107. Dr. Will Cole: Gut Issues and Anxiety? Functional Medicine Is Finally Connecting the Dots

You can eat clean, track your labs, take supplements, and still feel anxious, inflamed, tired, or flat. Why? Because the gut, brain, immune system, and hormones are in constant conversation, and most of us are only treating one side of that story. In this episode of Extend, I sit down with Dr. Will Cole to uncover the science behind the gut-brain axis, and why nervous system dysregulation might be the reason your biomarkers won't budge. We unpack how microbiome imbalances, silent inflammation, low vagal tone, and stored trauma show up as anxiety, constipation, brain fog, and burnout… even when you're "doing everything right." We also get practical: testing beyond standard blood work, HRV as a window into resilience, breathwork vs. meditation, EMDR, "ugly journaling," and when devices like Apollo Neuro and Sensate actually help. Dr. Will Cole is a leading functional medicine expert, a pioneer in gut-brain health, neuroimmune disorders, and autoimmune healing. He is also the host of the top-ranked podcast The Art of Being Well and the New York Times bestselling author of books including Gut Feelings, The Inflammation Spectrum, and Ketotarian. What's Discussed: (00:00) From Functional Medicine to the Gut-Brain Revolution (13:14) How Trauma, Serotonin, and the Vagus Nerve Shape the Mind-Gut Connection (21:13) Healing the Nervous System: Journaling, EMDR, and Wearable Vagus Nerve Tech (30:15) Why Real Health Change Starts with Individuals, Not Institutions (35:07) Food Deserts, Misinformation, and Taking Your Health Back (43:04) Regenerative Supplements, Soil Health & The Future of Functional Medicine Thank You for Our Sponsors: IM8: Try IM8 today with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at https://im8health.com/discount/DRSHAH. Vitaboom: For supplements you can trust and wellness solutions tailored to your health, visit https://vitaboom.com/ Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram:@darshanshahmd https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Dr. Will Cole: Instagram: @drwillcole https://www.instagram.com/drwillcole/ Instagram: @theartofbeingwell_ https://www.instagram.com/theartofbeingwell_/ Youtube: @DrWillCole https://www.youtube.com/user/DrWillCole

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?

  Dr. Will Cole, such a pleasure to be here.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, Dr. Shah, thanks for having me on.

• 0:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know, I've been looking forward to this ever since I was on yours.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yes, thanks for coming on mine.

• 0:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think I told you I was a huge fan of your work.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 1:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  From everything you've done from the beginning. I started my functional medicine journey like five, six years ago. And back then, there weren't a lot of people talking about functional medicine. So I watched like every YouTube you put out there.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, man, that means so much.

• 1:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I learned so much from you.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So much for you.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  You're doing amazing things. I'm so cheering you on from the sidelines.

• 1:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I'm so proud of you. Yeah, it's great stuff and I'm great to connect. We went to dinner last night in London.

• 1:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Here we are at the Health Optimization Summit in London, and we were lucky enough to book the podcast studio and get to talk. And I've been wanting to unpack this. And I've watched kind of your evolution through functional medicine, just through your podcasts and YouTube videos. And I really love some of the things you've been talking about lately, mainly around the gut-brain connection. I think this is something that is hitting at least the functional medicine world by storm right now, and there's so much to unpack there. So I'd love to talk about that, if that's okay with you.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It's such an important part, and beyond it just being this conceptual thing, it's a very tangible, measurable thing that you can see improve in somebody. Labs and somebody's lives when you address it in a meaningful way, in a deep way, going beyond the basics. Like if you haven't done the basics, then start there. But then there's a broad swath of people that are doing way more than the average person. They're better off than they would be if they weren't doing the sort of average wellness things. But we live in such a mad world in many ways where it's like, okay, the basic stuff doesn't cut it more and more sadly. And when we need to dig deeper, we need to.

