175. Justin Roethlingshoefer: Why Your Body Needs More Than "Healthy Habits" To Heal

Your body is constantly repairing, renewing, and rebuilding itself. Hundreds of millions of cells are replaced every few months, which sounds incredible until you ask the question most people skip: if the body is designed to heal, why do so many people still feel tired, foggy, inflamed, slow to recover, or like something is off even when they are doing so many of the "right" things? In this episode of Extend, I sit down with Justin Roethlingshoefer to bring that question back to the cell. Justin explains why healing is not just about what your body is trying to do, but the environment your cells are trying to do it in. If that environment is missing oxygen, overloaded with toxins, or depleted of nutrients, your body may be creating new cells without giving them the conditions they need to thrive. Justin Roethlingshoefer is the creator of OWN IT, a coaching platform and app built to help people take ownership of their health through HRV, VO2 max, sleep quality, cellular testing, personalized rhythms, and practical behaviour change. His work helps people cut through the noise of the wellness space and understand what their body actually needs at the cellular level, which is what makes him the right person to explain why feeling better may require more than another supplement, device, or protocol. What's Discussed: (03:46) Why your body's ability to repair and renew starts at the cellular level. (07:59) The three things your cells cannot live without. (08:36) Why the environment your new cells enter can affect how well they thrive. (12:33) How VO2 max reflects oxygen efficiency at the cellular level. (25:37) Why sleep quality matters for cellular detoxification. (34:30) Why standard blood work may not explain why you still feel off. (44:24) Why good habits can fall apart inside disordered rhythms. Listen to this episode of Extend to understand why your body may be trying to heal, why it may still feel like something is not working, and what your cells may need before your next supplement, wearable, protocol, or health habit can actually make the difference you are looking for. Free resources: Quality sleep is the most underestimated longevity accelerator. Download this sleep optimization workbook to transform sleep into a powerful longevity practice: https://www.drshah.com/sleep Thank You to Our Sponsor: Next Health Longevity Summit: Head to next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit to secure your spot at the first ever Next Health Logevity Summit in Nashville on 9/12. Momentous: Head to livemomentous.com/fiber http://livemomentous.com/fiber and use code DRSHAH for up to 35% off your first order. Learn More About Dr. Darshan Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://next-health.com Instagram: @darshanshahmd https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn More About Justin Roethlingshoefer: Website: ownitcoaching.com http://ownitcoaching.com Holy Health Website: holyhealthbook.com https://holyhealthbook.com Instagram: @JustinRoeth https://www.instagram.com/justinroeth/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview

• 1:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Justin Rothing-Sulphur. He's a brilliant mind in health optimization. Justin and I connected recently at another speaking engagement, and I was immediately struck by his ability to simplify complex science and make it truly actionable for people. He champions a philosophy that he calls Own It. It empowers you to become the CEO of your health. We're going to dive deep into his insights on cellular health, the critical role of oxygen detoxification and nutrients, and how understanding key metrics

• 2:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  like VO2 max and HRV can truly transform your well-being. Get ready to learn how you can truly partner with your body for lasting health.

• 2:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Justin, welcome to Extend. Thanks for being here.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  It's so good to be here, Darshan. Thank you for having me.

• 2:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so you and I were speaking together here in LA. And when I heard you speak, I was like, I gotta get that guy on my podcast. So I ran right up to you and I'm like, hey, can you join my podcast?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you so graciously accepted. And now you're here from Miami and really can't wait to give my audience all the things that I learned from you when you came to speak. So thank you.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate you. It's very rare, I think, in this space that's so noisy, so busy, so much marketing science and what's real, what's not, that you find somebody with such kinship and simpatico and with the same type of heart and passion for not only the truth, but also making very complex things very simple.

• 3:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  How do you make them applicable? And how do you use them so that they can become actionable in somebody's life? And so I just honor you as well because you've done the work to be able to make that happen for people because that's really kind of the art and the science integrated together.

• 3:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's so true. And it's like, you know, if you go on any Instagram feed, you get fed so much information now because you and I are in the health space with this, like the algorithms giving us all the stuff that people are seeing out there. And I feel bad for people because I would say 80% of it's bad information.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the 20% of it has good information. It seems overwhelming, confusing.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And like, how am I going to really apply this? And so, you know, there's a sweet spot right in there that I think you have arrived to from, you know, the talk I witnessed that you did, where it's like, here's what you need to know, here's how you put it into your life, and let's move forward from there. And here's how you see how it's working.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  And I think what's cool about it is you're able to take something that you have to go back to science and you have to go back to how the body works. This thing that we live in is miraculous. It is 30 trillion cells that have 500 million that replenish and repair and renew every 84 days. And that means every five to seven years, you, me, my mom, your mom, my Dad, your dad, our children will all have that same thing happen, become a new cellular human being every five to seven years. Like, just sitting on that truth for a second is wild to me.

• 4:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  That our bodies were literally created to heal. And so when you say that, it's not some anecdote or some feel-good mantra, it's a scientific fact. And so we have to come back to the cell and understand what is happening internally, so that we can actually start to align with how we were created. And if we can do that, the outcome is inevitable. And I think that's the cool part about it. But it's helping people understand that in a very applicable way, that really starts to clear the noise, so that once you feel empowered and equipped in that, you no longer become a consumer. You start to shut that down, because the pain points you once had, no longer exist.

