you can do which are fantastic. Getting a set of barbells and putting them in your closet or your bedroom so that every time you go there, you do 15, 20, like, you know, Arnold presses or something. Even that, as long as it's consistent and done on a daily basis for busy people, is gonna be extremely helpful. I think a lot of people think, like, it's either go to the gym for an hour three to four days a week or just give up completely.

Jay Shetty 46:24 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 46:25 [laughs] And nothing could be farther from the truth, right?

Jay Shetty 46:27 Yeah, and you're saying literally having something at your office desk, having something in your bedroom, just, just that little bit of a- addition to your already busy life is gonna make a difference. And we need to stop having this glorified view of going to the gym and having the perfect workout routine.

Dr. Darshan Shah 46:44 Right, exactly.

Jay Shetty 46:45 How do we get, how do we get,

Jay Shetty 46:46 how have you found people get rid of that perfectionist mentality when it comes to health? Because I feel like we also have it with food. We have it, we, we're on, we talked about nutrition. We have it with exercise, where it's like, "I'm gonna eat really healthy, or I'm gonna eat really bad." Like, if I had a pizza too many days in a row, I might as well just carry on eating pizza because, oh, it's not gonna matter that I had vegetables for one day, although you would argue it does matter and that one day of breaking the cycle [laughs] is probably useful. How have you worked with clients on that mental aspect of it? Because that's obviously what I focus on in my work so much.

Dr. Darshan Shah 47:17 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 47:17 I'd love to hear about it from yours.

Dr. Darshan Shah 47:19 Yeah. You know, it's, there's a lot of science around habit building and routine building. Um, Atomic Habits is a great book that I read. There's a couple others that I really like, and it's this kinda like this reward and cycle that you reward yourself ov- you have to consistently reward yourself on a daily basis for doing the right things and then not punish yourself for doing the wrong things.

Jay Shetty 47:39 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 47:39 And so I think there's a lot of psychology around that. It's, it's, honestly, it's really hard. I f- I mean, we find it hard for ourselves too, right? But I really believe in having a positive attitude about it. I think if you come at it with positivity and say, "You know what? It's fine. I messed up, but I'm gonna do it," and y- you're just positive about it, that in itself is a psychological barrier broken into starting today as the first day of your life to start building new habits again.

Jay Shetty 48:07 Absolutely.

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:07 Right?

Jay Shetty 48:08 Absolutely, yeah. It's, uh, I think, I can't remember who said it, but I've heard The Rock say it plenty of times. He's like, "It's either one day or day one."

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:16 Right. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 48:16 And he'll always quote that, right?

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:18 I love that.

Jay Shetty 48:18 It's a mindset. Like, it's either one day, we'll get to it one day, I'll do it one day, or it's like, no, today's day one. This is the day that I'm gonna solve it and start it, and I think that's that positive mindset you're speaking of.

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:29 Yeah, exactly.

Jay Shetty 48:30 Uh, was there a point three on exercise

Jay Shetty 48:32 that you wanted to make? I, I'm sure there's a point seven, but-

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:34 Yeah, there-

Jay Shetty 48:35 ... was there another one you wanted to kind of-

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:36 We should probably stop there on exercise. There's abs- there's absolutely more you can do.

Jay Shetty 48:41 Of course.

Dr. Darshan Shah 48:41 As you get older, uh, you know, your audience spans all ages and everyone, but as you get older, you really wanna look at stability and balance. So I try to do stability and balance exercises on a daily basis as well, things like standing on one foot, believe it or not. Yeah, just things like that. As we get older, we lose that, and if you're not training it, especially after the age of 50, you're gonna keep losing it. And then the number one killer of older people is becoming frail, falling 'cause they lose their balance, and breaking a hip or a bone. That's what usually takes out most older people. And so y- you can avoid that by incorporating some stability balance routines in your life.

Jay Shetty 49:19 I really appreciate you also looking at it from the perspective of, like, let's stop there because I, I think so often people listen to podcasts or read books, and there's just so much information, and then that makes us go, "All right, I don't know where to start." And so I love the fact that you're like, "Well, wait a minute. Let's just, this is step one. This is stage two." I love that- Very curriculum systematic based approach to mastering our health, rather than starting on point number seven and then figuring it out. So-

Dr. Darshan Shah 49:47 And, like, what I do with my patients is, like, we're having this conversation about everything, but I'll only give them one thing to do.

Jay Shetty 49:53 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 49:53 Right? And, like, we'll change two or three things, and then you come back, and we'll do the next thing, and then the next thing. So let's not worry about how much protein you have in your diet until you clean out your pantry and get rid of all the crap in your pantry, right?

