14. Darin Olien: The Deceptive Nature of Ultra-Processed Foods, Toxins in our Products, Top Tips on Nutrition, Daily Stress Busters + More

What if simple lifestyle changes could transform your health in ways you never imagined? In this episode of Extend with Darshan Shah, MD with my guest, Darin Olien, we dig into the basics—nutrition, exercise, and stress management—that lay the foundation for a healthier life. Darin also explains why cutting out ultra-processed foods in favor of fresh, whole ingredients is a game-changer for mental clarity, energy, and resilience. From practical tips like staying hydrated to learning the art of nose breathing, we explore how these small, daily habits make a big impact. We also tackle the hidden influences shaping our food choices and the sneaky ways ultra-processed foods become part of our diets, his powerful journey through plant-based nutrition, touching on the environmental and economic factors tied to our food systems and so much more. Darin Olien is the author of Fatal Conveniences, where he details exactly what the modern world is doing to our health, and how to fix it. He's also the author of New York Times bestseller SuperLife, host of the SuperLife podcast, and co-host of the Netflix series Down to Earth with Zac Efron. We also discuss: (01:35) Relationships, Malibu Fires, and Recovery (07:56) Optimizing Health Through Basic Lifestyle Changes (18:21) Understanding Bioaccumulation and Toxins (23:37) Healthy Eating and Social Media Manipulation (31:54) Impact of Subsidized Meatonomics on Health (44:39) Exploring Super Life for All (01:19:12) Toxic Exposure and Risk Reduction (01:26:19) Detoxifying Your Life Naturally (01:48:17) Navigating Sustainable Business Practices and more To learn more about Dr. Darshan Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ To learn more about Darin Olien: Website: https://superlife.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darinolien/

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

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend. In this episode, we're diving deeper into the hidden truths about ultra-processed foods, the toxins lurking in our everyday products, and the simple lifestyle habits that can have a massive impact on your health with author and filmmaker Darren Olien. From learning how to better manage daily stress to thinking about the food choices we make, this conversation is packed with insights Darren has accumulated with decades of knowledge from doing a deep dive into the science of detoxification. Darren Olien is a true pioneer in wellness and sustainability. He's the author of Fatal Conveniences and the New York Times bestseller, Superlife. You might also recognize him as a co-host

• 1:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  of the hit Netflix series Down to Earth with Zac Efron. Darren lives close to me in California, and I'm lucky enough to see him often. Every time I speak with him, I'm impressed with his deep, personal passion in helping others benefit from the knowledge that he's accumulating in his quest to live a cleaner life. Darren's expertise and passion for helping people create healthier, more intentional lives make this episode another personal favorite. So let's get into it.

• 2:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Darren, thank you so much for joining me on the Extend Podcast.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Nishan, I'm stoked to be here, man.

• 2:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this is great. I've really enjoyed our relationship so far. I think I met you going on your podcast.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And then we both live in Malibu, which is amazing. And we both went through the fires in Malibu together,

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  which both of us had significant damage. You're still recovering from that?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Still, yeah. Yeah, but, but you know, we got some light. We just finished a lawsuit against the power company.

• 2:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  So there's, there's movement literally today even. So there's, there's dirt moving around.

• 2:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's fantastic. Congrats. That's a, that's a feat in Malibu to get, get things moving in that, in that environment.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And then also, I mean, you've just had such an interesting life. It's just mind blowing. I want to, I want to get more details on that here soon. But first I want to talk to you, you know, ever since I've known you, you're, you just, I mean, first of all, you look amazing all the time. You look like you're Nordic, right? Like Nordic God here in front of us. And, you know, I've seen pictures of you in the past. You've kind of always looked this way. And, you know, I'm a big believer in just focusing first on the basics, right? Like, a lot of people love talking about longevity and biohacking and this and that. And, you know, I think that you've mastered the basics. And so, you know, from your vantage point and everything you've gone through,

• 3:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  all the documentaries you've done and, and your own routines, I'd love to hear some of the, kind of the top two or three things you do nutritionally. And then on movement and exercise and sleep. So nutrition, tell me a few things.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  I a hundred percent agree with you on the basics. If you don't have the basics down, then you're showing up to a forest fire with a squirt gun.

• 3:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  So from a nutrition standpoint, literally, if people can take away, just eliminate over-processed, ultra-processed food, get back to cooking your own food. If you just take away one thing from everything we're going to talk about, which I don't even know what we're going to talk about, all of it, start cooking your own food, whole food, learning how to cook food, learning how to, you know, go to the farmer's market, whole foods, like foods, the diversity of. Food is so underappreciated that, you know, healthy grown food is absolutely different than normal food and certainly different than ultra-processed food. So ultra-processed food is a divorce of nature and eating fresh whole food is is with nature.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And whenever you can go with nature, you're always gonna win. So whole food is the number one. I start every day with a massive bowl of fruit.

• 4:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  And sometimes oatmeal and fresh spirulina and these kinds of things. So, and then obviously like water and structured water and, uh, you know, my unrefined salt with the water or lemon or things like that. These are so basic and what they're doing is they're enriching someone with antioxidants and fiber and cleansing effect of water. We realize that seven percent of the US population doesn't even drink an ounce of water a day.

• 5:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not even one ounce?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Not one ounce, seven percent.

• 5:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  How they, how are they not dying or staying hydrated?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  So you're, you're chronically, you can probably find the estimate of well over seventy-five to eighty-five percent of the people in the US and other countries that are chronically dehydrated. If I walked around, virtually everybody we see is dehydrated.

• 5:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  So that's, if that's not a core to health, I don't know what is. And then of course, breathing, nose breathing, nitric oxygen, oxygen rates free, the body makes it. But if we're breathing or stressed through our mouth, we're not enacting that upper respiratory system, which actually then creates a whole other metabolic challenge and doesn't allow your body to, you know, counter some of the pollutants that you're getting. So just nose breathing alone allows for more oxygen flow, more nitric oxygen or oxide, and then, you know, the respiratory system benefits from it. So you, we're talking about, and we could keep going.

• 6:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  These things are so. Basic, you don't even need to know the physiology.

• 6:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It costs zero dollars. To breathe through your nose.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yes, right. So we're saying, we're saying conscious breathing, right? Nose breathing, easy hack. We'll talk about habits. You stack a habit. So every time you eat anything, do three nose breaths, right?

• 6:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love that.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Deep inhale, maybe do a double.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  You know, just do that and you could move it into a prayer. Gratitude for your food. Like now all of a sudden gratitude for the whole food that I'm eating. Gratitude for this fresh water that I'm drinking. So just that alone. If you centered your life around breathing, oxygen, whole food, gratitude. Just that example alone would probably take them well over ninety percent of the way to health. Right? And then you add in obviously sleep, you add in some movement. Next thing you know, this ain't complicated.

• 7:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  But it's habits. Habits are health or habits are disease. Where's your trajectory? Where are you going? If you're reacting to your life, if you're not proactive in it, I am really good at my discipline. To a fault, actually. Like, I'm like, ah, I gotta do, ah, I should, you know, I'm good. I should go out and meet people. Like, I should, I should go to this event. It's good. It's, you know, so I have to kind of exercise myself. Not that I'm breaking my habits. I don't break it and go, I'm gonna eat this ultra processed crap. I'm just not. It just, it doesn't. I'm not attracted to it. So it all really is, and that's where I wrote my first book, Superlife. It's tried and true.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  We're talking about the microbiome. We're talking about how whole food affects that. We're talking about sleep. We're talking about hydration. We're talking about, you know, and then you talk about hydration just a little bit. Reverse osmosis, your water, unless you have your own spring and it's tested and it's clean, that's the golden standard. Most of us don't. Add a little pinch of unrefined crystal salt to it. I love redmond. From the US here, it's the there's no microplastics or lead or any of that other exogenous, however their mining process exposure is. So next thing you know, you have clean water, you've just detoxified yourself by by cleaning the water with reverse osmosis.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  So now you're eliminating PFOS exposure, you're eliminating pesticides, herbicides. So there's so much going on that we could talk for weeks on, but we don't. The people don't need to know that, but they need to know enough to go filter your water. Add some unrefined salt to it. It's really good for the osmotic flow of the cells, right? So all of that to say, water, food, breathing, a little movement, going to sleep on time, seven to nine hours of sleep. Wow. All of a sudden, man, my life is now, if you've worked at those habits, your whole life's different.

• 9:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And the key is because literally you're eating three times a day. So you're doing these things over and over again. You're drinking water, hopefully multiple times a day. You're breathing like all day long, hopefully, right?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  A hundred thousand.

• 9:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Problem, right?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So it's because these actions in our life are repeated over and over and over again. Putting these micro habits in place around this makes a massive difference. And you talk about changing one percent a day adds up to thirty eight hundred percent change in a year. But when you're doing it three times a day, it's it's even more it adds up really quickly.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 10:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? So those daily routine, you know, what resonated with me when you talked about cooking your food too, I want to talk about that is we've gotten so disconnected from our food. I read an article the other day that people are making apartments in London and New York with no kitchens in them. Yeah, just a refrigerator.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Are you kidding?

• 10:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And a microwave. Yeah. No stove, nothing to cut on, nothing, because they feel that it's a waste of space because of food delivery services and instant food and people eating out all the time. The kitchen is the one thing they're eliminating.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  That is, that actually is very shocking to me.

• 10:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's mind blowing.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  That is the wrong direction.

• 10:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolute wrong. It's like eliminating your bedroom.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, like, it's, it's mind blowing to me.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think this disconnection that we've had from our food.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Over the last, it's only been recent, actually, I would say, maybe last eighty years, like our one generation.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and relative to the existence of humans, it's, it's, it's, it's nothing. We haven't been able to adapt. And certainly, we don't want to adapt, and we can adapt to a chemicalized version of food.

• 11:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Right? It shouldn't even be called food.

• 11:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, exactly.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  You know, so, oh, that's.

• 11:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's terrible. The direction, you know, things are heading is not the right direction. And, you know, even, even the Time Magazine article that just came out this week about is ultra-processed food bad for you?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, I mean, dude, that is such a propaganda that makes me absolutely, so now you're trying to spin dangerous food, your chemicalized food, hyper-palatable food, that absolutely every direction, every science angle points to it's destroying our human health, and now you're trying to spin it? So if, so that you can make some sort of argument for that it's not as bad as.

• 12:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a crime, man.

• 12:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a crime, right? Exactly. It's used, the media is being used to spread confusion and false information.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And there has to be some funding or some back-channeling of the big food companies to make this a headline. Like, why, why even put that confusion out there, right?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it, it, you know, the, and that, and that's the, that's the thing that we can, I kind of like to start small like that. When you see the obvious, like, like that, and I've looked at thousands of products.