• 5:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. And what I love that you've also done is you've created like a mental philosophy around this, that you've put into an app, and you've put into your coaching platform, it's called Own It, right? And so could you talk about the philosophy around Own It a little bit?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's built to educate, empower, and equip people to take ownership of their health. If we can empower you to understand, I think one of the biggest issues with the health and wellness space right now is everybody's competing to be right, where I actually never want to be right. I want to understand. I want to seek to understand, because if I can seek to understand, then I can find the truth. But when I'm skewed by a bias of needing to be right, I ultimately look at the science and manipulate it to make myself right. I look at the studies in a way to manipulate it to make myself right, where in actuality, that may not actually be right for the human being. I want to understand the body. And when you understand the body, you can start to understand and discern a language that's different for everybody. And so that's where

• 6:17Speaker 01

  heart rate variability, and VO2 max, and sleep quality, and cellular deficiencies, and all of these tools become not just biometrics, but communication platforms for us to understand the body, so that we can now go and take action in a very personalized, proactive, and preventable-based way, that allows us to participate in our health and see something new. And then again, refine it based on that communication. It's a relationship with your body, not something to be fixed or hacked away at, if you will, but rather something to, again, engage with.

• 6:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. The way you say own it, like I refer to this when I go speak as becoming the CEO of your own health.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like you are primarily responsible for your body and you can do this. And I think a lot of people, they don't think they can do it alone, but you actually can do it on your own. If you just understand what are the key performance indicators.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 7:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What moves the needle for you with those key performance indicators? And lean into the things that work, don't do the things that don't work.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And like you said, like this is something that you can then now not become a consumer anymore. Now you're in control when you understand what's working, is not working.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think even kind of bringing back own it into like that conversation, what you said, we have that same philosophy. You are the CEO of your health.

• 7:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  But at the same time, we want to build an executive team around you to support you.

• 7:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  And so we become the executive team to your health. We've got your health coach, we've got your mental performance coach, we've got your functional medicine doc, we've got your cognitive behavioral therapist, the people that kind of all integrate in and help you understand this thing.

• 7:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  So you can step forward powerfully. And so to kind of take that philosophy and make it practical, we have to come back to that concept of, okay, if we're made up of 30 trillion cells and 500 million become brand new every 84 days, and that means every five to seven years, we become a completely brand new human being, how do we optimize for our cellular health? What do we have to know that cells need? Well, cells need three things. They need oxygen, they need the ability to detoxify, and they need nutrients. Those are the three things they cannot live without.

• 8:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  And that creates a very healthy cellular environment, a environment where the new cells can thrive. And even if your body is creating new cells, but the environment is that of one that is nutrient depleted, one that is toxic, or one that is oxygen depleted. It would be like if I brought a brand new box of beautiful peaches to you and I said, oh, hey, just let me put three or four rotten ones on top. It wouldn't take very long before the whole box was rotten.

• 8:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's very true.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  And it's the same thing that happens with our cells is we are putting new cells. Bodies are doing the thing that is necessary to replenish and renew and repair. But we're living in an environment, we are living with habits and behaviors, we are living with life rhythms that are misaligned with how we're created. And so the environment the new cells are coming into are turning toxic, are dying off and not healing because we're not giving it what it needs. And so the coolest part about all of that integrated together, and this is where I love the metric of heart rate variability, is because mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stress, the body does not know the difference. And so when you start to see those three core components of oxygen, detoxification and nutrients,

• 9:29Speaker 01

  the underlying cause of that, if it doesn't have the oxygen, if it's not detoxifying, and if it doesn't have the nutrients, it causes stress on the body, stress that we are unaware of.

• 9:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Stress that is subconscious to us.

• 9:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And suddenly this becomes the aware factor of, oh, there's something in my habits, there's something in my behaviors, there's something in my life rhythms that my body is not liking, and thus I have to do something different. And so HRV becomes that key performance indicator that we empower people to understand. The light bulb moment of, oh, it's trending upwards, that means I'm making some positive changes, let's understand where they came from. And oh, it's trending downwards, my body's communicating something, let me figure out where that came from. And so then we turn those three things, if people go, okay, well, HRV improvement is a good thing, and this is something that we're after, then we have to start to be aware of how do we improve HRV. VO2 max is the message, is the

• 10:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oxygen.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Key performance indicator for oxygen.

• 10:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Sleep quality is the key performance indicator for detoxification.

• 10:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And recovery, right?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  And then cellular deficiency through cellular blood testing is nutrients. And so we've got these three areas that we can now dive deeper, understand, circumvent the guessing. We can test and actually have a real life conversation with your body, not something to be optimized, but rather something to be partnered with to build capacity so that you can carry the calling that's on your life. Because people really, at the end of the day, just want to feel good. They say it's for longevity, and I feel like that word has almost been force fed into people's vocabularies.

• 11:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  It's not actually longevity or after, it's actually about changing the way you feel now.

• 11:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  You want to have hope that maybe there's something better. In a year, maybe there's something better in a month. And when we change these habits and behaviors and start to look at, hey, how do I align back with my body's asking? You can really experience longevity in the moment.

• 11:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, longevity in the moment is critical. And what that really means to me is you feel good now and you're improving your health span. So you can feel good for as long as possible, for as many years as possible.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's my definition of longevity.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So let's dive into each one of those three topics, if you don't mind. Because obviously, everyone wants to know how to keep your cells in the most thriving environment. By the way, I love that peach analogy because it's so true. We have this body that is harboring millions of cells, right? Billions of cells. And if some of those cells are sick, if some of those cells are close to dying and they're in the same kind of bucket with all new cells that you're making, those new cells will deteriorate faster.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And there's names for these, they're called senescent cells, right? And we want them to go through a process called autophagy.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where you can get rid of these cells and a lot of that happens during sleep.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 12:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. So we're going to talk about sleep later, but first let's, why don't we start with VO2 max and oxygen, right?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 12:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So let's talk about how are we getting cells the oxygen they need? And how is VO2 max a measure of that?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when you think about VO2 max, VO2 max is literally the measurement of how efficiently the body is using oxygen, quite often at its maximum output. Like you're, you're taken to a space of failure. VO2 max, you can have an estimation number, you can go and get an actual VO2 max. Like you've got your VO2 master downstairs, you can go and throw a mask on, you can go get it done. It's amazing, right? And you get a really accurate number, where are you? And if you look at all the data, and again, this is, this is not bringing in the decline of age over time. This is talking about the sheer base value of men and women. The, the VO2 max number, you need to have adequate oxygen efficiency to get the cellular environment oxygenated enough so that you thrive.