• 2:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and you know, this is so relevant to me because this is where I feel like I'm at personally in my own life. Where I obviously, you know, for years I've been doing all the things, you know, measuring my gut health and making sure I'm eating my fiber and getting my probiotics and prebiotics. But I just feel like there's another level that I'm not addressing. And you know, you just mentioned it's measurable. How is this measurable?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Oh, in so many ways, subjectively and objectively. So subjectively, it's just checking in with people's bodies, right? If somebody's feeling that sort of wired and tired, anxious and exhausted. Really what I'm talking about is this larger neuro-immuno-endocrine axis. This intersection between the nervous system, the immune system in the form of inflammation and the endocrine system. How many people in the wellness world, again, better than the average American, better than the average English person or wherever you're at in the world, but they are not where they need to be and they know suboptimal. They're not feeling good. So when it comes to the nervous system, it's that sort of wired, tired.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  It's that nervous system dysregulation, that sort of background anxiety, the burnout phenomenon, epidemic that people are dealing with. These stubborn inflammatory issues that people can't get down. So subjectively, it's just not feeling good. Like check in with your energy levels, check in with your focus, check in with your digestion. I mean, we talk, if there's a day that goes by where I'm not talking about pooping. I failed. So two to three snakes a day is the Bristol chart frequency and formation. So many people with it that are, again, eat okay. They would say, I'm pretty good. They're going two or three days without a bowel movement. Like, they're chronically constipated or they're constantly having IBS, you know, IBS C and D.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  So I would say, subjectively, check in with these sort of major systems of the body. Digestion, brain function, hormonal health, metabolic health. And then objectively, looking at a few markers, looking at inflammation markers is a good way. There's a lot of people that eat pretty healthy that still have HSCR P levels that are higher than we want. Still have higher homocysteine levels and other inflammation marker. You look at their gut health, their gut health is not optimal. They have a lot of bacterial overgrowths, digestion and absorption issues. Still have it leaky gut syndrome markers.

• 4:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  And then when you look at hormones, it could be suboptimal. So there's a lot of things that you could see move and like, okay, their life is improving when we start dealing in with these sort of deeper things we can get into. And then these biomarkers on the labs are improving as well.

• 5:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, that's so relevant. And, you know, a lot of times people think that they've got their blood work done and they were told they were fine. But that blood work traditionally, even in functional medicine clinics, I hate to say, people are not measuring for bacterial overgrowth. They're not measuring for leaky gut. And so these are tests that are commercially available, that people have access to now. You just got to make sure you're asking for it.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, you have to ask for it. Yeah, you're right, even because it's like, what's that cliche of when everything, when every, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I feel like the best clinicians out there, they're so well intentioned, both conventional and otherwise. But it's like if their wheelhouse is that thing.

• 5:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Sometimes, as a consumer or a patient, you have to advocate for yourself, even with an informed doctor and saying, no, this is, through hearing the information and educating yourself, you may want to, you're thinking differently because this is your body and you have to advocate for yourself. So I think it's a good thing. Yeah, but looking at these, what we would call upstream root issues, which the gut is part of it, but I would say largely, like, looking even beyond that, of the immune system and these sort of stealth. Infections, environmental toxins that can dysregulate the immune system are profoundly important. And as, you know, there's a lot of unmeasurable things like chronic stress and unresolved trauma. Though you can't measure them directly, obviously, their mental, emotional, like spiritual facets.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  But they're stored in the body just as much as an environmental toxin is. So we have to look at, that's more of questionnaires, like the ACE score and getting to know them as a clinician to be like, oh, right. This is a piece of the puzzle here that's showing up in the dysregulation of the neuroimmunohendron axis. But we're not seeing it directly, both and not either or.

• 6:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm, that's such a powerful statement that these emotional traumas are stored in our body, just like toxins are.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and it makes, it makes total sense. And I think there's such a disconnection in traditional medicine between what's going on, you know, above the neck versus what's going on below the neck. But they're so intimately related. Can we talk about that? Like, how is the physical body, like the gut and the brain connected? What is some of the different ways?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when babies are growing in their mom's womb, their gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue. And they're inextricably linked for the rest of our life through what's known as the gut-brain axis, the connection between the gut and the brain. And I know I'm weird, but I think if you think about it, I've never seen any scientist or researcher say this, but like, okay, tell me if you think I'm weird. The intestines even resemble the brain.

• 7:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  And I don't think that's, I think that's part of this whole phenomenon, this sort of fetal. And, and the fact that 95% of serotonin is made and stored in the gut. 50% of dopamine is made and stored in the gut. So there's a lot of far-reaching implications from a neurotransmitter standpoint. Now, the mechanism of action, they'll say, well, it doesn't pass through the blood-brain barrier. But what it, how it's impacting this crosstalk. This bidirectional communication between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut is its impact on GI motility and its communication through the vagus nerve.

• 8:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  That, that largest cranial nerve in the body, that resting, digesting. There's, when we say nervous system dysregulation, a lot of times what we in part mean is poor vagal tone, that vagus. Nervous week, the gut plays a significant role in that. Because the gut's also home to seventy five percent of the immune system. Inflammation is a product of the immune system.

