Heart Disease, Hormones & LPa Explained by Dr. Darshan Shah

Dr. Darshan Shah reveals the shocking truth about the prevalence and danger of high Lp(a), citing personal anecdotes and expounding on how lifestyle changes, though beneficial, aren't always enough to mitigate the risks associated with this particular marker. The episode delves into modern testing methods, like the CLEERLY scan, and discusses revolutionary approaches such as Total Plasma Exchange (TPE) for managing Lp(a) levels and reducing overall toxic load. Get ready to be enlightened and empowered to take proactive steps in understanding and discussing these issues. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep272 Darshan Shah, MD, is a health and wellness specialist, board-certified surgeon, published author, and founder of Next Health, the world's first and largest Health Optimization and Longevity clinic. Dr. Shah has performed over 20,000 surgical procedures, including trauma and complex reconstructive procedures. As a Longevity Medicine specialist, he advises patients on optimizing well-being and extending healthspan and lifespan. Dr. Shah earned his medical degree at 21, becoming one of the youngest doctors in the US, and completed his training at the prestigious Mayo Clinic. He opened medical centers, started companies, and published a book. His commitment to education and self-improvement earned him alumni status at Harvard Business School and Singularity University. Dr. Shah's passion is educating people on adding healthspan to their lifespan, with over 100 speaking engagements and hosting the acclaimed podcast Extend. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

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

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I bring you Dr. Darshan Shah. Now, this is a really interesting conversation and a very personal one. So, a little background on Dr. Shaw. He is the founder of Next Health, which is important because many of you have asked me, like, where do I go to get my IVs? Where can I go to get some functional health help? And Next Health is, if you're here in America, and actually throughout the world, you may go check, but Next Health has franchised, they're getting close to 80 franchises where you can get some really good root cause healthcare. So, I want to point that out.

• 0:45Mindy Pelz?

  But what's more interesting about Dr. Shaw is that he is a board-certified surgeon, he is a longevity specialist, and he has stepped out of traditional healthcare to try to bring a more integrative approach to the world. I love what he's up to with Next Health. And I specifically met him at a dinner party, fascinating dinner party with a bunch of interesting humans, and he talked about a detox that he was really excited about called Total Plasma Exchange. Now, I did detox in my clinic for years, a lot of supplement detox, a lot of heavy metal, mold. Detox was a big part of my clinic.

• 1:30Mindy Pelz?

  So, when I heard about Total Plasma Exchange, I was intrigued. It is basically a therapy where it takes your plasma out of your body, which is where your toxins live, and then replenishes it. What came from that experience, we did pre and post blood work on me. And what we discovered in the pre and post blood work of this detox IV was that I had a blood marker called LP little a. LP little a is a blood marker for cardiovascular disease.

• 2:08Mindy Pelz?

  And if you have this blood marker, what it can do is cause placking on your carotid and coronary arteries despite your lifestyle. And I had it, very high levels of it. And that was concerning to me because my grandfather died of a stroke in his 60s. So what I wanted Dr. Shaw to do was to bring to you all two things. I wanted him to bring a conversation to you about what LP little a is. I think it's really important because this is quickly becoming a better marker of cardiovascular risk than cholesterol.

• 2:53Mindy Pelz?

  So we talk about that. I also wanted to talk about this total plasma exchange and what we know about it, because some of you are going to find this to be an incredible tool for helping conditions like autoimmune situations, which you'll hear us talk about. But when we're looking at longevity, when we're looking at the health of both men and women, but specifically women, cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular challenges are very common, and especially in the post-menopausal years with the loss of estrogen. What Dr. Shaw adds to this conversation is this genetic marker called LP little a. And I want you all to know about it.

• 3:38Mindy Pelz?

  I want you to hear what I'm doing personally about it, because this is one of those conversations that could be life-saving. I know it most likely is for me. You're going to hear what I'm doing about discovering this new genetic marker. But more importantly, I am bringing it to you to bring it to your attention. And hopefully, again, some of you are going to hear yourself in this conversation and find another resource to improve your longevity. So as always, I hope this helps. Dr. Darshan Shah. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again.