• 13:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  For men, it's 45.

• 13:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  For women, it's 38. And obviously, again, people will come at me and go, Oh, you know what? It should be higher if you're thirty eight. Yes, that's true. And yes, it declines over the course of time. But as a baseline, forty five for men, thirty eight for women. That should be our goal, above each of those.

• 13:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's great to have those concrete numbers in place.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So it doesn't matter what age you are. Forty five is where you want to be.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 13:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Obviously, we know it like at the age of seventy years start declining. So you want to build up some reserve capacity, right?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Correct. And that, and this is also why, like, we're, you will see that number decline over the course of time. But at forty five years old, you, as a goal, for a performance standpoint, you want to have your VO two max upwards of fifty five.

• 14:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  And that would be considered great. But again, without having a chart in front of us and being able to show it, I wanted to give just concrete numbers. Forty five or greater for men, thirty eight or greater for women.

• 14:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Not barring the age and just, this is where we need to be.

• 14:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  If you have not gotten a VO two max test done, and you want to have an understanding of where you're at, a very simple way to go about this would be, hey, uh, let's do a Cooper test. Twelve minute run, max distance, as far as you can go in twelve minutes. Empty the tank and, um, uh, I, basically what the equation comes out with, uh, for these numbers is if you're a male, you need to cover one point three seven miles or more. If you are a female, you need to cover one point one seven miles or more in that twelve minutes to be above forty five or above thirty eight.

• 14:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And so what this would say is that you have adequate oxygen efficiency utilization at the cellular level, and thus your body is getting enough oxygen. Here's, I think, the thing that people often miss is that if your VO two max, Darshan, was sixty and mine was forty, you would have a higher VO two max than I would. That means that your body's oxygen efficiency is greater than mine. But people don't get this next part is whose body would this conversation be more stressful on? Yours or mine?

• 15:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If mine was?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Sixty and mine was forty.

• 15:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 15:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Even though we're sitting here and I don't feel stressed.

• 15:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I don't feel like it's hard. My body's having to work harder to get the same amount of oxygen into my body throughout my entire muscular system, throughout my entire circulatory system than yours is. If we were to stand up, whose body would be working harder? Mine. Going downstairs. Mine. Picking up groceries. Mine. Playing with kids. Mine. Sleeping. Mine. Everything in life becomes more stressful, but we are unaware of it because we don't comprehend that stress. And that's the thing that happens behind the scenes that we become unaware of, which is why we slowly drift in our health over the course of time. And so we have to have an understanding of where are we? And that's why I love data, is it gives us the understanding of where am I today? Where am I trying to go?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And now let's put something very intentional in place as to figure out where do we go next.

• 16:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And so how do we improve VO2 max? Well, three things. First, 180 minutes of zone two every single week. Zone two, 60 to 70% of our max heart rate. Let's figure out what that is. And let's choose a steady state form of exercise to be able to optimize for that zone two is for that 180 minutes. It could be three days a week of 60 minutes each one of those sessions. It could be six days a week at 30 minutes.

• 16:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  But we have to stay in that zone for that duration of time.

• 16:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Steady state, something that's, that's again, keeping us in that, in that zone that we're in.

• 16:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And for most people, just so people out there know, is that zone two exercise, you can obviously measure your heart rate and make sure you're staying in the right heart rate zone. I wear a whoop band. It gives you your zone as you're exercising, so you can kind of modify.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where you're at. But another great way to do this is how do you feel? Your resting perceived exertion, right? So if you don't want to wear a band or a horror ring, you could just go about your base, how you're feeling at that moment.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And this would be a RP of like two to three, right?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Two to three. And it's also, if you kind of go back to that thought process, it would be like a, you're able to have a conversation, but it feels a little bit labored.

• 17:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  It's like you can, you can talk, but you feel a little out of breath as you're doing it.

• 17:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Kind of gives you that, again, that subjective thought process.

• 17:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. And so some of these ways you can do this is actually pretty easy. Um, you could actually go for a hike outside in some hilly environment, right? You can, you can hike at a pace where you feel like you're, you know, you can have a conversation, but you don't want to all the whole time you're doing it. Another way to do it is a treadmill that's on a incline of like 13%, right? 13% grade at three and a half, three miles an hour.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Throw a weight vest on, do the same thing.

• 17:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Weight vest, exactly. What are some other ways people can get this?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Elliptical machines, super easy, stair stepper, resistant bikes, uh, and just pedaling at a steady state. But it's, it's steady state exercise. I think that's the key thing that people have to understand is I get a lot of questions is, does it, does zone two count when I'm weight training? No. Does zone two count when I'm doing my interval work? No, it has to be that steady state. It's capacity building. It's creating this cardiac efficiency adaptation of your heart. So that we can actually, again, increase oxygen efficiency of the body.

• 18:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And so, um, that's the first thing is going to be 180 minutes. Zone two, every single week. Second is going to be 30 minutes per week of zone five.

