Dr. Darshan Shah ON: 3 Step Process to Reset Your Gut Health and Reduce Inflammation & Why Sitting is Increasing Your Mortality Rate by 10%

How do you reset your gut health? How can you reduce inflammation in your body? Today, we welcome Dr. Darshan Shah. Dr. Shah is a health and wellness specialist, board certified surgeon, published author, entrepreneur, and founder of Next Health, the world's first and largest health optimization and longevity clinic. With expertise in all body systems, Dr. Shah has performed over 15, 000 surgical procedures, including trauma surgery, general surgery, and reconstructive procedures. As a health and wellness specialist, he has advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their well being and extend their lifespan. Dr. Shah talks about the three-step process that empowers you to take charge of your health, examine the changing landscape of our food intake, and learn four essential ways to eat right. He emphasizes the importance of plant-based protein sources and the incredible benefits of vegetables, and dives deep into consequences of low vitamin D levels. The conversation takes a turn towards the power of social activity and how to break free from sedentary behavior. Uncover valuable insights on escaping the clutches of perfectionism and how to prepare for old age. Dr. Shah sheds light on the benefits of sleep tracking and shares best practices to ensure a good night's rest. Together, let's gain a deeper understanding of how inflammation affects your gut health, learn how to take care of your heart, and explore the technological evolution of cancer testing. In this interview, you’ll learn: How to eat healthy How to change your diet effectively How to exercise properly How to be more active at home The benefits of good sleep How to take care of your gut How to take care of your body There is so much to learn and so much information to process, but this conversation will surely lead you to a better, healthier lifestyle. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 03:06 Why Was There a Need to Build Next Health? 09:11 The Three-Step Process to Stay Healthy 13:19 What Has Changed With Our Food Intake? 16:16 4 Ways to Eat Right 24:36 Plant-Based Sources of Protein 26:11 How Vegetables Can Greatly Help Your Body 30:44 This Happens When Your Vitamin D Level is Low 34:12 Know What is the Blood Work Optimal Range 36:51 You Need to Invest in Social Activity 39:19 How to Break Sedentary Behavior? 46:46 How Do You Get Out of the Perfectionist Mentality? 48:32 How Do You Prepare for Old Age? 50:21 The Benefits of Sleep Tracking 57:24 Best Practices to Help You Sleep Through the Night 01:03:52 Inflammation Affects Your Gut Health 01:09:10 How to Take Care of Your Heart 01:14:23 Technological Evolution of Testing Cancer 01:18:24 How Do We Prevent Cancer? 01:22:28 Conclusion Episode Resources: Darshan Shah | Website Darshan Shah | Instagram Darshan Shah | LinkedIn Darshan Shah | Facebook Darshan Shah | YouTube Next Health See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a second-hand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe.

• 1:28Jay Shetty?

  Listing items is a quick and simple process and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part? There are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by Orange Theory Fitness. One of the best investments you can make is in your own strength. The choices you make today can help shape how you feel for years to come. Orange Theory Fitness provides a one-hour workout to build strength, burn fat, and build muscle

• 2:11Jay Shetty?

  with an expert coach guiding you every step of the way. Head to orangetheory.com/onpurpose to learn more and get your first class free. Orange Theory Fitness: helping people live longer, more vibrant lives. Terms and conditions apply. See webpage in studio for details. This segment about sleep rituals is brought to you by Dream Cloud Sleep, the world's most affordable luxury mattress. Did you know that the quality of your sleep directly impacts your overall health and happiness? That's where a sleep ritual comes into play. By establishing a soothing pre-sleep routine, you signal your body that it's time to wind down, promoting a smoother transition to dreamland and ensuring you wake up each morning feeling fully restored

• 2:55Jay Shetty?

  and eager to embrace the day ahead. But are you finding it hard to switch off after a hectic day? If you do, try some of these tips. Before lying down, take a moment to unwind with calming practices that will help you sleep better. Try deep breathing exercises, meditation, or gentle stretching to relax your mind and body. A hot bath or a cup of herbal tea can also do wonders in preparing you for a tranquil night's sleep. Another factor that can affect your sleep quality is the mattress that you're using. Having a good mattress can give you the proper comfort and support, which means you can sleep deeply and wake up feeling refreshed, which is essential for your overall health, reducing pain and feeling your best. With Dream Cloud, it's about investing in yourself

• 3:37Jay Shetty?

  and it goes to show that you don't have to spend a fortune to sleep comfortably. Dream Cloud offers affordable luxury, proving that you can enjoy a truly restful night's sleep without breaking the bank. Their mattresses are a dreamy blend of individually wrapped coils and gel memory foam. It's a premium hybrid mattress that's both supportive and soft. It's super high quality and guaranteed to last longer. So go ahead, slip into something more comfortable and feel the Dream Cloud difference. Go to dreamcloudsleep.com and use code JAY for 40% off plus an additional $50 off any mattress purchase. Dream Cloud, the world's most affordable luxury mattress.

• 4:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For every 10% of time that you spend sitting, you have a 10% increase in all-cause mortality. That's crazy! Yes, sitting for more than an hour at a time is literally what's killing most of us right now.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  He's a world-renowned surgeon.

• 4:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Entrepreneur and founder of Next Health.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Dr. Dashen Shah.

• 4:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 4:45Jay Shetty?

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

• 5:07Speaker 03

  The bestselling author and host. The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

• 5:14Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Our mission here is to make the world happier, healthier, and more healed. And we do that through introducing you to experts, stories, scientists, researchers, and doctors who have insights that we can all apply and improve our day-to-day life, or maybe even the way we think and live. Now, today's guest is someone that I've been working with personally for quite a few months now, if not a bit longer than that. And he's someone that I'm excited to introduce you to because he has so much great insight. And I love the way he approaches some of the challenges that we're all facing in our daily

• 5:56Jay Shetty?

  lives with our health and wellness. Today's guest is Dr. Shah Darshan Shah, M.D., a health and wellness specialist, board-certified surgeon, published author, entrepreneur, and founder of Next Health, the world's first and largest health optimization and longevity clinic. With expertise in all body systems, Dr. Shah has performed over 15,000 surgical procedures, including trauma surgery, general surgery, and reconstructive procedures. As a health and wellness specialist, Darshan has advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their well-being and extend their lifespan. Please welcome to the show Dr. Shah. Dr. Shah.

• 6:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 6:36Jay Shetty?

  It's good to have you here.

• 6:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:38Jay Shetty?

  I was thinking about it. I think we started working together probably just under a year ago, it feels like.

• 6:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It feels like about a year.

• 6:43Jay Shetty?

  About a year, yeah, about a year, yeah, about a year. And I remember we got introduced through my health coach, I believe. I think I'm trying to, now I'm like trying to piece it together.

• 6:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, connect the dots. I think it's your health coach, right?

• 6:55Jay Shetty?

  Sharma, who I've worked with for quite a few years now, she introduced us.

• 6:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 6:59Jay Shetty?

  You have this incredible facility. I know it's definitely in LA because that's where I go. Where else do you have it?

• 7:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So yeah, we have three locations in LA, one in New York and one also in Hawaii right now and Maui, which is sadly right now, they're going through a lot. But and now we're actually franchising all over the world. So we'll be in Dubai, we will be in Canada, Australia and all over the United States here pretty soon.

• 7:21Jay Shetty?

  And talk to me about this transition that you made very early on in your journey or not early on, actually, sorry, more recently.

• 7:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Jay Shetty?

  More recently, you made a shift in your career.

• 7:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:32Jay Shetty?

  Because you went from practicing as a doctor traditionally to now building Next Health. Talk to me about that transition and ask you about why you did that and what was the reasoning behind it?

• 7:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think, you know, most physicians never anticipate a complete 180 transition in their career, especially after you've like dedicated 25 plus years, but I felt a real need to do that. And it was mainly because of my own personal health. So what happened was I started off as a surgeon. I then also went into the entrepreneurial side of surgery. I brought surgery centers and I started hiring doctors as well. And so I was spending half my life being a surgeon, treating patients in the operating room. The other half my life running the business and the other half of my life, you know, trying to maintain my own health and my own sanity. And unfortunately, that last part of my life

• 8:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  just kind of fell through the cracks, right? And so what happened was I found myself 15 plus years into my career as probably the most unhealthy person in the building that I was working in. I was 40 pounds overweight and you know, weight doesn't really matter for everything. But for me, that really led to a tons of health challenges such as I had high blood pressure and that blood pressure was not getting any better despite being on two medications. I was prediabetic on diabetes medications and I was not able to move very well. Like all my joints ached because of an autoimmune disease starting. So, you know, I was 15, 16 years into my career and I was like, I'm getting really, really sick and.