• 4:23Mindy Pelz?

  If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 4:37Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, well, first, I wanted to say, welcome to the Resetter Podcast, but we're here in your own studio, and I'm just so excited to have this talk with you. So, welcome to my podcast, Arshun.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  So good to be here. So good to be here. Thank you.

• 4:50Mindy Pelz?

  Where I want to start this conversation, you know, for menopausal women, there is a lot of concern about heart disease, and there's a lot of concern in terms of low estrogen. But what I learned in the short period of time that I've been doing some work with you here at Next Health, is that there's a whole nother part of heart disease that we can measure, that we can look at, that has absolutely nothing to do with hormonal health. And that's what I want to dive into today. But two things I want to tell you that has come from the blood work you've done with me, is that, A, one of my dearest

• 5:31Mindy Pelz?

  friends died of a heart attack a month ago. And he was one of the healthiest humans I knew. He was 54 years old. He didn't have one single symptom. He lived an impeccable life. And in September, he literally was in his office, living, serving his people, getting ready to give a health talk, and he reached down to pick up something off the ground, and he fell down and died. And never, no pain, nothing. They claim he had a heart attack, and now I'm wondering if it's LPA. The other interesting thing is that my grandfather died at my age of a stroke. Never had an indication as to why. And I'm

• 6:11Mindy Pelz?

  wondering now if it was LPA. So, I would like to start this conversation with, please help us understand what LPA is. You found it high on my blood. That was shocking. And when I read about it, I was like, there's no lifestyle cure for this. And I, and it freaked me out. And it makes me wonder how many people out there are walking around with high LPA, and they have no idea that they're, you know, one moment away from a heart attack. So, talk a little bit about why this is such a pivotal marker.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  It's such a great question from, for your audience, to really understand what LPA is. And the reason is, is this is something relatively new in medicine that we've now have a renewed focus on. And so, you know, the problem with medicine is, Us doctors, we got trained 20, 30 years ago in medical school and no one's even talking about LP little a. And then we kind of move forward in our lives and see patients and it's really not in the forefront of our mind to even check for this because it's so new. And so I'm so glad that you're bringing it up on your podcast because everyone needs to get checked for LP little a. LP little a is a protein marker of cholesterol that

• 7:29Speaker 01

  is particularly bad for you because it can, it is number one, like you said, is lifestyle resistance. So it doesn't matter how clean your diet is, doesn't matter how much you're exercising. It can still have negative effects. And the way I like to describe it is also particularly very sticky. So what happens with LP little a cholesterol is that it can stick to not just the inside of your arteries of your heart, which leads to plaque that causes heart disease, but also to your valves, also to the arteries of your neck that supply your brain that can cause a stroke. So this is a particularly bad form of high cholesterol. And here's the clincher to it is we're also used to looking at a cholesterol panel, which

• 8:14Speaker 01

  is LDL, HDL, sometimes VLDL. It completely misses LP little a. And the reason for that is that LP little a doesn't fall into one of those buckets. Right. So another idea that people should get their head wrapped around is measuring Apo B. Okay. Apo B is a cholesterol marker that is a combination of all of the bad, I'm putting in quotes, bad cholesterol, LDL, VLDL, and LPA. And so if your Apo B is high, it's catching number one, potentially LP little a, but also it's telling you an overall status of

• 8:57Speaker 01

  how much of the bad cholesterol you have roaming around in your body. I want to be very clear too, because you know, a bunch of people are going to jump down the common throat of us. Yeah. Talk about, oh, well, cholesterol doesn't mean you're going to have heart disease. Right. Those people are absolutely right. It's not just high cholesterol that causes heart disease. You have to have a combination of factors, including metabolic disease, inflammation, high blood pressure. All these things work in concert to cause plaque in your arteries.

• 9:27Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  However, LP little a is particularly bad as well, because even in people that don't have metabolic disease or high blood pressure, it can still cause plaque.