Jay Shetty 50:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:06 Let's do that first, and then let's talk again next week. And so we take it at a stepwise approach. But if whoever's listening to this, you know, if you're taking notes, don't try to implement all of it at the same time.

Jay Shetty 50:15 Definitely.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:15 You'll get overwhelmed and quit. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 50:17 Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:18 Right.

Jay Shetty 50:18 Absolutely. All right, let's talk about sleep.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:21 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 50:21 So I've generally been a good sleeper my whole life, and very grateful for that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:27 How do you know?

Jay Shetty 50:27 By measuring. As in-

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:28 Good, good. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 50:28 I was gonna say, yeah, by measuring, not by how I feel.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:31 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 50:32 Uh, by measuring. I, I wanted to talk about an experience that I had that was bad, which was surprising for me. So I was wearing the Oura Ring for a long time, measuring my sleep, and I was scoring really well, and then during the pandemic, we moved home, and we were renting a place that was really disruptive at night.

Dr. Darshan Shah 50:52 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 50:52 We'd get real animals in the floorboards, in the walls. There was lots of noises outside. I often, because of where we were, and there were certain things about it that I was worried that what if someone broke in and, you know, there were these other anxieties that I had around it. And it was the first time in my life that I think I consecutively had one and a half years of bad sleep during the pandemic. And it was really interesting because I was doing my supplements, I was eating right, I've always meditated. I was doing everything, and just this one undercurrent, man, I was fatigued, I was exhausted, I was irritable. Like, it was so, it was so intense because I just wasn't sleeping deeply, and I'd often wake up multiple times per night, and that wasn't normal for me. And I also was wearing the Oura Ring at that time, and it was, my sleep score was just not great. And that was actually what forced me to move to this place and, and get this home because I was just like, I was, I was telling Radhi, I was like, "I need to leave." Like, it was that bad. And so I know what it feels like to have good sleep and bad sleep, and I think that sleep is one of those areas of our health that we underestimate in terms of how great it can be. But I think so many of us struggle with sleep, whether it be anxiety, whether it be insomnia, whether it be stress. And so I wanna start off by talking about tracking your sleep and improving the environment that we sleep in, at least as a starting point. But I do wanna get to two and three with you today on your list, because I do think there are people who are trying to do all that stuff, but there's still something not clicking, and I'm sure you've experienced this a million times with clients. So let's start at step one and then see where we go from there.

Dr. Darshan Shah 52:34 Right. So I agree with you, like, tracking is a game changer. But I can also tell you that I've had a lot of patients that get super anxious tracking, and they live and die by those numbers, right? So if you're one of those people that the overtracking of sleep kind of changes your day and changes your perspective on your day, only use tracking for a very specified amount of time. Use it for when you're very mindfully changing your sleep habits and your routines. And then stop wearing it once you got your sleep score up to a score that you like, right?

Jay Shetty 53:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 53:07 I personally, I, I like tracking my sleep all the time. I'm just a real data guy, so I like to see it. But when I go on vacation now, I don't wear my Oura Ring because I know that-

Jay Shetty 53:15 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 53:15 ... the sleep's not gonna be as good sometimes, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 53:18 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 53:18 Um, so, so, you know, I use it, I use it for when I'm being mindful about trying to get better sleep or if something's changed. Like I notice, um, I had COVID, um, and right after COVID, I had long COVID, and my heart rate was racing for months.

Jay Shetty 53:32 Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 53:33 Yeah, it was horrible. And, um, um, it really affected my sleep. But my Oura Ring told me that this is what's happening. This is why you're not sleeping well, your heart rate is, is racing. So I think the benefit of sleep tracking is really understanding it's not just the number of hours you're sleeping, it's really the sleep pattern and educating yourself on that sleep pattern. Um, Oura does a good job. Whoop does a good job. The Eight Sleep mattress has a phenomenal tracker.

Jay Shetty 53:57 Eight Sleep's great, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 53:58 It's great. I love it. Yeah. And, um, you know, understanding how much deep sleep you need, h- where that deep sleep needs to be in your sleep night, and understanding things like heart rate variability and an average heart rate at night is a game changer, right? While you're modifying your sleep environment and your routine. So once we get that in place, then the second thing we do is we absolutely make sure the person doesn't have sleep apnea. All right? So for those of you who don't know what sleep apnea is, that's when you stop breathing at night. Your body physically stops taking in oxygen. You don't have oxygen in your body for, for a few seconds at a time, but all night long. That affects your brain, your heart, virtually every organ in your body. So many people have sleep apnea and don't recognize it, and it's really sad because it's causing, basically, I tell them, it's causing a slow death, believe it or not. If you have sleep apnea, you have to get it treated right away. There's lots of different ways of treating it. There's dental appliances. There's, you know, that CPAP mask you can wear. There's surgery. But you gotta figure it out because no matter what you do-

Jay Shetty 55:01 What are some of the symptoms-

Dr. Darshan Shah 55:02 ... it's not gonna go away

Jay Shetty 55:03 ... that people could notice?