• 12:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  And you go, why, why, why is that endocrine disruptor in there? Why is that fragrance and undisclosed carcinogen in there? Why, why are they, it's sloppy, it's lazy and it's profit centered? So if you look at normal products, they're compromised, right? They're compromised for the, the idea that we will, we'd rather sell these and gain profit over the health and safety of people. So if you just start to understand, normal, everyday products are like that.

• 13:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Then you can start grappling with these bigger issues of like, wow, there's just this article, this doesn't line up.

• 13:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You're arguing now, again, against nature. You're, you're arguing against like, you know, it's, it's somehow along the way, the many choices that the media has allowed the compromise.

• 13:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Now we're in this, it's, it's, it's twilight zone.

• 13:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it really is.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Like, remember that, remember that, uh, what was that? Kind of funny, uh, newspaper that called the Onion?

• 14:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh yeah, the Onion, yeah, it's still around.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, is it still around?

• 14:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so great.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Like if, if this would be an article in the old Onion.

• 14:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, that's so true.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 14:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  A hundred percent.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  The Onion was always spinning stuff so outrageous that you'd read it and laugh, right?

• 14:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  This article would be in the Onion.

• 14:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're absolutely right. I, I forgot about the Onion until you mentioned that.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And it's go down the list.

• 14:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Go down the list of like, you know, we were talking before we said about PFOS and about chemicals and about all the chemicals that we've allowed, sixty to eighty thousand chemicals in our environment, in our clothing, in our food, in the air, in the water, in the, all of this stuff. And they're not for you. They're they're they're dangerous. And if you were to step back as someone new to the earth and go, why would you guys do that?

• 15:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  What, right? So like you start writing an article from this new vantage point of this new person looking at the world going, you guys are making food that's connected to cancers, diabetes, metabolic disorders, go down the list, and yet you have food, food forests, food that's accessible, nature's bounty, delicious, wonderful, life giving. Why would you do that to yourself?

• 15:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. And then spend a trillion dollars on healthcare trying to fix the problems you created.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I know, and then it's it's just becomes this sad, laughable moment.

• 15:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  When you're when you're as a human, you're so sad, but then as you step back, like, and you look at this cartoon.

• 15:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Cartoon is a good way to describe it.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  It's, you know, writing my book Fatal Conveniences, it was two and a half years of staring and reading, like, the research and then 20 other researchers doing, you're just like reading one thing and like, it's not that they don't know it. These industries, these ultra-processed food, these personal care products, like all this stuff. I can give maybe a, you know, a mom and pop didn't know that this flow agent in their product was bad. They didn't know. They didn't they didn't have the funding. They didn't know to even look. But not these big boys. They they know what they're doing.

• 16:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They have the scientists actually develop these things.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 16:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're creating these things and putting them in our food.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then they're and they're they're plausible deniability, meaning, well, we didn't actually test ours. So we don't really know that it was dangerous or is dangerous.

• 16:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's it's absolutely crazy.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Thirty, forty years down the road and like, whoops.

• 16:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Um, you know, one thing I want to go back to nutrition on with you, which I think it's, um, I've always wanted to have this conversation with you on a podcast is you're a vegan.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you're obviously extremely muscular. You have great health. And you know, there's so much internet controversy on diets and carnivore versus vegan versus.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And people attacking each other constantly.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think you have a really good perspective on this, and I would love to hear, like, you're a living, breathing example of a very healthy human being, and you happen to be vegan.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 17:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'd love to hear your perspective on how you talk about this with people.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. I mean, I took the position of like, it's none of my business to try to convince anybody of anything. If you have a question, I'll answer it from my perspective. And there's great people that will argue for that, look at the science and bat it back and forth. I just like, I'm, I'm, I'm just not interested. It's a lot of energy to try to convince someone who has no interest in, in, of changing their mind either. Right? So I'm like, I don't need to play that game. But for me, you have to understand the, the, the backstory is that I spent fifteen plus years running around the world looking for nutrient-rich botanicals, right?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  From forests to jungles to mountain tops to, so, so getting to learn and see the nutrient-rich bounty of this earth. You're like, wow, it's, it's kinda, it's, it's all there. And then, obviously, this is a very simplified statement I'm about to say. But then, for me, this, this almost bio-accumulator of flesh of another being, eventually, or at, at some point, whatever someone is consuming, whatever, if that's beef or whatever, that thing was consuming a plant. Right? And, and it becomes a bio-accumulator. And then on top of it, just stopping on that s- subject for a second.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  On top of it, I also looked at for myself, because I started to see the modern world, I'm like, there's a toxicity here. So now we have this layer, we're not talking about that. We're not talking about supreme health of whatever you're eating. You have to then understand that the bio-accumulator of nutrient- Is also the bio accumulator of toxins. So, you know, talk about fish, mercury, like parasites, go to, go to sushi. I can, if I was a betting man, anyone eating sushi, you have parasites. And they're probably, maybe they haven't debilitated you yet. But you, you just have other things that are going on. So for me, and then of course, I was an athlete.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  So I was just eating, I was a normal kid. I'm a, you know, from a farming community and so I just like. Minnesota, right? Minnesota, yeah. And so I just, just did what everyone else did. It wasn't until I was probably in my kind of late twenties. And that I was like, I remember, I, I remember in physiology class in college, amino acid cycling. And I'm like, why is no one talking about that? Cause so amino acids are precious, right? Even with the taphy, even with the body cleaning up, it breaks that back down. And it doesn't want to get rid of amino acids if it doesn't have to. So there is a natural recycling aspect to amino acids.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  So I'm like, okay, cool. Like, so the body, it takes energy to find amino acids, right? Maybe less energy to find carbohydrates. So the body has, okay, so I can kind of grok that. So then for me, I was like, well, and then morality and ethics kind of kicked in going. I wanted to be a vet when I was a four years old. I really love animals. And then it started to, that jump between, I'm disconnected to this, you know, burger that I'm eating. When in fact, it was a beautiful cow. And I'm like, and now these worlds are colliding where my superfood hunting, my nutritional diving into nutrient density.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Is colliding with, I'm going to stop eating meat now because I wasn't feeling good. It's colliding with, am I going to get enough protein? Maybe it's better now, and also realizing protein amino acids are in everything.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 21:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Watermelon, if I just ate watermelon, I would be deficient in certain amino acids and I wouldn't get enough protein. I'm not just eating watermelon. Again, we go back to diversity. Every study, also recently, every study that shows if you are eating whole food diversity, rich, you are never deficient in protein, ever, right? So everyone's like, well, how do you stay strong and, and, and athletic and performing and all this? I just eat more of what I'm already eating.

• 21:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  So I'm aggregating more calories because I'm putting more out, but I'm aggregating those calories with more diversity, which I'm getting all of the amino acids I absolutely need. So I'm never going out of my way to reach for protein. So, so for me, I just kept going down that road. So then ethics kicked in, the amino acid cycling kicked in, diversity, studies of I'm not lacking amino acids kicked in, all of these things started going, I don't, wow. And then, then having a profession finding these uh, foods, I was like, well, why don't I just eat the best?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Even, even down to the adaptogens, even down the adaptogenic herbs, even down to, okay, not a dried spirulina, a raw spirulina, not a regular cashew, but a sprouted cashew. Like, like, so I have spent my life

• 22:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  tweaking. Now in the world, I'm just having a salad.

• 22:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  But they don't know I'm mixing it with, you know, fresh olive oil, I'm mixing it with kimchi, I'm mixing it with miso, I'm mixing it with spirulina in my dressing. I've got 12 different veggies in there. I've got nuts, I've got five different seeds and nuts. And so I'm loaded. One of my salads has got 50 grams of protein in it.

• 23:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  So that's a long way of saying all of these different elements played out. Because I think these conversations get so overly simplified.

• 23:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous. Again, I know what works for me. I also know what the studies are that's proving a lot of my points. And then We all like extremes and social media now is manipulating all of us through these conflicts. Some of my talks, when I know there's, you know, carnivore people and paleo, I just go, hey, I'm a, I'm plant-based vegan guy and you don't have to be. I don't, I don't care. I don't care what you do. You want to sprint down that road and say all veggies are bad? Good luck. Let's meet in five to 10 years and let's see if your point of view has changed.

• 24:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Like, that's all I care. And that's as much as I care about it.

• 24:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Right? However, I've seen the power in plants. I've felt it. I've, I've been in fields. I've, I've, I've been in, like, I remember, um, when I was looking into Ashwagandha and Moringa and I was in Mumbai and that whole area in southern India. Always the best times was when I was having lunch with a family, a farming family who was cultivating some of the stuff. Their matriarch was this eighty-five-year-old Indian guy that was, lightning came out of his eyes. He was so turned on, like, he was so striking and with it.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I'm like, those moments? And then I'm going, many people don't know, the magic of my superfood hunting was what are we eating?

• 25:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Around the world.

• 25:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  What, what are we eating? Why are we eating it? Where is it from?

• 25:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  It's all right there.

• 25:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's all right there.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  It's all right there. And so those things, so back to our kind of origin story is like, it's so simple.

• 25:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  They were farmers and happy being farmers. Did they have a lot? Not in this standard, but they had everything. And you look at that guy and you look at their family, there was no ultra-processed food in anywhere. They're sitting around, community, social support, like, I mean, great-great-grandfather was like, like, vibrantly kicking ass in the field. I was in the field. With them, like asking them questions and like, next thing you know, in this instance, same same trip, I'm in a research facility that's not online. It's got at least a hundred and twenty years of Ayurvedic research in that facility.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  So I'm now asking them questions about turmeric. What do you say about it? What do you say about meringue? Does this show up anywhere? And like, next thing you know, like, you can't Google search that. But that's the, pun intended, that's what I was infused with. Many, many, many of those stories. All over the world. So of course you'd run into cultures that were, you know, killing their goat and eating that. But but the the rarity of meat. And you go, Dan, talk to Dan Buettner, right? He's like, the rarity of this stuff, we are misled.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that carnivore people are really not acknowledging because they have their agenda. Is not everyone, number one, can afford whatever they're talking about. They're they're they're believing they're super sexy, wild. You know, free range, it barely exists. It really, really, really doesn't really exist.

• 27:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I just got back from Africa. You know, I was in Rwanda, Tanzania. There's no meat to be found anywhere. I mean, it is all just what they can pick from their backyard. And like you said, these people look vibrant. They look like they're, I mean, they have incredible amounts of muscle mass as well.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Africa kicks ass.