• 8:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  So to understand inflammation, you have to look at where the predominance of the immune system resides, which is in the gastrointestinal system. So I, from a vagal, like nerve communication line, from an inflammatory standpoint, this sort of microbiome mind communication line is deep. And it is playing out every day in people's lives and people, maybe, a lot of people have digestive problems, as I mentioned, but a lot of people, okay, they may have severe digestive issues. So they'll say, gut health isn't my thing, but I have anxiety. I have depression, I have brain fog, I have fatigue. Now, again, to repeat myself, a lot of those people do have subtle digestive issues. Some have extreme digestive issues. But I would, my point in saying this is that you don't necessarily have to have

• 9:22Speaker 01

  extreme digestive symptoms, have underlying microbiome and gastrointestinal components to why they feel the way that they do. Because you're right, like in the West, we'll separate mental health from physical health, but it's one and the same. Mental health is physical health. Our brain is a part of our body, just as much as anything else is. And research is looking at this, sort of gut-brain connection, the inflammatory, the cytokine model, cognitive function, how research, researchers are looking at how does inflammation, cytokines impacting mental health. So it's so important. And when you're, you cannot, in my opinion, you really cannot have a meaningful conversation for people when it comes to mental health without looking at the gut's component. And that's not to say that's every single person under the sun, but it is the vast majority.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And I could say I really haven't found one clinically. I'm leaving it open to maybe there are some unicorns out there where the gut isn't a role. But I think it's, at the very least, a piece of the puzzle. For many people, it's a significant piece of the puzzle.

• 10:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. This knowledge could change, basically, all of psychiatry in America. It's a massive problem right now. Psychological issues being put on multiple medications. And then now you have medications that potentiate the effects of the other medications that you have to be put on because the meds aren't working. And no one's talking about the gut as being part of the issue, you know?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  No. So I mean, who is it? Dr. Amen says at breast, he said psychiatry is the only field of medicine that doesn't measure the organ that it's treating. And he's talking mainly about the spec scans in the brain, which is are great. But then, okay, let's also look at the interconnected pathways of the gut-brain axis inflammation as a whole, because we have to understand that the idea that this sort of this ambiguous, you know, serotonin issue.

• 11:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  There are measurable issues that if serotonin is implicated, why is there a dysregulation going on? It's not an SSRI deficiency.

• 11:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Let's figure out why we had the problem in the first place.

• 11:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. And you know, I love the reference back to embryology, because when I studied embryology in medical school, it's probably the most interesting topic to me. And just to see how embryologically the brain and the gut kind of develop together, being completely linked from from an embryological level.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Obviously, they are talking to each other, you know? And so one other fact that is really kind of crazy, actually, is the vagus nerve is the big nerve that you mentioned that connects the brain and the gut. I'm a surgeon, and one of the things that we used to do in surgery, you probably heard about this, is called a vagotomy.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 11:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now, a vagotomy was done because people got ulcers. And this was when, back when we misdiagnosed ulcers as a problem with the nerve stomach, the connection between the nerve and the stomach and what would happen. And the real problem was heliobacter pylori, and that was the reason people were getting ulcers, and no one knew this. So we would use to cut the vagus nerve. And what would happen to the people that had vagotomies was almost 100% of the time, they would change mentally. Okay? And so you could see this happening to them afterwards. And no one really talked about it. No one really, I don't think there's ever been studies between vagotomies and depression, because then we stopped doing them completely, once we found the real cause, which is the H. pylori and the acid secretion.

• 12:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But to me, just thinking about about my career through medicine, and when we used to cut the vagus nerve, and what would happen to them mentally, they were obviously linked, but no one considered there was a linkage.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah, wild. It'd be fascinating to go look back at any data on that, of just like what that those people that got it done, where's their, like, what happened to their brain, what impacted their mood?