• 18:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  And that's your high end. This is the stuff that sucks. Nobody wants to do it. And, uh, ultimately what you're looking at is 90 to 100% of your max heart rate.

• 18:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  This is going to be your interval work. So if we were going to take the examples that we kind of brought, that you kind of brought forward, it would be, uh, your 50 meter shuttles. It would be your 400 meter sprints, 800 meter sprints. Heavy resisted bike sprint intervals where you're pushing as hard as you can for 90 minutes, resting completely for 90 or 90 minutes, 90 seconds, pardon me, uh, and then resting for 90 seconds. And so it's going to be all out work with all out rest.

• 19:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Uh, heavy sled push and pulls, all these types of things that are going to get that heart rate into that high, nine, 85 to 100% uh, of your max heart rate. And then allow for that, uh, full optimal recovery in between.

• 19:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it. Yeah. So that's interval training. I talk a lot about in my social media sprint intervals where, you know, you go all out sprint, like you said, rest, get your heart rate back down, do it again, and just keep doing that over and over. Again, six to 10 reps. And then what's the third way of improving your VO2 max?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Weight training, weight training. Obviously, when we think about this, I always say, why do we talk about cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle? When we are talking about VO2 max? Because skeletal muscle is what moves blood through the body. And cardiac muscle is what pumps blood through the body. Why do we talk about blood? Because blood is the only thing that moves oxygen. And so, again, you go back to how the body was created, the things that are there. And we have to make sure that we are going back to how the body was created, how it was designed. So that we can see the inevitable outcome, which is an increase in VO2 max. If VO2 max increases, what happens to oxygen efficiency? It increases. Thus, we have the oxygen needed at the cellular level. I want to touch on that strength training component for a second.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Because I think a lot of people get confused with like, is it high intensity interval training? Is it all of these different components? And our body is the best adaptation tool that exists. And when we're thinking about strength training, a lot of times, we, I think, get overcomplicated in what we're trying to actually do. The biggest thing that we're trying to do is create lean muscle mass. In order to create lean muscle mass, your body actually has to tear, micro tears, and it has to then repair. And so, if I was to say to any listener who's listening, or even to myself, I go into the gym and I say, hey, I'm going to do three sets of 10 on the dumbbell bench press. I go in and I grab 25s and I rep out 10 reps and I stop and then I rep out 10 more and I stop.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And then I say, well, Justin, I want to see how many reps you can do those 25 pound dumbbells for. I want you to do as many as you can. And I rep out 37. Well, what did I do for the first two sets? Absolutely nothing.

• 21:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Nothing.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  There was, there was no adaptation that was happening. And that's what we see a lot of people doing in the gym is they go and they grab weight that they're more than able to actually pick up and do. We see it with men picking up the curls at the, at the, at the, at the rack. We see women with the pink dumbbell doing the lunges. And it's like, my gosh, you're picking up heavier laundry baskets at home. You're picking up heavier grocery bags, you're picking up kids that are heavier. We actually have to train our bodies to adapt. And so, this is where, when we think about the rep scheme. Somewhere between eight and 10 reps with a thought process and a mindset in the prescription area of one to two reps in reserve. So how I would think about that is if I'm gonna do 10 reps,

• 22:05Speaker 01

  I'm gonna grab a weight that I know I can do for 10 reps, but I don't know if I could do for 12.

• 22:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And so instead of grabbing 25s, I would go and grab maybe 70s.

• 22:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So now I can control the weight. I feel good with it. There's no injury risk, but it's gonna stress my body in a way that it knows, oh, I have to adapt and I actually have to lay lean muscle mass because what Justin's asking me to do is greater than necess- than what I'm currently able to accomplish. And so it keeps you strong. It keeps the lean muscle mass there, obviously increases your efficiency of utilizing oxygen in the body, which has, again, a bump in VO2 max.

• 22:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's so critical because without that little bit of knowledge at the end that you just shared about having two reps in reserve.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  People just waste a lot of time at the gym.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  So much time.

• 22:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  So much time.

• 22:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I see this over and over again. People are like wondering, I go to the gym three times a week. Why am I losing muscle mass? Why am I not building muscle?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, it's because of how you're working out. And then on top of that, too, is I do think there needs to be adequate protein intake, adequate.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 23:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Some supplementation around vitamin D and creatine.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All these can feed into muscle growth as well.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Thousand percent.

• 23:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. And then one of the things I like to tell my patients to do is measure their grip strength, using a grip dynamometer and do some other tests of strength once every quarter.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 23:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know you do this with your clients as well, where you're testing constantly to make sure that you're gaining strength, right? I think gaining strength is a really good way of easily measuring like how your muscle is functioning and how well it's utilizing oxygen as well.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yep, 100%. And I think when you think about grip strength, grip strength for the longest time has been highly correlated to longevity.

• 23:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Because it's one of the things that can't be faked.

• 23:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  It is earned by your lifestyle, how you're operating. You're probably carrying heavy things often. You are picking weights up often. The dead hang is another easy one if you don't have a, if you don't have a dynamometer. Can you? Dead hang from a bar for two minutes or greater is kind of like that barometer in the study that's quoted all the time to see the hockey stick effect in longevity and health span.

• 24:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  So these are some of the things, again, that we come back to, that we help to understand, all coming back to VO2 max. If we can do these things and we can make sure that we can say, hey, we've intentionally created this personalized approach for you and we've seen HRV, or pardon me, we've seen VO2 max go up, then the only choice for VO2 or for HRV is to go up as well. Because if oxygen is going up, that means stress is going down in the body, that means HRV is increasing, and that means cellular health is improving. And so that's the VO2 max component of why it's so critical and why it's important. And then that second is detoxification.