• 27:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Yeah, and people, people don't realize, but basically, most Africans are vegetarian because they have to be.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 27:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Same with the rural parts of India as well.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I mean, listen, I I love Africa. And I've spent a lot of time there. And I mean, I'm getting butterflies just talking about it. Like, I spent a lot of time in Kenya, Uganda, Senegal specifically. And you're right, the counter to what we're talking about is like, well, look at that result. Not just a couple radical people, villages and villages and villages and villages of that. If they were to adopt, what happens when they adopt our way? Radically shifts pretty fast.

• 28:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Now, again, yes, is there bad water, horrible condition? Yes. And at the same time, they did great during COVID. They did amazingly well. One of the best continents on the planet. Do that math.

• 28:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Right?

• 28:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, it's because they have a baseline level of incredible health, actually. And people, I think people look at Africa and they think that there's illness and sickness everywhere. But really, that has more to do with sanitation practices and those types of things, like actual pathogenic organisms. But if they are.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Dysentery, typhoid, Russian roulette of dirty water and food contamination.

• 29:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But it has nothing to do with what they're eating.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 29:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely. And you know, there's also the Masai Mara people that live on just cows, basically. And it just goes to show the incredible diversity of what our human bodies are capable of.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so I think getting religious on any one side is not probably the way to go, but just finding out what works well for you.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think, you know, definitely the vegan lifestyle, like my parents are vegetarian vegan. Um, we grew up in India. I mean, I did not grow up in India, they grew up in India. But it was by necessity, like you said, because it just was not meat around for them to eat.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And still.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Well, the true cost of meat.

• 29:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  And they were, we're, we're, this is a twisted culture again. We don't know the true cost.

• 29:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We don't know the true cost.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  We're just talking about the clothing. No one knows what a true cost, a true cost of a T-shirt. It's not ten dollars.

• 29:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  That's chemicalized, mostly slave labor, like horrible, horrible environmental cost, going right into rivers and streams and air and like, that's the T-shirt. So same with subsidized meat. We don't know what that is. And, and, and closer to your point, they couldn't afford it. In fact, I would make the argument because they can't afford it, that scenario puts them actually in a healthier category because they're not over consuming. Plus, they're not over consuming really poor quality, chemicalized versions of that same stuff.

• 30:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Right? So in a way, if we have the right meatonomics, it would also do that here. People would have less ability to buy that burger for ninety, twelve burgers for whatever a White Castle, twelve burgers for seven dollars. Like whatever the hell this crazy shit is, not to mention the toxic.

• 30:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Food that that is.

• 31:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  That's a whole nother, the meatonomics, the subsidized, the all that stuff. It's tricky.

• 31:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, when food started getting subsidized back in the fifties or forties, it just completely threw everything

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  into total disarray.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And this is where we, why we're at this situation where we're now. And it's just, it's mind blowing. We could talk about food forever, why we're here.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think the point of this podcast is really to give people actionable tools.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What they can do now and make them aware of these things. I want to talk quickly about movement and sleep as well. You have an incredible morning movement routine practice that I'd love for you to share. I think if people can learn a lot from this.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, as we gain in years, you know, these things, I, I'm so grateful for habits that I have gained and garnered over the years, kind of the first kind of weight that I picked up and conscious exercise was like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. And then I just wanted to be a better athlete and all that stuff. So my morning, you know, not to get in. To elixirs and adaptogens and water and all of that stuff that I do. But I do some great fascial maneuvers in the morning and breath work and kind of weave all of that in. I think there's, you ever meet the human garage people?

• 32:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I, I saw them on your Instagram.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they're, they're gaining some cool popularity. And I came from after undergrad in physiology. I shadowed with this guy, shout out to Dale Greenwald, an exercise physiologist in Boulder. And then I started doing rehab, doing some rehab training. I did neuromuscular training. We did some exercise, therapy, studying. I had some other people teach me Feldenkrais and other movements. So to create fascial changes, and I think it's way underutilized. So stretching is, and yoga is really the attempt, truly, I think, to get at this, this network.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yes, the muscle, but what, what is the rap of the muscle? That is literally from toe to head, all connected. That's the fascial lines.

• 33:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And people don't talk about this.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  They don't talk about this at all.

• 33:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's such an important piece of our anatomy.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Oh my God. So this will take on, this will be supple if it is supple. It will be concrete if it is concrete. And when I say that is it will take on the physiology of, of a trauma.

• 33:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  With it, if it's not addressed, it will take on the physiology of a tight, torn, broken bone, muscle, whatever. If not addressed, because it also has a nervous system through it. But you have to deal with it differently. It's so funny how, and I mean, you can speak to this too. It's like, you know, I had my physiology classes, but we, there's so many things now in retrospect that we didn't even fricking talk about. And it's like, we didn't talk, I remember fascia, but there was no understanding of how it was working in, in our, in our physiology, in our muscle, in our recovery, in our pain management.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  So I believe that fascia is massively understood.

• 34:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  And underutilized. So I do a lot of kind of movement, twisting passive. Stuff in the morning.

• 34:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And so then I'll move into meditation, all of, all of the journaling and all of those same. And then my next phase after that is then, you know, resistance training.

• 34:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Resistance training.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I, I mean, I just, I am addicted to moving heavy things, you know? I just, I have weights at home, outside, it's always, you know, it's a, it's a, I love lifting outside. I have squat racks and, and barbells and dumbbells and also rocks and stuff like that. So I have, you know, mountains to sprint up and do some sprints and stuff. So all of that's to the point where I'm like, I, I sometimes just need passive days. Like even today, I was like, okay, let me just, I'm, I'm feeling a little sore or whatever. So I just did like 20 minutes straight jump rope, thousand reps, bub, bub, bub, bub, bub, bub. And that, that is a whole different thing.

• 35:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  And also fascia is involved with that too. So that kind of, that bouncing and like the, even the Maasai, when you think like their, their tendon, fascial lines, I think if you studied that, you would, you would be blown away at what the tensile response. It's not heavy, it's not a lot of muscle mass, but it's the proprioceptive neurological kind of strength firing ability that's so sharp and so on. I mean, they're.

• 35:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's wild.

• 36:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's wild. It's, man, you said so many important things there and just, it's just your movement routine. But, you know, my previous life before I did, started doing this health optimization physician was I was a surgeon. And part of surgery is what we would do is we would literally, you know, cut through muscles to get to the organs that we need to get to. And you cut through the fascial layers and the most important part of the closure was re-approximating the fascia. Cause if you did not re-approximate the fascia, movement was affected forever, pretty much. You would never get your strength back in that area. And so keeping your fascia supple, key word supple and intact is key. And.

• 36:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  On that note, sedentary behavior is one of the most damaging, constricting and weakening of the fascia that you can do. And so keeping yourself moving is incredibly important for that fascial layer.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're talking about liquid, too.

• 36:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  You're talking about things, your fascia needs to move. And then you're like, talking about the hydration, too. Like, if we're all dehydrated, like, and, you know, you keep your brain, your central nervous system, your blood, you know, you keep digestive system, you keep that pretty hydrated. But if you're dehydrated, what's suffering? Your fascia's suffering, your skin's suffering, muscles are suffering. So it's all of that stuff. But that, but that importance of glide, I mean, you say supple, and I think of, you ever met Dr. Kelly Starrett?

• 37:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Love that guy.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Supple Leopard. Come on, shout out to Kelly.

• 37:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. He's, I actually just emailed him, he's gonna be on the podcast in the next few weeks. Great guy.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Love, love him.

• 37:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you're looking for the best in fitness equipment on the market, I've found it for you. I've recently joined IFIT as their chief science advisor, and I want to tell you why. Their commitment to science and research is commendable, and I see them doing more to incorporate it into their devices than any other brand out there. So whether you're aiming to crush your cardio goals or build serious strength, IFIT's cutting-edge treadmills, bikes, and strength machines are designed to bring the gym to you. With world-class trainers and interactive workouts built into every machine, IFIT doesn't just keep you moving, it keeps you motivated. So if you're looking to elevate your home gym experience with the best in fitness tech, choose IFIT.

• 38:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The other thing you said, which is so resonates to me, is, you know, the gym that, that we work out at sometimes in Malibu, they have an outdoor section and an indoor section.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For some reason, working out in that outdoor section, it's like, I get double, I think, sometimes, the amount of, I would say, benefit from, from being there. And just so inspiring to just be outside. And so your gym being outside, it just truly, I think, I don't know what the reasoning is behind it, but it- Truly increases the effectiveness of that workout.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  It's that it's it feels the most natural. I don't have shoes on.

• 38:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  I'm connected to the earth. I'm squatting in the dirt.

• 39:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Like, it's just I I now have an electromagnetic connection. I'm not disconnected. Right? So you instantly have a applied kinesiology response as a result of the circuitry guaranteed, right? It feels, but I can feel my toes digging in the dirt with everything that I do. Right? So you can't underestimate connecting to that Schumann electromagnetic pulse of the earth.

• 39:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And the photons of the sun.

• 39:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  You know.

• 39:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The chemicals from the trees.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  It's like, come on.

• 39:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's there's everything is is right there that you need.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  It's feeding you. Your your solar panels know, you know, if it's not, if it's good weather, I I don't have any shirt, you know, shorts on and your solar panels are up and it's the best.

• 39:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, you get grounding, you get the the sun, you get the the being out in nature all at once while you're working out. It's such a game changer.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could just write a book on all the bio, quote unquote biohacking, but you're not biohacking. You're just integrating. It's like you're just integrating all of this stuff and getting all of these benefits. And it's, you know, we we we have to break apart this modern world a bit

• 40:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  to reassemble ourselves in a, again, they flow back to nature, flow with nature. It's like, you know, flipping this script has only caused us harm to be disconnected from nature. I think it's about ninety three percent of our life as opposed to the other way. We were we were mostly just going to the hut and sleep. Uh, and you're out interacting with the earth and the and the elements, all this stuff. So now our modern world, we're inside, we're disconnected, we're not. And like, it's it's it's like, oh, take your shoes off. Oh, my. Like, it's like, it's so wild.

• 40:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's wild.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  That we are just having these conversations, right?