• 9:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  At that point in time as well, I had my first child and you know, having your first child is often like a time in your life where you sit and reflect. And I was actually doing the math utilizing studies that say like, if you have this hemoglobin A1C, this level of high blood pressure, this level of obesity, how long you're going to live? And that's why I was doing the math and I came quickly to the realization, I was a little bit older when I had my first child, I was 40, that I would not live to see him potentially graduate from college. And to me, like, that was a major kind of punch in the gut, right? Like, what am I doing to myself? And so that kind of started this thought process and this transition in my life where I said, I need to make some massive

• 9:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  changes here and I need to do a quick because I need to be alive for this kid, you know? I did what a lot of people do. I said, you know, I need to find the best of the best doctors. So I went to Beverly Hills, I researched all the best concierge medicine doctors, you know, I hired an expensive concierge medicine doctor. I said, your job is to get me healthy. Went to his office and, you know, paid a pretty penny for this too, wasn't cheap. He did a bunch of tests on me and he found out that, yeah, I was prediabetic and it was getting a little bit worse and I was hypertensive and I need to be another blood pressure medication. And probably the reason I was having difficulty moving and, you know, being, performing all the activities in my life that I wanted to perform with

• 10:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  vitality was because I was depressed. So then he added an anti-depression medication to my list of meds. My list of meds grew from eight medications to 12 medications. And that's all he told me. He just prescribed me four or five more things. There wasn't even a mention of, do you go to the gym? Do you, how do you sleep? What's your stress level like? Not even a question about that. And I thought to myself, like, there is something really wrong here. And, and this was the world that I grew up in, right? This is the medical training that I grew up in the, in medical school. When I did med school back in the 1990s, you spent one day of one class talking about nutrition, maybe half a day

• 11:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  of another class talking about sleep, but it was mostly about sleep disorders, right? Like sleep apnea and things like that. I did not have the knowledge. So how can I expect this guy to have the knowledge? Right? I mean, the Western medicine is so disease focused and so reactive that unless things are really bad and we can't prescribe you a pill or a surgery, there's nothing they can offer you really, right? And so I saw like a massive flaw here and I decided that moment in time, like I need to learn for myself how to do this right. So decided to hire someone else to take position in my office that I had and just take some time off and educate myself. And so that led to six months to a year of going to every conference I could find.

• 11:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And this was like eight, nine years ago. When I have a struggle, my first instinct is to educate myself, learn, learn, learn. And so I went to every conference I could find. I went to like physical therapy conferences. I went to like how to become a personal trainer, registered dietitian courses. I went to all these conferences and I learned so much. And then I kind of stumbled into the field of functional medicine. Have you heard of functional medicine? And I'm sure you have. You had Dr. Hyman on here is one of the fathers of functional medicine. My favorite people in the whole world, but learn from him and others about the root cause of illness. And it was incredible. Like within eight months, I was able to like completely turn my health around. And as I was doing this, the patients I was seeing,

• 12:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I was helping them do the same thing. And they were like, how come no one told me this? And so that's what kind of started my new career in medicine. I said, you know, medicine is fantastic. If you're helping sick people become unsick, you're treating cancer, you're treating diabetes, but it's also to me exponentially more fantastic when you're helping the other 90% of people who aren't sick, stay healthy and never get to that point in the first place. And so for me, it was just kind of bringing all that together and really. Providing a place for people to go when you're not yet sick, like when you're not yet need to go to the doctor or the hospital, where do you go? It's not just the gym, right? There's much more you need to do. It's a lot more work to be done.

• 13:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's what I then dedicated my new kind of, my new life in medicine to is creating that place.

• 13:26Jay Shetty?

  What are those key pillars or the core areas of next health, based on functional medicine that you're measuring and that you think we all need to be aware of when we're looking at that 360 degree look at our health?

• 13:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. So, you know, this is where I think, you know, I have this conversation with all my patients. We sit down and we say, look, there's an overwhelming amount of health information out there and a lot of it is not based in science. There's a lot of like majoring in minor things, right? There's a lot of focus on like, what's the best superfood? Or, you know, what's the, how much caffeine should I have per day? But like, in reality, what I tell people is, let's break this down for you into the main components. And over time, let me educate you on the main components of health. But let's not major in the minor things. Let's focus on the 20% of the information that's going to give you the 80% of the result, right? Like, what are the key two or three things you need to know on each aspect of your health to create a major difference?

• 14:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's the Pareto Principle, which is, where can you expend the least amount of energy to get the most amount of results? And then, once you get that right, you can absolutely go down the rabbit hole further if you want to. So, we start off, I have this thing called a wellness wheel. I call it, there are 12 points in the wellness wheel. We start off with the basics, nutrition, sleep and exercise. But then we move on to gut health, immune system health, hormone health, heart health and brain health. And so then we spend a lot of time talking about each one of those individually. And in each one of these categories, what I do is I try to frame it as, this is a three-step process. And the first step is number one, how do we make sure you're not dying from this, right? How do we make sure your nutrition is not killing you? Like, you're becoming a metabolic disaster with diabetes?

• 15:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or how do we make sure that your immune system is healthy enough to prevent cancer? How to not die, basically? The second part of it is, how do we improve your health span? How do we keep you as health? As possible for as long as possible. And then the last part is, what's the advanced science out there in the longevity world that we can implement into your life. Once we make sure you're not in trouble and then you've mastered how to take care of your health span yourself, how do we then start applying these these new techniques, this new science. So a lot of people come to us and they want to jump straight to like, how do, how do I do N A D I V? How do I do hyperbaric oxygen therapy? I'm like, no, no, no, let's hold on a second. Let's make sure you're not eating ultra processed food first because that's what's going to make the biggest difference.

• 15:52Jay Shetty?

  Right. Yeah.

• 15:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So that's kind of how we frame it and it's, um, we go down each one of these categories and talk about what's going to make the biggest difference for people.

• 16:00Jay Shetty?

  Fantastic. I think this is, I wanted to lay that out for people because I want people to understand. A, you've been on this personal journey yourself. There's a professional shift here as well because you can see the kind of challenges that come with traditional medicine and how functional medicine is the future, even though it seems like it's rooted in ancient times or an older method that's coming back. And then looking at these key areas, and that's what I want to dive in to with you today, if that's okay.

• 16:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 16:28Jay Shetty?

  Touch on all these areas because

• 16:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Jay Shetty?

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

• 16:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 16:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, let's dive in to, let's first start with nutrition because I think that it's such a big area of our lives. And I think it's one of those ones that everyone will say, hey, I was put in for surgery, but I was never really told to change my diet.

• 17:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:07Jay Shetty?

  Or even, even when I went last year, you helped me through my. You didn't perform the surgery, but you helped me through my hernia surgery. And I've spoken that on the podcast a couple of times. And I was never told to change my diet. However, by, by the doctors, you did tell me, and so did Mona. If you had not told me that, it would have been a lot harder to even recover. So even though it wasn't integral to the surgery, it did affect the recovery. And so let's talk about nutrition. It's such a big part of our life. Let's start with what has gone wrong with our food? Like what, what has changed about our food? That it's almost like a surprise to us today that what we eat is affecting how we feel.

• 17:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's, it's really multifactorial, but it's all happened in the last 50 or 60 years. You look at like obesity rates, heart attack rates, diabetes rates of the last 50 years, just exponentially increasing. And I think that it's a few things that happened. One was there was a little bit of a panic back in the 50s that we weren't going to have enough food to feed everybody. Right? So the government start putting into place subsidies and laws and bringing corporations together to start mass producing food. And that mass production of food led to over farming of soil, packaging foods to make them last longer. But then also, you know, you have these packaged foods are not that inspiring. So how do you make them taste better? You make them hyper palatable.

• 18:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then whenever you involve corporate America in anything, right? What's the goal of corporations to make a profit? How do you do that? By making things cheaper and making more of them. Right? So now you have these giant food conglomerates, like making tons and tons of food as cheaply as possible. And that means using chemicals. It means using dyes. It means hiring scientists to make it hyper palatable. So even though normally you're, you know, you would eat this thing and your body would be like, what is this? Yeah, this is horrible. And your body will sense how bad it is for you. Now you can't because the scientists have made it taste good. Right? And so you have this massive kind of explosion of ultra processed food.

• 19:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  An entire supermarket, you look at the square footage of a supermarket, only the outside of it is dedicated to fresh food. The entire middle is frozen, processed, boxed, canned food, right? And we have so much of it in our society right now that that's really what's caused a lot of the problems. In addition to that, we have food coming from all over the world to us. So it's being shipped to us, it's being stored, it's being preserved, it's being grown in soil that's over farmed. And so we've kind of come to this disaster point where most of the food that we see that is being supplied to our population has become full of toxins and basically not healthy for you.

• 19:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So really, we have to really, really look at and take a step back. How do we eat 50 years ago? And how can we go back to that type of eating pattern?

• 20:08Jay Shetty?

  Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you that it's a primary focus of On Purpose, but on a day to day basis, many people don't know where to turn or which tools can help. Over the past couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say, fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep, and generally feel better in your daily life. So many bite sized options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world, along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out my seven minute daily series to help you live more mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On Purpose get 40% off

• 20:53Jay Shetty?

  a subscription to Calm Premium at calm.com/jay. That's C A L M dot com forward slash J A Y for 40% off. Calm your mind, change your life. I think that's the hard part, right? Like you just said that when you go into a grocery store, you're seeing that the majority of it is taken up by processed foods. People are thinking, well, how do I, what do I eat? Because it's almost like we've got so used to eating out of tins, cans, boxes, packets. It, it almost even takes a second to think of what food isn't in one of those or isn't refrigerated or isn't frozen or whatever it may be. Like, what would you say, taking your eighty twenty principles you were mentioning, referring to before?

• 21:35Jay Shetty?

  What is that thing that we can do twenty percent? Because I think when we think about food, it just feels so big and overwhelming. And then the stress of cooking with our busy lives and working and coming home late from work and trying to eat something quickly, like what's the, what's the quick win? Or what's the small win that we can make?