• 9:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And so that's why measuring LP little a is so important. About 15 to 20% of people have a high LP little a and they have no idea.

• 9:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So it's interesting, because my friend TJ, who died of a heart attack, they, when they did an autopsy, because he was only 54 years old, they found that he had a fibrotic valve. And they called it, his dad died of something similar. And they didn't know exactly why his dad died. So there, so is there a familial genetic connection here?

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And everyone that I've seen with a high LP little a, there's always stories like what you're mentioning of someone in the family that died way too young with a heart attack, or a stroke, or a valve issue.

• 10:21Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, unfortunately, just in general, heart attacks, 50% of people don't even know they have heart disease until their first heart attack.

• 10:29Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And 50% of those are fatal. So people get diagnosed way too late.

• 10:34Mindy Pelz?

  Way.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  With heart disease.

• 10:35Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So another important fact for all your audiences is to know this, that they need to be more proactive in asking their doctors to be more proactive in getting some of these blood biomarkers done.

• 10:47Mindy Pelz?

  So therein lies a big problem. Because, and, and in bringing this to my audience, one of my concerns was, I don't want to freak everybody out.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:57Mindy Pelz?

  I want to create resources. So make sure, those of you listening, we're going to at the end, really talk about some of these resources. But it brings up a really interesting question that I deal with a lot with my following, is that people are not heard in their doctor's office. And so if they walk in and they're like, hey, I heard this podcast, I'm wondering if I should have LP, do you call it LP little a?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  LP little a.

• 11:19Mindy Pelz?

  LP little a checked, doctors don't Like to be told what to to test for. And if it's that new, they may not even know anything about it. Is there any kind of advice we can give to the listeners on how do you talk to your doctor about testing this?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely. They could even if they do have a family history of heart disease, they could say, I'm at risk because I have a family history of heart disease. I'd like to be checked for this.

• 11:44Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And most doctors will probably say, okay, well, let's just check it. Right?

• 11:50Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  I think maybe seventy, eighty percent of doctors will will check it.

• 11:54Mindy Pelz?

  Hope so.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  This is what I'm hearing, you know, when I, when I, I do a lot of these podcasts and people tell me, oh, my doctor actually checked it. He didn't fight me on it.

• 12:01Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  And he got educated. Now he's checking it on all of his patients.

• 12:03Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  So that's, that's really good news to see, you know, the mindset shifting. However, if they're not going to check it on you, most people are seeing their doctor through their insurance. Just look at other doctors in your area that your insurance will cover and go to somebody else.

• 12:19Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Have them check it. You really want to have a relationship with your doctor where you can challenge them, where you can bring them information and they will consider it. And they will, you know, if it's a blood test, that's a very simple blood test. Every insurance company should be paying for it. They should order it for you, you know, for something that you're concerned about. And so, you know, I'm very encouraged now to see more and more doctors are having less of a patriarchal kind of relationship with their patient.

• 12:48Mindy Pelz?

  Great. I'm so encouraged to hear that.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Me too. And I'm seeing this a lot. And, you know, I'm very happy to kind of see doctors working with their patients.

• 12:56Mindy Pelz?

  Agreed.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Instead of telling them this is what you need, you know, and not even listening.

• 13:00Mindy Pelz?

  I think that, you know, one of my favorite books that I ever read was by William Davis, and it was a book called Undoctored. And I, it came out like ten years ago and he, I actually interviewed William on this podcast. And he told me he got so many challenges on this book, like the profession came after him. And in the book, he talked about in this day and age, because we can Google search all this stuff, we can look up all these science articles, we can listen to, to conversations like this. That doctors need to be aware that they have a more educated patient coming in to their. Office and that they should be working together with them.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:35Mindy Pelz?