• 40:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  It's so wild that we've, you know, it's it's, again, it's shocking. That, you know, you and I were born into it. Everyone here is born into this world. So we didn't create a lot of it. But we're here right now in this, this time, in this place, in this space. So if we turn back our common sense on, if we turn that back on and go like, how do humans work? And what, what do I want my super life? That's why I love my, my name of my book and now my podcast, Superlife. Superlife. Underneath it all, it's not a brand to me. It's a way of life. I wanna live powerfully, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I wanna be turned on by what I do.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  I wanna give it away. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna create opportunities and solutions for the world. I wanna, I wish there was one hundred of me that wanted to do. And the cool thing is, people are coming. Like, people come, like, we resonate with things. And then we like, okay, let's have a conversation. Just before podcasts, three brilliant, four brilliant people were talking about, we all had insights into Pifos. Yes. So all of a sudden, you're like, hey, okay, so can we chelated? And like, well, it comes out in this way. And well, we know this and we know. So we're just like, we gotta come together and solve some of the things that we were born into. It's no one's, one's fault.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  And there's great people. I believe in the human spirit. I believe we all want the same thing. So if we have that, I have that in mind, and billions of us really want the same thing. We wanna be happy, wanna, wanna have a healthy life, and we wanna feel good. We wanna hang out with our friends and our family. And I love to ask big questions. Well, what could life be like if it was a super life for all? And, you know, being in India and being in Africa and being in places where I'm like, we failed as a human family in a lot of ways. And I get discouraged. I know there's good people and, and organizations and, and corporations. There's good people in, in there.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I've met them and they're trying to do the right thing. And there is also a Massive human failure. When, when you and I could jump on a plane right now, just point a place in Africa. And we could bounce around in a car and just basically say, what's your water like? And all of it will be bad.

• 43:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Outside of the cities and questionable even in the cities. So for me, aside from governments and politics, all of that, I'm not that interested. There's another layer. A stronger layer that bonds us all, right? That layer, that's what I'm interested in. And listen, if that trickles down to get people healthier and policy change will happen, does happen. Put enough pressure, all of a sudden PFAS is in the lexicon. Some idiots writing a thing on ultra-processed food in Time Magazine, like whatever.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  It's starting to like, they have to counteract like, uh-oh, you know, whatever. But it's starting to trickle down, but I don't wanna, I don't wanna necessarily play in that game. I wanna be in this game where a bunch of us are really striving for something better because it's the right thing to do. That's what inspires me every day because I get to talk with people like you. I get to talk with people who are striving for something greater. You're striving for like, let's get a next health revolution. Literally, I think of that as beyond your brand too. Let's create a next health revolution because clearly what we have all been born into is not adequate.

• 44:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's not healthcare. It's sick care, disease management.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is not a super life.

• 45:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's not a super life.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  That is, that is ridiculous. It's utterly a failure. Let's acknowledge it. And let's create something different.

• 45:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Right?

• 45:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's, you know, that's my goal is to just start over again. Let's just start over. Let's just reimagine what healthcare should look like.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, there's definitely some great things in Western medicine that we can use in health.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 45:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But most of it is there only for, it should be there for emergency disease management and emergency care. And we should never need to, we need to utilize it one, one thousandths of what we're utilizing it right now.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. Use the infrastructure. Let's use the infrastructure that they created.

• 45:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Let's make it infinitely better because it would, you know, listen, I had a friend of mine. I've been like obsessed over how to scale hyper individuality. I try to serve the masses in a lot of different ways. And I, and I had a great conversation with a good friend of mine who did a program with United Health Group. And they had the, some of their clients from Target and Delta, they came to them and said, hey, man, we're paying you a lot of money because our employees are sick. Do you have a program that could help our employees so we don't have to cut you as big of a check? And they're like, matter of fact, they hired my buddy and he created a conservative program of like, ah, eat, eat well and move a little bit.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  But what we're really going to do is support you. We're going to have someone read a script, not give medical advice and just support you in your habit forming activities. And then just moderate, all clinically substantiated conservative. And he created the infrastructure for that. It was so successful.

• 46:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I believe it.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Within a year and a half, it was well over a hundred million dollars in valuation and getting, and just people following basic stuff changed it. So I say that because I, for me, that's hope. It's hope, it's more hope. People don't even know that existed, right? But it helped a whole bunch of people. So how can we continue to just use common sense? Use them. So it was United Healthcare. It was a damn insurance company that ultimately did benefit from people getting healthy. So it's possible. There's so much money in health and vitality and a clean planet. We just got a little over our skis with.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Whatever the hell we're doing right now, but we can make a run and we are making a run at doing things better.

• 47:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I believe that.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  You know?

• 47:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I believe that for sure.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  So I have a lot of faith in what you're doing. I have a lot of faith in what I'm I'm setting out to do. I have a lot of faith in the people that I have seen along the way, swinging big for making change, right?

• 47:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think what you're doing and kind of what we're doing here is, you know, unfortunately, like you said, we've gotten over our skis with our current system. We have pharmaceutical companies. We have hospital systems. We have the FDA. That all was to serve a specific purpose that just got way overboard. Now it's there. It's a behemoth that we have to deal with.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  And doesn't want to give up its position easily.

• 48:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's not going to, right? So I, my belief is we just start over with a different system.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's what I'm really hopeful about.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let that system do what it's gonna do. I'm done complaining about it and and obsessing over it. It's not gonna change. We just gotta do something, start over with something new.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 48:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think it's happening right now. We're in that moment.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And and and honestly, I think, I think, and they come, they will come and support you eventually. And and because, you know, listen, it doesn't, it's not rocket science. When they see the trend moving towards, they get on board. Like, I can tell you personally, I can't say the company, but literally one of the biggest companies in the world has committed to regenerative agriculture.

• 49:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Or it's already happening with zero need to say anything about it. They've already started it. It's already happening. It will change the fabric of millions and millions and millions of acres of land.

• 49:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  I say that because for me, when we have these conversations, it can feel we're, you know, you've been at this for a while and you're going, okay, I gotta, I'm gonna create a whole new system. It can be hard. But when we have, we know others are doing it and then we know we can support each other and like going, okay, I know what Darshan's doing over here. Okay, I know what I'm doing over here. I know what they're doing. Okay, so now let's all, let's all start working together and create a new system. And when we create those systems, those other people will come. Like those other people I know three M has committed to not producing the most dangerous

• 49:56Speaker 01

  PFOS in 2025. So they're so so the the pressure now is happening, even though it's a forever chemical and they started in the 50s.

• 50:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Forever chemical, meaning we don't know how to get rid of it. But at least now we can move to change, right? And I and I applaud you because I know what it's like in my own way to build something from nothing. But the momentum is so attractive.

• 50:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Because number one, you know, you need to do it. And that's the only person you need to answer to. And then and then by doing that, you're creating a snowball effect and now other people and other investors. And so you create out of nothing because you see something that needs to happen that needs to be different.

• 50:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. And for both of us, I think gives us a sense of purpose as well, which is like, you know, we wake up every day excited to do this because it's um, it can be so monumentally impactful to the world.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  And listen, it's not easy.

• 50:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  I mean, I.

• 50:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not at all.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Like I've had it's all of this stuff. You get a million curveballs.

• 51:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  And like, oh, my God.

• 51:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, every day.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  But but it also forges the deeper reasons.

• 51:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  If it was for money, I would have stopped a long time ago. It's not a big enough motivator for me, right? If it was for recognition, would have stopped a long time ago, like, because most of it, I would say 99% of the work, no one is seeing any of that.

• 51:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  It's the person in the mirror, right? It's like, okay, this is what I want to do? Sure you want to do it? Is this what you want to do? Are you sure you want to do it? Because here comes another curveball. Right?

• 51:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So true, resonates with me so much, absolutely.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  I know you know.

• 51:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that that brings up, for the people that don't know you, I'd love to just, you know, you to tell us a quick, and I know it probably won't be that quick, but a quick, as quick as you could make it, like, history of Darren and how you got here to this point.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that's funny.

• 51:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I consider you like a true expert in all things environmental, you know, and and you got here through a lot of self-learning and and and a lot of struggle as well. So I'd love to just hear from you.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Oh, man. History of Darren, that's fine. I just gave a talk at my 35th high school reunion, by the way, which is really trippy.

• 52:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Minnesota?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  That was

• 52:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's trippy.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  That was wild. Because as an 18-year-old leaving high school, no way would I have thought I'm giving this talk right now.

• 52:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What were you doing back then? What was your goal in coming out of?

• 52:36Speaker 01

  My goal was like right here. I wanted to play football in college.

• 52:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Right? Go to a semi-decent liberal arts college and and and go play football. And I don't know what the hell I want to do. Right? And so then I got hurt. I beat out all these bigger guys playing fullback. And my sophomore year, I was starting. And I was just business administration. I mean, my dad was a college professor, so I felt a little pressure to just like, you know, what job do I want? I didn't consider creating anything. I was just like, what? You know, that's the programming of school. It's like you find a job. So I had that mentality and I was playing football. And then all of a sudden, I got

• 53:21Speaker 01

  a career-ending back injury my first game as a sophomore. And then I couldn't find a way out of it. So I was pretty pissed off. I was depressed. I changed schools, went to the same school Dan Buettner went to, but he was 10 years my senior.

• 53:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where was that? St. Thomas?

• 53:37Speaker 01

  St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

• 53:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Problema.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  So in that, I was able to construct.

• 53:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Was Dan there when you were there?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  No, he was 10 years my senior. So, but we, you know, recapitulated that after we got To know each other, but so then I was able to kind of create my major. And I got exposed almost from a liberal arts perspective on physiology, nutrition, kinesiology, applied rehab, like all these different interesting things. We just, it was a small school. So we could kind of piecemeal all of this stuff together. And it just got me like, number one, it was of my own need because my back was messed. I tore my sac. Think, think about this. I tore my sacroplexus, which is just a massive ligaments,

• 54:23Speaker 01

  like barely blood flow, fascia, all this, you know, what the hell, my vertebra was fine. So it was a, it was a very tough injury because you couldn't put your finger on it. So that started my path. That started my, my physiology path, my nutrition path. And then from there, I was like, well, what am I gonna do? But it was the first time when in school, I was like, I can study something I'm interested in. What a concept, right? And then that opened me up. And then the day after I graduated, I jumped on a motorcycle. My dad was on his motorcycle. I went to Colorado and I just wanted to go there.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  I didn't know if I was gonna stay or what, but I ended up shadowing this guy that I mentioned earlier, Dale. He was a physiologist and he worked with DOs and chiropractors and, and people out of surgeries and out of accidents and stuff. And it was really kind of challenging. So a lot of movement therapy, a lot of, and then I met a pharmacist, got to be really good friends with Ben Fuchs. He's actually incredible formulator of skincare. One of the greats, like thirty five years of nutritional skincare way before his time. But I, you know, and I asked him, I said, can you get me protein and creatine? And at the time Mao Huang, which was Ephedra.

• 55:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  So he just get, get it to me. I'd sell it in the gym. I was selling that that stuff when I was in my twenties. And he would just get me like pounds and pounds and they're shoving into bags and containers. And I sold it. So I was on, I was taking creatine because I was like, I was reading the studies then. And I was like, creatine is incredible. There's no downside. And the mechanism of action is like, hello.