• 24:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, let's talk about that one next. So the background there is as we're living our day.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Our cells are doing a lot of work.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 24:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that work leads to toxins building up in the cell. The cell cannot do the work and eliminate the toxins at the same time, for the most part, right? And so maybe you can jump off from there, like, what are these toxins? And then why is accumulation of them bad?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you look at the toxins from the air that we breathe, from the water that we drink.

• 25:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  From the food that we eat.

• 25:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  From the environments that we are present in, from the perfumes that are going on to our skin, the lotions in our skin. We are just so unaware.

• 25:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  That our body is one big detoxification platform. It was built to detoxify.

• 25:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  But when it gets overloaded and we actually don't offload everything at night, that's when we start to run into trouble. And so when we think about how we sleep, we sleep in four sleep stages. We've got a light sleep stage, we have a slow wave or deep sleep stage, we have a REM cycle and a wake cycle. And what differentiates a high-quality sleeper from a low-quality sleeper is the percentage of time spent in those middle two sleep stages. And that's going to be your deep and slow wave as well as your REM. And all the data shows that you need 38 to 50% of your total sleep time in those middle two stages to get adequate detoxification of your body, of your cells. And what that means is that's the offloading. That's where all of the toxins that's been eliminated all day long can now suddenly

• 26:16Speaker 01

  get washed, can get, can get pulled, filtered, and then sent to the lymphatic system where we will urinate them out, we will breathe them out, we will sweat them out, or we will have a bowel movement and eliminate them, right? So we've got those four elimination pathways, and that's where we need them to get. But here's the kicker. There's something in our body called the glymphatic system. And the glymphatic system is basically the street sweeper for the cells that pulls all of those toxins together, gets them to those places where they can get extracted in the morning. But the glymphatic system only turns on during those middle two sleep stages. And so for a lot of us, we forego high-quality sleep. We're like, oh, I can sleep when I'm dead.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And if we keep that mentality, that time is going to come far sooner than we probably want.

• 27:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  And so, sleep quality becomes that metric that, and it's not, well, it's not quantity of time, it's quality. It's how much of your total sleep time are you getting in those middle two sleep stages? And like I said, 38 to 50% is where we need to be to get adequate detoxification so that our body can start to eliminate the toxins that we're requiring, so we can start to feel as good as we need to, and ultimately have the cellular health that we're actually looking for.

• 27:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Momentous. So as a doctor, one of the questions everyone always asks me is, what supplement should I really be taking? And honestly, before you even pick what's the right supplements for your body, you always need to think about whether you can trust the brand that you're buying or not. Here's where most people don't really take into consideration. The supplement industry is barely regulated. Brands don't have to fully disclose every ingredient in their formulas, and most products are never tested for purity or accuracy. That means a lot of the products that you buy online, you're not actually getting what's on the label. And that's absolutely not acceptable.

• 28:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it shouldn't be acceptable to you either. That's why I partnered with Momentous. Momentus is a Brand I really believe in. Why? Because they created their own standard, which exceeds what the industry normally talks about. The Momentous standard means they source the highest quality ingredients. They use clinically validated formulations and they test every single product and every single batch. Every Momentous product is also certified by NSF for sport. This is a gold standard of third-party testing. It checks for contaminants, heavy metals, banned substances, and verifies what's on the label is exactly what is actually in the product. And they publish those test results directly on their website. So you can see it for yourself.

• 29:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You'll see there's no unnecessary fillers. There's no artificial additives. So you don't have to guess if your product is high quality or not. You know it is when you pick Momentous. If you're going to invest in your health, trust the supplements you're taking. And Momentous is built on trust. Go to livemomentous.com

• 29:19Speaker 01

  And use the code DRSHAO for up to 35% off your next order.

• 29:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And what's important here too is that you don't really know what your sleep quality is unless you're tracking it with some sort of wearable. And this is why wearables become important.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Is understanding, like you said, you said it's not the amount of time, it's the quality of your sleep. And there's no way to really know that.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Unless, you know, if you're waking up tired, you definitely had horrible sleep quality. But there's another huge number of people that are having horrible sleep quality and they have no idea.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. And I think you bring up a great conversation.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Won't derail us, but on the wearable conversation.

• 30:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And where you've got all these people go, I've got wearable anxiety and I'm just, I'm just all about the optimization of it. And I'm obsessed over the data. We've completely eliminated this concept of this is just a communication tool. It's just helping us understand where we're at. And it was never about a Something to obsess over. It was just always something to give us an awareness. Oh, this is how my choices, my behaviors, my life rhythms are impacting me. And it gives us now more information, a new understanding to make a different decision. And so it was never something to be perfected, but rather something to be understood. And when we can actually understand it, it can again, give us so much freedom in how we live. Just wanted to throw that in there.

• 30:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so true. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like the other wearable that we all have is a watch.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But no one says like, oh, it's too much information for me to know what time it is.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Kind of got to know, right?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So that you wear a watch. So that's a good idea to wear a wearable and just understand what is your biology doing? Right? And how your habits and your actions are affecting your biology.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 31:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And look, if you don't want to look at it, I get it. But wear it and get the data and have someone else look at it for you.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like a health coach or, you know, a trainer. So they can at least tell you like, hey, you know, I'm looking at your data for the last six weeks and your sleep quality is horrible, you know, especially during these time periods. What happened? And then you can start making modifications.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  I give the example often as like a business owner. If, if somebody was running a business and they got their P and L every month and there was a bunch of red numbers on there. And they're like, you know what? The next time just take the red numbers off and still give me the same P and L. So I can feel good about myself.