  And so I talk about this a lot on all my platforms. And one of the most common questions I get is, well, how do I talk to my doctor? Because there's a level of I'm better than you. And that's the way a lot of doctors have been trained. But is there anything else we can do to create better rapport with our doctors?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think another thing that you can do is you can get blood tests on your own now. So there's some new laws passed, not even, they're not even new anymore. And now LabCorp and Quest, you can basically go on their website, find what you want to order.

• 14:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And you can order a lot of blood tests on your own.

• 14:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And so that's really great, too. And you can bring in some of these blood tests. You'll have to pay cash for it, unfortunately.

• 14:18Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  But you have to, you can bring in these blood tests to your doctor. And I think a lot of doctors will appreciate you taking a pro act. There's also a company called Function Health that can do over a hundred, I think 200 biomarkers on you for $500. I mean, it's, it's, this stuff is available now.

• 14:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And it's so, it's so incredible to see people actually wanting to know their own data, right?

• 14:41Mindy Pelz?

  I know, it's really, it's really fun.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:43Mindy Pelz?

  So, and then my other question on LP little A was really like, where does epigenetics fit into this? Because, you know, and just to, just to throw some numbers out there. When I did my test with you all, the, we did a pre and post after a detox treatment called TPE, which we'll go into here in a moment. But the pre was at 60. My LP little A was at 60. So I've done some research on that and 50 to 60 is high.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:14Mindy Pelz?

  And like, it was a little bit of a, of a fear and a lot of a wake up call. And we're going to, I want to dive into what we're doing next to sort of evaluate where I'm at. But it did leave me like, I'm always a believer lifestyle can cure everything. I'm struggling on this one to believe that there's nothing I can do other than, you know, the, what we're going to talk about with just TPE. Like, what else? Is there anything you can do in lifestyle? And where does epigenetics fit into this?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So. LP little a is particularly resistant to lifestyle changes because it is so sticky. It is so virulent. It does cause so many blockages. However, that doesn't mean that lifestyle won't help, right? Because what lifestyle will do for you, things like, you know, focusing on a diet that's beneficial for you, fasting, getting regular exercise, not being sedentary, avoiding ultra-processed food, that's going to lower your overall APOB, right? Your overall cholesterol burden if you're a risk for heart disease.

• 16:17Mindy Pelz?

  Got it.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  And if you lower your overall, it's less likely, or at least you slow the rate of developing plaque as well.

• 16:25Mindy Pelz?

  Got it.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  So I still feel that lifestyle has a role here. One other thing that we should mention is not everyone with high LP little a will develop plaque and therefore it's necessary to do additional scans of the heart to kind of see what your actual plaque burden is. And we can talk a little bit more about that as well.

• 16:44Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So, you know, just to give everybody a little background. So we ran these tests on me. We identified this LP little a being high. And now you're moving me to the next step, which I think is also a revolutionary thing that I did not know about, which is the CLEARLY. Is it called a CLEARLY exam?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  CLEARLY test, right.

• 17:05Mindy Pelz?

  So talk a little bit about that because again, you know, somebody who has a grandfather on my maternal line who died of a stroke, this is something that I'm not going to turn my head away from because if I can know if that plaque is there and what that plaque looks like, it sure seems like it could be life-saving for me.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so, you know, for about 50 years, we've had this scan of your heart that we can do. It's called the coronary calcium score. This is a CAT scan of your heart, is very low radiation. And what it does is it scores how much calcified plaque you have in your blood vessels. So this scan has been around forever. For some reason, insurance does not cover it, but almost everyone can get this at a local radiology office for like a hundred to $150. So

• 17:54Mindy Pelz?