• 21:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, absolutely. So, so the twenty percent here is working really hard to eliminate that ultra-processed food. Okay, so really focusing on how do you get fresh, organic food into your body as much as possible? And I could tell you, if you only make this one change, that's all you need to worry about. You don't need to worry about your protein content and your micronutrients. Like, all of that will come with just switching from ultra-processed food to organic, fresh, whole foods. And then if that's the only one thing that you do, you, you've had a massive win. That's going to give you the eighty percent of the result because it will force you to learn how to make good food quickly, because we're all busy, right? So how do we make, how do we make a quick protein shake?

• 22:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or how do we make a quick salad and still get the nutrients in that we need to and not feel hungry? Once you start doing that, you find that your hunger goes down just exponentially. You don't need to eat as often and you kind of eliminate, you know, snacking is such a huge thing now. It's almost like we're taught that if you're not snacking, you're not going to have enough energy for the day. And that's only because we're snacking on processed food in between eating processed food, right? So, so, so really, once you start eating whole food again, you can even, a lot of people just stop even eating one meal a day. They go straight into lunch and dinner. I eat protein every morning for my meals. I, I, I need to have protein in the morning, that most people do. And we could talk about fasting later too, and kind of the change in thought around that.

• 23:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But making that one change is going to give you eighty percent of the result. In, in my opinion and my experience, talking to hundreds of people about this over the last year or two. And then there's two or three things you can do after that, once you got that down, but that would be number one, for sure. What are two and three? Okay, so number two is managing your glucose response curve.

• 23:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. So the science has come extremely far in this. And what we know for a fact is, first of all, we know for a fact that metabolic syndrome, diabetes is rampant, and it's just getting into more and more communities throughout America all the time. And that's because of things like we talked about, snacking, ultra-processed food, et cetera. But it's also just people have forgotten how to eat in a way that keeps your glucose curve under control. Now, when I say glucose curve, that means that I'm talking about like actually measuring your glucose all the time and seeing when it goes up and when it goes down. And so there's a device now that you can buy, it's called a continuous glucose monitor. Have you worn one of these yet? I haven't, but I've seen them, yeah. I think my wife had one.

• 24:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 25:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's one of the things you learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor. You also learn from wearing a continuous glucose monitor, what foods shoot your glucose through the roof versus, you know, rather than anybody else's, right? And it's different. Like, if you eat a banana, it could shoot your glucose through the roof, and your friend, no problem at all. And that's because your microbiome, your metabolism, is different than every single other person. So you can personalize the foods that you eat to keep your glucose level steady. And if you keep your glucose level as steady as possible, day after day after day, and you know, you can cheat, it's not like people don't cheat. We all like to eat a dessert every once in a while, or a cookie, but... It really makes you cognizant of what's happening internally.

• 25:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 26:22Jay Shetty?

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

• 26:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:40Jay Shetty?

  And it's not overly technical in a way that I can't wrap my head around it. So I love how practical you just made that, especially how we eat what's on our plate. Because I think so many of us spend so long trying to figure out like, oh, maybe I shouldn't eat that. And I shouldn't have that. It's actually the order can make all the difference. And now everyone who's listening or watching, make sure that you don't go and start with the bread or the chips.

• 27:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:03Jay Shetty?

  You know?

• 27:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Get the crudité instead.

• 27:05Jay Shetty?

  Exactly, exactly. That's why they serve it first. Well, now I guess they serve chips and guac first too. But what was the number three?

• 27:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So number three and number three and number four, it can be switched around based on your particular dietary pattern. But I would say number three is making sure you have adequate protein intake. And a lot of people, they diet and they not just cut back on the, you know, the carbs they eat, the fats they eat, but they also cut back on the amount of protein they eat. And you lose weight on the scale, but you're losing more muscle mass and you're losing fat. And that's a travesty because you need your muscle mass to support, not just support your bones and give you strength, but it's also one of the biggest organs in your body that's preventing you from going into diabetes, cancer and dementia. So preserving muscle mass is key.

• 27:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So I have all of my patients buy this really cool scale that I like. It's called the in-body H2N scale, H20N scale. And it's a scale that you step on, but you also grab under these handlebars and it tells you your skeletal muscle mass. Okay. So you can not just track your body fat percentage, but also your skeletal muscle mass. And obviously you want to maintain your skeletal muscle mass, especially the older you get. So the closer you get to 40 and 50, you need to have a big store of skeletal muscle mass because it's going to decline. We all start declining after the age of 50 and it takes a lot of protein, a lot of strength training to make up for that decline. And you want to maintain that skeletal muscle mass.

• 28:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Number one thing to do is have one gram per pound of body weight of protein per day, broken up into three to four divided dosages. Okay. So you do that. You step on the scale. I like weighing myself every day. It gives you that accountability factor and you can track the data and make sure you're maintaining skeletal muscle mass and if you need to, decreasing fat mass. Now, one gram per pound of body weight, like people don't really know, like how, what is that really? So look it up. Most people weigh, you know, somewhere around 150 pounds. Look up 150 grams of protein. Look that up on Google and you'll see all sorts of infographics and it's, it's a lot of protein. It's not a small amount of protein. And if you're vegetarian or vegan, you can still do this, but you're going to probably need a little

• 29:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  bit more because only about 80% of that is bioavailable protein. So you want to maybe even increase a little bit more. And once you see that infographic, once you see, or just even like buy a little scale and measure out 150 grams of protein, see what it is. You're like, oh, wow, I am really not getting enough protein day to day.

• 29:37Jay Shetty?

  I've been thinking about that a lot lately myself. I've been looking at that and Rady and I were talking about it. I was like, yeah, I'm not sure I'm getting as much protein as I need to be getting. And I'm obviously plant-based. So that was something that we were diving into. What are the best plant-based sources of protein that you're seeing? And that actually add up to that amount? Not, I know what the sources are, but it's almost like, how do you get that much of it?

• 29:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, you know what the sources are, like beans and grains and all, but also I myself and all my vegetarian and vegan friends, I recommend, you know, pea protein powder. It's really good. It goes down easily. Put in, put it, like you need to add it to like your oatmeal and other, other things that you're eating and you'll, you'll start building up, you know? And look, the idea is not to get from like, 10 grams of protein a day, all the way to 150 grams. You build up slowly over time and you see what kind of works for you. All of this needs to be individualized. And that's why I like having like that data point, which is the bioimpedance scale, that in-body scale. Cause you can see like, oh wow, my skeletal muscle mass is going up. I'm doing good now, like here's where I need to be, right?

• 30:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So you can really personalize it for yourself.

• 30:45Jay Shetty?

  Okay, fantastic. This is already helping me. I like listening to everything you're saying. This is, it's so relatable and so, so actionable immediately, which, which is fantastic. And I love the, and I keep, keep, please keep sharing like the tools or the, the gadgets that we can have or websites or books. Because I want all of our community to feel really supported and go, okay, that's what I haven't read yet. Or.

• 31:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I have no financial like hookup with any of these companies. I'll tell you if I do, but this is the stuff that I love. And I've seen my patients really take too as well. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna blurt them out and.

• 31:21Jay Shetty?

  I think it's fantastic.

• 31:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Do your research, you know, but.

• 31:25Jay Shetty?

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

• 31:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 32:07Jay Shetty?

  I don't, I mean, I have a lot of vegetables.

• 32:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 32:09Jay Shetty?

  But I have no idea, so you're gonna have to tell me.

• 32:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, and so a lot, a lot of people really know like what's the right amount. And really, the amount of vegetables you eat has a lot to do with the amount of fiber intake you need, which 90% of America doesn't get enough fiber, and fiber is a critical ingredient of our diet. Secondly, that's where most of our micronutrients and phytonutrients are, is in those vegetables. Thirdly, they just keep you full and satiated all the time as well. So getting enough vegetables in your diet is extremely important. The number that I've seen and a lot of fitness and nutrition gurus talk about is, it's a big number. It's like 800 grams of vegetables, which is about a quart of vegetables, right? So, once again, get your scale and measure this out and see what it is. It's not a small amount. It's

• 32:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  like two full salads a day, but that's kind of what we need to work up to. So, if you're doing that, the need for supplementation is minimal to none, actually. I'm not a big supplement pusher. I'd much rather people get it in your diet. The reality of the situation is, however, it's really hard to get that much protein and that much vegetable product into your diet, right? And of course, we can't talk about vegetables without talking about making sure you're buying organic, you know, you're buying as local as possible. And if you can't, go to ewg.org, Environmental Working Group's website, they'll give you a list of what are the most toxic vegetables and the least toxic out there right now. So, look

• 33:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  at that website, and they'll give you the list. So, if you're not getting enough vegetable intake into your diet, the next step is to add some supplementation to that. The most common supplements I recommend for people are vitamin D. We don't get enough sunlight to produce it. We're not getting enough in our diet. So, most people do need some vitamin D. It needs to be dialed in based on a blood test. So, you do a blood test. I like the vitamin D level to be around 50 to 80. And the vitamin D form that I like people to take is vitamin D3K2. The K2 is also another vitamin added in. It prevents overabsorption of calcium with the vitamin D and deposition of calcium in your blood vessels. So, vitamin

• 34:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  D3K2, then fish oil supplement as well. For the vegetarians and vegans out there, there's some great non- Fish sources of fish oil as well. So I would do that as well. Magnesium is something that we're all very deficient in. So I would do magnesium as well. And then creatine, believe it or not, it's amino acid. That has a lot of research behind it. Do you do creatine?

• 34:43Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes.

