200. Dr. Will Cole: How to Heal Your Cells—Mitochondria, Peptides & the Science of Aging

What if the fatigue, brain fog, low energy, and other symptoms we associate with getting older actually begin much deeper—at the level of our cells? I've followed Dr. Will Cole's work for years, and his approach to gut health and functional medicine played an important role in my own health journey. Now he's taking that conversation one step further with his new book, Heal Your Cells, exploring what's happening inside our cells as we age—and what we can do to support them. In this conversation, we break down the emerging science of cellular health and longevity, including why different organs may age at different rates, how mitochondrial dysfunction affects energy, and the everyday factors that can accelerate cellular aging. In this episode, you'll learn: Why cellular health may be the next frontier of longevity How your biological and organ age can differ from your chronological age How toxins and nutrient deficiencies can affect cellular function Why mitochondrial health is critical for energy, metabolism, and healthy aging How food, polyphenols, movement, and other lifestyle factors support your cells What peptides are and why they're becoming a major part of the longevity conversation What to know about emerging regenerative therapies like stem cells Why emotional health, stress, relationships, and spirituality also belong in the longevity conversation We also discuss oxidative stress, cellular signaling, food sensitivities, environmental exposures, and the growing number of tools designed to measure and influence how we age. The biggest takeaway is that improving cellular health doesn't require doing everything at once. Start with one change. Support the foundations. Then build from there. Because when we talk about longevity, we're ultimately talking about the health of the trillions of cells that make up who we are. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @darshanshahmd and @extend_podcast Learn more about Dr. Will Cole: Website: drwillcole.com https://drwillcole.com/ Book - Heal Your Cells - Available now at penguinrandomhouse.com https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/812741/heal-your-cells-by-dr-josh-axe-and-dr-will-cole/ Instagram: @drwillcole Thank You To Our Sponsor! Momentous: Head to livemomentous.com https://livemomentous.com and use my code DRSHAH at checkout for up to 35% Off!

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

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  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're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Will Cole, incredible honor to have you back on the show. This is just such, such an incredible pleasure to have you here.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's been about a year since I've been on. So we need to make it an anniversary thing every, every time this year.

• 1:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I'm gonna make sure we do that because, you know, like I told you earlier, in my health and wellness journey, started off as a doctor, but I knew nothing about health. I just knew about how to treat people with diseases. And when I got unhealthy, you were one of the first people that I started reading and listening to, and specifically around gut health, I didn't even realize I was a thing as a doctor. Like, we never talk about that, other than like, taking your colon out for cancer, you know? And it changed my life. And like, it's such an incredible honor, and it's just kind of like surreal to be sitting across from you again, when I've learned so much from you over my life.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  That really means a lot to me. And I told you this offline, but like, I really mean it. Like, you are one of the kindest people, most brilliant people in our space. It's amazing to see God working through you with the clinics and the podcasts. It's just amazing. And so many exciting things to come. I'm excited to be back.

• 1:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, thank you. It makes me so honored to hear that from you, especially, like, considering you a mentor. And, you know, I think we're entering this new age in the health and wellness conversation. I think people that have been going through this journey with us, listening to our podcasts, we've talked a lot about functional health, and gut health, and toxins, and these kind of topics, and how we really need to rethink health beyond just like, you know, taking a pill for every ill, kind of a thing, and really empowering ourselves to get healthy again. And now, as you go through this journey, a lot of people are talking more about cellular health. And you and our good friend Josh Axe wrote a book together called Heal Your Cells. And I think it's time for this conversation,

• 2:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  because people want to know more. And what I really respect about you is you've really taken a really incredible view of the science, combined it with like, responsible education, and how to really use the science to make you feel better, not just physiologically, but also emotionally, and kind of like, bringing it all together in a lifestyle. And so, I'm really excited about having this conversation with you about cellular health.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 3:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's kind of where, you know, let's talk about that, right?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So how is it, my first question to you, is how is cellular health connected to how we feel? You know, you might be fatigued, you might have brain fog, you know, rundown, like, all these things that we feel. How does that tie into what our cells are doing?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is kind of abstract, right? That when people know, hopefully, we're made up of cells, right? If they learn nothing else in today's episode, we are made up of cells. Let's start there. But it is actually so profoundly connected, it is actually the root cause of why somebody maybe isn't feeling their best, isn't thriving. So, in short, and then I'll extrapolate. In short, if you're not feeling your best, if you're somewhere on this continuum between health and health problems, you just know intuitively, I know something's off in my body, maybe a brain fog, fatigue, digestive problems, hormonal problems, skin problems, metabolic issues, these are all, yes, they're organ issues, right? And we can, in mainstream medicine, and also in functional medicine, we talk a lot about organs, right? If someone has a thyroid problem, or a gut problem,

• 4:08Speaker 01

  like we mentioned, or a brain problem, those are all organs, right? But the cells that make up that organ, actually is what the science pointing to, it's a collective cellular dysfunction of the cells that make up whatever organ we're talking about, that are all influencing each other.

• 4:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Because cells are like humans, in the sense of like, we are like, the company we keep. And they are influential. So you have these sort of senescent zombie cells, and other types of cellular dysfunction that can create this cascade of cellular dysfunction. So, to get to the root cause of why you feel the way that you do, you actually need to understand, what is your cell telling you?

• 4:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  And we have 30-plus trillion cells that are, for some of us, screaming for help, to pay attention. For some, it's subtle, still small voice of our cells, saying, hey, pay attention to me, something's off here. So it's, the science around it is so exciting to this, either Sinclair's work from Harvard, we talk about Stanford, Stanford researcher, but this information model, or theory of understanding aging and chronic diseases, that our cells have lost recognition of self, is this process of ex-differentiation, that we want our cells to be differentiated, so the brain cell knows, hey, I'm a brain cell, or the gut cell knows, I'm a gut cell, or the ovarian cell, whatever you're talking about. If you're dealing with a health problem, at any specific issue, you want that cell to know what it was meant to do, how, what did God create it to do? But if there's a

• 5:28Speaker 01

  lack of that, if there's ex-differentiation, the analogy that's used in the research in the space, is that, kind of like a proverbial scratched record or CD, is that if you played that record or CD, it would play, but it's skipping around, right? And that's what's happening epigenetically, is that the code, that pristine cellular code of a DNA, it's not being able to be read very easily, so that brain cell, or whatever organ you're talking about, has lost recognition of self. So that's where problems ensue. And we have this ancient primordial defense mechanism, the cell danger response, where the mitochondria starts getting kind of leaky, people, we talk about leaky gut syndrome, I haven't talked about it ever in 16 years, where people can have leaky gut syndrome, or leaky

• 6:13Speaker 01

  brain syndrome, increased blood-brain barrier permeability, that's linked to neuroinflammation. But ultimately, it's not a brain or a gut problem there, it's the cells that make up the brain and the gut, it's actually the mitochondria become leaky. People have leaky mitochondria syndrome, and they don't even know it. And the mitochondria, the cellular energy factories of the cell are creating these reactive oxygen species, and that's making the cell membrane, this healthy fat-made phospholipid cell membrane, that's where all communication lies, that's where the receptor sites are to hormones, and to neurotransmitters. So cell communication is off, the cell has become hyper-defensive and hypervigilant, and that's how the people that are made up of those cells feel, this regulated hypervigilant, you know, kind of wired and tired, anxious and exhausted. But that's how their cells feel.

• 6:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  So that's really the heart of, of it all. And in Heal Your Cells, Dr. Axe and I are teaching people, what's the latest science show for us to up-regulate these cell renewal pathways, so your cell can recognize what it was always meant to do, whatever organ you're talking about. So, it's so exciting, really.