Dr. Darshan Shah 55:04 Right. So the symptoms of sleep apnea are, number one, you wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night or your significant other you're sleeping with tells you that. Secondly, you wake up really tired every morning and you sh- and you have daytime somnolence, where you're just kind of falling asleep a few hours after you've woken up. Even snoring very loudly can indicate sleep apnea as well. So if, you know, your spouse, whoever, tells you you're snoring really a lot. Um, and then there's a questionnaire you can take online. It's a very simple questionnaire called a STOP Bang questionnaire, S-T-O-P B-A-N-G. Just Google that. And you take the questionnaire, it'll give you a score, and it'll tell you if you need to be evaluated for sleep apnea. So being evaluated for sleep apnea now is much easier. People used to dread going to a sleep lab and getting all the wires put on them. Now you just wear, like, a little device on your finger overnight at home, and we can get a good idea if you have sleep apnea or not.

Jay Shetty 55:56 Wow.

Dr. Darshan Shah 55:56 And the sleep doctors are very good at treating this now as well.

Jay Shetty 55:59 Wow. And you're saying there's different types of, uh-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:02:04 ampakingen Sвалось Key. Sleep routine starts first thing in the morning, and then you know how the iPhone now has, like, a sleep alarm, right? So, like, it's not an alarm clock to wake you up, it's when you need to start preparing for sleep.

Jay Shetty 1:02:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:02:16 So when that alarm goes off two hours before sleep, all the lights turn off as much as possible, switch on some, you know, soft orange-colored bulbs instead, and just start winding down your brain.

Jay Shetty 1:02:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:02:28 You know, a big part of that is avoiding electronic devices.

Jay Shetty 1:02:30 Absolutely. Yeah, great advice. No, great, great advice, and all things that I've been practicing. I used to, I used to worry about sleeping at 65 degrees 'cause I'd think it would feel cold. And what I always remind people is you still have your duvet, you still have your blanket over you. Like, you don't, you don't have to be cold. Uh, you can still wear pajamas, [laughs] right? Like, it's just c- cooler in the room, and that's been, done wonders for my sleep, even for sleeping in longer and, and being more comfortable. The cave-like darkness has always been a, a big win for me, and, and huge, and I think that the... We've always tried to have very early dinners, and that's been such a huge thing of, like, we try and eat dinner at, like, 6:00, 6:30 PM, just so that when you're in bed at 9:30, that it's, you know, easier to go to sleep. But-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:03:16 Right

Jay Shetty 1:03:17 ... all things we've had to work on over time and adjust and figure out, and it's not always perfect, and, you know, it's-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:03:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:03:23 ... yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:03:24 And part of, like, the eating dinner earlier thing, too, is our caveman ancestors didn't eat after it became dark, right?

Jay Shetty 1:03:30 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:03:31 And so it's really, food is another item that sets your circadian clock almost as much as light does as well. So that's, that's a key factor, eating earlier. But yeah, it's all little things, and one at a time, and, you know, you're not gonna change everything overnight. It might take a year, but y- it benefits you for the next 50.

Jay Shetty 1:03:47 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:03:48 Right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:03:48 Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanna dive into, so there's a few

Jay Shetty 1:03:52 areas left, and I, I wanna take bits and pieces of all of them. I don't wanna do all of them. But I wanna dive into gut health, just because it's so... I didn't realize for years I was having gut issues, because I just didn't know what that even meant. I didn't know how to know. I think today now, people are much more informed. I'm talking about, like, 10, 13, 15 years ago, when I didn't feel it was in the zeitgeist or the conversation as much. Uh, how can someone be conscious and aware, if they're not already, that they may have leaky gut, that they may have gut issues that they're not fully conscious or aware of, or they're being negligent? I was one of those people who, even if there was some discomfort, I would just write it off because you're young, and you're fit, and you're healthy, and you don't care about it too much. What should people be looking out for?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:04:37 Yeah, no, that's, that's a really good point, and, um, once again, you know, by the time you become symptomatic from some of this stuff, a lot of damage has already been done for a long period of time, right? And so what I look at here is another one of those biomarkers, one of those CEO of your own health type of things, which is a biomarker called hs-CRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein. This is a marker of inflammation. Um, it's a very simple test that every doctor lab can do. We've been doing it for, like, 50, 60 years in medicine, but it's a marker of inflammation. You want this number as close to zero as possible, but a lot of times it'll go up to one, two, three, or four, and usually that comes from some sort of situation going on in your gut. So your gut is the biggest organ in your body protecting you from the outside environment. Most people think it's your skin-

Jay Shetty 1:05:26 Mm-hmm

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:05:26 ... but your gut actually has four or five times the surface area of your skin does.