  Calcium score?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Calcium score, right. So it's not very expensive. You can get it for a low price and most people should consider getting this done prophylactically, especially if you have risk factors of heart disease. Now The next level above that now is a clearly scan. So what they're able to do now is use a little bit longer of a CAT scan of your heart. So it's not just 10 or 15 minutes, it's almost an hour or so. So there is more radiation, so you really want to make sure you really need this. But utilizing artificial intelligence, they can now look at your entire artery. There's four major arteries in your heart. They can look at the entire artery and not just see calcified black, which is kind of older plaque, more stabilized plaque,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  but also see what's called soft plaque. And this is plaque that is not yet calcified. So when we do this test on you, Mindy, we'll be able to see all of your arteries and how much plaque you've had build up in your arteries, both soft and hard plaque. And we'll get a really good indication of where we need to focus our attention as far as the plaque buildup in your heart. The other test we're going to do on you as well is the echo of your carotid blood vessels, right? The ultrasound of your carotid blood vessels to see if there's any plaque buildup there as well. And we're also going to do an echo of your heart to check your valves to see if there's any plaque buildup on your valves. Now, you know, we're being very complete with you.

• 19:20Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Not everyone needs to do all of these tests.

• 19:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  It's very important, if you could diagnose the high LP little a, to work with your doctor, potentially even a cardiologist, to see which tests will be necessary for you.

• 19:32Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Okay, so then that brings up the other thing that was surprisingly high, and I'm wondering if there's a correlation, was my LDLs were high. Does LP little a also make your LDL cholesterol higher?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  No, LP little a and LDL are two separate buckets of cholesterol. And so, you know, the whole controversy of LDL.

• 19:51Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  We don't know if LDL is really what leads to heart disease. And most people, some people live at a high LDL and they have no heart disease. I see this over and over again in many of my patients. And we're very thorough in everything that we check. However, if you have high blood pressure, if you have metabolic disease, the high LDL is a concern.

• 20:08Mindy Pelz?

  Right. And so is a statin even helpful in this, either in this scenario at all?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  So statins are not helpful for everybody. And so I just want to say that upfront that not everyone needs to be on a statin. And so what I will say is that statins themselves probably don't lower LP little a, but they do lower your overall cholesterol burden.

• 20:32Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And so there's other medications that we look at with people with LP little a, things like PCSK nine inhibitors, which are an injectable medication that you can do to lower your overall ApoB. There's also a zetamide, which for people that are hyperabsorbers of cholesterol in their gut, can actually lower your absorption of cholesterol as well. So usually you're using some form of combination therapy with people with LP little a.

• 20:57Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And I did a bunch of research on this since my blood work and aspirin, they're back at like that take an aspirin a day. Is there any legitimate claim to taking an aspirin for any heart problem?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  There's so much controversy around aspirin. And I hate to like dive into this without having like another hour long episode with you. But what I will say is definitely aspirin is not for everybody. So what we're talking about here is a lot of what we call primary prevention, right? Taking a medication, even though you don't have appreciable signs of disease to prevent you from getting disease in the first place. We know for aspirin that that's not a good idea because it does cause a lot of bleeding in your GI tract. So not everyone needs to be on an aspirin. However, if you are one of these people with like a lot of blockages in your arteries that are significant, your cardiologist might think aspirin is right for you.

• 21:49Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Okay. And then the other interesting thing is this connection because on I feel like on the heart disease conversation over here, we have LP little a, we have cholesterol just in general and all the LDL, HDL. But then on the other side of this heart conversation for women specifically, women going through perimenopause and into their menopausal years is that that you need cholesterol. You need cholesterol to be able to make estrogen and your brain requires cholesterol to be able to function normally. How?

• 22:24Mindy Pelz?

  How do you, how do you rectify that? Because in all the work that I've looked at for menopausal women is that we start to see signs of dementia and Alzheimer's when a menopausal woman starts to get on a statin because you've brought cholesterol down so much, which has brought estrogen down even more and has created a damage in the brain. So there's a lot of pieces here. I don't know if you see where my brain is going. There's a lot of pieces here that I hold as a 55-year-old post-menopausal woman of like, okay, I'm taking some bio-identicals to make sure that my heart and my brain stay well, but then I also have this issue of LP little a.

• 23:07Mindy Pelz?