• 7:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It really is. And I love that analogy of like, a cell, it's almost like a little mini human, it has its own organs.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Organelles.

• 7:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly, organelles. And they can have leaky syndromes as well, like leaky mitochondria. And so, if, when you're, you know, this concept of organs versus, organ health versus cellular health, one of the things that you talk about is how some of our organs are actually aging faster than other organs, right?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's measurable now. And I would, I'd love for you to talk about, like, how do we know that? How do we measure that? And why does that happen?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. So I mentioned Sinclair's work, there was another field of research that we talk about in the book, from Stanford, it was also published in Nature. They found one in five Americans, over the age of 50, has, which equals like, 22 million Americans, have at least one organ aging more rapidly, significantly so, than other organs in their body. And what that means is that the cells, if the heart cells were aging more rapidly, then the study showed that people were over 200% increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, heart failure. If the brain cells, if the cells of the brain were aging more rapidly, they were at an over 80% increased risk of neurodegenerative problems. If the liver cells were aging rapidly, it was about up towards 50% of liver problems. And they

• 8:32Speaker 01

  looked at 11 different organs, the immune system was looked at as well, profoundly, what this phenomenon of uneven aging

• 8:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  is really important. And we can quantify that. So the Stanford researchers are looking at different types of protein, and I believe, they are, they are working on this direct-to-consumer lab to compare apples to apples of their data. To be clear, that was over 50.

• 8:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  I would love to look at data of people in the younger, like, with the same metrics. Because if you compare apples to oranges, well, there was a study published in Nature as well, different group of researchers, they found people born after 1965 were aging more rapidly than people born prior to 1965. This is the UK Biobank, at the same age, when they were comparing ages. This is UK Biobank and some data in the United States. People born in the 90s, millennials, were aging more rapidly than people born at 1965, at the same age. So we have so many younger people, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, that have senior citizen cells, and they don't even know it. And we see that in the data. Girls are getting their period younger and younger. People, autoimmune conditions, I see so many babies,

• 9:37Speaker 01

  kids that have autoimmune conditions. Type 2 diabetes used to be called adult onset diabetes. Now, 38% of pre-teens are prediabetic. Almost sounds like a fake statistic. It's like, wait, how could that be possible? But that's the conventional statistics on this. Why? Because the cells of these different organs are aging more rapidly. So, to under, and we can quantify that, we can't look at the same data as what Stanford researchers are looking at. Looking at yet in a clinical setting, but we can look at the closest thing is DNA methylation.

• 10:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  This this sort of symphony age testing to look at DNA methylation, which is connected to hundreds of different biomarkers, clinical biomarkers that are associated with chronic disease. So we can look at pretty much the same 11 organs and quantify what how fast or how slow your age your cells are aging. Are you aging normally or are your cells aging more rapidly than your actual birthday?

• 10:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm. Wow. So it sounds like the Stanford researchers did a different type of testing.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, if they did like organ biopsies or do they?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I don't believe so. Yeah, no, they looked at proteins.

• 10:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Protein markers.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, protein markers. Yeah. Yeah, I don't believe it was biopsies. Yeah.

• 10:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That would be really interesting to see. I know the symphony age test, which is a methylation test of aging, looks at the markers of aging inside your blood, specifically like white blood cells, I think is where they get those markers. And, you know, we run this test and a lot of our patients, you do, you do see

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  people that are aging more rapidly in one organ versus the other. And for me, it's more of like a clinical indicator to go look into that organ specifically.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To find out what's going on, right?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's up regulating maybe there is a genetic predisposition that that person has a family history of heart disease or brain issues or cancer. Well, okay, genetics loads the gun, epigenetics pulls the trigger. So, yeah, we want to see our is something being upregulated there epigenetically that's causing that organ. So you can have that potential grace period where maybe your parents or grandparents didn't have, right? Because when you know better, you do better, better, like Maya Angelou said, hopefully. And look, we can't control everything. We can't play God, but we can do the best we can with the information we have and the blessing of the time that we live in, which this is a double edged sword of a time that we live in. But part of the blessing is where you you can have empowerment and have

• 11:49Speaker 01

  data and information and have some proactive realization of where you're at versus just putting your head in the sand and wishing for the best.

• 11:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think there's a critical moral of the story here is like just because you find out one organ is aging more rapidly in the other, or you find out you have a genetic disposition to something. That does not mean that that's going to be your destiny.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is a predisposition, not your destiny, and you have the power to do something about it.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And to your point, knowledge is power. Like now you know because of the age we live in, that there are tools available, and we're going to get into some of those tools that can help you modify that course and reverse course or change course.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So you don't have that destiny, right?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So I think a lot of people come to doctors sometimes and they're told the diagnosis and they feel like that's going to be their forever, right? And that's absolutely not true as far as you are concerned and the the current science.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely. No, there's and that's that's the the the way of navigating all of this, because when we talk about these increased risks of the the age that we live in, this the epidemic rise of chronic disease or mental health problems, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune conditions. It's easy to get for the person that's listening or watching this, they feel like, man, I'm screwed. Like, this is so depressing, but I hope they hear the fact that, yes, the other side of it is we know so much more and we can do something about it and you don't have to live in fear. Like, there's, there's so many things you can do and a lot of the things that we talk about in the book are low cost, free things. And then there's, yeah, there are next level things for people who need it and have need have access to it.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  But there's something for everybody. You don't have to be overwhelmed because stressing about healthy things isn't good for your health. So just remember that, everybody, that this is just a form of self respect and self nourishment and you don't. And this is the other thing that I think people get caught up on. They get this paralysis of analysis and they feel like they have to have it all figured out. And if they don't have it all figured out and if it's overwhelming, they just shut down and they don't, they just listen to it and don't do anything. You don't have to have all the ducks in their row to start leaning in and doing the next right thing. Just lean into the next right thing. And maybe it's overwhelming at first, all this wellnessy stuff, all this biohack functional medicine stuff. But when you feel better, when you're less inflamed, less dysregulated, more grounded, just doing the foundational stuff and leaning in,

• 14:12Speaker 01

  the things that used to overwhelm you aren't going to overwhelm you at one point. So then you have more resilience and more bandwidth. You can lean into more stuff. So I, that's why I think people should, I need people to do that because we could start changing so much when people realize, oh, I don't have to be perfect to start leaning in and doing the next right thing of things that love my body back.

• 14:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, my message to people along that same topic is you don't have to do 100 things. You don't even have to do a dozen things. You only do one thing.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  One thing consistently.

• 14:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly, exactly.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, you know, when we talk about cellular aging again, you mentioned a few things. You talked about the cell membranes, mitochondrial health, senescent cells. I'd love to dive into some of these concepts and maybe we can just kind of frame it up with the article that we talked about in Cell Magazine about the root causes of why a cell ages. Can you talk about that?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Was that kind of like a framework you used for this book?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  It was, yeah. And every few years, like there, depending on where what you cite, there's different hallmarks of aging, right? And I'm glad they've added in microbiome imbalance back to gut health. It's like, yes, that is a hallmark of aging, understanding the gut is such a gatekeeper to systemic cellular aging. Because leaky gut syndrome really is this sort of seminal event of the intestinal lining cells, which are only one cell thick. But if there's a breach of the cells of the gut lining, it it will create systemic cellular confusion.