• 34:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, fantastic. Five to eight milligrams every morning. Just put a scoop in your coffee. It mixes in with anything. I think that's another really interesting, good one. And then I kind of then, you know, kind of do it based on what I ate the day before, right? So if I got a couple of good salads in, fine, I don't need to do anything else. If I didn't, I'll take a packet of AG1, which is like a phytonutrient powder, which I really like and/or a multivitamin. Sometimes as well, I'll do that too. And then protein powders are pretty much always a staple for me as well. That's the other supplement that I use.

• 35:16Jay Shetty?

  You're just putting that on to other stuff?

• 35:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, putting that on to other stuff, putting that into a shake, you know, shakes are very convenient. There's a really good protein powder I like called Supergut. It's actually a resistant starch and a protein powder and fiber all in one like bag. And so Supergut is a fantastic like rescue product. I have like if I've been on a plane for eight hours or something, you know, and I just come home and just take that and I get my nutrition in. And that's pretty much it. You know, there's other things you can do, like if you're having trouble sleeping, there's ashwagandha, there's glycine. If you're having trouble with stress, ashwagandha is another good one for that. But then I'm really selective about which ones to use.

• 35:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah. Great. Those are fantastic. That's a really good breakdown for anyone. I mean, I remember when I first started measuring that with Mona is like my vitamin D, which you would never have known if you met me or saw me was 10.

• 36:08Jay Shetty?

  And it was just like, I was living my life. Like I was on planes. I was giving keynotes. I was, I was healthy. I was energetic, whatever. And she was just like, I don't even know how you function. I was at a 10. It was like, it was, and I was unaware.

• 36:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How old were you when you did this?

• 36:22Jay Shetty?

  This is, oh, this is like a year and a half ago.

• 36:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 36:26Jay Shetty?

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

• 36:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You bring up an extremely good point. Couple of points I want to make here. One is you have to become the CEO of your own health. And what I mean by that is a CEO manages a business by looking at numbers on a daily basis, right? Most people manage their health based on a feeling that they have, symptoms that they have. They're not looking at numbers. So becoming the CEO of your own health means knowing what are the key KPIs of your health. There's only about 10 of them. Skeletal muscle mass being one of them, body fat percentage being another, vitamin D level being another. You gotta keep that dialed in, right? Because the other point I want to make with you is that when your vitamin D level is low, like at this age, and you don't take care of it

• 37:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  for 20 to 30 years, that's when the lack of vitamin D leads to the higher risk of Alzheimer's, leads to the higher risk of heart attack, leads to the higher risk of hormone problems. It all started 20 to 30 years before, when you barely felt it. You see what I mean? So looking at those numbers 20 to 30 years ahead of becoming sick is the key to becoming CEO of your own health, and then making all those diseases a non-issue, making all the things that people die of a non-issue.

• 38:02Jay Shetty?

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

• 38:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:13Jay Shetty?

  But actually, it isn't if you're looking at the numbers. And I think we just haven't been trained to look at our health in terms of numbers. Like, you'd measure your height growing up, or you'd measure your weight growing up. But those are such poor indicators of health in and of themselves, without looking at all of these other metrics that we're talking about here today, whether it's your glucose levels, whether it's your vitamin D levels, magnesium, et cetera. You mentioned so many other vitamins and supplements. I just don't think we're trained to know where to look and what to look at. And therefore, we're basing it on, I feel tired today. I feel, and I think, this is something I want to mention as well, that the mind and the body are so connected, but I think so often our physical challenges, we think are a mental challenge. So we think we're tired because

• 38:57Jay Shetty?

  we have, we're not focused enough, or we're not excited enough, or we're not motivated enough. We make the physical A mental issue, but it isn't. It's purely a physical. And I know that because I feel so purposeful and love what I do and I'm so joyful about it and I'm so excited about it. So if my body's not working to the degree I want it to, I'm very clear that you can have all the mental stuff down. But if you're not taking care of your body, it doesn't just. You can push it a bit further, but that's not going to get you up the hill. So.

• 39:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, you're absolutely right. This, when your brain starts feeling it, usually your body is in big trouble.

• 39:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's when you start feeling it. So, you know, I think your point about the numbers is so, it resonates with me because that's what happened to me when I became sick. I outsourced my numbers to my primary care doctor and my, you know, concierge medicine doctor. And they got my numbers back. They looked at them and you know, you get these, if you've ever seen your blood worksheet, like if something is out of range, it turns red. Otherwise it's all black. It's all like a bunch of numbers, right? And so because things were like barely in the red and not moving, they decided not to even talk to me about them, right? But in reality, things were changing for a long time and going in the wrong direction. And that's because Western medicine can't really do anything about that number until they can prescribe you a pill for it.

• 40:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that pill only comes when it's disease time. That's the problem. And I also think people get overwhelmed with the, with the numbers because, you know, most people you don't know what these numbers mean. So what I really try to do with my patients is give them like 10 numbers. These are the 10 numbers you need to watch and why. And I think that makes it a lot easier for them. So I give them a spreadsheet. I let them watch their own numbers. And I think it's important for them to watch their own numbers rather than outsource their health to their physician. Because they need to know what the optimal range is, not just the disease range, right? So let me just give you one more real quick on the glucose.

• 40:53Jay Shetty?

  Please. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a really important one. It's a hemoglobin A1C. And you probably heard of this before too. It's a measure of your last three months average of glucose. And you're pre-diabetic when this number is 5.7 and you're diabetic when it's 6.5 or above. My number was 5.7 and he just put me on a medication, but. Five years ago, I had measured this with my doctor and it had gone from 4.7 to 5.0 to 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.4 and no one said anything to me, you know? And I could have done something about it back then before I had to. Now it's an emergency, right? So I think that's another number people should watch nutrition wise is that hemoglobin A1C number.

• 41:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I guarantee you, if people call their doctors and ask for their latest blood work result, it's on there.

• 41:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or it should be. If it's not on there, you have a bigger problem, but it should be on there and you'll see kind of where you're at, you know?

• 41:49Jay Shetty?

  This is fantastic, Dr. Shaw. Thank you so much. All right. I want to dive into, let's do exercise next.

• 41:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 41:56Jay Shetty?

  You brought that up. I want to dive into it. And if I, if there's ever a time where you want to go back or share something, feel free. This is all about giving the most value to everyone who's listening and watching.

• 42:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 42:06Jay Shetty?

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

• 42:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I gotta play pickleball with you. I love pickleball.

• 42:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And it's just, it is like, I have played at this point today, I don't, I'm not playing today, I played the last five days in a row, every day. I probably played for an average of two hours a day on average. Some days were three, some days was one. And it is such an easy workout because you're just running around, you're sweating, you're having a good time with friends, you're outdoors. And I've, I've made it a priority in my life that all of my friendships this year, we're going to do something active together. So instead of getting together and sitting down and eating dinner, even though I love doing that, we're actually going to go on a hike instead or we're going to go on a walk. And if I don't feel like going on a hike or a walk, then at least we're just going

• 43:09Jay Shetty?

  to do something active, whether it be an escape room so that we're moving around or if it is that I have enough energy to play pickleball, we're doing that. The idea is how can every friendship be based on fitness that is also fun, rather than friendship which is based on us sitting on a couch, watching a movie together, which by the way, I still do as well, but that can't be the primary way to.

• 43:30Jay Shetty?

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• 44:13Jay Shetty?

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• 44:51Jay Shetty?

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• 45:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hang out. Such an incredibly good point. And I just spent the last weekend in Ojai with some of my friends. And literally, like, we would not sit down until we all hit 10,000 steps, you know, for the day. And pickleball was part of it, hiking was part of it. And, you know, the old adage is so true. You become the average of the eight people you surround yourself with, right? And so of the eight people you're friends with, like my community of friends. We work out together. That is our social activity and it's so much fun. We find different things to do. You know, we're lucky. We live in the hills and we can hike together. We can go to these really fun gyms together, but it makes exercise not exercise.

• 46:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think what happens and why people don't get enough exercise is because exercise is literally like going to the gym by yourself and it's not inspiring a lot of times when you go to the gym. If you don't, especially if you don't have a trainer, you know? And social exercise for me was the cure to not getting enough movement in my day. Absolutely.

• 46:35Jay Shetty?

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

• 47:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 47:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  you have an increase of 10% in your all cause mortality and it's like linear.

• 47:58Jay Shetty?

  Wait, say that again?

• 47:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, for every 10% of time that you spend sitting. Over a baseline, you have a 10% increase in all-cause mortality.

• 48:06Jay Shetty?

  That's crazy.

• 48:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's crazy how much sitting or just moving changes the entire equation. So, once you go from being sedentary to not sedentary, your rate of death from heart attacks, from Alzheimer's and dementia, from stroke, from anything, goes down exponentially. So, what I tell people is, no matter what, every 45 minutes, you can take an exercise snack. And this has been proven in research as well. Every 45 minutes, spend 10 minutes getting up and walking around a little bit. And if you do that, you've broken the cycle of sedentary behavior completely. So, what I do is I have my patients buy like a little egg timer, like a little metal, it looks like an egg.

• 48:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we just set it to 45, put it down, and when it rings, you get up, walk around. And guess what? That's the same amount of time needed to break the strain on your eyes, to break the stress cycle as well. So, it's a really good idea to take these exercise snacks when you're at home. I'm sorry, when you're at work, but then also when you're at home. People sit down and watch, you know, TV for two hours. So, it happens again. So, that's step one, is don't be sedentary. Even athletes, there's so many athletes that are sedentary during the day, like or during the evening, that they're affected by this as well. So, focus on that first, don't be sedentary. Then step two on exercise is now, what kind of activity can we put in to really start like moving the needle

• 49:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  with how exercise can improve your longevity and health span? So, do you want me to talk about that a little bit too?