Jay Shetty 1:05:30 Mm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:05:30 And so when that barrier to the outside environment is disrupted, toxins from the outside environment filter into your bloodstream, causing inflammation. Inflammation is when your immune system is overactive, and you not only destroy the toxins, but you start destroying your normal brain, heart, muscle, bone cells, all of it. So you need to know when you have inflammation going on in your body. The first way to tell is by this blood test, and then probably after that blood test has been elevated for months and years is you finally start feeling it in your gut. So if you get this measured, and you have this a little bit too high, then you start need to l- looking at your gut as a primary source. Secondary source would be your oral health, believe it or not. Like-

Jay Shetty 1:06:14 Yeah, talk to me about that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:06:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:06:15 That's really, that was, yeah. Go for it. Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:06:17 Yeah, there's a huge association between poor oral health, dementia, and heart attacks as well, and that's because a lot of inflammation takes place in your mouth if you have cavities, if you have gingivitis, et cetera. So, you know, if your inflamma- inflammation levels are high, need to go see the dentist, make sure your, your oral health is okay, but then you need to start treating your gut. Here's where a functional medicine doctor can be extremely helpful, 'cause they can really sort through, like, what is going on with your gut. Do you have leaky gut? Why do you have leaky gut? You know, 10% of the population has gluten sensitivities, 7% is dairy sensitive, or probably even more. These are just, you know, these are just estimates. And once you start eliminating those inflammatory foods, the toxins in your food from your diet, your gut starts to heal, and we can put you on a gut healing protocol. Reduces inflammation, and inflammation is a root cause of all the major diseases. Once you treat inflammation, your chance of getting all the other diseases are much less, right? So you've gotta focus on your gut. And so this is where, you know, I tell my patients, like, "Look, it's not just about sleep, exercise, and diet. Now we need to start talking about gut health." Like, that's another thing we need to talk about, and so hs-CRP is the biomarker for that. Measure that, and then of course, if you're having symptoms, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, definitely need to go get that checked out.

Jay Shetty 1:07:38 Yeah, it can be so easy to just kind of feel embarrassed about it or be negligent of it or to just kind of brush it off to the side. But, um-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:07:47 I can't tell you the number of, like, men and women that I see that are like, don't wanna talk about it, 'cause they're just like, "Doctor," you know, like, "I have a lot of gas." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:07:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:07:55 You know? They're so embarrassed about it.

Jay Shetty 1:07:56 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:07:56 But it's like- Let's double-click on that

Jay Shetty 1:07:59 Yeah, yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:07:59 We need to figure that out, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:08:00 Yeah, and it's just, and it's just, it's almost like it's, it's weird what we've been taught to, like, be ashamed of in society when these are, like, really normal, natural things that we all need to be massively aware of. It's interesting how the most important things in society become the most taboo to talk about, you know? We're talking about health right now. Money's another one in, in-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:20 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:08:20 ... a different way. Or, like-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:22 Right

Jay Shetty 1:08:22 ... even, like, relationship challenges, or things that are vulnerable have become this thing of, like, "Don't talk about it. It's, it's weird."

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:08:29 "It's strange."

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:29 It's sad, right?

Jay Shetty 1:08:30 Yeah, it's really sad.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:31 I know.

Jay Shetty 1:08:31 Yeah, it's really sad. Like, so.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:32 Well, hopefully, I mean, stuff like this podcast, you bring it to light, people start talking about it, and bringing it more into mainstream conversation is so important.

Jay Shetty 1:08:40 Yeah, I think that's what's needed. I mean, I know for a long time, like, I didn't know who to talk to about things because you just don't hear it.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:08:46 Right.

Jay Shetty 1:08:46 And I think when people are talking to their doctors, also having physicians who we feel understand this language. And that's why I think with you saying that we need to become the CEO of our own health, I think we've always wanted to outsource it to a doctor or to a healthcare professional, whatever it may be, and the truth is no one's gonna care about it as much as you.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:06 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 1:09:06 And so it has to start there. So this, I wanna focus on this one because

Jay Shetty 1:09:10 it's so interesting. So you obviously talk about heart health as one part of your wellness wheel.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:16 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:09:17 And it fascinates me because even when I've seen it on your wellness wheel a million times when I've been in, and when we know how important the heart is, we rarely talk about heart health. And if we do, we kind of do it in a soft way. We don't really talk about it from a scientific point of view. And you talk about how important it is to know our levels at 25 years old. Is it APo- ApoB?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:43 Yep.

Jay Shetty 1:09:44 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:44 ApoB, right.