• 15:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Right? So the the researchers over the years have looked at these hallmarks of aging and it involves things like microbiome imbalance or underlying gut problems. It involves mitochondrial dysfunction. It involves these things called senescent cells, which are these zombie cells that I mentioned earlier. They're they're cells that have kind of they resist apoptosis, they resist cell death. So that's why they're called zombies, because they kind of they release these cytokines and like anything in the body, small amounts of senescent cells are can be normal, right? They're they're actually protective. Inflammation is not inherently bad. God made it. It's made to fight things off. It's the breaking of the Goldilocks principle, homeostasis in the body. That's where problems

• 16:21Speaker 01

  ensue. So you don't want, you know, bacterial overgrowth in the gut. You don't want deficiency of bacteria. You want it just right in the amount that you need. Same with inflammation. So all of these things are in not necessarily pathological, but they're just a breaking of homeostasis in the body. And I like it and it's the framework and that's framework in Heal Your Cells is understanding these are the things you're going to find in pretty much anybody that's going through suboptimal health or a chronic health problem. And we break it all down in the book to show how do you recover that? How do you actually reverse these dysfunctional cellular patterns? Because they're really all cellular cellular dysfunctions in some way or form.

• 17:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, one of the things that you talk about a lot is this healing architecture, right? And a healing formula for your cells. And so if you can kind of walk us through that, I'd love to like dive into each one of those topics individually because I think they're so important. And, you know, I think, once again, for people going through their health journey, this is probably some of the more advanced stuff, but it's all rooted in things that everyone can do for free every day, right?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so I, this is the science behind it. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to spend thousands of dollars doing this stuff, but knowing why it works is important, right?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's talk about, for example, toxin exposure.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Like, how, how, why is that something that affects us on a cellular level and what can people do about it?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So all of these, if I could break down the areas that I think create the most cellular dysfunction, that X differentiation the most, that this what's scratching that proverbial proverbial cellular CD or record, it would be environmental toxins. And you can make an argument because everybody's going to be different here. So I get, I'm going to lay them all out. And if you want to go in the weeds in any one of these, let's deep dive on it or all of them if you want. But we know when you look at somebody's health history and certainly their labs, some people are going to be bigger, this is going to be a bigger area or that's going to be a bigger area. So I'm going to lay it all out for you all watching this or listening to this. But no, you don't have it all have to have it all figured out. It may not even be relevant for you.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  These are just areas that I've seen over the years be the biggest saboteurs to cellular dysfunction, which in turn cells will interact with other cells around it, impacting the entire organ. So number one would be environmental toxins, so manmade environmental toxins, which you just go to our a few generations back. These are things that the human species did not have to contest with. But most of this is post World War II stuff, where they had to kind of figure out, okay, what does industries? How do we shift industry from war to manufacturing in our country? So herbicides, pesticides, microplastics, forever chemicals, heavy metals, those things, right? And they, well, I'll just lay it out briefly first. The second would be biotoxins, which are nature toxins that have never been healthy, right?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I mean, a toxic mold or virus or bacteria isn't healthy. But I think it's exacerbated today because of the manmade EMF specifically. So we there have, we have in vitro studies that show this, that the EMFs, electricity in our homes and our workplaces and our schools, Wi-Fi, 5G, all of this stuff, even the electricity though of the house will irritate the mold in the homes. So it's actually irritating the mold to release more mycotoxins or mold toxins. And it also it makes, especially for people that are EMF sensitive, that have these certain genetic variants, make their cells more irritated too. So I, biotoxin conversation is really, in my mind, the mold plus EMF perfect storm.

• 19:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  That is why we're hearing about it more and more.

• 19:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Because again, the Bible talks about mold and Old Testament. So it's never, Bible says, Leviticus says, burn the house down if you have a moldy house. But we have mold remediators now. You don't have to burn the house down. But it's, it's not just the mold. It's the mold plus the EMF in a lot of cases, plus the person's bio individual sensitivity. Everybody's different. And viruses and bacteria and parasites are in that category too. The next would be foods, which like food toxins, foods that don't love the human body back, they're irritating the, and it's not just what we eat. It's when we eat. A lot of the researchers call these. Cellular dysfunction issues, metabolic hormonal autoimmune problems, chronobiological, meaning we're eating too many foods that don't love our body back too often.

• 20:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  So these upregulating pathways of autophagy and mitophagy are not able to, the cellular renewal pathways aren't able to really hit peak performance because we are just upregulating mTOR and other pro-growth pathways.

• 20:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  And then I would say two other things would be light toxins, I'm using the word toxins very loosely, stressors, let's just call them stressors. Dirty light, like light inside is a blessing, but it's like we're so divorced from nature that it's throwing off our cellular clocks and our cellular clocks have lost track of time and that's contributing to the self-stress response. And the last would be the mental, emotional, spiritual piece. Like you can call it spiritual toxins, right? Disconnection, loneliness, chronic stress, unresolved trauma, our spiritual disconnection from God, in my opinion. All of this stuff, because the cell danger response cannot distinguish between physiological and mental, emotional, spiritual threats.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So it's a both and, not either or in most cases, but all of it can be summarized with when, what makes your cells feel unsafe?

• 21:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And for some people, it's going to be a mold, for some people, it's going to be environmental, for some people, it's going to be a food that doesn't love people back. It doesn't, we don't know. For some people, it's unresolved trauma.

• 21:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  But health history, labs, context, or you as the listener or watcher, viewer, to go in and check in with yourself, what are the stubborn areas in my life? What are the areas that are the dark corners that you maybe know intuitively, it's making my cells feel unsafe? Well, you can do something about it.

• 22:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think you talk about this, and so do I a lot, is number one is avoidance of toxins, right? And you broke it down to those five categories and, you know, some people, once again, get paralysis by over-analyses, they just think, there's toxins everywhere, like what am I going to do, right?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I like to focus people on the Pareto principle. There's like a few key actions that you can do that can get you 80% of the result, right? And so maybe you can break it down on those same five topics, like what are one or two tips, hints?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Quick wins that people can get.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  I love it. So food, let's start with food, because everybody's eating, right? Hopefully, you should be eating, people. So everybody's different there, right? Because of the time that we live in, there's even healthy foods that may not be loving your body back. It doesn't make that food bad, to be clear. It just means when we have a lack of gut resilience.

• 22:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  It could be stressing an already stressed out system, so you have to build resilience. Resilience building, like gastrointestinal resilience, but really cellular resilience is the name of the game here. Like, that's the clinical objective, that's what your goal should be. So you have to meet your gut where it's at, because you aren't just what you eat or supplement with, you are what you absorb, and your gut's like having a problem digesting salads, it's not the salad's fault. You just need to build some cellular gastrointestinal resilience there, so you can have the dang salad if you want to. But like, I would say soups and stews are something to think about here. Like, just do some souping and stewing, because it's, I mean, this is like ancient Ayurvedic stuff, this is ancient, traditional Chinese medicine stuff. Any indigenous culture around, around the world, I mean, what's the cliche of like chicken noodle soup when you're sick?

• 23:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  It's not the noodle part that's making you better. It's what's easy to digest, what's grounding, calming, it's cellular safety food. So I would say focus on nourishing, grounding soups and stews, bone broth based, soft cooked vegetables, pureeing them if you have extra sensitive gut, you can make them more carnivore-ish if you really have a lot of digestive problems for now, but it's, again, it's not the vegetables' fault, but you're, many people can tolerate vegetables when they're cooked soft in the soups and stews, because you're making it more bioavailable to the body and easier to digest. And then the meats are easy to cook, you know, digest as well. For people that have problem digesting meats, the soups and stews, break it down. So do 30 plus days of soups and stews. It's a great grounding thing.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  So then you're not focused in the weeds, just saying, I'm just going to focus on soups.

• 24:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And I'm not talking about Campbell's soups.

• 24:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The Mayline can, right?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  He said, what was the one, like, I forgot, forget it, with the noodles with the, oh, what was it?

• 24:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  SpaghettiOs.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  SpaghettiOs.