• 49:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, before you dive into that, there's something that I'm really glad to hear that because one thing I've been recommending to a lot of my corporate clients is I don't know who invented 30-minute and 60-minute meetings. I just don't know where that came from. We just invent these things where they have to be that long. And I've started saying to so many of my clients who are living, like I don't live a meeting-to-meeting life anymore. So, I get a lot of movement. I'll stand up, I'll walk over there, I'll walk back, I'll walk next door, I'll jump in a car, we'll walk to the meeting. So, I thankfully have a lot of movement in my day. But when I used to work in the corporate world... World. I used to always tell everyone, have a fifty five minute meeting or have a twenty five minute meeting. That then gives you an extra five minutes to stand up, to walk, to get hydrated,

• 50:23Jay Shetty?

  to look out of a window or maybe get some fresh air. And then to look out into the distance so that you're not constantly short sighted. I feel today we're constantly looking at our phone, at our laptop, at an iPad, and we're becoming more and more short sighted. And that's why it kind of feels like our mind can feel a bit crowded and clouded. And to me, just going outside and looking out into the distance, maybe spotting a bird, a cloud, a distant building. It just opens up the mind a little bit. And I feel like just shifting it from having five minutes off every hour, which isn't going to negatively impact a meeting. You're not going to achieve anything more in that extra five minutes. And same with if you took fifteen minutes off a meeting, maybe if meetings shifted to being forty five, not an hour.

• 51:05Jay Shetty?

  I think you'd achieve so much more in the meeting too, because now you have less time. And so I just think there's so much there and I just want to give people more value on that, that it's so easy and practical to implement some of this. And a lot of it's just breaking these old rules that have just lasted for far too long.

• 51:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so true. And you must have talked to Google about this because on Google Calendar, you can program twenty five minute meetings. Do you know that?

• 51:28Jay Shetty?

  I didn't know that.

• 51:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, or fifty five minute meetings. So every meeting is automatically like cut short by five or ten minutes.

• 51:34Jay Shetty?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 51:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And then what I tell people to do too is switch from a regular Zoom account to the free Zoom account because it kicks you off in forty minutes.

• 51:42Jay Shetty?

  That's smart.

• 51:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's like, sorry, guys, I gotta go. I'm running out of time here.

• 51:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, you might look cheap, but it will save you health.

• 51:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. But on that, one more double click on that point too, is that if you do have a life where you have to spend a lot of time at your desk, on the computer, on meetings, really consider getting a treadmill desk or a walking desk. That's been a game changer for me too. Like, I'll, I'll get twenty five, thirty thousand steps in after three hours of meetings, you know, it's pretty, pretty incredible amount of steps.

• 52:10Jay Shetty?

  Wow, that's amazing. All right, sorry. So go to number two on the exercise.

• 52:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 52:53Jay Shetty?

  Sports, I guess.

• 52:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sports, right, exactly, where you're working really hard. You don't have to do a lot of that every week, but you do need to get some of that in every, every week. And then I really like what Peter Attia says about zone two aerobic exercise. Like getting thirty to forty-five minutes a day into start every other day or so. I think that's important, but look, it's so hard for people to fit all this into their life, right? So you gotta make it as easy as possible. So there's like these seven-minute HIIT routine apps that you can do, which are fantastic. Getting a set of barbells and putting them in your closet or your bedroom. So every time you go there, you do fifteen, twenty, like, you know, Arnold presses or something. Even that, as long as it's consistent and done on a daily basis for busy people, is gonna be extremely helpful.

• 53:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think a lot of people think like, it's either go to the gym for an hour, three to four days a week, or just give up completely.

• 53:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And nothing can be farther from the truth, right?

• 53:47Jay Shetty?

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

• 54:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 54:04Jay Shetty?

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

• 54:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, you know, it's, there's a lot of science around habit building and routine building. Atomic Habits is a great book that I read. There's a couple others that I really like. And it's this kind of like this reward and cycle that you reward yourself over. You have to consistently reward yourself on a daily basis for doing the right things. And then not punish yourself for doing the wrong things. And so I think there's a lot of psychology around that. It's, it's honestly, it's really hard. I, I mean, we find it hard for ourselves too, right? But I really believe in having a positive attitude about it. I think if you come at it with positivity and say, you know what? It's fine. I messed up, but I'm gonna do it. And you're just positive about it.

• 55:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That in itself is a psychological barrier broken into starting today as a first day of your life to start building new habits again.

• 55:27Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. It's a, I think, I can't remember who said it, but I've heard The Rock say it plenty of times. He's like, it's either one day or day one.

• 55:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 55:36Jay Shetty?

  And he'll always quote that, right? It's a mindset, like it's either one day, we'll get to it one day, I'll do it one day. Or it's like, no, today's day one. This is the day that I'm gonna solve it and start it. And I think that's that positive mindset you're speaking.

• 55:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 55:50Jay Shetty?

  Was there a point through an exercise that you wanted to make? I'm sure there's a point seven, but was there another one you wanted to kind of?

• 55:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We should probably stop there on exercises. There's absolutely more you can do. As you get older, you know, your audience spans all ages and everyone. As you get older, you really want to look at stability and balance. So I try to do stability and balance exercises on a daily basis as well. Things like standing on one foot, believe it or not. Yeah, just things like that. As we get older, we lose that. And if you're not training it, especially after the age of 50, you're gonna keep losing it. And then the number one killer of older people is becoming frail, falling because they lose their balance and breaking a hip or a bone. That's what usually takes out most older people. And so you can avoid that by incorporating some stability, balance routines in your life.

• 56:39Jay Shetty?

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

• 57:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And like what I do with my patients is like, we're having this conversation about everything, but I'll only give them one thing to do, right? And like, we'll change two or three things and then you come back and we'll do the next thing and then the next thing. So. Let's not worry about how much protein you have in your diet until. You clean out your pantry and get rid of all the crap in your pantry, right? Let's do that first and then let's talk again next week. And so we take it in a stepwise approach, but. If whoever's listening to this, you know, if you're taking notes, don't try to implement all of it at the same time. You're going to overwhelm and quit.

• 57:37Jay Shetty?

  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Let's talk about sleep.

• 57:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 57:41Jay Shetty?

  So I've generally been a good sleeper my whole life and very grateful for that.

• 57:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How do you know?

• 57:47Jay Shetty?

  By measuring, as in, I was gonna say, yeah, by measuring, not by how I feel. By measuring, I wanted to talk about an experience that I had that was bad, which was surprising for me. So I was wearing the Oura ring for a long time, measuring my sleep and I was scoring really well. And then during the pandemic, we moved home and we were renting a place that was. Really disruptive at night. We'd get real animals in the floorboards, in the walls. There was lots of noises outside. I often, because of where we were and there were certain things about it that. I was worried that what if someone broke in and you know, there were these other anxieties that I had around it.

• 58:29Jay Shetty?

  And it was the first time in my life that I think I consecutively had. One and a half years of bad sleep during the pandemic. And it was really interesting because I was doing my supplements, I was eating right, I've always meditated, I was doing everything and just this one undercurrent meant I was fatigued, I was exhausted, I was irritable, like it was so, it was so intense because I just wasn't sleeping deeply. And I'd often wake up multiple times per night and that wasn't normal for me. And I also was running the Oura ring at that time and it was, my sleep score was just not great. And that was actually what forced me to move to this place and, and get this home because I was just like, I was, I was telling Rady, I was like, I need to leave, like it was that bad.

• 59:13Jay Shetty?

  And so I know what it feels like to have good sleep and bad sleep. And I think that sleep is one of those areas of our health that we underestimate in terms of how great it can be. But I think so many of us struggle with sleep, whether it be anxiety, whether it be insomnia, whether it be stress. And so I want to start off by talking about tracking your sleep and improving the environment that we sleep in, at least as a starting point. But I do want to get to two and three with you today on your list because I do think there are people who are trying to do all that stuff, but there's still something not clicking. And I'm sure you've experienced this a million times with clients. So let's start at step one and then see where we go from there.

• 59:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. So I agree with you, like, tracking is a game changer. But I can also tell you that I've had a lot of patients that get super anxious tracking and they live and die by those numbers, right? So if you're one of those people that the over-tracking of sleep kind of changes your day and changes your perspective on your day, only use tracking for a very specified amount of time. Use it for when you are very mindfully changing your sleep habits and your routines. And then stop worrying it once you got your sleep score up to a score that you like, right? I personally, I, I like tracking my sleep all the time. I'm just a real data guy, so I like to see it. But when I go on vacation now, I don't wear my Oura ring because I know that the sleep's not going to be as good sometimes, right?

• 1:00:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, so you know, I use it, I use it for when I'm being mindful about trying to get better sleep. Or if something's changed, like I noticed, um, I had COVID, um, and right after COVID, I had long COVID and my heart rate was racing for months.

• 1:00:52Jay Shetty?

  I'm sorry to hear that.

• 1:00:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it was horrible. And, um, um, it really affected my sleep, but my Oura ring told me that this is what's happening. This is why you're not sleeping while your heart rate is, is racing. So. I think the benefit of sleep tracking is really understanding it's not just the number of hours you're sleeping, it's really the sleep pattern and educating yourself on that sleep pattern. Aura does a good job, Whoop does a good job, the Eight Sleep Batteries has a phenomenal tracker.