Jay Shetty 1:09:44 Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:45 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 1:09:45 So walk us through that, in understanding what that is, what it means, and how do we know?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:50 Right. Exactly. So I think everyone's heard about, like, watching your cholesterol levels, right?

Jay Shetty 1:09:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:09:54 Okay. So right now what happens is you get your cholesterol levels measured sometimes in your 30s if you're lucky, usually a doctor will wait till you're 40, and unless it's, like, over a really high number, no one's really gonna do anything about it. And then people will start talking to you about your diet and managing your exercise, you know, exercise more, eat better, eat less fat, eat less cholesterol. Then you just kinda let it go until all of a sudden it's an emergency for you to get on a statin, [laughs] you know?

Jay Shetty 1:10:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:10:23 And I think it's kind of 10, 15, 20 years too late at that point in time, right? The damage has already been done. Um, if you do cardiac testing, you'll see that there's already blockages in blood vessels at that point in time, and most of the time, these are not diagnosed until people have their first heart attack. No one even looks at the blood vessels until you've had a heart attack, and it's really sad the way this whole thing goes, and it's especially sad because heart attacks and strokes can become like an orphan disease, like a disease that never affects us-

Jay Shetty 1:10:56 Mm-hmm

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:10:56 ... if we just do it right.

Jay Shetty 1:10:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:10:58 And this is where I think medicine has made, like, a tremendous, incredible amount of knowledge has been gained, and this is where I try to really encourage my patients to really partner with their medical doctors and really get this treated. So when I say know your ApoB level, I love ApoB. It's a new, new type of cholesterol measurement, kind of lumps together all the bad forms of cholesterol, which I even hate saying bad cholesterol, but it lumps that together, the dangerous forms. And knowing what your ApoB level is when you're 20, 25, that's kind of the baseline where you want it to be, right? So as this starts creeping up, you wanna start doing things about it with your exercise, diet, sleep, gut health. All of that matters. But then when it gets to a certain level that's a little bit too high, that's when you wanna start doing cardiac testing and diagnosis. So there's really great tests that can be done now, CAT scans of your heart, that can tell you, 20, 30 years ahead of time before you have a heart attack, if you have a blockage. And we have great therapeutics now to turn back the time on these blockages, to get rid of these blockages, to prevent you from having a heart attack. I can't tell you the number of patients that we've had in our clinics that we've done this scan on preventatively, and how many of them actually a- had to go straight to the emergency room to get a blood vessel opened up.

Jay Shetty 1:12:15 [exhales]

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:12:15 You know? Double-clicking on this, just 'cause I think it's really important for your audience to know, ApoB, and there's another one everyone needs to get measured when they're young, is the LP (a) , or even young or old. If you've never had it done, gotta measure LP (a) . LP (a) is a genetic form of cholesterol that can't be treated with diet, nutrition, and, um, exercise or cholesterol-lowering medication, traditional ones.

Jay Shetty 1:12:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:12:39 And if you're one of the, you know, few percentage of people that have it, you'll still get massive blockages in your arteries at a very young age. So most people don't check that until it's too late as well.

Jay Shetty 1:12:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:12:50 And we can treat that now as well. So LP (a) and ApoB, two tests everyone need to ask their doctor about.

Jay Shetty 1:12:56 That's fantastic. I'm so glad you're, like, giving us a vocabulary of knowing what to check, 'cause I think otherwise, you know, I know I'd just go up to my doctor and be like, "Well, how, how healthy is my heart?" And they're gonna be like, "You're fine." Like, you know, and it's-- And I think that's the challenge. We don't really have a vocabulary, or we don't know the exact tests and checks that need to happen. And again, I think you've given us so many across the board, and I just hope everyone who's listening or watching, like, please, please, please go and check these things out because I just want you to live a healthier, longer, happier life, and, you know, so much of this could either make it easier or harder.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:13:32 Right. Absolutely. And I think, you know, there's different types of people. Some people like you, like, you wanna know, and you wanna know as soon as possible because you wanna make sure you get it treated or take care of it before it becomes a big problem.

Jay Shetty 1:13:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:13:44 And so those are the type of people I think will take this information and really run with it. Then there's another type of people that will take this information, bring their notes to their doctor. Some of their doctors will say, "Okay, let's check it." Some will be like, "No, you don't need to do that." And they'll be like, "Okay, I'll just leave it." Which, you know, it's fine, but I really encourage people to become the CEO of their own health, become more aggressive and proactive in learning and tracking these things and pushing your doctor on some of this stuff. And then you have a group of people that just, like, they want their head in their sand like- I don't wanna know until it's a problem, tell me then. Which there's not much you can do about that [laughs] except, you know, take care of 'em. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:14:19 Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:14:20 Right?