• 12:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, right, exactly.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, I mean. You know, there's mouse studies that are done now that we know that if you do a fecal transplant on a mouse and you can change their neuropsychology, right? So there's that, what's going on in the gut is affecting the mind. But what about the other direction? You talk a lot about traumas and how that is linked to what's going on in your gut. And traumas, obviously, there are things that happen to us when we're in childhood or even afterwards that are deep seated in our neuropsychology. How are those connected?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's this bidirectional relationship, right? How does the physiological impact the psychological, the mental, emotional, spiritual? And then, as you've mentioned, conversely, how does the mental, emotional, spiritual impact the physical? So these are more nebulous, right? It's a more straightforward and prescriptive for you and I to say to patients, okay, eat this, take this, do this biohack, take this peptide. You know, it's prescriptive, it's linear. It is nonlinear to deal with things like chronic stress and unresolved trauma, certainly unresolved past trauma. So we have, but we have to talk about the complex, right? It doesn't, it's not going to be solved as easily and straightforwardly, but it's something that needs to be unpacked. If you are stuck at a plateau, you have to look.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  For some people, it's a small piece of the puzzle. For some people, it's the significant player in why they're not moving past their plateau. And we all gaslight ourselves in many ways, right? And many people will gaslight themselves here and say, well, they'll compare themselves to someone that has gone through worse than them. It's not the event, it's the response to the event. There's a lot of bio-individuality to that, because I see a lot of family members, a lot of siblings as telehealth patients. And it's very fascinating to me to say that they both had the same childhood and they both have higher ACE scores, meaning that the adverse childhood experiences or events, like they went through very serious trauma, mental, emotional abuse growing up, physical abuse, sexual abuse growing up. But their responses can be different, right?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  It can manifest in their life differently. So there's a genetic and epigenetic interplay here with a lot of different variables. It's an entourage effect of variables, but we have to look at as a, as a variable. And Research is clear, the higher somebody's ACE score, the more likely they're to have autoimmune problems, mental health issues, metabolic issues, even trouble losing weight. Like the body's stuck in that fight or flight, stress state, a lot of inflammatory problems. And I have every new telehealth patient when I'm talking to them initially online is to fill that out and let's talk about it. And then the ACE is great, there's a lot of really cool data around it. But we even have to talk about life experiences after childhood. Cause ACE score ends when they're in adolescence. But what was their life?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Did they go through any big T trauma in their twenties, thirties, sort of on and on? So these things are, research is clear, stored in the body. They can, they're gonna dysregulate that neuroimmunohendocrine axis. And it's as if that past memory is living in the body on a cellular level until today. Until you decide to start to look in these dark corners of your life and start to address it. And metabolize stored trauma, metabolize chronic stress from the body, just like we said. We would an environmental toxin or a biotoxin, like a myotoxin. So this sort of, the most recent book that I wrote was called Gut Feelings. Cause it's exploring the gut and the feelings and the interplay between the two.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  But again, the protocols for the feeling stuff, it's going to be very much bio-individual. But we have to find consistent tools within that sort of somatic toolbox, that nervous system regulation toolbox that people can stick with. And like, most people will say, when we lean into like Vagus nerve exercises or breath work or meditation, the people will say, I'm not good at it. I suck at it, or it's not for me. Like, I want people to know, if you say meditation, you're not good at it, welcome to the club. Like, we all suck at it. That's why it's called a practice. And it's not to say that maybe that type of meditation isn't right for you. You need to find a different tool. What's another act of stillness that's supportive of that parasympathetic that is weak?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Cause when you have a weak vagus nerve, a weak resting digestive system aspect of the autonomic nervous system, of course it's gonna be unnatural. So it'd be like, if we never had worked out before in the gym, we go up and show up at the gym and it's gonna be unnatural. We're gonna be sore, we're gonna feel insecure about it all. It's gonna be very clunky. And I could say, The gym's not for me.

• 17:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  It's not. Or if I went to the gym once and said it didn't work for me. It takes consistency over time because you're strengthening something that is profoundly weak.

• 17:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  A vagus nerve that's weak for many people.

• 17:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's such a great analogy because, you know, a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people on meditation. They say, I tried it, I couldn't do it. I got this app and I couldn't do it. I couldn't stick with it. Well, it's like, just like going to the gym. Like, you're not going to watch three YouTube videos on how to work out and then expect to be an expert at doing, you know, at doing deadlifts at the gym. It doesn't work that way. Sometimes you have to have a trainer. Sometimes you have to try a different modality. Maybe you need a machine or kettlebells. But if you stick with it, eventually you'll figure out something that works, right? And for me, for the people that say, I can't meditate, start with breath work. Everyone knows how to breathe. Right? At least start there and then we can move you into. Well, I mean, yeah, instinctually we breathe, but you're right.

• 18:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most of us don't even know how to breathe correctly sometimes too. Yeah, so I think, I think you're absolutely right. Like, this is something that, it's a practice, it's something that we have to do. And it's, might seem like it's unreachable sometimes, but with practice you can get there. And it's so incredibly important. I think the problem there is though, that when you go to the gym, you see results. Like, maybe you gain muscle, you gain less fat. But with Vagus nerve tone, it's hard to find a measurable or even a, something like looking in the mirror.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Externally, yeah.

• 19:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, externally. And so how can people, are you believing HRV as a measure of Vagus nerve?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, HRVs are wonderful. Look, well, the wearables, it's one way to measure it. I don't think it's the only way to measure it. And HRV is a lot of different factors that can play into something. And HRV being suboptimal and maybe sleep or something like that. You may be staying up too late. You know, there's a lot of things and maybe how they're working out, what they're doing. But it is a metric that certainly should be tracked. And something that we track for everybody. So HRV and then of course the REM and the deep sleep and all these sort of other things. Signs of the parasympathetic being supported. Over time.