• 24:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  It's like, Dr. Coulson's SpaghettiOs count.

• 24:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Can you imagine?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Tomato soup.

• 24:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The sales of SpaghettiOs go up after this podcast. We're not SpaghettiOs, we're doctors, make your own soups at all.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. You could do bone broth base, you could do like a seaweed base, you could do like a ginger base, kombu, like a mushroom base, but predominantly bone broth base, but you could do some plant-based broth too, ginger glangle broth, and that's for the food piece. Fasting piece is just maybe not eating too late at night.

• 25:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Right? Your body is 10x upregulating autophagy and mitophagy, and we can get into that, but it's just your cell has the ability to actually take a, it makes a cellular trash can called the autophagosome, and attaches the lysosome to it, which is like this enzyme packet that dissolves all the cellular junk. It's doing that when you're sleeping. So when your body and your cells can focus on repair and not digesting, which requires a lot of energy, you will feel better in the morning. So allow your dinner maybe to end earlier in the day, allow a couple of hours before you go to bed, so you can fast through the night, so the cell cleanup crew can happen as you sleep, and that will improve your REM and deep sleep and heart rate variability, and you can break the fast at breakfast in the morning.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Look, more progressive types of fasts are appropriate to upregulate these pathways even more, but that's a simple thing people can do. Next thing, environmental toxins, I would just say, like swap out things, right? We live in such a blessed time where you can go to Target or Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, and get better for you, cleaning ingredients, or kitchen ingredients, or personal care products, or beauty products, or whatever. So look at, the environmental working groups are a good resource here. Like ewg.org, use their skin deep initiative, look at their Clean 15 Dirty Dozen for fruits and vegetables, look at the things you're using on a daily basis. Kitchen, like, use cast iron skillets, or a brand like Caraway or Our Place, over the Teflon non-stick conventional stuff.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Just one scratch of a non-stick coated pan, a conventional one, can release over 9,000 plastic particles.

• 26:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Jeez.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  So that makes your cells feel unsafe, like, and most of us have some of these environmental issues in our body, which therapeutic plasma changes these things and clearing this stuff out, but just start decreasing the exposure is the first step. And the mold piece, I would say an air purifier. So if you're saying like, I would say EMF, decreased EMF exposure and air purifier are two things that like everybody needs. So like, turning off, again, sleep, it's when you sleep, that's where autophagy and mitophagy is happening, your cellular renewal pathways are happening at night. So you want EMF to be less or gone at night. So sleep with your phone outside of the bedroom, turn off your electricity into your room, if you can go to the breaker and just turn off your room, as long as it's not attached

• 27:36Speaker 01

  to something that you need to be on at night, and then if you need, if you, a Faraday bag or a cage, just to mitigate it, it's just basically a net that goes over the bed, you don't have to do that. And then there's the EMF harmonizing, mitigating devices that can help, but really, just sleeping with your phone away and turning off your electricity and your wifi router at night can be wonderful. And then get out in nature, get, put your feet on the ground, get in, swim into a body of water. Getting in nature is one of the best ways, is to kind of regulate, because it's all about electricity is really what it is, there's cellular electricity, and when you're constantly with man-made, polarized EMFs, and not God-made, non-polarized EMFs, your cells are going to feel stressed and unsafe.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  So EMF and air purification, EMF mitigation and air purification are two great things there. And then that kind of solves the light piece too, like just wear blue, I have these blue light blocking glasses, like, wear blue light blocking glasses for the light, allow a couple of hours after, like, without your phone at night, like, you'll survive, you'll survive, I promise you. The anxiety will rise, but use it as a meditation.

• 28:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Like, what's that inner resistance about? Get curious about that, and get out in nature, read an actual book, journal, like, and that deals with the stress and trauma piece. I have every telehealth patient for the stress and trauma piece, do something active and passive, so journaling, like journal speak method, write, write things, write things you would never write to anybody else, that you're embarrassed about, have so much shame about it, but it's metabolizing stored stress and trauma in the body. And I think we talked about this last time, but transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation, the vagal nerve stimulators for that stress, trauma piece, and then nature, nature, nature, God art is like, is the most healing thing somatically, to breathe in the biome of nature to deal with the stress and trauma pieces is another tool there.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  So I think I mentioned all the sixer cell things, but if you start leaning into what I just said there, your cells will start feeling safer.

• 29:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. So many great, high-value points there, and just to highlight a couple of them, I think, dealing with traumas, unresolved traumas, and these can be major traumas that occur, even small things, like maybe, you know, someone made you feel bad during the day. Journaling is an incredible way to get that out, and no one needs to read it ever, but it's just the act of writing it that makes all the difference. I think there was a big study that was done on people that needed trauma therapy for, for actual like post-traumatic stress disorder, and they were told to journal about their trauma three times a day, write the same thing again, again, again, write like two or three pages, then do it again, and then do it again, and it had a better effect than actually months of counseling.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so true. It's wild. It's stored there in the cells epigenetically. A good prompt that I have telehealth patients do is, what does it feel like to be me today? It's a heavy question when you don't feel well, or you're stressed, or dysregulated, going through a chronic health problem. And I have them do 20 minutes a day. Write pen to paper, pencil to paper. Don't type on your phone. There's something somatically about writing with a pencil or pen on paper. And I would say even there's studies showing cursive. If you remember the R K old timey cursive, which schools are going back to teaching people. Cause there's something about cursive writing that can be meditative and cathartic as well.

• 30:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely believe that. Okay, so great points on toxins. And most of what you said is like avoiding them. And then there's some things that you can actively do to help you avoid them. Air purifier is a big, big believer in that, especially in your bedroom when you sleep. You mentioned Target has like really great products. Branch basics is one of those.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Love branch basics.

• 31:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's what I use in my home and they're Target now. Lots of great, great, great advice there. So, okay, we've eliminated the toxins. Now the cell is feeling so much better. It's, it's not having that, you know, fight or flight syndrome occurring within the cell. But it's nutrient deficient, right? There's deficiencies in the cell. How can someone think about cellular nutrient deficiencies? And how do we replenish those?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would say the gatekeeper is that I am for, not for everybody, look, not for everybody. That's where health history and labs and context comes into play. But I would say you will meet more people than not that will benefit from the soups and stews for a month. Okay, so let's start there. Let's just say a month of like this sort of cellular siesta for your body, cause it's going to calm things down. It's going to allow to build resilience. Cause your gut is that gatekeeper. Your cells of your gut are the gatekeeper to all the other cells of the body. And then what I would do is lean into some of the compounds that are shown in the scientific literature to stimulate cell repair. So, and that's not to say you couldn't do that in the first month.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  I, I just mean, you know, you may want to lean into this just to calm the gut first if you deal with more digestive problems. You could start it all at once if you wanted to, if you aren't dealing with digestive problems. But I would say the, the field of xenohormesis. So hormesis is the dose makes the poison, right? And if the dose makes the poison, the dose also makes the medicine. So it's things that, and the mythology of hormesis, which I don't know if it's historically accurate, but the mythology is that there was this king that thought he was going to be murdered, which if you know anything about history, that happened a lot. Royals were killing other, you know, royals. But his mom ended up, this is the, this is the mythology. I don't know if it's true. But his mom tried to poison him,

• 33:06Speaker 01

  but he'd been doing small amounts of the poison in his life. So when his mom tried to poison him, he didn't die. Hence the hormesis. The dose makes the poison of the medicine. So that's where the concept of even vaccinations come to be, or homeopathy in some way, right? Or certainly more overtly classified as hermetic effects are things like high intensity interval training, or cold plunging, or sauna, or fasting, or fasting mimicking diets. The ketogenic diet, which is fasting mimicking. Those are all adversity mimetics or hermetic effects. These are things that simulate stress on a cellular level. So your cell can be less differentiated, or more differentiated, less X differentiated. So that's, that, it's sort of a buffing of that scratch CD or record.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  So that cell can recognize, oh, that's my code. That's what I'm supposed to do. I can be a brain cell. I could be a heart cell. I could be a gut cell. And then hence you have vibrant wellness. So the food group that I think people should be leaning there, these xenohormetic plant compounds are plants that have gone through a stressful time in their life. So I think this is beautiful. Cause have you ever seen Avatar, the film Avatar?