Jay Shetty 1:14:21 Absolutely. We've talked about brain health

Jay Shetty 1:14:23 before on the show, but I wanted to talk about cancer.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:14:25 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:14:25 And the, the reason why I wanna touch on that obviously is because I think the rates are just going up and up and up. I've lost two people in the last four years, three people in my entire life, people that I'm, like, very close to. This does not include your auntie, your mom's friend. Like, you know, like, not even just, like, looking around the whole space, but, like, people that I'm directly close to. And all from different causes, all from different reasons. It's something that I think, you know, that we all have a fear around because you just hear it so often, and everyone's going through something. Like, you talk about cancer's biggest enemy is being diagnosed at stage one, but that, whenever I've had friends or people I love, we always find out at stage three or four. So how do, how do we get that? What, what do you need to do?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:15:10 Yeah. So cancer diagnostics literally in the last five years has become incredibly revolutionized, and there's two tests that have done this. Um, one is a test called the full body MRI, like the Prenuvo scan.

Jay Shetty 1:15:24 Which is what we did when, I think... Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:15:26 Right. Exactly. Yep, you, you, you did the full body MRI. And that happened because we've always had MRI scanners, but now MRIs are becoming more ubiquitous and cheaper. These are no radiation scans of your entire body, and they're getting quicker too, so we can do the whole body in, like, under an hour. I always say if Steve Jobs had one of these, he'd still be alive today, you know? So it's a scan that scans your whole body for not just tumors, but also other anatomical abnormalities that can kill you, like aneurysms in your brain or your aorta. So I think that's a very useful test. It's controversial because you do find a lot of what's called incidentalomas. These are incidentals that you end up chasing down a rabbit hole as far as what is that thing over there.

Jay Shetty 1:16:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:16:06 But if you can tolerate a little bit of, you know, having diagnostics done and a little bit of stress while you figure out what those things are, you'll know a lot more about your body in enough time to take care of an issue. So that's one technology. The second technology, which is truly revolutionary, is the liquid biopsy. This is the GRAIL, the Galleri GRAIL test. And, um, this is a blood test that you can do, and you just send in a vial of blood. They check it for little fragments of DNA from active tumors in your body, okay? And so it can diagnose 50 of the most hard to diagnose tumors at very early stages. And, um, right now, unfortunately, this test is expensive and not covered by insurance. My feeling is as the technology evolves, it'll become cheaper and cheaper, of course, and it'll become the new standard in medicine is to check everyone for this once a year. Because the reason cancer is so hard to treat is because of being diagnosed at stage III or IV when it's sometimes metastatic, right? And then it's almost, it's, you have to go chemo, radiation, surgery. It's so hard. But once you diagnose it at stage one, it's like it's not even had a chance to get there, right?

Jay Shetty 1:17:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:18 So this blood test, if you can afford it right now, you know, once a year I would start doing it for... If you can't, it's gonna get cheaper. Keep your eye out on it. I think it'll get cheaper really quickly as a lot of technology is becoming right now. It's gonna revolutionize the way we diagnose cancer. And then everyone, in addition to those, you can't just do those. Each of those detects its own things, right? You've gotta get your colonoscopy. Do it early, especially if you have a family history of colon cancer.

Jay Shetty 1:17:44 We had that done too.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:46 Yep, exactly.

Jay Shetty 1:17:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:47 Yeah. Very important.

Jay Shetty 1:17:48 I was scared for, like, a week. [laughs] It was like... Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:51 Yeah, it is scary. But the nice thing about colonoscopy-

Jay Shetty 1:17:53 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:53 ... is not just diagnosing cancer. Like, if you go in there and you see a pre-cancer, you can remove it immediately.

Jay Shetty 1:17:58 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:17:58 So it's like treatment as well, right?

Jay Shetty 1:18:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:00 And then for men, get the PSA test, which is a blood test for your prostate. For women, make sure you get your mammograms and make sure you get your OBGYN exams. That's kind of like the array of preventative diagnostics you wanna do now in the 21st century to, you know, basically diagnose cancer before it, before it kills you, you know? As soon as possible.

Jay Shetty 1:18:22 And how, how do we cancer-proof

Jay Shetty 1:18:24 our body?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:24 Cancer-proofing is done by doing all of the other things that we talked about today.

Jay Shetty 1:18:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:29 Getting seven, eight hours of sleep, making sure that your nutrition is, comes mostly from whole foods, not-

Jay Shetty 1:18:36 Mm

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:36 ... processed foods, and exercising and not being sedentary. The other thing is eliminating toxins from your day-to-day life, and so we can talk about that a little bit if you like.

Jay Shetty 1:18:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:46 How to eliminate toxins.