  Like, am I just doomed to have a heart attack? And where does that all fit together?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  You're definitely not doomed to have a heart attack. And so, you know, heart attacks happen most of the time because of an obstruction of the blood vessels that are going to the heart muscle, right? And so what we're really talking about is preventing obstructions and preventing, if you have current obstructions, them getting worse. There's a lot of different ways to do that. It doesn't have to be, you know, lowering your cholesterol to minuscule levels. Now, what I will say, though, is that there are massive studies that show lowering your cholesterol prevents heart attacks, okay? And so we do have to wrap our head around those studies in people with blockages of their blood vessels and then contrast that with the other problem that you're mentioning,

• 23:55Speaker 01

  which is brain issue.

• 23:57Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Not having enough cholesterol for your brain to do the work that it needs to do, right?

• 24:02Mindy Pelz?

  Right, exactly.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  So I think that, from what I've seen around the research, is that there's giant studies done, like by the Cochrane Institute, that takes major studies and compares them, that in general, for most people, lowering cholesterol does not cause worsening of symptoms of cognitive impairment, okay?

• 24:22Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Now, here's the problem, is that this is in most people, okay? And as we all know, with every study, you have this bell-shaped distribution curve of what most people, what works for most people is in the middle of that curve.

• 24:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  But then you have people on the outside of that curve, that some people will have worsening of cognitive symptoms with.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Cholesterol lowering medications. Now, in those people, you're in a particular pickle.

• 24:49Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Now, for you, though, we don't know if that's where you're at.

• 24:52Mindy Pelz?

  Right, right.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  We won't know until we actually figure out how we're going to treat your, um, your blockages in your arteries.

• 25:00Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  If you have them.

• 25:01Mindy Pelz?

  Until we see the clearly.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then what we can do is we can change the dosage of the medications. We can change the form of the medications. Even different, even different statins on different people will have different effects.

• 25:12Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  And so you really got to go down kind of the diagnostic rabbit hole and the treatment rabbit hole with a skilled cardiologist that knows how to deal with all of these problems.

• 25:22Mindy Pelz?

  So it's personalized?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  It's very personalized.

• 25:24Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Extremely personalized person to person.

• 25:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so what I'm hoping people are gathering from this so far is that we really need to be checking LP little a on, on our, our yearly blood work.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Right. Knowledge is power. The first thing is you have to know that there's an issue.

• 25:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And then know that there's treatment for this. And so if you don't know that there's an issue and you don't do any treatment, you're going to be one of those 50% of people that figure out you have heart disease when you're first have a heart attack.

• 25:51Mindy Pelz?

  Right, right. And then if there is a high LP little a, then the next step would be to ask your doctor to do a clearly exam.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:00Mindy Pelz?

  And then from the clearly exam, you can see if the plaque is hard or soft. And it's the soft plaque that we're the most worried about because that's what can break free.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 26:10Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. And so finding the right person to understand that, is that going to be hard for people? Or is that, you think, most people should be able to find a doctor who's willing to go into the clearly exam?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I think, I think it shouldn't be hard for people.

• 26:24Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And just like we talked about with blood testing earlier, that if there is a physician that you're working with that kind of blows this off or tells you, don't worry about it, there's definitely other, you, you should always get a second opinion.

• 26:37Mindy Pelz?

  Of course, yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  That's why it's just called a second opinion.

• 26:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, everybody should get one, yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Right. The first guy just gave you his opinion or her opinion, right?

• 26:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  That's why you get a second opinion to see what are your options, right?

• 26:49Mindy Pelz?

  You know, funny little side note on that. I was at a conference or I was speaking at a conference this weekend and Malcolm Gladwell was speaking. And he, you know, of course, looks at patterns. And one of the patterns he's seen in the US is that you get different medical care depending on the city you live in. And so he used the example, and I forget which type of medical, medical care it was, but he's like, the way they treat, let's just say, high cholesterol in Chicago compared to the way they treat high cholesterol in Miami are completely different based off the city and that actually it's the town you live in that determines the medical care that you're gonna get. Have you heard that before?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  I absolutely believe it, and I've seen it in my own eyes. You know, I trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. And the way we practice medicine there is very different than how it's practiced in like Los Angeles, for example.