• 1:01:17Jay Shetty?

  Eight Sleep's great.

• 1:01:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's great, I love it, yeah. And, you know, understanding how much deep sleep you need, where that deep sleep needs to be in your sleep night, and understanding things like heart rate variability and average heart rate at night is a game changer, right? While you're modifying your sleep environment and your routine. So, once we get that in place, then the second thing we do is we absolutely make sure the person doesn't have sleep apnea, alright? So, for those of you who don't know what sleep apnea is, that's when you stop breathing at night, your body physically stops taking in oxygen, you don't have oxygen in your body for a few seconds at a time, but all night long. That affects your brain, your heart, virtually every organ in your body. So many people have sleep apnea

• 1:02:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and don't recognize it, and it's really sad because it's causing, basically, I tell them it's causing a slow death, believe it or not. If you have sleep apnea, you have to get it treated right away. There's lots of different ways of treating it, there's dental appliances, there's, you know, that CPAP mask you can wear, there's surgery, but you gotta figure it out, because no matter what you do, it's not gonna go away.

• 1:02:23Jay Shetty?

  What are some of the symptoms that people could notice?

• 1:02:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. So the symptoms of sleep apnea are, number one, you wake up gasping for air in the middle of the night, or your significant other you're sleeping with tells you that. Secondly, you wake up really tired every morning, and you have daytime somnolence, where you're just kind of falling asleep a few hours after you've woken up. Even snoring very loudly can indicate sleep apnea as well, so if, you know, your spouse, whoever tells you're snoring really a lot. And then, there's a questionnaire you can take online, it's a very simple questionnaire called a Stop-Bang questionnaire, S-T-O-P-B-A-N-G, just Google that, and you take the questionnaire, it'll give you a score, and it'll tell you if you need to be evaluated for sleep apnea. So being evaluated for sleep apnea now is much easier.

• 1:03:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  People used to dread going to a sleep lab and getting all the wires put on them. Now you just wear like a little device on your finger overnight at home. And we can get a good idea if you have sleep apnea or not.

• 1:03:16Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:03:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the sleep doctors are very good at treating this now as well.

• 1:03:19Jay Shetty?

  Wow. And you're saying there's different types of therapy or there's different types of

• 1:03:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Treatments for sleep apnea.

• 1:03:26Jay Shetty?

  Treatments, sorry, treatments, right, yeah.

• 1:03:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, there's, there's stuff you can get from your dentist, like a little dental appliance that pulls your jaw forward. There's a CPAP mask. There's also surgeries that you can do as well. Losing weight, special pillows, propping your butt. There's lots of things you can do.

• 1:03:40Jay Shetty?

  Wow. Okay. Yeah, I can't, I can't believe that. It's, it's so fascinating, right? Again, because these things haven't been measured since we were young. And because we don't know what to look out for, you could be sitting there for months or years going, why do I wake up feeling like this? Maybe I'm anxious, maybe I'm stressed. And that could be a part of it, but there's something else going on as well.

• 1:03:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I can tell you how many people that I simply asked a few questions, I just asked you. And they're like, yeah, I have that. Yeah, I have that. And it's like a revelation. And they're 55 years old and they have sleep apnea. They've had it for 25 years. So it's really sad how under diagnosed it is and how incredibly treatable it is. And that could change the trajectory of your life, you know, because once you treat sleep apnea, your metabolism actually gets under control. And you start losing weight. You start having less glucose spikes. You start eating better. You, you feel less brain fog and then you also prevent, sleep apnea is one of the main risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. So you prevent Alzheimer's too. So once again, is knowing early and treating things early.

• 1:04:42Jay Shetty?

  What if someone's, they're, they're okay just about getting to sleep, but that they wake up multiple times when they're sleeping? What have you found to be useful for someone in that scenario? Have you treated, worked with anyone who has that?

• 1:04:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:04:56Jay Shetty?

  I've just met so many more people these days that are not telling me they can't sleep. They're saying, I can sleep, but then I'm waking up and then waking up. And these aren't people with kids or anything. So this is like a You know, it's just how they're feeling.

• 1:05:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Three main reasons for it, I normally see. One is nocturia, where they have to get up in the morning to go to the bathroom. And so there's medications and exercises you can do to treat that. The second reason is going to bed with anxiety and stresses on your mind. So what I tell people to do is number one, no electronics and maybe even no TV before going to bed. Cause that can keep you thinking, but keep a notebook by the side of your bed. If you're one of these busy people that just have so many things going through your head, write them all down. And then you'll at least, you know, download that onto a piece of paper and hopefully get it out of your head. But the third thing that I find that really does this too, is eating or drinking a little bit too close to your sleep.

• 1:05:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You have this kind of glucose surge that happens after you get to bed and it just wakes you up too. So really making sure there's three to four hours between your last meal and going, going to bed is key.

• 1:06:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And I'm so glad you brought up the devices and conversation because I was talking to a lot of people. When, when people have been saying to me, Jay, I'm experiencing anxiety. One question that I often ask people is what did you watch last night? And there are some people in the world who can watch the craziest, scariest, eeriest things and not feel anything. And there are people who watch those things and it puts these cliffhanger chemicals, as I like to call them, into your body, which constantly puts you on that cliffhanger, which keeps you up, that makes you wake up with this state of fright. I was just at, we went to watch Oppenheimer a couple of weeks ago and we were watching the trailers. And the Exorcist trailer came out. There's another Exorcist movie.

• 1:06:41Jay Shetty?

  And Radhi just sat there like this, if you're not, if you're watching, sorry, if you're listening, then I'm closing my eyes and my ears. And Radhi literally sat there like that and she was like, just tell me when it's done. Cause she doesn't want to watch it and that, that trailer was far too long for a trailer. I felt like it told me the whole movie was on those trailers. Yeah. So for Radhi, she knows that she's aware of that. And so she won't watch and consume content like that. I can watch it and laugh it off and be fine and it won't affect me unless I'm watching it every day. And I think it's so important that we, we check ourselves that way because you're just making it harder for yourself in a way you don't need to.

• 1:07:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. I'm one of those people, I can't watch horror movies anymore. It just affects me way too much. It just sticks in my head. I actually become a scaredy cat at night and I can't sleep. So I just don't even entertain the thought of watching, like even a trailer, I'd probably close my eyes on that trailer.

• 1:07:30Jay Shetty?

  That trailer was haunted. That was like, do not watch the new X's trailer if you wanna sleep at night. That was like, it stayed with me for a while, but uh. No, that's great. Anything else on sleep that you feel as, as that one, two, three is we're going?

• 1:07:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so number one is sleep apnea. Make sure you don't have it. As you're tracking your sleep, two and three are fix your sleep environment and fix your sleep routine. So your sleep environment needs to be like how our ancestors slept when they were cavemen, a cold, dark cave, right? So turn the temperature down in your room. What's even better than turning it down in your room is buying like an eight sleep or something that keeps your bed cool itself, but it should be somewhere around sixty five degrees. Dark, like totally dark, like even the little red lights and alarm clock, cover them with black electrical tape and put them in a different room. And then quiet, and most people can't get it fully quiet, or some people like the quiet even becomes like, it becomes noise to them.

• 1:08:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So a sound machine, like a white noise machine, is very, very effective in improving your sleep. And what's really cool about doing these things is you can do like one thing and see how it affects your sleep score. And then a week later, buy a white noise machine and see what happens to your sleep score. Like you might not feel it physically the next day, but your tracker will tell you, like you went up from eighty five to ninety five just by buying a white noise machine. And I've seen it happen over and over again. And so your sleep routine, what I like to tell people is your sleep routine actually starts the moment you wake up. And there's probably like only three percent of people that the moment they wake up, they actually go outside to expose themselves to sun, right?

• 1:09:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most people just, they go from being inside to going in their garage, getting in their car, going to work, parking in the garage, right? Like no one goes outside anymore in the morning. I make it a point to take me and my kids outside first thing in the morning, expose yourself to sunlight. That sets your circadian rhythm, your melatonin is gonna start secreting like it's fourteen hours afterwards. That's key. Sleep routine starts first thing in the morning. And then you know how the iPhone now has like a sleep alarm, right? So like it's not an alarm clock to wake you up, it's when you need to start preparing for sleep. So when that alarm goes off, two hours before sleep, all the lights turn off as much as possible, switch on some, you know, soft orange colored bulbs instead and just start winding down your brain. You know, a big part of that is avoiding electronic devices.

• 1:09:50Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Yeah, great advice. No, great, great advice. And all things that I've been practicing, I used to, I used to worry about sleeping at sixty five degrees because I think it would feel cold. And what I always remind people is you still have your duvet, you still have your blanket over you. Like, you don't, you don't have to be cold. You can still wear pajamas, right? Like, it's just cooler in the room. And that's been done wonders for my sleep, even for sleeping in longer and, and being more comfortable. The cave-like darkness has always been a, a big win for me and, and huge. And I think that the, we've always tried to have very early dinners and that's been such a huge thing of like, we try and eat dinner at like six, six thirty P M, just so that when you're

• 1:10:33Jay Shetty?

  in bed at nine thirty, that it's, you know, easier to go to sleep. But

• 1:10:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:10:37Jay Shetty?