Jay Shetty 1:18:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:18:47 So the Pareto principle on that is realize where do you spend the most time, right? You spend the most time probably at work and asleep in your bed at night. That environment, the air in that environment, you want that to be as clean as possible. So you wanna detoxify your air, your water, your food, and chemicals on your skin. So air, buy a air purifier for each one of those environments if the air is not perfectly clean. For your water, um, I recommend getting a under-sink reverse osmosis system in your kitchen, um, where you drink, get most of your drinking water. Drink it out of glass bottles for the most part. And for your food, organic, or go to that website called ewg.org. And finally, for the cosmetics that you use and the stuff you put on your body, there's a great app called Think Dirty, and it, you can put any product in there or scan the barcode. It'll tell you the level of toxin-

Jay Shetty 1:19:38 Wow, yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:19:38 ... and recommend to you the most non-toxic products. You do that, you've covered 80% of the landscape. Like, you're, you're living in a mostly non-toxic environment. I'm sure there's people that have other things that they do, but that to me are the keys.

Jay Shetty 1:19:51 Yeah, my wife is my Think Dirty app. Like, she's gonna figure out-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:19:54 [laughs] That's awesome

Jay Shetty 1:19:54 ... she's, like, she's checked every product. She got us to switch to glass bottled water. She put the reverse, uh-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:20:01 Osmosis, yeah

Jay Shetty 1:20:02 ... osmosis system in. Like, she's just so on top of all this stuff, and I'm like, if I didn't have her in my life, I don't know what I'd be doing right now, and it's incredible how These... And, and also, you know, when someone recommends these things, like when my wife first came up with this reverse osmosis water thing, I was like, "Come on, like, do we really need it?" Like, you know. And, and it's interesting how, like, we have such random resistance to a lot of these things. We kind of overthink it, or we, we underthink it, where we just go, "Oh, well that can't be that such a big deal." Like, I think the whole bottled water thing is now blown up. When my wife was talking to me about it, like, four, five years ago-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:20:35 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 1:20:35 ... and at the time it was like I could've been a bit like, "Oh, no, it doesn't matter. It's just a plastic water bottle." And now you see the research, right?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:20:43 Right.

Jay Shetty 1:20:43 And so I think it's so interesting how, like, if you have someone in your life, your friends, your family who are recommending things to you, be open-minded about it-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:20:50 Yes. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:20:50 ... because you have no idea when it's finally gonna be proven. And I'm hoping that anyone who's listened to this episode, please, please, please share this w- episode with friends and family members, because I think what Dr. Shah has done beautifully today is he's laid out step one, step two, and step three. And so whether you're someone who's just getting started in your journey, or whether you're someone who's trying to refine it and improve it and enhance it in a deep way, you know, you've kinda given the pathway for all of those.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:21:16 Well, thank you. And you know, you're right, it's so easy to be skeptical, right? It's hard to be not skeptical and open-minded and l- do your research and really dive in, but I mean, you do such a good job of, you know, trying to get people to break through that barrier of skepticism and opening their mind to new possibilities, that I think if people were to, like, just kind of, even if they pick up one thing-

Jay Shetty 1:21:37 One thing

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:21:37 ... and research it on their own, th- you're gonna make a positive change, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:21:40 I agree. Dr. Shah, you've been incredible today. I mean-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:21:42 Thank you

Jay Shetty 1:21:42 ... you've given us such a wealth of insight. And like I said at the beginning, I want this to be the episode that you come back to to go, "If I'm looking at my gut health, what do I need to focus on? If I'm looking at my nutrients, what do I need to focus on?" Please, please, please take a screenshot of this episode right now. I want you to make sure that you tag Dr. Shah and I on social media so that he can see what resonated with you, so that I can see what's that one thing you're trying, what's that thing that is now your day one, not your one day. What is the thing that you're putting into practice that is gonna shift how you feel, that is gonna shift, uh, how you live your life? What is the thing that you've been avoiding measuring that you're gonna measure from now on to make sure that you can start taking the proactive steps in avoiding some of these challenges that you can. Uh, Dr. Shah, I wanna ask

Jay Shetty 1:22:28 you the final five, of course-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:22:29 [laughs] Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:22:29 ... which we do with every guest. Uh, but I wanna make sure that I ask, where should people find you? Where should people follow you? Where can people connect with your work to continue to be educated?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:22:39 Yeah, so you know, I've been doing this course for my patients now for many years, and um, a lot of them want their family and friends to do this, but they might be living in different countries. So I recently started putting the entire course on my Instagram page.

Jay Shetty 1:22:51 Fantastic.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:22:51 And so @darshanshahmd. If you go there, like, it's all kind of in order. We're gonna start with nutrition, then move on to sleep, and move on to exercise, et cetera. And over the course of the year, we'll have all the content on there, but in a sequential fashion.