• 31:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, that's just like, doesn't work that way. It wouldn't, it wouldn't be very long and you get a knock at the door and be like, hey, this business is no longer yours. I own it because you've now gone bankrupt.

• 32:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  It's the same thing with disease and symptoms in the body where it's like your body's knocking on the door saying, hey, you're at a point where you're almost no longer owning your body. And these are the symptoms that you're experiencing. It's a wake up call that we have to start to become accustomed to. And so if you've chosen not to track simply because you've chosen not to learn, that's one thing. That is a pushing off and elimination of the power that you have internally.

• 32:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Where it's our responsibility to know that we get one body. We're called to be a steward of this thing. And if we steward this thing well, man, it will serve us so well for life. But if we ignore it, don't be surprised when all of a sudden it starts to rebel because it's not working the same way that it was designed to. And so when we think about detoxification and sleep quality, thirty eight to fifty percent, that's where you need to be. The question becomes, okay, well, how do we get there? How do we improve that? And it all comes back to circadian rhythm. How do we optimize for this rhythm that is running our entire body? It basically tells us when to be in performance mode, when to be in repair mode. And number first thing, consistent sleep and wake time. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, Monday through Sunday, January through December.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  It is the less variation, the better because melatonin and cortisol start to have a better workflow, start to integrate at a better way. Second is three, two, one rule. Three hours before bed, no food. We have four hundred times more melatonin produced in our gut than is produced by the pineal gland in our brain. And so this is why oftentimes people have a late night meal and they toss and turn all night long. And there's just like, I don't understand. It's like, well, our body has stayed in this sympathetic mode that it hasn't allowed us to actually recover, hasn't allowed us to get still because the body's like, oh, my gosh, we have saber toothed tigers after Darshan. We can't allow him to get into deep stages of sleep because he might have to go and protect himself.

• 33:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  He has to wake up right away, right?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then two hours before bed, no more work, heavy decision making because mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stress, body doesn't know the difference. And so it's just going to put you in protection mode, keep you in those light and wake cycle stages of sleep. And then lastly, one hour before bed, no blue light. We have to, again, remember that down regulation of that nervous system is what prepares us to go to sleep. I don't know if somebody listening maybe remembers watching a football game late at night and they've got all the blue light from the TV thrown in their eyes and then they go lay down and their eyes are wide awake and they can't fall asleep. And it's like, wow, I was literally ready to fall asleep on the bed, on the, on the couch. Why can I not fall asleep now? Because your brain thinks that it's light out, thinks that it's daytime. Cortisol spiked, melatonin dropped.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  We've got this inverted rhythm, which is why we go to bed wired and we wake up tired. And so when we start to have those two things that we can really Really start to implement consistent sleep and wake time as well as that three to one rule. And we start to track over the course of time, we'll start to see that there's actually a renewing of the quality of sleep and thus the detoxification of how we're operating. And now we start to look at it again. If sleep quality increases, that means detoxification increases. That means stress on the body decreases. HRV would increase, cellular health would increase.

• 35:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, all tied together.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  We start to see how it all flows together.

• 35:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And then thirdly, we've got the nutrient side.

• 35:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And I think when we come to nutrients in our health system, traditionally we've a lot of people out there, you've, you've had your CBC done, your complete blood count. You've had your CMP, your metabolic profile, you've had your lipid profile, all important to get done. But it's a blood serum panel. It's telling us like what's broken, what's not working right.

• 35:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's usually late to the game as far as like, you know, things in your blood biomarkers and the standard blood laboratories.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They change when things are really breaking down.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  And I, and I love that you said that because a lot of people think they get those things done and they're being proactive.

• 35:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I just got a text today. Here's my blood test. I got done my doctor's offers. Everything looks good, right?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like, yeah, but this doesn't really tell you anything. Like this is just tells us that you're not dying of something at this moment.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Your standard CBC and chemistry profile.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. I, I always say just because nothing's broken, doesn't mean everything's right.

• 36:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And a lot of people, and a lot of your listeners will probably agree to this is like, hey, all of my blood markers look good, but why do I not feel right? Why don't I feel well? Well, that's because there's a lot going on underneath the hood. And the serum is not where the cells operate. The cells operate internally within the cells. And so that's why I talk about going and getting done that cellular micronutrient panel. Understanding the core vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory capacity profiles that your cells use daily. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, they produce 100% of every single process within the body. They are involved in everything. And when we are missing those core components at the cellular level, that's why the body is not functioning.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  The way that it should, it would be like going and saying, hey, I need to go and drive from LA to San Diego on a quarter tank of gas and there's no gas stations you can stop at along the way. Well, you're probably going to have a hard time getting there. It's it's it's pretty, especially if traffic is tough. And so that's that's what we're asking our bodies to do. We're sending them into a dogfight.

• 37:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Every day.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Every day with half an army and bows and arrows. When when the opponents, the bacterias, the viruses have machine guns. It's like, how do we expect our bodies to react? And so this is where we come back to when we know what we're deficient in at the cellular level. We can start to get highly personalized in what we supplement. We can start to get highly personalized with what IVs we do.

• 37:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  We can start to get highly personalized with what food we eat.

• 37:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  We can start to get highly personalized with how we fast and whether we fast, whether this is a good season to fast. And we can start to actually understand what we put into our body as fuel has to be done in a way that is purposeful, not just food as fuel.

• 38:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think looking at food beyond just carbohydrates.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Protein and fats, right? I mean, obviously, we need all three of those, right? But there's so much, that's what happened with processed food. All we got was carbohydrates, fat and some little bit of protein.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But the nutrient density of processed food is just not, I mean, by definition, it's not there and there's no fiber in it as well.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so most people, what I see when I measure these micronutrient profiles is almost everyone has deficiencies.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Everyone does.