• 56:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, for anyone not taking creatine right now, it's, I consider it a foundational.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 56:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Five to eight grams of creatine starts slow. And what's your dosage that you use?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I'm, I'm, I'm probably eight to 10 at this point. Yeah. I mean, especially women. I think almost even more importantly because of, you know, the keeping their muscle engine up.

• 56:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  And men's testosterone and growth hormone and all of that stuff. Not directly resulting of the creatine, but indirectly because you're able to keep your muscle mass and build your strength and all of that stuff. So, so that was my OG, man.

• 56:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  He's one of the first supplement distributors.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Dude, I was, I had a buddy who played for the Minnesota Vikings that I'd trained with. And I ended up supplying him and he may or may not have been distributing a bunch of Ephedra to the Vikings back.

• 57:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  But, um, before it got banned, that one got banned. So anyway, that was my origin story. So a little entrepreneurial, a little physiology, a little nutrition. Then I really botanically, I had a retired M D that was friends with my pharmacist buddy. And he would just start coming in and lecturing me. He'd bring, he'd go to the C U library, stacks before the internet, stacks of research. And he'd just like, I'm retired, but I missed the boat on this. This is the next layer. Nutrition is the key. And I was just like, oh, why are you focused on like?

• 57:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Like, why are you so focused? Of course I like nutrition, but I'm like, I was just like, I wasn't fully grocking it at the time. He ended up passing away after I left, but he made a massive impression on me because it's, I started on the side. Started formulating stuff. So I started making like my own, I started seeing like, you know. The metrics was like this first kind of protein thing and then these power, the original power bars and like, and I started looking at it going, this is crappy ingredients. So I started making a bunch of stuff. So I started adding more and adding more and playing with. So then nutritionally, I started digging in and, and me and the doctor would go back and forth. That was the origin of me formulating.

• 58:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  So I started formulating and I'm just like, I don't see what I'm doing on the market. And then I'm like, my father passed away. This was now cut to two thousand three. My father passed away and I was really like, ah, stop messing around. Like, go for it. Like, don't just, you know, make some stuff and give it away. Like, do something. So that's what really got me on the first plane to the Amazon.

• 58:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  I was like, go, go see what it is. And I left a PhD program in nutrition because I was a, I was so dialed in to what I was doing and where I was going and what I was learning. I was like, ah, I'm too passionate about this. I'll pick this up later. And I never did. I never did, but I just stayed on it. And I started formulating, finding all this stuff. And I'm like going, no one knows about this stuff.

• 59:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  No one knows about, you know, chuchuasi or dragon's blood or maca or yecan or sashenchi. And like sashenchi profile of omega three, six and nine was mind blowing for the human. And no one knew about it. So I'm like sitting there going, how the hell? Of course someone knew about it, but from my vantage point, it wasn't really in the, it wasn't in the marketplace. So I also ran into a good buddy. I haven't talked to him in a long time, Chris Killam. Was like, was my OG as a superfood hunter guy at a herbalist, right? So he was in the world. He was in the, he was in Peru. So I met him for the first time in Peru.

• 1:00:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  With my right hand guy, Miguel, and we just, um, I gotta reach out to him. He's just the best. And he's, he was always committed to transparency and finally, like, early days. So that's when, just I'll cut quickly to the story, but that's where I was like, I gotta put this stuff out. So now I'm seeing this, this, this treasure chest of botanicals that I'm not seeing well on the market, if at all. So I'm gonna do that. But of course, I didn't know what I was doing as an entrepreneur. I burned through all my money, kind of in the 11th hour, out of nowhere, Beachbody got wind of what I was doing and they go, okay, I know you're doing all this stuff and you're making all these other formulas.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  You can keep doing that, but can you make this kind of meal replacement idea that we have? We didn't really have the idea, but we have a little bit of an idea through Carl's wife, Isabel. And I met her and she's a great herbalist, nutritionist, and we just, boom, I met her and it was off to the races.

• 1:01:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Crazy.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  And then they basically said, do what you do, do it right. And I'll let me worry, Carl was like, let me worry about selling it.

• 1:01:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What was the product? What was the actual product?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Shakeology.

• 1:01:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Shakeology, right? But what was in it?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. It was, so, so the question I asked myself was, what are we, what are we requiring? As a, as a society, and I was easily seeing nutrient density was gone, right?

• 1:01:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  So I was like, okay, super fruits from Camu Camu to Osorola, like we gotta crank up the natural form of vitamin C. Don't break it apart. Don't just make this high vitamin C, da, da, da, da, da. So then prebiotics, probiotics, stable, back then even, stable in a dry formula, right? Adaptogens, because I was like, stress is through the roof. So then cordyceps, chaga, reishi, maitake, ashwagandha, shizandra, which is a mind blower. And then, you know, like I said, the prebiotics, probiotics, eh, enzymes, digestive enzymes, like all of this, there's sixteen ingredients.

• 1:02:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  And then cut to, I don't know, nearly twenty years later, they've sold, you know, five billion dollars worth of, you know, it was like way, you can, impossible to understand. Like they just hired me to do it. And I was like, yeah, I'd love to do it because I've been doing it.

• 1:02:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  And then next thing I know, it was.

• 1:02:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What an incredible story.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  That's how it started, and then, and then just cut to the exposure I had around the world.

• 1:02:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Gave me all that other stuff.

• 1:02:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  The environmental perspective on things, what was going on in the world.

• 1:02:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You were traveling a lot and you had to put your eyeballs on it.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was obsessed, dude. I was gone every five weeks.

• 1:02:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  And I was just like, I'm out. It wasn't even traveling in the United States anymore. That's not traveling.

• 1:02:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Like I was out.

• 1:03:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You were gone, yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  I was out and bouncing around in cars just to meet that farmer, just to go to that. That would, that was obsessed.

• 1:03:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  But it also opened me up to pollution. It opened me up to exposures. It opened me up to bad water. It opened around the world and I was like, what's going on? And so my environmental awareness happened in happenstance by just flinging myself in the middle of crazy situations. And so then that love for, I, I met people along the way with alternative energy, alternative waste remediation technologies, which I'm still involved. I've known these guys now for seventeen years.

• 1:03:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Like, we have a podcast waiting to tell you about the clean energy stuff we're up to that will, that's a whole nother side that I don't even talk about.

• 1:03:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I can't wait to hear that one.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But it's earth shattering.

• 1:03:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  It's literally, dude, so inspiring. It's not, it's, you know, I'm supporting, I'm part of their company, but the scientists, the dedication, the understanding of free energy and, and how to change a lot of things. It's just.

• 1:04:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it does seem like a pivotal moment in time right now where things can, there's gonna be a massive change during our lifetimes, I feel.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:04:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's gonna at least get started during.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  In the last five years, I've seen a shift with one of my buddies who knows stuff that will, you won't, you won't, I'm gonna tell you off air, I'm gonna show you some stuff off air, you won't believe it.

• 1:04:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I can't wait to see.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  You will be able, you won't be able to really understand it. You'll get it because you're a bright person. But that kind of thing, again, these are my friends, these are people, this is what gives me hope. So when people say, what gives you hope? And this is what I want, I want to continue to share this on TV and we're working on a whole nother like amped up version of, of another docu-series that is so exciting. We got two Academy Award winning directors. We've got stars, we've got countries behind us that are opening up the treasure chest of what's going on in their country, dude. And so.

• 1:05:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Is it on energy or is it on the environment?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  It's on health, it's on happiness, it's on the environment, it's on mothers, it's on indigenous, it's on sound and like it's like, it's creating itself and it's in its hope and its solutions. And, you know, doing down to earth, even though hard to do something that's when something didn't exist. The origin of down to earth was literally on a, on a piece of paper.

• 1:05:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You just sat down and wrote it down?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  I just wrote it down.

• 1:05:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That was your docu-series with Zach.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Before I knew Zach.

• 1:05:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  So I'm like, people were saying, you should do a, a superfood hunting show. I'm like, yeah, that would be fun. But I would also like to do longevity. I would also like to do water. There's miraculousness in water. People don't understand there's toxins in water. There's all of these different elements that I've now been infused in me, I want to talk about. And then the energy stuff, and now that's the maturation of that. So the, so the shift is I'm now a conduit for solutions. Because. You know, I I get stuff, so that fuels me more. So then the medium of sharing it becomes podcast,

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  becomes these conversations, becomes docu-series, becomes solution-based mechanisms of supporting people and organizations to create different and and better. And so so super life, my new kind of amp i- is kind of the culmination of of everything people have heard, even on this call, on on this talk, to how to service people where they're at, but also inspire them as to where we're going.

• 1:07:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Where we're going.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  And and it's real. That's what's cool. And like, if anyone can see, I've seen it. I've seen, I'm not saying we have the answer for everything. Absolutely not. We need everybody. Like, there's a million solutions for a few things in the world. We need all of it. However, there's some really cool things that are going on. And it also is down to, we need to help people find those habits to break out of their destructive habits and educate them along the way so that we can reorient them back to nature and realize that some of the stuff that's around us is not great for us. And just grokking that for the average person is enough.

• 1:07:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think the takeaway I have from this conversation from you is that, you know, I talk a lot about with my patients, before we even start talking about their biomarkers and their health history and all that, we talk about mindset. And I think it's really important to have a growth mindset, that things are going to be okay. They we're headed in an incredible direction as a civilization, and everything you hear in the media is so negative. It's so things are going the wrong way. But really, we live in an incredible society right now. Yes, there's a lot of bad things out there. But I think getting yourself in that growth mindset, both individually for yourself and for humanity as a human race, just knowing things are going to get better is so powerful, because that inspires you to take action, both for yourself and for humans.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Dude, you nailed it.

• 1:08:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:08:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  And I think, I think all of us need to consume less of that stuff and actively.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Actively create the life that they want. Because it's really hard if you're consuming all of that negative stuff to then overcome all of that. To then go, yeah, but what do I want? I don't, I don't need to watch news ever. I, I, it's not gonna, everything that I've shared with you today. I know where I'm going. It's not changing.

• 1:09:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the news is not going to change that.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  It's not informing, oh my, oh, it's real, oh, the food, it's bad. Like, I don't need any more. If anything, I'm educating myself to solution based changes. That, that's where the fuel is. I don't need negative Johnny over here telling me, you know, some puppet master of some compromised situation. I don't need that. I don't want that in my life. I, I want, I want you, people that are up to things. And I want also the community of people. I want people listening today, whether you follow Darshan or myself or someone else. Find your community, man. And if you can't find them, be that.

• 1:09:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, start it.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  And that, that will guaranteed even when it doesn't feel like it sometimes. That will create a magnetic field of change and people will come to you, right? So.