Jay Shetty 1:23:05 That's fantastic. So darshanshahmd on Instagram-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:08 Right

Jay Shetty 1:23:08 ... is the place to go and follow. And we're hoping you're gonna upload it to TikTok as well, so.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:12 Yes, yes. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:23:13 Yeah, yeah. We need you, we need darshanshahmd on TikTok too. I love it. Both of them-

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:16 Right

Jay Shetty 1:23:17 ... would be amazing. Uh, Dr. Shah, these are your final five.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:20 Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:23:20 We ask these to every guest. Sometimes a different mocktail of, of all of them, but we need one word to one sentence maximum for each question. So question number one: What is the best health advice you've ever received?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:33 Get up and start moving.

Jay Shetty 1:23:35 Nice. All right. Question number two: What is the worst health advice you've ever received?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:40 Let your doctor watch your blood markers.

Jay Shetty 1:23:43 Right. Wow. All right. Uh, question number three: What is something you used to be skeptical about in terms of health and wellness techniques, but now you swear by?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:23:53 Yeah, this whole, um, field of eliminating toxins from your day-to-day environment. I used to think it didn't matter, but it matters so much.

Jay Shetty 1:24:00 Again, yeah, you think, "Oh, air purifier." Like y- it's just, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:24:03 What are they trying to sell me? But it does make a huge difference.

Jay Shetty 1:24:06 Right. Uh, question number four: What is something that you used to swear by for your health and now you actually think, "Uh, no, I don't need to focus on that anymore"?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:24:15 Intermittent fasting. I know a lot of people will get upset at that answer, but I think there's a lot of science to the contrary now.

Jay Shetty 1:24:24 Let's, yeah, let's dive into that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:24:25 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:24:25 Let's segue into that for a second.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:24:27 Yeah, so intermittent fasting is great for people that need to s- start eating less calories on a day-to-day basis. It's a good way to manage your caloric intake. But like I said earlier, a lot of people end up taking less protein, and so they lose skeletal muscle mass, and that's what happened to me. I was intermittent fasting. I started, and my skeletal muscle mass on my scale started, like, plummeting, and I was like, "What is happening?" And it's all because of intermittent fasting, so I stopped it. So it's really more about what molecules you're putting into your body, I think, rather than the timing of it.

Jay Shetty 1:24:59 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:24:59 And I think, um, you know, you really wanna be careful if you are intermittent fasting that you're still getting your protein intake and you are also not in the category of people that are either pregnant or breastfeeding or, you know, an athlete. I think I've seen a lot of athletes actually cause a lot of damage to their metabolism by intermittent fasting.

Jay Shetty 1:25:18 That's, I, I mean, I'm not an athlete, but I found that when I was experimenting with it. So I do st- I stop eating dinner by, like, 6:30 PM, and I don't eat until the next morning, until 9:00 AM. So that's the closest I get to it, but I'm someone who needs to eat three meals a day, and I don't snack a lot. And so for me, it's like those three meals are my main meals, and I'm very happy with them, so breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I eat breakfast at 9:00, lunch at 12:00 to 1:00, and then dinner at 6:00. And it's like, for me, that keeps my energy steady. I'm not overeating or undereating at any point. Like, it works for me. And so I've always, I've always been interested in that as well, because I, I've always found myself feel healthier, happier, and stronger when I'm doing that.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:25:59 Yep, and that's the key. You have to go by how you feel and-

Jay Shetty 1:26:01 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:26:01 ... and, um, I think you said another key, where you don't have to snack during the day. Like, you're obviously eating whole foods and you're eating an adequate quantity where you're not having to snack, so-

Jay Shetty 1:26:12 Yeah

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:26:12 ... that's another key as well.

Jay Shetty 1:26:13 Yeah, absolutely. All right, fifth and final question, Dr. Shah, which is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:26:22 Get yourself a group of friends that you're so happy and proud to be around, that you share common interests in where you want your life to go, not just where it's at right now.

Jay Shetty 1:26:34 That's a great answer. Everyone, that's Dr. Shah on On Purpose. Thank you so much for listening and watching. Again, I hope that you take away and practice, as Dr. Shah kept saying, just one thing from this episode and watch how your life changes. Again, a big thank you. Follow Dr. Shah on Instagram, @darshanshahmd on Instagram and on TikTok, soon to come.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:26:54 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:26:55 Uh, make sure you do that, and I hope that you stay happy, stay healthy, and stay well. Uh, thank you again, Dr. Shah.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:27:01 Thank you so much.

Jay Shetty 1:27:01 Thank you so much.

Dr. Darshan Shah 1:27:01 Thank you, Jay.

Jay Shetty 1:27:02 Thank you. If you loved this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.

Speaker 1:27:10 If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over 1,000 convicted felons and over 100 murderers, and their brains are very damaged