• 19:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  But beyond that, it's going back to subjectively, like, how am I feeling? Like, am I have building resilience in my life? Am I feeling less wired and tired? Do I have better focus? Do I have better energy levels? Is that anxiety not there anymore? Because when people's proverbial bucket is emptied, they have more wiggle room. They have more resilience. So, yes, HRV, REM, and deep sleep are certainly a great way to look at the parasympathetic and from a wearable biomarker standpoint.

• 20:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  And should be looked at.

• 20:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  But it's multifactorial. It's certainly multifactorial. And again, back to that sort of both and, like, dealing with the sort of physiological side of it, because supporting gut health is another way to support vagal tones. Like, you're gonna be, anybody that's working on anti-inflammatory lifestyle, supporting their gut health, that is supporting their vagal tones.

• 20:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  But it's, okay, the feeling side of gut feelings, like, that's where things like breathwork, somatic practices, journaling, we see a lot of great success with.

• 20:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Journaling, right.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, journal, speak, ugly journaling. Basically, that's a very, very much a physical representation of metabolizing these things that are in our bodies that we would never say to anybody, but you are ugly journaling. You are writing out all the things of, like, a good prompt that I like to give people is, like, what does it feel like to be me today? Because a lot of these people that we'd see that have autoimmune issues or these, you know, inflammatory problems, these, what the world would call mystery illnesses, they have a lot of anger and rage and shame and hurt in their body on a somatic level. So to write out and journal, we make them do 20 minutes once a day, they hate it most of the time at the beginning, because, first of all, they're not on their phones, and they're like, writing out with a pen and paper, a pencil and paper.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  It's like, who does that anymore? And your hand cramps, and you're just like, ah, I don't, you may like it some days, and some days you won't like it, but you show up and you do it because your why is bigger than your excuses.

• 21:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And you wanna just, you wanna get rid of this stuff, you've done all the detoxes out there in the wellness world, this is the time to detox that emotional pain.

• 21:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  And put it out, and pen to paper. I've seen it do tremendous for inflammatory issues, nervous system issues. It is profound and it's so low cost. It's free other than your time and the pen and paper. But I mean, really accessible tools. I love EMDR for people who need it, like iMovement, desensitization, reprocessing, that type of therapy. These sort of practices done consistently can be great tools. And we prescribe them, if you will, just as much as we would a peptide protocol.

• 22:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it.

• 22:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 23:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 23:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IM8. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/IM8 or go to im8health.com/discount/drsah and you can get 20% off with my discount code, DrShah. You can also find the link below.

• 24:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 25:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and supplements. Go to vitaboom.com and check it out.

• 25:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just a highlight on the journaling. So there's actually research out there showing that writing about your traumas multiple times in a row, day after day, even if you feel like I already wrote about it, why did I write about it again? It helps you process that trauma. And the research shows that that journaling practice is just as effective as like weeks of actually seeing a psychologist unpack trauma as well. It's massive how effective it is.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Massive, massive. And then sometimes, again, the writing or the talking that a therapist is needed. But then EMDR is a good thing where it's not.

• 25:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What is EMDR? Talk about that.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  So it's eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. So it involves some, it involves integration. It involves talk therapy, but very much less so. So versus having sort of rehash it all the time. Again, there's a time and place for processing and integration. But it involves memories, going back to past memories, and using eye movement to retrain the nervous system to not have a hypervigilant response like it used to. So it is a great way to not intellectualize it all. And on that level, but it is on a nervous system. Level retraining the hypervigilance. So you could go back after you've gone through sessions of EMDR.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  And these are things we integrate for telehealth patients. They don't have that same visceral response where it was like a 10 out of 10. When they went and thought about that past trauma before, as far as they could sweat, they anxiety, their hands get cold, they feel shaky, they get triggered. They're not getting triggered like that anymore. So is EMDR a solution for everybody? No, but we have to. I typically have telehealth patients. We find something active and something passive in that sort of somatic feeling toolbox. And something active could be the breath work, it could be the meditation, it could be the ugly journaling. And something passive I find is important because it's for the people that we're talking about,

• 27:17Speaker 01

  people that are really doing a lot for their health. To add another thing they have to do or add into their routine can overwhelm them.