  All the things we've had to work on over time and adjust and figure out. And it's not always perfect. And, you know, it's, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. The best habits are the ones we hardly notice, the ones that quietly shape the way we move through life, giving us the confidence to focus on what really matters. That's Mazda's approach to safety. Every Mazda is designed with proactive safety features that help keep you more aware, more connected and more engaged with your drive. So you can stay present behind the wheel. That commitment has earned Mazda recognition as Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. And as of July twenty twenty six, Mazda has won more twenty twenty six I I H S top safety pick

• 1:11:17Jay Shetty?

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• 1:12:02Jay Shetty?

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• 1:12:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And part of like the eating dinner earlier thing too is our caveman ancestor didn't eat after it became dark, right? And so it's really food is another item that sets your circadian clock almost as much as light does as well. So that's, that's a key factor, eating earlier. But yeah, it's all little things and one at a time and you know, you're not going to change everything overnight. It might take a year, but it benefits you for the next 50.

• 1:13:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I want to dive into, so there's a few areas left and I want to take bits and pieces of all of them. I don't want to do all of them, but I want to dive into gut health just because it's so, I didn't realise for years I was having gut issues because I just didn't know what that even meant. I didn't know how to know. I think today now people are much more informed. I'm talking about like 10, 13, 15 years ago, when I didn't feel it was in the zeitgeist or the conversation as much. How can someone be conscious and aware, if they're not already, that they may have leaky gut, that they may have gut issues that they're not fully conscious or aware of, or they're being negligent? I was one of those people who, even if there was some discomfort, I would just write it

• 1:13:45Jay Shetty?

  off because you're young and you're fit and you're healthy and you don't care about it too much. What should people be looking out for?

• 1:13:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's a really good point. And once again, you know, by the time you become symptomatic from some of this stuff, A lot of damage has already been done for a long period of time, right? And so what I look at here is another one of those biomarkers, one of those CEO of your own health type of things, which is a biomarker called HSCRP, highly sensitive C reactive protein. This is a marker of inflammation. It's a very simple test that every doctor lab can do. We've been doing it for like 50, 60 years in medicine, but it's a marker of inflammation. You want this number as close to zero as possible, but a lot of times it'll go up to one, two, three, or four. And usually that comes from some sort of situation going on in your gut.

• 1:14:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So your gut is the biggest organ in your body protecting you from the outside environment. Most people think it's your skin, but your gut actually has four or five times the surface area of your skin does. And so when that barrier to the outside environment is disrupted, toxins from the outside environment filter into your bloodstream, causing inflammation. Inflammation is when your immune system is overactive and you not only destroy the toxins, but you start destroying your normal brain, heart, muscle, bone cells, all of it. So you need to know when you have inflammation going on in your body. The first way to tell is by this blood test. And then probably after that blood test has been elevated for months and years is you finally start feeling it in your gut.

• 1:15:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So if you get this measured and you have this a little bit too high, then you start looking at your gut as a primary source. Secondary source would be your oral health, believe it or not, like

• 1:15:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I talked about that. That was, yeah, go for it.

• 1:15:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, there's a huge association between poor oral health, dementia and heart attacks as well. And that's because a lot of inflammation takes place in your mouth. If you have cavities, if you have gingivitis, et cetera. So, you know, if your inflammation levels are high, you need to go see the dentist, make sure your oral health is okay, but then you need to start treating your gut. Here's where a functional medicine doctor can be extremely helpful because they can really sort through like what is going on with your gut? Do you have leaky gut? Why do you have leaky gut? You know, 10% of the population has gluten sensitivities, 7% is dairy sensitive, or probably even more. These are just, you know, these are just estimates.

• 1:16:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And once you start eliminating those inflammatory foods, the toxins in your food from your diet, your gut starts to heal and we can put you on a gut healing protocol. Reduces inflammation and inflammation is the root cause of all the major diseases. Once you treat inflammation, your chance of getting all the other diseases are much less. Right. So you've got to focus on your gut. And so this is where, you know, I tell my patients like, look, it's not just about sleep, exercise and diet. Now we need to start talking about gut health. Like, that's another thing we need to talk about. And so HSCR P is the biomarker for that, measure that. And then, of course, if you're having symptoms, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, definitely need to go get that checked out.

• 1:16:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it can be so easy to just kind of feel embarrassed about it or be negligent of it or to just kind of brush it off to the side, but.

• 1:17:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I can't tell you the number of like, men and women that I see that are like, don't want to talk about it because they're just like, doctor, you know, like I have a lot of gas.

• 1:17:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're so embarrassed about it, but it's like, let's double click on that. We need to figure that out, right?

• 1:17:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. And it's just, and it's just, it's almost like, it's weird what we've been taught to like be ashamed of in society when these are like really normal, natural things that we all need to be massively aware of. It's interesting how the most important things in society become the most taboo to talk about. You know, we're talking about health right now. Money's another one in a different way or like even like relationship challenges or things that are vulnerable have become this thing of like, don't talk about it. It's, it's weird.

• 1:17:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's sad, right?

• 1:17:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's really sad. Yeah, it's really sad like so.

• 1:17:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 1:17:54Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:18:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:18:01Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:18:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:21Jay Shetty?

  And so it has to start there. So this, I wanna focus on this one because it's so interesting. So you obviously talk about heart health as one part of your wellness wheel. And it fascinates me because even when I've seen it on your wellness wheel a million times when I've been in, and when we know how important the heart is, we rarely talk about heart health. And if we do, we kind of do it in a soft way. We don't really talk about it from a scientific point of view. And you talk about how important it is to know our levels at 25 years old. Is it APOB?

• 1:18:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, APOB, right.

• 1:19:00Jay Shetty?

  So walk us through that and understanding what that is, what it means, and how do we know?

• 1:19:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. So I think everyone's heard about like watching your cholesterol levels, right? Okay, so right now, what happens is you get your cholesterol levels measured sometimes in your 30s if you're lucky. Usually, doctor will wait till you're 40. And unless it's like over a really high number, no one's really gonna do anything about it. And then people will start talking to you about your diet and managing your exercise, you know? Exercise more, eat better, eat less fat, eat less cholesterol. Then you just kind of let it go until all of a sudden it's an emergency for you to get on a statin. And I think it's kind of 10, 15, 20 years too late at that point in time, right? The damage has already been done.

• 1:19:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you do cardiac testing, you'll see that there's already blockages in blood vessels at that point in time. And most of the time, these are not diagnosed until people have their first heart attack. No one even looks at the blood vessels until you've had a heart attack. And it's really sad the way this whole thing goes. And it's especially sad because heart attacks and strokes can become like an orphan disease, like a disease that never affects us if we just do it right. And this is where I think medicine has made like a tremendous, incredible amount of knowledge has been gained. And this is where I try to really encourage my patients to really partner with their medical doctors and really get this treated. So when I say know your APOB level, I love APOB.

• 1:20:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a new, new type of cholesterol measurement. Kind of lumps together all the bad forms of cholesterol, which I even hate saying bad cholesterol, but it lumps that together, the dangerous forms. And knowing what your APOB level is when you're 20, 25, that's Kind of the baseline where you want it to be, right? So as this starts creeping up, you want to start doing things about it with your exercise, diet, sleep, gut health, all of that matters. But then when it gets to a certain level that's a little bit too high, that's when you want to start doing cardiac testing and diagnosis. So there's really great tests that can be done now. CAT scans of your heart that can tell you 20, 30 years ahead of time, before you have a heart attack, if you have a blockage.

• 1:21:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And we have great therapeutics now to turn back the time on these blockages, to get rid of these blockages, to prevent you from having a heart attack. I can't tell you the number of patients that we've had in our clinics that we've done this scan on preventatively. And how many of them had to go straight to the emergency room to get a blood vessel opened up, you know? Double clicking on this, just because I think it's really important for your audience to know, APoB and there's another one. Everyone needs to get measured when they're young is LP little a, or even younger old. If you've never had it done, got to measure LP little a. LP little a is a genetic form of cholesterol that can't be treated with diet, nutrition and exercise or cholesterol lowering medication, traditional ones.

• 1:21:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And if you're one of the, you know, few percentage of people that have it, you'll still get massive blockages in your arteries at a very young age. So most people don't check that until it's too late as well. And we can treat that now as well. So LP little a and APoB, two tests everyone needs to ask their doctor about.

• 1:22:10Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:22:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. And I think, you know, there's different types of people. Some people like you, like you want to know and you want to know as soon as possible because you want to make sure you get it treated or take care of it before it becomes a big problem. And so those are the type of people I think will take this information and really run with it. Then there's another type of people that will take this information, bring their notes to their doctor. Some of their doctors will say, okay, let's check it. Some will be like, no, you don't need to do that. And they'll be like, okay, I'll just leave it, which, you know, it's fine, but I really encourage people to become the CEO of their own health, become more aggressive and proactive and learning and tracking these things and pushing your doctor on some of this stuff. And then you have a group of people that just like, they want their head in their sand, like, I don't want to know until it's a problem.

• 1:23:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Tell me then, which there's not much you can do about that, except, you know, take care of them.

• 1:23:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We've talked about brain health before on the show, but I wanted to talk about cancer.

• 1:23:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:24:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So cancer diagnostics, literally in the last five years, has become incredibly revolutionized. And there's two tests that have done this. Um, one is a test called the full body MRI, like the Pranuvo's scan.

• 1:24:39Jay Shetty?

  Which is what we did when I think.