• 27:41Mindy Pelz?

  It's crazy.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of it has to do with just, you know, who you're talking to. Right? Because doctors are talking to each other a lot in the Mayo Clinic. You're forced to because number one, it's cold outside and there's nothing to do, so all you do is talk to the other doctors. The whole town is a town of just medical professionals. And so you have no one else to interact with. So all you're doing all day long is talking about medicine.

• 28:04Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, whereas in LA, I feel like the practice of medicine is a little bit more isolated. So what you've learned maybe five years ago is what you're still, you know, that's your knowledge base still. And so, you know, obviously, there's great doctors in LA. And those, those are the ones that are keeping themselves up to date with the latest technology, the latest thought processes, etc. And you just gotta go search and report.

• 28:25Mindy Pelz?

  So, so it's weather dependent? Is that what I just heard? Because it's a matter of if you're inside or outside.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:32Mindy Pelz?

  So the reason I bring this up is because I think, A, you know, I'm hoping people are gathering how to talk to their doctor about this because that's how important I feel like this, this test is. But also, I think we have a tendency to put our doctors on pedestals. And one of the things that I'm trying to do with my audience is educate them so they can be in collaboration with their doctors. And understanding that you may be getting a skewed answer based off the city you lived in is really interesting, and I think it's something we need to, I think we should move medicine to this place where it's teamwork. It's not a hierarchy. And I don't know if I'm just a dreamer, and I know you're trying to do this with Next Health, but I feel like if everybody came together as a team, then the patient would

• 29:17Mindy Pelz?

  win. Is that ever gonna be possible?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  I think, I think medicine is moving in that direction for sure.

• 29:23Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, great.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  I think more and more people are realizing that every patient is an N of one. Your biology is completely different than the average that every study is reporting on.

• 29:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  So we have to hyper personalize your care, right? We're gonna learn a lot over the next few months as we're going through your LP little A journey.

• 29:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  And you might be one of those people that, you know, don't really need any treatment because your, your heart is fine and we're gonna keep a close eye on it.

• 29:49Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Or it might be something else. And so we just really gotta treat every patient as an N of one, not make blanket decisions for people.

• 29:56Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  You know, there's this whole thing in medicine called standard of care.

• 29:59Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Right?

• 30:00Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  And it's really hard, in my opinion, to ever have a standard of care when everyone is so different.

• 30:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  There has to be, of course, we wanna hold ourselves to certain standards, but that doesn't mean we do the same thing for everybody.

• 30:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And so it has to be a partnership for patient and doctor.

• 30:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. The other term that's being redefined is evidence-based.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:20Mindy Pelz?

  So evidence-based to me means we saw a study on it and now we organize everything for that patient around the study. For women, this is a loss because most of the time they're not studying us.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:31Mindy Pelz?

  I've recently heard the reframe as evidence-informed.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:35Mindy Pelz?

  And I really like that because you can look at a study, maybe even on a man, and you can say, that's interesting, now let me become my own N of one. I just got, use the evidence to inform myself.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:46Mindy Pelz?

  So I, I don't know if that's being, you know, brought into the medical world, but or even in to hear it next health, but I really feel like that's a more empowering statement because we throw evidence-based out and then we're like, oh, I don't wanna talk to you because it's not, it's not evidence-based and you should only go to evidence-based doctors. And I think evidence-informed brings everybody into the conversation.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Evidence-based, when I hear that term a lot of times, you know, Marty McCary wrote an incredible book called Blind, Blind Spots in Medicine, a great book. And he basically

• 31:23Speaker 01

  I might be misquoting him, but he basically says that people that throw out the word evidence-based all the time are people that are really looking for that as an excuse for not having all the information.

• 31:33Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  And so you're absolutely right. It has to be evidence-informed, but understanding that every patient is a different biology.

• 31:41Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  And we still need to consider that the evidence might tell us one thing, but this person might be on the outside bands of what that evidence is showing.

• 31:51Mindy Pelz?