• 27:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, my gosh, another thing you're telling me to do, another thing, Dr. Cole. So something passive, this is where I think utilizing devices that's work on frequency, work on Vagus nerve stimulation can be really helpful because it's something that's happening in the background. You know, so there's a lot of transcutaneous Vagus nerve stimulation devices that, again, it's, you can wear them on your wrist, on your ankle, you can wear them around your neck that are just doing the work in the background. And I've seen it be great for HRV, great for REM and deep sleep, done consistently. And that's where I think that the advancements in the sort of biohacking wearable space can be a great tool within the toolbox.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  It certainly is never a replacement for the active stuff and the foundational stuff. But I do see it being a significant needle mover for people.

• 28:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So do you have any favorite devices, Vagus nerve stimulators?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Apollo Neural, we utilize the most. And it's out of University of Pittsburgh's research out of their psychiatry department. Yeah, we love it. We see great tools. Sensate is another one that we use. There's a few different apps out there. We utilize the Silk app, which is frequency. Device, but it's frequency medicine that I have great success with.

• 28:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, amazing. Great tools that are readily available for people, but very important to emphasize, those are working in the background while you're actually doing the real work as well in the foreground too, right?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 28:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So do you, you know, one of the other things I wanted to kind of add to people's toolbox on this episode is you and I both interviewed Gabby Bernstein and Internal Family Systems and her latest book, Self Help, which is also, I think, another tool that you can use throughout your day about just pausing in a moment and just understanding where those traumas are affecting your immediate emotional reactions.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. No, it's, yeah, that book is fantastic because it's bringing IFS to someone that maybe doesn't have access to a therapist right now.

• 29:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  I still would say ultimately to get access to a therapist when you can. But yeah, it's a great tool to look at these origins of trauma, I think. And there's different modalities out there. It's not one way for everybody, but there's so much, I mean, this is the blessing and the curse of the time that we live in. It's a double edged sword. There's so much access, but that can be overwhelming, right? But that's why sometimes the best mental health advice you can give somebody is walk away from your phone and more isn't always better. Sometimes it's more isn't always better, like the other modality, the other thing to buy. It's being consistent with what you already have.

• 30:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And that's the unsexy part. Consistency isn't sexy. Consuming the next thing is the sexy thing. That's what people want. But that's not always the case. If you have effective tools and you're like, wow, it's something else. No, maybe it's not something else. It's just consistency is the something else.

• 30:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. Yeah, you know, this goes into habit formation too, right? Like if you have one habit that you can stick to for an entire year, that's so much more valuable than stacking three or four habits that you do once a week, which I see a lot.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 30:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  With the best of intentions.

• 30:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Part of my job and probably part of your job too is like editing, editing the things. It's like, yeah, that's nice in theory, but you only have so many hours in the day. So what What are gonna be the biggest needle movers for you? So you maybe just need two or three of those. Some people, yes, they do need more tools within the toolbox. I'm not saying it's that simple for everybody. But sometimes it is and consistency is just the missing biohack.

• 31:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, so true. Consistency is a missing biohack for almost everybody.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Hate to tell you, we're in this amazing expo with all these amazing things out there. So you can't buy consistency.

• 31:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. You cannot buy consistency. So true. So where do you see the future of this gut-brain-connection-science going? Like, will we get to a world where there's like a probiotic capsule? That is now the new, you know, emotional-regulating-medication? Or fecal-transplants? Like, where do you see the future of all this ending up?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  I want there to be more exciting, well-formed research around this. So more and more people can come behind it, right? I want this to be a bottom-up, that's probably a bad pun here, but bottom-up, top-down. I didn't mean it that way. I want it to be a grassroots thing and I want it to be a national thing as well. I want people to be empowered on their individual and not wait for nation-states to get behind this stuff. Like, start, what can you do today to start improving your health? So I guess what I'm trying to say is I want there to be more great research, but democratization of the information that's already out there.

• 32:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Because we're scratching the surface. We're at this amazing convention here where this is a small percentage of the population that even understands this.

• 32:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  It's growing. I mean, over the past 15 years, it's definitely, we've gotten more mainstream than we've ever gone. But we're still in a weird bubble. And there's still a lot of stigma around wellness and nutrition and biohacks and these type of progressive ideas that are disruptors in many ways. So I just hope that we can keep reaching more people in a positive way. But doing it in a way that's sound, doing it in a way that is measured, doing it in a way that is not hyperbolic or fringe or isolating people. And we can all be better. And that's communication and social media. It's just, it's tough to communicate this to the public because there's so much spin, I think, on what we're doing.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And then sometimes the nature of social media, the context and the nuance is oftentimes lost too. So people could come across as like extreme, but they're not. The world's extreme, like chronic disease is extreme.