• 1:10:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so powerful. It's so true. If you become what you want to say, people will find you that are very like minded as well. Absolutely.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  And you have to let go of, of, of when and how. And believe me, it's crushed me to my knees many times when they're like, God. Okay, I see, I see this. I'm working towards it, but my God, I, I am not seeing a result. And it, and it's, and it's challenging. That is guaranteed. If you are at a place right now in your life and you want to be in a different place. That chasm.

• 1:10:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That space, right?

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  That space has got a transformation that needs to happen with you.

• 1:10:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  No one else, but those someone else's may not want you to change. They may actually energetically, ah, that might be friends, that may be family. Here's a superpower that I don't know if I've ever said, a superpower that I have learned. Not easy. I'm willing to let go of everyone for the betterment of what I know to be true in my heart.

• 1:11:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Not out of anger, not out of upset, not out of asshole, none of that. I just feel something and I'm willing to go do it now. It's up to them if they are gonna still be in my life. Of course, my family's still in my life, but my family, I love them, but they know one percent of what I'm doing in the world.

• 1:11:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  That's fine. That's totally fine. I don't need, that's the thing. I don't need them to be anything other than who they are. But where I'm going creates an opportunity of other supportive things. Can be people, can be opportunities, can be doors. I'm a master at seeing a door that's cracked open. I'm a master at it. I know a little bit about a lot of stuff, but when a door is cracked open and I see a possibility, you're sure as shit and I'm going through it.

• 1:12:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's amazing. That is a superpower actually, because I'm a real big believer of the power of manifestation.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I think that power can go both ways. You can aim for a certain result and know it's gonna happen. But then if someone else is negatively influencing that and your focus goes to that negative influence, you're gonna get farther away from that result, whether or not that person has done any actions or not.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  And you've given your power to that person.

• 1:12:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. That's true.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Don't offload your power, man.

• 1:12:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So for people wanting to get healthy, if there's someone else saying it's just not gonna happen, or they're just, let's go get one more drink tonight. Yeah, it's okay to move away from those people.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 1:12:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  And they're okay with making the, whatever their decision is and the, and the willingness to take all of that projection from them, because they may, they may call you names, they may say you're crazy.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Dude, if I had a nickel for every time someone didn't believe me, didn't trust what I was doing, was gonna work out.

• 1:13:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Uh, was crazy, I would be a gazillionaire.

• 1:13:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  And my entire family, my entire family, absolutely, at one point in my life, it's too, too big of a story to tell now, absolutely, almost violently disowned me.

• 1:13:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, wow.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  For some choices that was a spiritual choice, really.

• 1:13:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  I wasn't in a cult and none of that shit, but I'm just saying, like, I was committed to something so much, and I told everybody, and that was also the challenge, be willing, don't share everything with everybody. Like, sometimes, just for me, just for myself, I don't need to tell anybody, right?

• 1:13:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't need to tell anybody right now, so I, I've, I'm better at discerning who can handle. And also, over time, you forge friendships that like, I know if I tell this person, they're gonna be stoked.

• 1:14:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm always telling that person, they're always telling me, cuz we're always.

• 1:14:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, lifting each other up.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And then other people like, eh, like, and then that, we don't need that, we need people to, to, to support us.

• 1:14:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:14:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 1:15:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 1:16:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So I want to turn the conversation to something that I feel, you know, for whatever reason, people are very still unaware, the level of toxic exposure in our day-to-day life. And not to sound like alarmist about this, but I almost do want to kind of ring the alarm. There is toxic exposure in our day-to-day life that's happening that is beyond anything that we can see, and is definitely something that no one talks about. And unfortunately, the system is geared towards not telling us about this because it's very profit motivated. And, you know, unfortunately, the way things have panned out over the last few decades is there's a lot of profits in hiding these toxins. And so I want to talk about, you

• 1:16:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  know, you have so much knowledge in this. And number one, what are the risks? What are the toxins? And how do we avoid? So I think the way I like to kind of frame this for my patients is, number one, it's very overwhelming for people, right? So I like to like really simplify it into the Pareto Principle. Like, what are the big actions that we can take that can create a massive reduction in our toxic exposure? And I like to divide it up into four categories: air, water, food, skin. Right? So just to keep it simple, I know there's a few other things, but I think the Pareto Principle says that we can look at these, we can make major changes that can have massive impact in our life. So let's start with air. Okay?

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, air, you know, here in California, open your windows.

• 1:17:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Get fresh and HEPA filters, you change on a regular, right?

• 1:17:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Your, your air conditioning, the filters for your air conditioning system, change them every, how often?

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  At least six months.

• 1:17:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Every six months at least, yep.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Right, at least.

• 1:17:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You can do this yourself for cheap.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Very cheap.

• 1:17:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You don't have to spend hundreds, it's just having an alarm on your calendar.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:17:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Every human needs to do this.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But what if you're at work? How do you, how do you handle?

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  You can mandate that at work.

• 1:17:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You can mandate it.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have to have, they, they have to have, at least in our country, right? So they have, you know, HEPA certifications that they have to, so you're like, hey, can I, when's the last time you guys checked the, the filters and blah, blah, blah, and can you, you know, these things you can, if you're in a cubicle, if you're in that situation, you can, and, you know, listen, sometimes people don't always, they check the box, but they don't do it. So these are important things for you to follow up on.

• 1:18:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I counsel my patients, I'm like, you know, you can tell a little white lie to get some information, just go to your HR department. I have allergies, when, how often you change the filters?

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  And what?

• 1:18:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you know.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  And what are your cleaning products?

• 1:18:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  You know, so what are your cleaning products? I have allergies, blah, blah, blah. Uh, what kind of cleaning agents are you using on the floor? Like, you, listen, be annoying in these situations, it's your health, right? The air quality indoors is infinitely worse than the air quality outside.

• 1:19:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No matter where you are.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  No matter where you're.

• 1:19:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No matter where you are, your indoor air quality is worse than out. And people don't realize that. People think they're in a protected environment inside.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it's actually the exact opposite.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  The exact opposite. So like, our, our oxygen levels in cities are, the saturation is down, like, and so it's like hovering at like, seventeen, eighteen percent. When it's below seventeen, it's a crisis, right?

• 1:19:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Correct.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  So oxygen also is this other quality of oxygen, it, it's this scavenger, so it, it's, it's a, you know, it, it stabilizes pollutants, so the more pollutants it does, the more oxygen gets. Gobbled up and all of that stuff, but also it doesn't allow for the ionosphere to keep up. So your your saturation of oxygen in polluted areas just gets low and low and low. And you don't even realize it and it's already happening indoors. So you really wanna indoor air quality. Like I I if I need my air conditioning, I've already got it sorted out and filtered. But my I am outside. When I'm working outside, I work outside like if I can, I go sit under my oak tree.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I bring my computer out there and you wanna do the best you can. If you are working from home, there's a lot you can do.

• 1:20:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Right, there's a lot you can do to.

• 1:20:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most many people work from home now and.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love what you said, you open your windows like, you know, we're because we're in California, especially closer to or a little bit farther away from the city.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Our air quality index, everyone needs to look at their phone and see the air quality index.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Always really good outside, much better than is inside.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So the more time you spend outside and the more you keep your windows open, the better.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and and you know, listen, hang out next to plants.

• 1:20:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  You know, they're really good.

• 1:20:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Talk about that to why?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, plants are giving you your essential oxygen, right? So and it's taking your carbon dioxide, so it's a beautiful loop, right? So.

• 1:21:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's why we have a plant right here for you.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:21:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're real, they're all real.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  That's good, I like that. And then also there there is a relationship of calming effect with with plants. I forget there's there's about five plants. There's there's a type of aloe is just good to have. It has some remediation possibilities, but also aloe is just good for your skin. Uh, you can keep aloe in there and there's a few others that I forget off the top of my head that actually clean the air. So the plants you can bring inside, so so air quality, it's a easier fix and also. You have to mention the aerosolized sprays that you're using, cleaning products, uh, fragrances, these, this, this weird obsession that we have with, you know,

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  plugin, you know, perfumey, like guaranteed that stuff is as, as matic, guaranteed it's probably carcinogenic in some way. These things are very dangerous.

• 1:22:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Think about the air plugin purifiers that are electrical that are.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's such, it's so counterintuitive. People think they're buying that to clean the air, but it's actually spraying chemicals out of the air.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you're, you've made, you've made a, and they know this. You've made a olfactory association with a smell. So, and they're very smart about it. They, they make that smell because that to now you has made that association that then now it's clean here.

• 1:22:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Right? So, so just break that whole thing. Easy to replace. You can, so, so think of the, the compounding effect of getting rid of all of those things and then using an essential oil, right? Lavender, rose, uplifting in your environment. Tea tree is great. Also antiseptic, antifungal, anti-mold, all of these things. You can use, uh, cleaning products with organic, uh, white vinegar diluted in water. Throw some lemon, essential oil in there and it lights up the entire place. And it's also a very passive, energy lifting, mood altering, beneficial substance.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  So, so, so yeah, of course we like good smelling things, but just don't buy the chemicalized versions of it.

• 1:23:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think, I think that's such a key factor to hone in on for this entire journey. And I'd say detoxifying your life is a journey. Don't try to do it all at once. Try to do it over the course of a year, right? And some of the stuff you have to eliminate, but then having a replacement makes you not miss

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:23:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  what you eliminated, right? People love nice smells, but burning, you know, these scented candles all the time and plugging these things in, they're very detrimental to your health. And I don't think people also don't know the fact that most of the negative health effects of our exposure to toxins actually comes from our air more than any other category. So it's essential to modify the air that you're breathing. And you spent just something early about breathing through your nose versus your mouth, which is, this is the purifying organ.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Purifying as well, right? It's the natural purifying organ and, and that's what the mucosal lining is. And, and the hairs and things like that. So, yeah, again, you know, again, it's flipping on that kind of fixture inside of us that's common sense. And we've offloaded some of that stuff and we've been duped from a marketing perspective. But, but again, like when I clean my house, it is upleveled my environment, not downregulated my life. So I've still done it. I've still cleaned, but I've, but I've done multiple things. I've eliminated many, it's not just one.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  It's sometimes upwards, sometimes the fine print of, in which they don't have to disclose in fragrances is 200 VOCs, volatile organic compounds that they don't have to disclose. So there's hundreds of chemicals that you're taking in that you're super sensitive to, right? So now you've eliminated over 200 chemicals and then had a couple ingredients that are actually beneficial, antifungal, antiviral, and then you've, you've lifted up your mood.

• 1:25:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  As a result.

• 1:25:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  So you're still doing the same thing. You just replaced it.

• 1:25:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. No, and replaced the thing that's actually beneficial. It's went from negative to positive.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:25:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So what about the people, I used to live in Central California and the air quality index there was horrible, like more than half the year.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  We change our air filters all the time. Opening the windows is probably actually a detrimental thing. What are some techniques that people can use there as far as filtering their air?