• 34:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I've watched all of them.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Me too. It's like, I know, there's something.

• 34:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So beautiful.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Something spiritually very accurate about it is like, not that we're all blue people, but, and like 10 feet tall, but, but that we are all connected. And the quantum of all of this, and I'm making it too woo woo than it has to be. It is very steeped in science. I just think it's beautiful and poetic. Is that when plants go through a stressful time in their life, they create more polyphenols. So think bright and bitter. The brightness of the rich pigments of a blackberry or pomegranate, or blueberry, or the bright colored spice of turmeric, the orange of turmeric, or the bitterness of an extra virgin olive oil, or the bitterness of an herb like rosemary, thyme, or basil.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Why are that, what's, where's the brightness in the bitter? Or even things like broccoli sprouts, like the sulfur compounds. These polyphenols, these sulfur compounds are made because of the heat that the plant had to endure, the, the arid soil. And that's why organic plants that we just talked about here tend to be higher in these compounds, because they had bugs eating it. They had, they had more of a diverse life, right? And mimicking nature. Nature can be tough on plants. And I didn't mention teas, but oolong tea, and pu'er tea, black tea, green tea, also rich in these catechins and E G C G and things like this. So the, the cells of the plant, the cells of the life of the plant teach our cells to be more resilient. They upregulate, they are xenohormetic.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  To shake that cell up, proverbially shake that cell up and say, you, this is who you are. You've got this, baby. You are a brain cell. Remember who you are. And that's how I see it. So it's the science around is really exciting. And these are, I think people should be cultivating the bright and the bitter on a daily basis. It's a great, simple way to, to, to start to heal yourselves.

• 36:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. It's incredible, the science around polyphenols that we know and how much is uncovered, but we don't know. There's literally millions of polyphenols that are undiscovered. And like, to what you were saying, it's beautiful because these things develop in nature and they're having effects on our body that we just won't even realize. And that's why, look, I like supplementation, but I'm also like, you gotta get it from real plants because there's stuff in there that we don't even know exists yet.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  And 100%.

• 36:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Incredible cellular effects.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And I think on that point, that lack of diversity. And look, you, you have to meet your gut where it's at. But if you have a lot of food sensitivities, that's why improving your gut health resilience is so important. So you can do reintroduction eventually. You can have diversity of plants. Cause they do help teach, they help with microbiome diversity, of course, from a polyphenol and fiber standpoint. But they also, beyond microbiome diversity, they help with these cellular repair mechanisms. So I just think people unnecessarily restricting foods in perpetuity when they don't need to is a problem. And we see this with people that are like, they go on this trendy diet that may have been relevant for somebody else. But even what, what's healthy for one person may not be healthy for you. And then they create, it's like, cause what, how, you see any elimination diet, right?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Whether it's A I P, or GAPS, or carnivore diet can be used as elimination diet. Any eliminating whole food groups may be needed for a time, but they are a proverbial cast on a stressed out gut. And for people that keep a cast on for years and years on end, if they, especially if they don't need to, that muscle can atrophy if you kept a cast on. I think that's what's happening on a gut immune access standpoint.

• 37:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Where it's like you've atrophied, you're, you have no resilience. Cause you've kept the cast on forever. You need the tug and pull of nature to create resilience. And we've overcorrected sometimes in wellness by creating these nutritional therapeutic interventions that do have a place, but the reintroduction is just as important as elimination.

• 38:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's so funny, the other day I had a patient come in and she was like, I haven't eaten nuts in 20 years. I'm like, why? You're allergic to nuts? She's like, no, I'm not allergic to them. I just, someone told me 20 years ago, I had a food sensitivity test that came back positive for nuts.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Wow, they made their personality.

• 38:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  That snapshot in time became their personality.

• 38:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That became their personality, right? And it's like, no, that, that's a temporary intervention to allow your gut some time to heal. We should check again. We should, we should start reintroducing these if you're not truly allergic to them. So yeah, I had a scratch test. I'm not truly allergic. It was just a food sensitivity. So this is kind of stuff we, we see all the time. And you're right, your gut needs to be able to handle diverse foods. Now, the only one I would say that is probably a little bit different is like gluten, maybe, and dairy for some. And I think people have more permanent sensitivities to those, but most other foods, especially plants.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, fruits and vegetables.

• 38:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. Should be okay.

• 38:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Creatine isn't just the most researched supplement. It's actually proven to deliver results. So whether you want stronger muscles or you want a sharper mind, creatine is the energy source you're going to need to get there. Momentus just introduced signature spec creatine. It's their highest quality creatine to date. It has 10 times fewer impurities and two to five times stricter heavy metal limits than even other premium creatines. And it's all backed by six stages of testing and certification. Not to mention the ultrafine micronized powder makes it so easy to mix into your favorite drink or smoothie. Try it yourself at livemomentous.com slash Dr. Shaw,

• 39:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and you'll get up to 35% off your first order using the code Dr. Shaw.

• 39:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So let's move on then to another big topic about cells that we just absolutely have to cover is cellular energy, right? And the mitochondria. And you mentioned leaky mitochondria earlier. I think that's something I've never talked about in this podcast. Would love to dive into cellular energy and how that system works and how people can optimize it.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. So, well, the key part of mitochondria dysfunction, because you'd be hard pressed, if you're going through a chronic health problem, think brain fog, fatigue, autoimmune problems, metabolic problems, type 2 diabetes, fertility issues. I mean, remember, we talked about hallmarks of aging. All those problems are accelerated aging of different organs. All of those have a mitochondrial dysfunction component. So the mitochondria, again, the sort of poetic, like, beautiful avatar-like viewpoint that dang film messed me up, actually just confirmed things of how I always felt. But these are descendants of bacteria, right? I mean, they are at the dawn of time, primordial bacteria that were

• 40:49Speaker 01

  gobbled up by other bacteria that end up in every single one of our cells. You know, the Bible talks about we're formed from the dust of the earth. So even if you look at it from like an evolutionary or creation standpoint, doesn't even matter. There's something beautiful, poetic about this sort of, this has its own DNA, a non-human DNA inside every one of our cells? What the heck? It sounds science fiction, but it's actually not. And there's this beautiful mitochondria microbiome crosstalk, like, the ancient bacteria of the, which is the mitochondria, speaking to our gut microbiome, all the trillions of bacteria in our gut. So this is profoundly important. So you can see, okay, when someone has gut problems, microbiome imbalance, which is a hallmark of aging, and this sort of

• 41:32Speaker 01

  lack of communication between cells, the cells of the bacteria even, our microbiome is stressed. All the bacterial overgrowth and sort of these proverbial weeds overgrowing in the gut garden, there's a lack of homeostasis. So the crosstalk can be really off, and both the gastrointestinal system and systemic cellular inflammation, these mitochondria releasing these reactive oxygen species. So rehabbing the mitochondria, there's two pathways that the science is clear on what we need to be supporting. Mitochondrial biogenesis, which is making more resilient mitochondria, and mitophagy, this sort of cellular renewal of the actual mitochondria. And there's tons of mitochondria. We think there's just like one in each cell. There's like myriad, there's a plethora of different mitochondria, and