• 33:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's so true.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  The way we're living life in our modern world culturally is the really dysfunctional thing.

• 33:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  We're just trying to find a path to, for people to live longer, healthier lives. So I'm excited about the different, what I would say, different national awakenings that I see happening.

• 33:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  In the United States with the Maha movement. And look, it's independent of politics for me. I think this should be a bipartisan, health is a human issue.

• 33:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  But I, beyond the legislation and the, like, I'm so excited about people in our space to be, have a seat at the table.

• 33:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And look, government is a corrupt, twisted thing. So even, who even knows what they can achieve in their time spend. I'm pragmatically optimistic. I know the guys want to make positive change. They want it. Now, whether the industries and the sort of special interests will let them do everything that they want to do. The answer is no, they won't be able to do everything they want to do. But believe me, these guys want to get access, get this amazing information that we're talking about today. Mental health care, looking at gut health, looking at root causes of disease to the masses. Cause I do feel like some of it has to be a national policy, education, empowerment, systemic thing.

• 34:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  And these are complex topics when you talk about national health.

• 34:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  But I'm optimistic. But beyond the legislation and the movements within, and even in the UK, people are waking up to what NHS is saying and a different path of taking, empowering yourself with your health, your own health. But what I'm excited about is, more than anything, is the increased awareness around these topics.

• 34:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Because the amount of news they're getting.

• 35:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Chatter, right, exactly.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And it's waking people up. And the media's pushed back on functional medicine and integrative. Medicine and different ideas, diversity of thought is very scary to the monolithic, you know, group thing.

• 35:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  But they doth protest too much at a certain point. It's almost like the protestation of the sort of system is waking people up to being like, oh, wow, there's something there. Like, if they, why are they protesting so much? I think that pandemic is a good example of that.

• 35:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  It was like, okay, you are doubling down so much that a lot of just average, compliant people started waking up to this. So I think more and more of this movement will wake people up to wanting to do something different.

• 35:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  We have to do something different to see something different. So I'm excited more than anything about the grassroots, a like increased literacy. I talked to some like heads at Walmart a few months ago, and they wanted to know about the sort of Maha movement and all this stuff that's happening. And they said like, the average Walmart customer is asking about ingredients.

• 36:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Like, what? So if nothing else, you could hate everything else. But if you're looking at someone that's like wanting to look at added sugar, wanting to look at artificial food, just wanting to look at different ingredients that maybe require a warning label in other countries. That's not a bad thing.

• 36:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a good thing. So I think pragmatically, I see a lot of increased awareness, which is a great thing.

• 36:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. You know, the last eight years has been so interesting since the pandemic. And I, I feel like the pendulum swung all the way over to just international decrees that everyone needs to stay home because of this virus. And anyone that protested against that, you know, many doctors I know got their licenses taken away for going against the grain on this, you know? And everyone woke up and then podcasting kind of took a major leap forward, I think, at that point in time, and people started getting their own information. And now this kind of next stage, I think a lot of that promoted the Maha movement as well, where people are like, wait a minute, we need to listen to both sides of this issue

• 37:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and not just rely on the FDA and the, you know, the, the governing bodies that we have with three letter names out there to tell us what we need to be doing. Because that has failed us, and that's what's gotten us to this point.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  But the flip side of all of this is, and thank God for you and the people in the movement that are trying to push things back in a good direction to where maybe one day there will be national legislation that's changed and we can end up being healthier than we were, than we are right now and maybe back to where we were six decades ago, right? But people don't have time to wait right now.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  No, they don't.

• 37:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There's not time to wait to have the nation states get us back into a state of health. People need to get into the mentality of taking matters into their own hands, getting the information themselves, doing N of one experiments to see what's going to work for them, right? This whole concept of, you know, guidelines and medical guidelines that are built upon massive research studies and what works for the average individual, it's not going to work for everybody. People need to take their health back into their own hands and I love what you're, what you're doing is giving people the tools, telling them, here are the different tools that you can try, see what works for you. And whether it be for your gut health, unpacking trauma, we don't have time to get into all the other things you talk about. And for the audience, please read Dr.