• 38:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Everyone has deficiencies. So even though maybe your serum levels are coming back OK of like magnesium, for example, when you look intracellularly, you have very low levels of those.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so it's important to dive a little bit deeper.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're not going to get this blood test from your standard doctor's office panel.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is something that, you know, you can get from a functional practitioner that has access to these types of laboratories.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  And I think the other thing that's important for people to hear is you're not aiming for zero deficiencies on this test.

• 39:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  You, I have deficiencies, you have deficiencies, even with the level of intention we have. But what you are looking for is that those deficiencies change every testing period. It means that you are solving for what was there and based on the new season. Maybe you went from winter into spring and summer. And now the amount of sunlight that you're getting is changing. The amount of travel that you do is increasing or decreasing. Exactly, exactly. And so now all of a sudden, your body is adapting differently. So you need to give it different things. Right. It would be like if you started a business plan back in 2016. And today you're running off that same business plan. It's like, it's just not gonna work. Right. Your business will no longer be yours after a while. Like, it is gonna go bankrupt. And you're gonna struggle along the way and you're gonna be frustrated.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  And so when we think about this, the other thing is when you're deficient in, say, B12 or magnesium. It's not as simple as just going and saying, oh, I need more magnesium and more B12. Sure. There are different cofactors, there are different enzymes, there's different upregulating factors that are needed in order to get those raw materials into the cell for the body to use. And again, that's why it's important, important to have that health executive team around you as the CEO of your health to help guide you, educate you, lead you, whether that's through what we do or whether it's through what you guys do at Next Health, that we can come alongside, guide, educate and empower you to be like, oh, I get it now. Like, I understand.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  I no longer needed that supplement that the guy was telling me about on Instagram or the person was talking about over here because maybe that's not what my body needs. But now that I test and I understand it, there's actually three or four things that I could take that would be so game changing for me that I wouldn't wonder if my supplementation was working or wonder if my new diet that I changed on was working, but I would feel it. Yeah. Literally almost instantly. Because you're now giving the cells what they need from a nutrient standpoint. And when cellular deficiencies decrease, all of a sudden, stress decreases on the body, HRV increases and our cells start to thrive. Yeah. And so when we think about like, okay, what can we do? Well, number one, it's so

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Simple, but like, single ingredient foods. How can we eat single ingredient foods? Like, even if we have something packaged, let's look at the ingredient list, even if there's eight things, and make sure each one is a single ingredient. Like, how can we be so focused on that? I've been to Arowan like twice, and I think that was like, the coolest thing. You walk in, it's like, my gosh, like, everything here, yes, it's more expensive, but my gosh, everything here is primarily single ingredient foods. It's like, higher quality. It's like, awesome. I love it. Even, like, I was, I've got a sweet tooth naturally, so I go, and I pick up this pie, and I was like, I'm looking at this pie. It has six ingredients in it. And I know what each one of these is.

• 41:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, you've heard of those before, right?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  This pie would not last more than a day in my home. But, but again, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Single ingredient foods.

• 42:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  The second thing is we want to make sure that we're having a methylated multivitamin. Like, when we think about methylation, it's, for a lot of those who are unfamiliar, methylation is simply taking the nutrient that's coming into the body, turning it into a usable form that the body can actually absorb at the cellular level. And some of us have methylation genetic breaks that we're just not able to. And when we can't do that, if we're taking in something that's unmethylated or something that's man-made, enriched nutrients, fortified nutrients, they end up as toxins in the body.

• 42:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  And so, more toxins, and we're not getting the sleep quality we need, thus, we're actually just storing more toxins internally, which make us have less energy to go and move. And so, we're decreasing VO2 max and oxygenation of the cells, and we wonder why we're sick. We wonder why we're not doing well. So, single ingredient foods, methylated multivitamin, and then making sure that we're getting half our body weight in ounces of water with an electrolyte. Something that helps with the absorption into the cell so that we can actually do what we were called to do. And again, when nutrient deficiency goes down, all of a sudden, stress in the body goes down, HRV goes up, responds accordingly, cellular health increases. And so, you can see how each one of those three mechanisms become something that becomes highly personalized, highly proactive, highly actionable

• 43:18Speaker 01

  that our clients and you as an individual can understand and have now a guardrail. Or handrails to be able to go and feel like you have agency over your health with HRV as that governing body of like, hey, is what I is what I'm doing in alignment with what my body's asking? Or is it in misalignment? And is it is it giving me a new language that I can start doing something new with?

• 43:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a really great structure, the way you put this for people. And so it makes it very simple for them. And it focuses on the big rocks that you need to get into place first before you dive deeper and deeper into all the other modalities and supplements and things out there. Yeah. And I find that most people don't have these rocks in place first. So it's like, without getting these things in place first, there's really no reason to move on and go down the rabbit hole and buy yourself a red light bed or whatever you might have, right?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So it's a really important way of getting people to focus on what they need to focus on first.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  And I think the cool part, even going back to what you just said, is if you don't have those in place, you won't get the benefit from it. But once you have them in place, you get exponential benefit from those other tools.

• 44:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  That's when everything can go on the rocket ship, which is what you're expecting. But if you don't change how you're operating daily, you're gonna be like, man, I just wasted $5,000 on this thing. And or I just spent five grand on this year membership to this place and I didn't see any change. Yeah, well, you didn't change. Because these disciplines were never meant to be the goal. They were always meant to be the path to the goal, which was to shape you into the person that you were called to be, which is to align with how your body was created. So you can have capacity to do what you were actually called to do.