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  And heavy polluted areas.

• 1:25:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Polluted areas, yeah, air filters I'm referring to.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, um, if they don't have, I mean, you can buy smaller stand down units. And if you're in apartment or whatever, you can, you don't have to go through the management and you can just get, you know, these standalone R two D two type of type of filters. So you can do a lot there. And then again, make sure you change those out quite a bit. And, you know, if you're, if you're living in those areas and if you could find parks nearby, you, you wanna visit as many parks as you can and bring your kids and just make that a, get back to nature as much as possible.

• 1:26:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Routine, yeah. I tell people, you know, even if you can get an air purifier for your bedroom at night and your work environment, even if something by your desk at your cubicle, if you work in one, you know, that, that's basically where you spend eighty percent of your day.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:26:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Getting those two areas to have some sort of filtration.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even like if it's, if, if there's a little humidity, it's great for the, for, you know, little humidifier in the bedroom too is fantastic with the filter system. You can sleep like a baby.

• 1:26:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the key is to make sure you're changing those filters on a regular basis, right?

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Um, okay, let's move on to water.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, a lot of people are drinking tap water. People are very confused about trap water, about fluoride in the tap water. Love for you to talk about that a little bit.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  No, it's quite, it's not confusing.

• 1:27:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It shouldn't be confusing.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Right, uh, the fluoride shouldn't be in your, shouldn't be in our water. It's um, a derivative of the aluminum industry and the pesticide industry. And I don't know how they did it, but certainly in America, they got it in most of the water. Um, to, to convince us that it's good for our teeth and the data is just not, doesn't really line up. And it's a neurotoxin. So that's just one, right? So, so everything from, you know, the air to the environmental pollutants end up in our soil and eventually end up in our water. So everything from pharmaceutical drugs to pesticides, herbicides to now.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  I think it's quite conservative still that fifty percent of the population now are getting a majority of their PFOS from the drinking water. And that's also shower, right? Too. So easy fix, reverse osmosis, right? Right? So either under the counter unit, you don't see it, or counter countertop unit, you can get a RO system. And again, change a filter every four to six months, and those are a few bucks. So once you buy that RO filter, you've stripped the water, yes. So you want to build it back up again. You want to add your electrolytes back to it. So add a pinch per glass, half a teaspoon per gallon or so with unrefined salt.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  And again, yes, there was reports of some of the salts having microplastics in it and and higher amounts of mining contaminants. So that's why I've done a pretty good deep dive on a US-based company, Redmond Salt.

• 1:28:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Redmond Salt.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Redmond Salt, yeah. So they're very careful about how they mine. They don't use explosives. They don't do all that. They test all their batches and everything else, and it's just from a, you know, hundreds of thousands of year old mine. So so that that is an easy fix. And then and then then the next easy fix is buy yourself a strong glass bottle. I'm a big fan of glass. I travel with glass even, so I have thick glass and sometimes I have a little sleeve on it, so I take it with me. Even for my own mental health, I if I'm traveling and I have to buy, I'd rather if I'm on a long flight, I I do have to buy plastic water bottle.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  So I'll dump it. I'll actually just dump it in there. I'll add maybe, you know, either she legit or or some other minerals or something like that. Just so that I can buy, you know, less exposure to that plastic. But that said, glass bottle, RO filter at home, now you've now you've eliminated hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of toxins in in your tap water. And now you're not. Putting it in a contaminated vessel, you get a glass bottle. And now you've saved money, you've improved your health, you improved hydration. This is probably one of the most powerful things you can do.

• 1:30:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Because we have to drink water, uh, we're not drinking enough of it. You know, two to three liters a day is a good target and that I used to gulp. Now I kind of do it in in phases so I can like hydrate a little better. So I do like little glasses, like in my morning, I'll take a glass right away. And then I'll do a few little things. I'll stretch. I'll take another little shot like twenty minutes later. So I I will, I've stacked my habits with my drinking water. With my procedures in the morning. So by the time I'm done exercising, I've already drank. Uh, you know, a liter and a half of water, right? So I'm not, I never wake up to pee.

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  I've never disturbed my sleep, so I front load my hydration in the first part of the day. And then I'm less even craving water out of after two o'clock.

• 1:31:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's such great advice, especially as we get older, uh, men and women disrupt their sleep. You know, almost once a night for most, and I would say eighty percent of people once a night.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:31:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, eighty percent of people once a night disrupt.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  My dog disrupts my sleep.

• 1:31:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Every once in a while.

• 1:31:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Another one, right? But um, yeah, front loading the hydration. What about for people that can't afford um, you know, reverse osmosis system? I mean, they can get a little bit pricey sometimes, especially if you don't install them. Have you seen ones that are less expensive? Yeah?

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Aqua True is a countertop one for two hundred bucks.

• 1:31:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Aqua True.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've vetted them, uh, they're on my marketplace and I think they even give a hundred bucks off. My my customers. So it's like, yeah, it's like maybe two hundred bucks.

• 1:31:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Aqua True.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  But look at, but look at that over the year, look at that over the savings of.

• 1:32:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Immeasurable.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's immeasurable. So and and even cheaper is distillation. It's just a little. I don't, I think a little more of a pain in the ass because you have to distill it. So it's got a vapor, it's got to go to vapor and re condense.

• 1:32:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  And so, but that you can get for ninety nine bucks.

• 1:32:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. What about the filtered jugs?

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Oh, they're horrible.

• 1:32:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They're horrible.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, listen, I, the caveat is, you know, activated charcoal seems to be quite good. And actually ingesting is what I want to dig into with PFOS. But it does, activated charcoal does have an affinity to take PFOS out. It certainly is showing up in the data and the, in the environment as well as potentially so. But it doesn't get out everything. So that filter, I'm just talking about these one classifications of compounds. But the, the, those Britas and all of those other things, they, they, they are not doing the job.

• 1:32:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  And the municipalities also, just to say this, the municipalities are way behind getting rid of chemicals. So the, going back to our Africa conversation, typhoid, dysentery, things that acutely will just, you know, almost kill you. Municipalities are solving, right? So they're filtering, they're chlorinating their things. So, so we're not acutely, you know, on the toilet after we drink our water. Right. But we haven't solved for the chemicalized exposure. They're way behind. So that's just to say, you can't see it, but it's there. You can actually, you can go, you can request

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  um, your water municipality, you can request reports. I would maybe be suspect if they're current. But you can also environmental working group, ewg.org, you can go and look at, at, at test reports. You'll be horrified. If you don't believe that there's things that you shouldn't be drinking in your water, just take a look. Take five minutes right now. Go to ewg.org, put in your zip code and see what the hell is in your water. You will be filtering your water out of that, right? So, so an RO, distillation, boom, glass bottle, pinch of salt, you're gonna be a, you're gonna be a superstar.

• 1:34:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that's like, um, it's such a. Like once you get it set up, it's not that hard.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it makes like it cannot be overemphasized how massive of a change that is.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:34:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just to get a glass bottle, a reverse osmosis system, pinch of salt.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:34:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's it. Yeah. Okay, let's move. We talked a lot about food already.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Although I want to go back to PFOS actually because we've mentioned it a few times. I think, you know, water definitely is one of the main ways of getting this into our bodies. Um, can you tell us what PFOS is? Why it's important and what it does to us?

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So PFOS or PFOAs, uh, it's a pre or pro floral alkalized substance. It's basically fluorine gas violently slammed together with carbon atoms. And it creates this, this radical chain that's really good at its job. Hydrophilic, hydrophobic, it's heat resistant, it's slippery, uh, stain resistant. And they decided to throw it on our nonstick pans.

• 1:35:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  That's what, that's the OG of them use. So your eggs aren't sticking anymore.

• 1:35:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  This is the same as Teflon?

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  It's Teflon. Yeah. So Teflon is what you know of as that first. But then the crazy thing is because it's so good at its job, it had, it became used in all these other ways. So anytime, sorry to say, it's going to ruin a bunch of you, but I'm not making this up. It's in anytime makeup doesn't wipe off.

• 1:35:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  PFOS.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  PFOS. Anytime they say your clothing is wrinkle resistant, stain resistant. PFOS, uh, same goes with your bedding, your bedding sheets, your carpets, your couches, your baby bibs, right? Easy to wipe off diapers. Like again, not, not every time you see something is almost a miracle. Clothing, there's so much PFOS in our clothing, underwear. There's something to do right away. Change your underwear to organic. I know things get expensive, but change your underwear out.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  You're getting petroleum PFOS, microplastics into your junk, both male and female. That's not a good thing. So PFOS and also PFOS in the environment shows up a lot in fire retardants. And leather products, they put the PFOS thing so it, you know, water falls off it. So

• 1:36:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Literally everywhere.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Literally, i- i- it's, it's everywhere. And the problem that they discovered, and I got to interview, I was telling you earlier, Chris Hansen, who was one of the first, first people to study the PFOS in the blood, find out PFOS in the blood in the nineties. And she realized that we all have it in us, and even in the nineties. And they said it was safe and it isn't safe. So PFOS is connected, has a high carcinogenicity. So there's cancer causing effect. And the weird thing, when it gets weird, is because these chemicals have no natural compounds, they kind of create this

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  free radical challenge in the body. And you see it like I'm reading these things going, it's connected to high cholesterol. It's connected to metabolic conditions, connected to diabetes. Like, what the hell is going on?

• 1:37:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The reason is, it's, as you mentioned before, it's a forever chemical.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It gets into our cells and our cells don't want it there. So it's constantly trying to eliminate this thing and it can't. And when that happens, it creates an incredible inflammation, which leads to oxidative stress, free radicals. It leads to cancer because it's a constant irritant to our body. Whenever your body's in a state of constant inflammation, it's always trying to fight this thing that's inside of you that it cannot get rid of. It's an alarm signal in every cell. And it's just, it's like a bad house guest that just won't go away. And it's always like a problem. And so I truly believe that, you know, a lot of people are wondering like, why is cancer on such a huge upswing right now? This is one chemical that has a lot to do with it.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  has a lot to do with them. And there's a lot of different masks that this one has on it. There's over fifteen thousand of those classifications underneath the PFOS. So there's just and also, you know, I'll also mention the daily thing, packaging, food packaging.

• 1:38:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Right? So food packaging, all all fast food. So those those wrapped hamburgers or whatever doesn't stick on there because they have a layer of PFOS. And so anytime.