• 42:17Speaker 01

  the body's recycling them constantly, right, and spitting them out. And there's ways to upregulate and renew these mitochondrial, which you need for cellular energy. One ways is just balancing your blood sugar. I think that's like a basic, basic one, because insulin resistance is like gasoline on a mitochondrial fire. And you do not want that. So getting your blood sugar balanced, making sure your protein's optimized throughout the day, finding your carb sweet spot, those are sort of macro understandings of like, okay, big picture stuff, is that you cannot have blood sugar roller coaster in a healthy mitochondria. It's a good sign that you don't. So you could wear a CGM, you don't have to wear a CGM,

• 42:58Speaker 01

  for just for 30 days as an experiment, because everybody has, they're somewhere on that insulin resistance cellular dysfunction spectrum. So I think finding how many whole food fiber-rich carbohydrates they could have without causing glucose spikes, it's not, to be clear, I think that there's a sweet spot with that. I think sometimes people end up stressing about the number, and stressing about this stuff isn't good, when you look at continuous glucose monitors or any wearable device, there's a time and place for it, but stressing about it's not healthy. But being informed is healthy, being empowered, having discernment and, you know, awareness on what's going on in your body is healthy. And then some compounds that I would say that science shows to be helpful for mitophagy are postbiotics,

• 43:43Speaker 01

  there's one called Urolithin A, which I know, you know, there's a whole suite of Urolithin that your body makes from fermenting, and the microbiome makes this in the gut by fermenting prebiotics, specifically these allicic acids, back to these polyphenol flavonoid compounds. Allicic acid is in things like pomegranates and blackberries. And some people don't have the right bacteria to fully break and make enough Urolithin, but, believe me, like, food is so dynamic, so to reduce the power of a pomegranate or blackberry to just one compound is reductive. It's dynamic with lots of different compounds that we don't even understand yet, the power of it. So I think still having those foods is important. And then if you

• 44:26Speaker 01

  want to supplement with a Urolithin supplement, or a higher allicic acid supplement, to get an efficacious dose can be an appropriate tool here, because we are, we absorb and can assimilate in the gut. And then, yeah, so, that's an important compound that I would say. And then, I just read a study the other day, I'll just say this for mitochondrial renewal, it is leg day on when you work out in the gym. Nobody likes leg day. I mean, do you like leg day? I want to meet you if you like leg day. I just did it last night, and I wanted to throw up. But it's like, I need to change my relationship. I need to have a better attitude with leg day. Because I saw this study, I'm like, dang, I need to like leg day. Because it said that, the studies show when they did the leg day on

• 45:09Speaker 01

  one leg, they saw an increased amount of the cells basically spitting out mitochondria, like dead mitochondria to make new ones. So it was upregulating these mitochondrial

• 45:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just in one leg.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Biogenesis, just in one leg. And then the second leg didn't have it. That just shows you how powerful leg day is. And there's other studies that show just lifting weights in general will enhance mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy. So work out, move, pick up heavy things with good form, at least three times a week for half an hour, and then progress, like, don't stay the same as you get stronger. But yeah, leg day is profoundly, it seems to be, have a special mitochondrial favorability there.

• 45:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think it's just because, you know, we know most of our mitochondria and our metabolism lives in our muscle, and our leg muscles are, contain the most amount of mitochondria, so.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And that's why we feel it.

• 46:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's why you feel it, exactly. I'm a big fan of Timeline, Urolithin A supplement. I take it every single day, because I'm one of those people, I don't make my own Urolithin A with my gut bacteria. And I probably do at some small level, but this definitely is extremely helpful in helping create those new mitochondria. And then, you know, you mentioned a couple times reactive oxygen species, these are kind of like the burn off fumes of energy production, and they can be, they can be, you mentioned earlier, you know, making your cells more resilient, because you need these reactive oxygen species to do that. But if you have too much, they can damage DNA in cells and membranes, et cetera. And so renewing your mitochondria helps you to mitigate some of this damage.

• 46:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What are some other ways people can mitigate the reactive oxygen species?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is such a good point that you brought up, the cascade effect of that leaky mitochondria that's happening, it's the cascade effect it has on the membrane is so important. So this is intimately connected, right? The sort of mitochondrial membrane axis, if you will, it's not really a thing, but I just made it a thing. So it is, but it's, both are important. And I would say the things to focus on there is going to be healthy fats, so diverse omega fats, like, we need a long chain omega-3 fatty acids. So sardines, anchovies, like, get them out, have them, like, don't be afraid of them. So it's like, in the extra virgin oils, you get the polyphenols from the extra virgin

• 47:32Speaker 01

  olive oil. So I think a variety of long chain omega polyunsaturated fatty acids, decreasing industrialized seed oils, which is controversial in our space, it's, I don't know why, but it just became politicized in some ways. And now there's people that are like chugging down canola oil and just like, want to love it so much, because someone else hates it. The, so I just have a middle ground on that. I think that modern Western diet is too high in omega-6, not enough on omega-3, so that omega-3, 6, 9 ratio is needed for cell membrane health, which you need, as you mentioned, the mitochondria is releasing these reactive oxygen species, but you need the byproducts of energy, this sort of rusted reactive oxygen species, like the fumes, I like the way you said it, the fumes, but you need the, just

• 48:17Speaker 01

  like, when we eat food, we're supposed to go to the bathroom, one to three snakes a day on the Bristol chart. There's a lot of people that have cellular constipation, because their cell membrane is more oxidized. So the, your cells are supposed to bring in the good stuff, metabolize that, release the byproducts of energy, these reactive oxygen species, like the cell poop, if you will. But because the cell's stressed out, the membrane is more oxidized, less permeable, less fluid, they call it cellular fragility syndrome, the byproducts that ROS can't get out, so you have this backup of these ROS. So part of, yes, heal the mitochondria, but also focus on these tools of healing the cell membrane. So when your cell poops, so to speak, you can get it out of the cell.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  So membrane omega fats, and then types of saturated fats, like C15, like, I've seen studies, but as many as one in three people can have low C15 levels, which is this essential fatty acid, which is in things like dry aged cheeses, and like dairy fats. So, yeah, mainly it's dairy fats that people can get. But I would say grass-fed beef has other types of these, like conjugated linoleic acid, these healthy saturated fats, and has omega-3s. So I would think, I would say, focus on good quality nutrient-dense whole food fats, and back to the seed oils real fast, it's the lipid proxidation that can, lipid proxidation. So in addition to the, when your fatty acid profile is off, it can contribute to, just like sugar can create advanced glycation.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  And products, there's these L A L E's that can happen with lipids.

• 49:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, okay.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Uh, canola oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil. So all of that's to say is you're repairing that gut membrane. So you're allowing the good stuff to get into the cell, nutrients to get into cell. And you can get the byproducts of energy to get out of the cell.

• 50:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Uh, with proper membrane integrity. And if you have proper membrane integrity, it also will help with hormonal signaling. And neurotransmitter signaling, which is that's where the receptor sites are all on the cell membrane. So that's profoundly important for people to be do for cell health.

• 50:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, that takes me into my next question for you, actually, which is cellular signaling. So you have a lot of space in the book dedicated to peptides, right?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the way I like to describe peptides to people is that these are natural biological signals that our organs have been making since the beginning of time.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And as our cells become more, like you said, X differentiated. We produce less of these because our cells don't know they need to make them. And just with age cells, they don't, in organs, they just don't make enough of it. And I'd love for you to kind of take us through, you know, how you describe peptides in the book. And how you see them being beneficial, because a lot of people are talking about peptides right now.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, it is like.