• 1:24:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 1:25:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  while you figure out what those things are, you'll know a lot more about your body. In enough time to take care of an issue. So that's one technology. The second technology, which is truly revolutionary, is the liquid biopsy. This is the grill, the gallery grill test. And this is a blood test that you can do. And you just send in a vial of blood. They check it for little fragments of DNA from active tumors in your body. Okay. And so it can diagnose 50 of the most hard to diagnose tumors at very early stages. And right now, unfortunately, this test is expensive and not covered by insurance. My feeling is as the technology evolves, it'll become cheaper and cheaper, of course.

• 1:26:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it'll become the new standard in medicine is to check everyone for this once a year. Because the reason cancer is so hard to treat is because of being diagnosed at stage three or four, when it's sometimes metastatic, right? And then it's almost, it's, you have to go chemo, radiation, surgery. It's so hard, but once you diagnose it at stage one, it's like, it's not even had a chance to get there, right? So this blood test, if you can afford it right now, you know, once a year, I would start doing it for, if you can't, it's gonna get cheaper. Keep your eye out on it. I think it'll get cheaper really quickly as a lot of technology is becoming right now. It's gonna revolutionize the way we diagnose cancer. And then everyone, in addition to those, you can't just do those. Each of those detects its own things, right?

• 1:26:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You gotta get your colonoscopy, do it early, especially if you have a family history of colon cancer.

• 1:26:59Jay Shetty?

  We had that done too.

• 1:27:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, exactly. Yeah, very important.

• 1:27:03Jay Shetty?

  I was scared for like a week. It was like, yeah.

• 1:27:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it is scary, but the nice emac colonoscopy is not just diagnosing cancer. Like if you go in there and you see it pre-cancer, you can remove it immediately. So it's like treatment as well, right? And then for men, get the PSA test, which is a blood test for your prostate. For women, make sure you get your mammograms and make sure you get your OB-GYN exams. That's kind of like the array of preventative diagnostics you want to do now in the 21st century to, you know, basically diagnose cancer before it, before it kills you, you know, as soon as possible.

• 1:27:37Jay Shetty?

  And how, how do we cancer proof our body?

• 1:27:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Cancer proofing is done by doing all of the other things that we talked about today. Getting seven, eight hours of sleep, making sure that your nutrition is, comes mostly from whole foods, not processed foods and exercising and not being sedentary. The other thing is eliminating toxins from your day to day life. And so we can talk about that a little bit, if you like, how to eliminate toxins. So the Pareto principle on that is realize where do you spend the most time, right? You spend the most time probably at work and sleep in your bed at night. That environment, the air in that environment, you want that to be as clean as possible. So you want to detoxify your air, your water, your food and chemicals on your skin.

• 1:28:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So air, buy an air purifier for each one of those environments if the air is not perfectly clean. For your water, I recommend getting an under sink reverse osmosis system in your kitchen where you get most of your drinking water, drink it out of glass bottles for the most part. And for your food, organic, or go to that website called ewg.org. And finally, for the cosmetics that you use and the stuff you put on your body, there's a great app called Think Dirty and you can put any product in there, scan the barcode, it'll tell you the level of toxin and recommend to you the most non-toxic products. You do that, you've covered 80% of the landscape, like you're, you're living in a mostly non-toxic environment. I'm sure there's people that have other things that they do, but that to me are the keys.

• 1:29:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, my wife is my Think Dirty app. Like she can figure out, she's like, she's checked every product. She got us to switch to glass bottled water. She put the reverse osmosis system in, like she's just so on top of all this stuff. And I'm like, if I didn't have her in my life, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. And it's incredible how. And also, you know, when someone recommends these things, when my wife first came up with this reverse osmosis water thing, I was like, come on, like, do we really need it? Like, you know, and, and it's interesting how we have such random resistance to a lot of these things. We kind of overthink it, or we, we underthink it, where we just go, oh, well, that can't be that such a big deal. Like, I think the whole bottled water thing is now blown up. When my wife was talking to me about it like four, five years ago,

• 1:29:50Jay Shetty?

  and at the time, it was like, I could have been a bit like, oh, no, it doesn't matter. It's just a plastic water bottle. And now you see the research, right? And so I think it's so interesting how like, if you have someone in your life, your friends, your family who are recommending things to you, be open minded about it. You have no idea when it's finally going to be proven. And I'm hoping that anyone who's listened to this episode, please, please, please share this episode with friends and family members, because I think what Dr. Shah's done beautifully today is he's laid out step one, step two, and step three. And so whether you're someone who's just getting started in your journey, or whether you're someone who's trying to refine it and improve it and enhance it in a deep way, you know, you've kind of given the pathway for all of those.

• 1:30:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, thank you. And, you know, you're right. It's so easy to be skeptical, right? It's hard to be not skeptical and open minded and do your research and really dive in. But, I mean, you do such a good job of, you know, trying to get people to break through that barrier of skepticism and opening their mind to new possibilities, that I think if people were to like, just kind of, even if they pick up one thing and research it on their own, that you're going to make a positive change, right?

• 1:30:54Jay Shetty?

  I agree. Dr. Shah, you've been incredible today. I mean, you've given us such a wealth of insight. And like I said at the beginning, I want this to be the episode that you come back to, to go, if I'm looking at my gut health, what do I need to focus on? If I'm looking at my nutrients, what do I need to focus on? Please, please, please take a screenshot of this episode right now. I want you to make sure that you tag Dr. Shah and I on social media, so that he can see what resonated with you, so that I can see, what's that one thing you're trying? What's that thing that is now your day one, not your one day? What is the thing that you're putting into practice that is going to shift how you feel? That is going to shift how you live your life? What is the thing that you've been avoiding measuring, that you're going to measure from now on, to make sure that you can start taking

• 1:31:37Jay Shetty?

  the proactive steps in avoiding some of these challenges that you can? Dr. Shah, I want to ask you the final five, of course, which we do with every guest, but I want to make sure that I ask, where should people find you? Where should people follow you? Where can people connect with your work to continue to be educated?

• 1:31:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 1:32:05Jay Shetty?

  Fantastic.

• 1:32:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So @darshanshaMD, if you go there, like it's all kind of in order. We're going to start with nutrition, then move on to sleep and move on to exercise, et cetera. And over the course of the year, we'll have all the content on there, but in a sequential fashion.

• 1:32:20Jay Shetty?

  That's fantastic. So DarshanshaMD on Instagram.

• 1:32:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:32:23Jay Shetty?

  Is the place to go and follow. We're hoping you can upload it to TikTok as well. So.

• 1:32:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:32:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, we need DarshanshaMD on TikTok too. I love it. Both of them would be amazing. Dr. Shah, these are your final five. We ask these to every guest. Sometimes a different mocktail of all of them, but we need one word to one sentence maximum for each question. So question number one, what is the best health advice you've ever received?

• 1:32:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Get up and start moving.

• 1:32:49Jay Shetty?

  Nice. All right. Question number two, what is the worst health advice you've ever received?

• 1:32:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let your doctor watch your blood markers.

• 1:32:58Jay Shetty?

  Right. Wow. All right. Question number three, what is something you used to be skeptical about in terms of health and wellness techniques, but now you swear by?

• 1:33:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this whole field of eliminating toxins from your day to day environment. I used to think it didn't matter, but it matters so much.

• 1:33:15Jay Shetty?

  Again, yeah, you think, oh, air purifier, like it's just, yeah.

• 1:33:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What are they trying to sell me? But it does make a huge difference.

• 1:33:21Jay Shetty?

  Right. Question number four, what is something that you used to swear by for your health? And now you actually think, ah, no, I don't need to focus on that anymore.

• 1:33:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Intermittent fasting. I know a lot of people will get upset at that answer, but I think there's a lot of science to the contrary now.

• 1:33:38Jay Shetty?

  Let's, yeah, let's dive into that. Let's segue into that for a second.

• 1:33:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So intermittent fasting is great for people that need to start eating less calories on a day to day basis. It's a good way to manage your caloric intake. But like I said earlier, a lot of people end up taking less protein. And so they lose skeletal muscle mass and that's what happened to me. I was intermittent fasting. I started my skeletal muscle mass on my scales started like plummeting. And I was like, what is happening? And it's all because intermittent fasting. So I stopped it. So it's really more about what molecules you're putting into your body, I think, rather than the timing of it. And I think, you know, you really want to be careful if you are intermittent fasting, that you're still getting your protein intake. And you are also now in the category of people that are either pregnant or breastfeeding or, you know, an athlete.

• 1:34:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think I've seen a lot of athletes actually cause a lot of damage to their metabolism by intermittent fasting.

• 1:34:32Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:35:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep. And that's the key. You have to go by how you feel and, and I think you said another key where you don't have to snack during the day. Like you're obviously eating whole foods and you're eating an adequate quantity where you're not having a snack. So that's another key as well.

• 1:35:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. All right. Fifth and final question, Dr. Sarr, which is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

• 1:35:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

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

• 1:35:48Jay Shetty?

  It's a great answer. Everyone, that's Dr. Shah on On Purpose. Thank you so much for listening and watching again. I hope that you take away and practice as Dr. Shah kept saying, just one thing from this episode and watch how your life changes. Again, a big thank you. Follow Dr. Shah on Instagram at Darshan Shah M D on Instagram and on TikTok soon to come. Make sure you do that and I hope that you stay happy, stay healthy and stay well. Thank you again.

• 1:36:15Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 1:36:16Jay Shetty?

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

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