• 1:39:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  A lot of plastic bottles, too. A lot of bottles, a lot of Tupperware has this stuff in it. It's mind blowing is how they put on everything.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  These things are not just plastics, even though plastics themselves, a huge amount of chemicals to make this one, which was once crude oil into plastic, right? So there's a lot of chemicals already, but then they put this other layer. Because again, it's so good at its job. It's so convenient for us. But now your food, your hot food is interacting and soaking up more and more of this PFOS. So now, you know, we're going back to we we are getting out of even making our own food. If you're again, when you're making your own food, you're eliminating all of this other types of exposure. So there's there's more than just it makes sense to eat whole food.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  It makes sense to stay away from these things that are absolutely connected to derailing your physiology.

• 1:40:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, absolutely.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  And just emphasizing forever chemicals. We don't yet know how the body doesn't know how to get rid of them. We don't know how to get rid of them. So this is, and then they just keep adding this to us for the last, you know, four or five decades.

• 1:40:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. And then with food, let's go on to food here. We talked a lot about, you know, how important is eat whole foods? However, there's also in the way you prepare your food at home, because a lot of the pans, the utensils we use to prepare our food, a lot of that is also covered with chemicals too. So how can we avoid some of this?

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, this has been tough. I've I've contacted a bunch of pan companies and like looked at it. And then, oh, there are some nanoparticles that they're not disclosing and stuff like that. So unfortunately, like we all want to know, I want a nonstick pan, of course. God dang, they're so good at.

• 1:41:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Non-sticking.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  Non-sticking. So it took me a long time. There was a couple greenwashing ones that I thought they had me and then they duped me and then I was like, oh, so one good source that I used, she's actually a fellow Minnesotan Viking, but she lives out here in Ventura, she's called Momivation.

• 1:41:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Momivation.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  She's a mom and she works directly, funds this through her partnerships and nonprofits and grants. She will literally go and grab all of these companies, third-party legit labs and test this shit herself. So through her EWG and then for like cosmetics, personal care, campaign for safe cosmetics, like these, these are some juggernauts that are doing so. They're good resources. So through her, I started digging in, then I contacted the company. There's a pan company called, I think it's called Extrema.

• 1:41:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Extrema.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  Extrema is pretty great. Not a hundred percent. I kind of like it and don't like it. Like, obviously I want a non-stick, but I don't want a non-stick to get my chemicals. So, so this one's pretty good, but it's ceramic. You gotta be careful though. When they say ceramic, it's not necessarily ceramic is what's touching your food. It's whatever other layers of chemicals they're doing. And that's where they, that's where they greenwash you. Get these healthy ceramic pans. Okay. Well, you didn't disclose it.

• 1:42:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What you put on top of it. Right.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  You didn't, you didn't, you know, so, so food and what your food touches.

• 1:42:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And what you're storing it in, your Tupperware.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Glass, glass, glass.

• 1:42:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Glass all the time.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  No, no plastic.

• 1:42:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I, I think the more you can use glass in your kitchen and, and your cookware and your plates and everything.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Cutting boards, get rid of all the plastic stuff and like, go to wood and be careful with the wood and what they stained it with. Cause that's usually then formaldehyde and then the formaldehyde is getting in your food. Like, so I'm sorry to say, we just, there, there's some homework we need to do. And that's what I'm trying, I'm trying to get out solutions for some of this stuff. Cause it's, it's, I get it. It's overwhelming for.

• 1:43:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I think the challenge is it is overwhelming. And I think first is knowing that this is a problem.

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Secondly, is putting into place like the Pareto Principle, that what are the few actions we can take to make a big difference? But then having easy access to resources that someone like yourself is curated that really cares about the right information. So, you know, I really would, I know you have a lot of resources for people and we'll talk about that at the end of the show, but do you have lists of like, what are the best items to buy?

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You mentioned some and.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm getting there. I've got my marketplace, daniellee.com. I've got a marketplace where I've vetted a bunch of stuff.

• 1:43:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  And I'm adding to it every week, you know, with a small team, it just takes, takes time because it's, it's layers and layers of disclosed information, conversations with the scientists, the owners, the thing like, you know, it's like, it becomes a whole thing.

• 1:44:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  And it's like, wow, that's, that's what we have to do to get like, okay, like, you know, and every so often you, you run into companies that are like, oh, thank God, they're just doing it right. Right from the get go. So every entrepreneur here, listening, just do it right from the beginning.

• 1:44:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  Because like, just, just, I, I, and listen, it might be harder. It might be hard. It's always hard. But if you cut corners, you're cutting off part of your soul and eventually they'll find out.

• 1:44:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  They as in we will.

• 1:44:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. People will find out, right? And so lastly, on the skin part, and this is something that I feel is another way we're just hurting ourselves. It's like literally like, you know, putting your hand on a fire and burning, burning yourself with in a very slow fashion with some of the stuff that we're using on our skin. And so we love, like, what are some of the chemicals there that we need to watch out for?

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's the parabens, the phthalates, the fragrances, those are kind of the big, the big boys.

• 1:45:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Parabens is what they put in lotions and things like that, that, you know, make your skin soft, but also as a forever chemical, right?

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Right. It's, it's, you know, the parabens actually do have. Some half lives, right? The phthalates, the parabens do have some half lives, but they're flow agents, so they become necessary lazy.

• 1:45:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Alternatives, but the people say they're necessary. But so they do have some half lives between four to eight hours within the body. The problem is that you're reapplying all this stuff. So on average, a woman is using about a hundred twenty, hundred twenty eight different chemical exposures every, every day.

• 1:45:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  A hundred twenty eight a day from cosmetics.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  From cosmetics and from lotion. So you think about this huge organ we have. You know, what I'm wearing, the deodorant I put on, the, the toothpaste I put in my mouth, the dental floss I use, the shampoo I use, the moisturizer I use, all of that's in my body. So if you reverse engineer that, do you really know what's going on in your body? Or are you just, that's just what I use because I don't want to sweat, so I'm using that deodorant. So I would, I would start scrutinizing your lotions, your, your things that you're, you're the big stuff you're using every day. Your fragrances, your shampoos, your lotions, that, those are the big, big boys.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  So if you're using like, I, I use coconut oil and castor oil. Like that's kind of my moisturizer, like castor oil is very penetrating and deep and healing. It's a very thick, so you can cut it and you don't, depending on your skin type. But coconut oil is natural SPF, right? So these things are like simple, they're so cheap and maybe everything else. So, so then kind of go from there and then, and then there's great, there's more and more good companies in terms of, you know, more specifics and, and serums and facial serums and all of that stuff that you can.

• 1:47:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and EWG has a really good list of these. There's also an app called Think Dirty that I like to use sometimes.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's another one called Yuka.

• 1:47:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yuka, yeah, that's another good app, right? And I think to make it not overwhelming, once again, I think it's a journey. Picking the one product you use the most in your bathroom and then just researching it one, one week and switching it out. And then maybe a month later do the second one.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, yeah, I would go with the ones that you feel like are like exposed. For me, I would say, what do you open your, up your mouth to? So like you would go, okay.

• 1:47:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Toothpaste.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  Toothpaste.

• 1:47:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Floss.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  Floss and if you're using Listerine, you're insane. Like that's gonna mess up your microbiome in your mouth and and hurt your digestive process and hurt your amylase and like digestive enzyme. Rabbit hole, but like those kind of things be scrutinized and then obviously your organ of your skin, what are you constantly putting on your skin? Deodorant, lotions, shampoos, condition, all of these things. So then again, you're right. Just start with one. When you're done with that tube of toothpaste, I like bite toothpaste.

• 1:48:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Because it there's from a sustainable, from a client, I'm like addicted to like just bite it's so efficient. And it's so easy and it's not, there's, there's not the bad stuff in it and it's great. So.

• 1:48:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What do you floss with?

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Um, I have a bamboo charcoal. I forget, I forget the company. I've always, I've used them for a long time. But then, and all I do is, yeah, that, that non-stick. I'm gonna ruin this for people, but that, that slippery.

• 1:48:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Floss.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Floss that glide stuff, that's full of PFOS.

• 1:48:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's PFOS, right?

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Slides, it's really good at its job, slides really easily. So what I do is I use the bamboo string. Uh, with the charcoal, anti fungal, antibacterial. So, but I, I just wet it. So I just have the sun, I wet it quick and then ding ding ding and it's.

• 1:49:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're done.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  And it's, it works just as good. And once you have healthy gums, they're not bleeding anyway.

• 1:49:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  So, so you don't even, again, this is just a habit. You replace it and you don't even miss it.

• 1:49:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, so powerful. These little changes add up over, I mean, look, we've spent how many years of our life like exposing ourselves to toxins? The good news is you could spend a year slowly decreasing your toxic exposure. And you could literally turn back the clock on this, on the damage it's done within a year.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Nature is powerful.

• 1:49:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Powerful.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  But if you're constantly blasting yourself with glutens, it doesn't have much of a chance. But when you eliminate, nature herself will rage powerfully for you, not against you. So like give her a chance, give nature a chance and, and your life will be like, we all know how time. Clicks by. You and I will have another discussion probably before that, but in another podcast in six months, a year. Again, we'll just click by.

• 1:50:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  So what am I doing today?

• 1:50:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  Don't underestimate those choices.

• 1:50:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, they add up really quickly. Darren, this is such a great, incredible, so much information. Thank you. And I think I learned a lot, a lot of new things about you. I mean, this is, this is so awesome.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Really fun.

• 1:50:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love your passion for not just what you're doing, but spreading the information. I think it's absolutely inspiring and the passion for the environment and humanity in general. And so I can't wait to hear more about the research you've done in energy and in all these different aspects of humanity. It just sounds, sounds like you've learned a lot. I love it. How can people find out? I love your marketplace on DarrenOlien.com. What other things can they see from you? How can they find out about you?

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's a good place. I get Darren Olien on all social media and YouTube and, and, and just, yeah, newsletters and I'm switching my, my whole brand over to Superlife, but Darren Olien, you'll be able to find anything.

• 1:51:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then what books? Tell us the titles of the books you've.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Superlife is the first one and then Fatal Conveniences.

• 1:51:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That was your first book?

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, so you're going back to that brand?

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's fantastic.

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Cause it really, the, the genesis of the title was always standing for something a lot bigger. So I just was going back to like, it's beyond me. Like I'm connected to it, but it's beyond me. So let's switch it to, so I'm rebranding everything.

• 1:51:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I love Fatal Conveniences and then good documentary?

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I did Down to Earth, me and Zac Efron, and I'm working on a new, new one. We can't reveal it quite yet, but should be filming in October.

• 1:51:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Be running around the planet. So if I see you in an airport, make sure to say hi.

• 1:51:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I will. I will for sure. Darren, thank you so much for joining me today and look forward to all of our future conversations.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, me too. Thanks, brother.

• 1:52:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You're welcome.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 1:52:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

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