• 51:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But you and I have been using peptide for a decade.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not just on ourselves, but patients.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Exactly, it's not new in this space. And like the bodybuilding world, my dad was a bodybuilder in the eighties. And like he, this is like big in the bodybuilding world back in the day too. Not always done healthily, I'll say that, but um, it was, it's not new in sort of the health conscious world.

• 51:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  So they, you can't, and you can't, I couldn't have written a book, like Dr. Axe and I couldn't have written Heal Your Cells. Without like about healing your cells without talking about peptides, because it's all about cellular signaling.

• 51:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  And to have proper differentiation, you need to improve cell signaling. And we've talked about different ways to do that. But another way to sort of shift and shake up your cells, so to speak, to remember like this, you've got this. Let's upregulate these healing pathways, whatever you're talking about, and any specific peptide. You're improving cell communication. So uh, I think peptides are a great tool, because as you said, your body's already making it. But when you look at GLP one, BPC one five seven, where is the body making those peptides? It's in the gut. So start with improving where the peptides made in the, for example, for those two. Cause your body already has its own peptide pharmacy in the gastrointestinal system.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Or in the brain with certain peptides, or wherever you're talking about the different peptides. So improving health through the things we've talked about up until this point. All the tips I've given, lean into things and more around these areas. Your body will naturally make more peptides endogenously, naturally, your God given, man made nat, or God, God made, not man made. Uh, natural peptides. But we live in a fallen, broken world, and I'm a pragmatist. And even when you get somebody's gut health to like the best it's gonna be. They're a light years better than they were, they would be. But we know that our world is not in a great place environmentally, right? We know people have been sick for a long time because of this mismatch, this epigenetic genetic mismatch.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  That our cells are living in a brave new world because of humans pretending to be God. And when humans pretend to be God, there's unintended consequences. And that's what, how we treat the earth, that's how we treat each other. That's how the, we're eating foods that don't love our body back. We have a lot of self sabotaging behavior on individual basis and a societal basis. So because of that reality, I think, and I have seen this be the case. That a both and not either approach to peptides is the way forward for most people. And when you have a both and, meaning improve your health with, improve your metabolic health. Improve your gut health with food and movement and mind body practices and nutrition from supplements. All that's foundational stuff. And then you won't need that much peptides.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  A microdosed, cyclical, extended breaks for most people is where the sweet spot's gonna be. Instead of these tribal camps where it's like the American way of how they're using Ozempic. Which is like, a little is good, the more is better. And I think we're over correcting and creating these unintended consequences.

• 54:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  With Ozempic personality and semic clued died, you know, Ozempic zombies, they're calling it. Where it, they're, they're down regulating these dopaminergic uh, reward centers of the brain. And it's impacting their relationships. I actually heard some wild things, anecdotally, we need studies, but anecdotally. I think we've swung the pendulum too far for many people. And then the other side is like the super crunchy, God bless them, healthy, that says, you are a traitor. For being functional medicine to talk about peptides, like you're a sellout to Big Pharma or like whatever. And I think the truth is oftentimes somewhere in the middle with many things in life. And it's like, yeah, this can change somebody's life and you don't need that much of it and you can come off of it. And like you said, the bodies are already making this anyways. These are just building blocks to proteins.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  I mean, this is not anything radical, doesn't have to be. But that's why purity and transparency and like making sure you're getting the real stuff. And it's monitored with the proper, you know, clinician.

• 55:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  And a compounding pharmacist if needed, is gonna be the way forward with peptides. But I think we talk about them at length in the book because of that.

• 55:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, that brings up another thought about just regenerative technologies in general.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The responsible use of them, you know, our friend Josh, he talks very openly about how he had stem cells injected. And it caused a massive problem for him. And you know, these regenerative technologies are out there. In my opinion, there's incredible promise of this completely changing medicine. But how does someone ensure that they're getting their peptides or stem cells from someone who's gonna be responsible with, with the administration?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's why I think there was a huge mistake in 2023 with the last FDA uh, administration commission, kind of took them off the nice list and put them on the naughty list. And then what happened? It created this sort of underground shady gray area market where it was, everything was research only. And it, look, some brands were completely fine and have, but they had to work within that confines of that regulation. But many weren't okay. But you had no way of knowing, like as the consumer, there was so much shady stuff out there. And then they're just being sold this and they don't know what they're getting. Heavy metals and other toxins uh, in these peptides. And some didn't even have the active ingredient in them. So wild, so they shoved it underground by over regulating these things that are ultimately, your body's making them anyways.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  And I have, you know, I'd like to get your take on this, but I think it was not for the safety. I think it's like, there's a lot of things that aren't very safe that are on the market, let's be honest. I think it was because nature can't be patented. And when nature can't be patented and owned, multinational corporations like in Big Pharma, they wanna subjugate it. And like, let's get, people can't have this, it's too powerful. Let's like demonize it and delegitimize it and like shove it to the underground. But they created a bigger problem. So now I think let's, like, hopefully some of these that are coming on back on the, the, the nice list. People can get access to them, but in safe ways. And that's why going to a reputable doctor, like even as a consumer, even if you go to a doctor, ask questions. Like where are you getting these?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Is there like a certificate of, you know, purity or let's look at the analysis of these things. Uh, as you would with anything, as you would with anything to have informed consent.

• 57:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, I completely agree. And you know, same thing with like the whole stem cell world. I feel like the FDA has so over regulated it that it makes it hard for, to do the science.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And why, I think it's the same thing. I think the pharma industry knows that these are extremely powerful.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Um, it could make many of their drugs useless.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  And so. And I think even with the psychedelics, to be honest with you, right? Right, it's like, there's so many examples of it's like you, you are just so, you're protesting too much. It's like, yes, these things are not inert. Yes, they, you need to have proper guidance and transparency and like clinical monitoring, of course. But to then to demonize it and to over correct one way, it's like the truth again is somewhere in the middle. And I think that the context around these things matter and they can help a lot of people. Right, all of these stem cells, peptides, psychedelics, all have their place.

• 58:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely, yep. You know, one of the things I love about you is you do such an eloquent job of bridging the gap between the science and the spiritual nature of just being a human on earth in this, in this universe. And um, you know, I think you mentioned a few things that I would love to dive in more with you one of these days. It's like the quantum connections between all of us, right? And um, and how that's disrupted now in this modern society that we live in. I would love maybe just for you to say a few words about how. The listeners of this podcast can bring more spirituality into their health and wellness journey. How have you done it?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow, that's so important. And that is one of the areas we actually talk about in the book, because it is, it's not talked about a lot. When you talk about cell hell, like, why are you talking about God? But it is so, it is another area that makes our cells feel unsafe. The studies that show that, a lot of them are correlated, but I still think fascinating. There was a Harvard study that found people that had a regular faith practice, part of a faith community, had a 33% decrease risk of dying over a 16 year period, all cause mortality.