• 44:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I love it. I love it. And this is the kind of the journey I wanted the listeners to go on with today, because this is the one I heard you talk about exactly. And it's such a great framework to put into your life. And then you've built an entire training program around this, right? With your own it app, is that right? Can you talk a little bit more about the app and what that does?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically, what we do is we take people on this journey and we bring them into the ecosystem, get them tested, get them understanding, okay, where are you? Let's understand where we are. Let's understand VO2 max. Let's understand sleep quality. Let's understand cellular deficiency. Let's see where HRV is placing us in this initial spot. And then as we start to go through within the app, we start to, again, build in this new understanding. Sequence of what habits and behaviors mean something for you. And how do we then design rhythms that are intentional? Because what a lot of people do is we stop at habits. We know what good habits are. There's a lot of great habit books out there. Atomic Habits, Tiny Habits, Habits That Stick, all awesome. But when you try to put good habits in disordered rhythms or dysfunctional rhythms, everything goes awry.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  You can no longer hold it because the case doesn't actually fit the new habits that you're trying to have, which is why they've always fallen off. And so we have to get new rhythms established, rhythms established in your life. When are we going to bed? When are we waking up? What are we doing in the evening? What are we doing in the morning? What time are we eating? Do we have a Sabbath day throughout the week that we take completely off? Do we have these quarterly reassessments of like, where are we? Do we have a family planning day? Do we have a moment that we get to cook together as a family? Do we go and have evenings that are set aside for kids' activities? And then ones that are set aside for family activities? Like, do we have these rhythms established? And if we do, amazing. If we don't, we're gonna end up with disordered rhythms,

• 46:40Speaker 01

  trying to put new habits into these spaces. Disordered rhythms create disordered bodies. Disordered bodies create disorders. And that's kind of that path that we walk through. And so that's what the app helps us do, is create this actionable insight for people so that they can see, okay, where am I at? And let's understand my body. Let's understand the language in real time so that I'm no longer guessing how to operate this way, but I now feel empowered in this journey.

• 47:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic. And then you also wrote this book, Holy Health. So tell us a little bit about the book and when is it coming out?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Holy Health comes out August 11th. And it was so fun to write because what I basically have been battling with for a long time, just in my own world and talking to a lot of people, is seeing how scripture and science are not separate things. They're integrated, they're one. And what science has been trying to prove, scripture has known as truth for a long time. And when you start to see how closely tied these things are and how integrated these things are, there are fundamental truths that hit the soul. And your soul knows the truth. Everyone listening, when all of a sudden you hear something that you just... When you hear something that's right, you're like, that's right.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  It's not like Darshan's right. It's not like Justin's right. No, that's

• 48:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That is right, right.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  That is right. And as I said, I don't know if I said it at the beginning of this, I never aim to be right.

• 48:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You did say that.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  I just want to aim to understand.

• 48:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  And if I can understand, it can give us a sense of freedom and it can give us a sense of peace that transcends all other desires of understanding. And this is kind of what the book does is it helps us go from looking down to just looking up and seeking, okay, what does this body that I live in need in order to thrive, need in order to heal? And if I've tried it medicine's way, if I've tried it biohacking's way, if I've tried it wellness's way, and it hasn't quite worked for me, what does it look like to actually try to do it God's way? And if, and the book's basically, like I said, that invitation to look up and say, hey, what can I do to live in a line with how I was created so that I can now be intentional with this highly intentional created body?

• 48:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Love it. And you're bringing this to churches and entire churches are reading this and going through the program as well?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yes. So not only is it out to everyone in a, in a program, but also in through the churches. And so small groups can bring it on. And we've got at this point, thousands of churches going through this, which has been just

• 49:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  transformative.

• 49:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's amazing.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  The results are incredible. And it's just been really, really cool to see the revival of the integration of mind, soul, body, and this realignment of what has been disconnected for so long.

• 49:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And doing it in a church environment too, brings in the other aspect of health, which is community.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Community.

• 49:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. So you tie your health to your community, whether it be in a church or your family or other communities, and everything just exponentially compounds.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, that's fantastic. Well, this has been incredible conversation, Justin. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  No, I love it.

• 49:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where can people hear more from you, learn more from you?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can get the book at holyhealthbook.com. Easy, simple way to go grab it there. And then you can follow me on Instagram, at Justin Roth, R O E T H.

• 50:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you very much, Justin.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  So good. Thank you, Darshan.

• 50:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  See you soon.

• 50:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Here are my top five learnings from that episode with Justin. Number one, your body naturally renews itself. Every five to seven years, your body is completely replacing every single cell. This means your body is constantly trying to heal and renew, and your habits dictate the quality of these new cells. Number two, focus on these three cellular pillars. Optimal health hinges on three essential cellular needs: oxygen, detoxification, and nutrients. Addressing these foundational elements is more effective than chasing any fad. Number three, target-specific VO2 max numbers. Justin aims for a VO2 max of 45 in men and 30 for women, regardless of age, as a baseline for adequate oxygen efficiency.

• 50:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is a key indicator of overall health and stress resilience. Number four, train smart for oxygen efficiency. Incorporate 180 minutes of Zone 2 cardio weekly, which is at 70% of your max heart rate. Incorporate 30 minutes of Zone 5 interval training, which is at 90 to 100% of your max heart rate, and both of these will significantly boost your VO2 max. Number five, prioritize sleep quality for detoxification. It's not just about sleep quantity. You need quality. 38% to 50% of your total sleep time should be spent in deep or slow wave and REM stages for adequate cellular detoxification. You have to track your sleep with a wearable device

• 51:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  to ensure your body is properly cleansing itself through sleep.

• 51:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode, and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.