• 38:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Will Cole's last book, it's a game changer. But you give people really good structures and ways to like implement this into their life. I think it's so powerful now and people need to start doing it now.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the things are free and low cost. That's the other sort of, I think, judgment and people say about those sort of wellness space as a whole. That's not true. I think most of the things, that's a myth. I think it's a myth from industries that want to say, well, look, like this, these, like, because everything else is subsidized, like the mainstream system is subsidized and manipulated artificially low and like, it's not healthcare, it's, it's disease management, it's a sick care system. And it helps people, I'm not saying it doesn't help people, there's people that have diseases and they need to be managed, but it's not about health. It's not about thriving health for the vast majority of cases. And there are nice, high-end things out there in the wellness space and they're there for

• 39:26Speaker 01

  people who need them or want them, right? But there's a lot of low-hanging fruits. Like I went and To Aldi the other day, like I live in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania. I don't live in a bougie place, so please don't come at me and say wellness is elitist. It doesn't have to be. It's there for people that are elite and they're and let them be. It has, it's, it's, these are different tools within toolbox for different people.

• 39:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I mean, it's ridiculous to say, anyways, I don't digress. But the, uh, but I went through Aldi, Costco, Walmart, all these things. There are amazing things that are in these grocery stores. You just need to know where to shop.

• 40:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  So the, I live in a food desert, a rural food desert. And it's completely possible, but it's just, again, educating, empowering people to know how to do it. And do the best you can with what you have access to and give the rest to God. You don't have to be perfect.

• 40:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  You don't have to have it all figured out to start moving the needle in the positive direction.

• 40:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely. And by the way, Aldi, Costco, they are picking healthy foods to stock their shelves with. Because they realize.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  The consumer wants it.

• 40:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The consumer wants it now. It's still consumerism. You just have to want it.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you will get it. So whether, you know, this whole, I almost think it's a, um, overblown concern that is brought to, um, the, the public speak because of, um, where subsidies are. But this whole concern about food deserts, as long as people that are in the food deserts want the right items, consumerism will bring it to you.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 40:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  They'll be in the bodegas, they'll be in the random farmer's markets, they will be there. I can go in rural food deserts in Western Pennsylvania and go to the average groceries, uh, the average, um, gas station. Right? This is not healthy places, guys. I can go in the gas station and find things to eat.

• 41:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Cause consumerism has dictated that even the people getting their gas are still people like me. And they want things like that. So it's, if I could see, look, I travel all around for work too. And I see, there's access everywhere. But you have to, and research shows that, like, there are exceptions to this. But predominantly when there's a, in urban food deserts, rural food deserts where there isn't good options. Oftentimes, it's still there, but it is not maybe in high enough amount. But it's the people aren't picking it.

• 41:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  The people aren't picking it. And if they did pick it, like you said, it would grow and grow and grow because it's supply and demand. It's basic. So that's why education empowerment is so important. So these people in the rural and urban food deserts can start voting with their dollars instead of being placated and pandered that they're constantly in this victim mentality. They're not. The people in my small town, it's they're like anybody else. And again, it's the education empowerment that is the distinction there, which is why it's so threatening, I think, for long form conversations like this and the democratization and decentralization of health information is so threatening because all we are doing is just raising people's awareness to then be informed consumers.

• 42:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. I'll kind of back this up with a story. So I was in a Vons supermarket in the middle of

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Love Vons.

• 42:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  San Bernardino, California.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  I've probably been there.

• 42:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There was a woman with a shopping cart full of three kids going through the cereal aisle, telling the kids, read those labels. Can you read that? And if you can't read that, you can't buy it. And the people stocking the shelves heard this. And right there is change happening.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right there in that story, there's change happening.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so I think information is power and then vote with your dollars and change will happen, but don't wait for change to happen.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Don't be in that victim mentality.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Again, to repeat myself, do the best you can. You may not have access to everything, access to everything, but I have seen people just make small steps in the right direction, really be profound. And for people that are beyond this basic stuff, like lean into these other tools that I'm talking about.

• 43:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I love it. Dr. Cole, so glad we got to have this conversation. It's gonna be a game changer for people and can't wait to keep the conversation going. Tell us about your last book and where people can find you.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything's at drwillcole.com, D R W I L L C O L E dot com. And yeah, the book is called Gut Feelings, my podcast, which you were on. It's called The Art of Being Well. And yeah, I have a lot of exciting things going on. Mainly telehealth patients, which is always exciting for me. So they want to learn about the telehealth clinic, they can check that out. Just go to the become a patient page. But yeah, I'm working on my next book. And yeah, I should say this. We recently launched a regenerative organic supplement line called Longevity RX, which I'm so excited about. It's like we're soft launching it. I don't know when this will air.

• 44:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  But I'm really excited about it because supporting the soil and getting herbs and botanicals and nutrient dense foods from regenerative organic farms when you can is a great thing.

• 44:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Are these farms in Pennsylvania?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  The farms are in Missouri and Tennessee.

• 44:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. Oh, I can't wait to check this out. Thank you, man. Thank you so much for being there.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 44:39Dr. 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.