• 59:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  33%?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Whoa.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And another study showed they had lower high C reactive protein inflammation markers, people had a faith practice, tons of different markers that basically summarized, correlative studies, but still fascinating nonetheless. And a lot of these things are mysteries. Like, we don't understand how they work, but I do think it has something to do with safety, somatic safety, knowing that you're not alone, connection, and you are part of something larger. And Dr. Lisa Miller's work out of Columbia University saw the same thing. She did neuroimaging study that found the people that had a faith practice, and she saw this across faiths too, that had increased resilience, back to that concept of like, what are ways to create resilience and safety on a cellular level? So I think getting two

• 59:57Speaker 01

  things, getting part of a positive community, doesn't mean you have to agree on everything. That's part of this, is like, true tolerance. And we've lost the art tolerance, like, very definition of tolerance means it's people you don't necessarily always see eye to eye. But you're supposed to, like, iron sharpens iron. You're supposed to be able to hear differences of opinions. And we've become so siloed in our algorithms to only have this confirmation bias, and only hear things that tickle our ear that we want to hear, and to confirm our biases already. And we become more and more isolated, more and more tribal, and more and more bitter, and rage filled. And it's, it's stuff that feeds chronic disease. And our cells feel unsafe when we're like that. So be a part of a spiritual community, get

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  involved in a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or a temple, wherever you go, or it could be a meditation group. Like, it's whatever it is for you. But it's something that's cultivating community and acts of stillness of the parasympathetic. And it's probably multifactorial. I think singing plays a part of it. And you look at the vagal toning of chanting and singing, moving your body. I mean, there's so many somatic components to this that I think. But I think get involved in a positive, edifying community. And then number two, would be getting out in nature, what I call God art, like, taking the ineffable, the wonder, the whimsy of as medicine. I think there's something profoundly beautiful about that. And the research out of Japan and South Korea of Shim and Yoku shows that.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  They're not connecting it to God, but I think there's a majesty to creation, and what that can do on a breathing in the biome of of nature actually shifts our own gut microbiome, it shifts our own natural killer cells in a positive way to balance our immune system, improve our mood, actually increasing bacteria in the gut that produce more serotonin. So I think getting it in creation is a powerful spiritual practice. And I would say that journaling piece is another one. Like, we could say prayer, meditation, journaling, some sort of communication, so it's getting out, not in, meaning you're releasing these things that are stored in your body. I think those are three things. And then personally, I

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  would just say, calling out to God, crying out to God, and that sort of communication to God outside of you, but also within you, is part of the quantum, I think, for people, is prayer, like prayer, in general, I think is a powerful tool.

• 1:02:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, absolutely. You know, I think about, I grew up going to Catholic school my whole life, not my whole life, until like, high school. And part of the checklist of things that you have to do when you go to Catholic schools, you have to attend Mass once a week, right?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then I also grew up Hindu, my parents, and they took me to temple every weekend. Both of those times, when I was in a Catholic church or in a Hindu temple, you could just feel all the stress melt away. I mean, most people, the minute you walk into that door, there's a regulation that occurs between your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, right? And then, fast forward to now, going into kind of a church environment, and coming out of it, like, my HRV definitely jumps like 58 points after being in that environment. I've noticed this on my own biomarkers, you know? And so, to your point, I think that there is a massive regulation that occurs. And the more you can do that, the more you can be in this routine, the better it could, the better it serves you

• 1:03:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  from just that one biological pathway. And I'm sure there's so many others.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so true. And I think there's, there's something to be said with Gen Z doesn't know all these studies that I just talked about, but there's something that they feel deep in their soul, that the world is filled with so much disconnection and loneliness, and like, spiritual bankruptcy, that it's shocking to me, the Gen Z are the most regular churchgoers right now in our country. They're averaging two church services a month.

• 1:03:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Why is that? They don't know the RCTs, the studies that we're talking about here. They just know, I want something real, and the world doesn't have it. And I think that they're, they're somatically healing themselves, and they don't even know it. They actually don't even know what they're doing for their health, because spiritual health is physical health, and vice versa. They're connected.

• 1:04:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. And there's chapters in this book about this as well. Both you and Josh are very spiritual humans, and I love that about both of you. And I'm so glad that you made that part of the story of this book, you know? It needs to be more in the conversation on health and wellness.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 1:04:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think, you know, to your point, this is such a politicized world. Like, you talk about religion, all of a sudden, people will like, attack you.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It needs to be talked.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  It does. And I think more and more people, like, I think we're coming out of that. Because I think in this age of AI, and sort of AI accelerationism, and I think humans are going to realize, look, even if we don't agree with other humans, we're still humans. And we need to put down our sort of, again, our prejudice and intolerance, and come together, even if we don't see eye to eye. I hope it's, I see that vitriol coming down. It's like, even if they're not a Christian, they still are like, you're another human, we've got you. And we're going to have to realize that sooner rather than later.

• 1:05:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I'm glad, I agree. I think the pendulum's swinging back towards the middle on this. The Stanford study that you talked about, you know, there's, there's an insinuation in there that the maximum lifespan of humans can be extended, right? I think they said, what, what did they say, 140, 120, or something like that?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I've seen statistics, I mean, between 120 and 150, yeah.

• 1:05:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What are your thoughts around where things are going? To your, you know, to your, you just said AI is now become a full blown reality in our lives. And how do you see this playing out with AI, cellular health, and maximal human lifespan?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Look, I think there's gonna be, all of this is TBD. I mean, it's like, let's just see what these promises are. But I think AI is a tool, right? AI is a tool, like any other tool. And our, like, my Google Maps is AI, right? My, the Whoop Band, the Aura Ring is AI, Siri is AI, all can be blessings. Like, AI, AI within healthcare can be a blessing to make doctors work smarter, not harder, to get answers for people. So if it makes the human actually more human, but more effective to help other humans and help themselves, I think can be a blessing. I just think that we probably, like, most things are going

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  to overcorrect. And I think that I have major concerns with AI, not AI as AI, but AI accelerationism, and these larger, like, artificial general intelligence, like, the, the idea that humans are not going to be the most, you know, intelligent beings on the planet, and, you know, AI consciousness, and the, and the worldview of a lot of these AI accelerationists and transhumanism, I, that, I think that, to me, is like, the, the dark side of longevity, where it's like, I'm not about to get some, you know, you know, chips implanted in my body to live forever and to, you know, avoid death. I, and that's why I think this obsessive compulsive fear

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  of death, and merging with technology to get that, is not the way forward. It's not what we're talking about. And it's like, the antithesis of what we talk about in Heal Your Cells. It's not that. It's adding life to your years and years to your life. It's not this obsessive compulsive fear of death. But yeah, so I think, I don't know if that answers your question. I think that AI has amazing thing, but humanity doesn't have a good track record to strike a balance with something so powerful. And we've never seen something so powerful. So I, it's, it's like, we need to be acting now, as far as like, regulation and thoughtful, like, let's pause and figure out how to use this, not just for longevity, but humanity as a whole. And I don't think anybody's, well, people are asking the questions, but it seems like anybody in charge is asking the question.

• 1:07:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, unfortunately, it's gotten a little out of control, and there's no regulation around it, or even talk about regulation that's responsible on this matter right now.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  And AI, I've heard an AI ethicist say, like, AI, like I said, it goes Siri, Google Map, all that stuff, AI. AI is not bad. AI, it's, AI is like transportation. It could be used, you know, you could ride a bike for transportation, or had a car for transportation. What the AI accelerationist worldview is, like, everybody should be on a rocket, and no one's asking if the rocket's safe or not. We're just going up to space, and see you later. Like, that's what's happening. I thought that was pretty on point with what's happening right now.

• 1:08:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Wow, we covered so much ground on this. Well, this was awesome. Yeah, this is fantastic. You're always so knowledgeable, and I'm so glad my listeners get to hear from you. Obviously, we're going to talk again next year. I can't wait to see where we are next year, with, with everything going on in the longevity field, in the health field. But in the meanwhile, everyone needs to pick up a copy of your book. Is it out now for purchase?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  It's out, yeah.

• 1:08:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Purchase, okay. So people can actually get a copy now.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Get a, yeah.

• 1:08:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic. So obviously, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, everywhere. I have all the links at drwillcole.com, my podcast, which you've been on, The Art of Being Well, is there. But yeah, Heal Your Cells is everywhere books are sold.

• 1:09:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 1:09:09Dr. 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.