  That's right. That's right. Okay, so, super helpful. Now, what I want to do is move to this new treatment that you are rolling out in all of your clinics. And what is so shocking on the conversation of LP little a was that mine was at, my LP little a was at 60, and then I did one session of total plasma exchange. And the next day when we tested it, it went down to, I think, 32. So, explain to me what total plasma exchange is and why. I think it's probably exciting for a lot of things, but it seems like it, from what I can tell off of searching this on, you know, doing Google searches and ChatGPT searches,

• 32:34Mindy Pelz?

  that they're really thinking of total plasma exchange as a real treatment for LP little a.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so plasma exchange, maybe it'd be helpful to talk about a little bit of the history of it and how it's done.

• 32:46Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, please, yeah, because that's interesting, too.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so plasma exchange is a treatment that we've had in the hospital for about 50 years now. I remember being in medical school and we would use it for really severe situations, things like autoimmune crisis.

• 33:00Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Where someone's autoimmune disease was completely out of control, they were in the ICU, and they were intubated, and we need to do something to save their life. We also use it for things like drug overdoses, when people took too much of their heart medication, and to filter out the drug.

• 33:17Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, interesting.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  So the way plasma exchange works is we basically hook you up to an IV, we're removing some of your blood, and then we're putting it in a giant centrifuge. For people that have seen PRP, they know that when you put blood in a centrifuge, it separates into its components of plasma and blood cells.

• 33:34Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  And with this machine that does this for you, all of your blood, we're re-infusing your blood cells, your right, your red blood cells and your white blood cells, we're re-infusing those.

• 33:45Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  And we're taking the plasma out completely.

• 33:49Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  And that plasma is then basically thrown out, okay?

• 33:53Mindy Pelz?

  Right, okay.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Um, you were holding a bag of your plasma.

• 33:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's really, it's really interesting.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like three liters.

• 33:59Mindy Pelz?

  And I, and we, we'll post pictures of that, especially on our YouTube channel where this will be visual. But it's really remarkable to, to, when you hold up all the stuff that just came out of you.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so what the really important piece here is replacing that plasma with albumin. Albumin is a protein that our body naturally makes. And the reason we have to replace the plasma is that protein in your plasma creates what's called an oncotic gradient in your blood vessels. So all of the fluid stays within your blood vessels, okay? And so we have to replace it with albumin. And so that's what we did for you. It's about a two to three hour treatment. Actually, it's less than two hours for most people.

• 34:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it was like an hour and a half.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Hour and a half, yeah. And during that time, we do one therapeutic exchange of one plasma volume.

• 34:45Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  And so the treatment as you had done is very comfortable. A lot of people have the misconception that we take out all your blood and you're basically laying there with no blood. That's not true.

• 34:55Mindy Pelz?

  No, that, that wouldn't, that wouldn't be possible.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  That wouldn't be possible. It's only about a hundred cc's at a time. Someone asked me like, what if the electricity dies and the machine dies? And all my blood is out of me? I'm like, no, it's only like a hundred cc's at a time. So people have been doing plasma exchange for literally five, six decades. It's extremely safe. It's an FDA-approved modality that's been used in hospitals. We're using it as an outpatient, which means you can have it done in our clinic.

• 35:22Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And then you can go home right afterwards. And so it has a lot of benefits to it because what lives in your plasma is your cholesterol. So we use it a lot for what's called familial hypercholesterolemia, where someone has the genetic abnormality, the massively elevated levels of cholesterol. We use it for that. We use, we're now using it for LP little A. We're using it for people that have high levels of Toxins build up in their system from environmental toxins, immune disturbances as well. People with autoimmune conditions. So there's a lot of potential applications. And what's really cool about it is we're not giving you a medication. We're not adding something to you like a chemical. We're just removing the bad stuff.

• 36:02Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  The way I like to describe it.

• 36:03Mindy Pelz?

  So if I walked into my doctor's office and they're like, you need to go on a statin because your cholesterol is high. And if I went and did a TPE, then is technically, would that be like cleaning my cholesterol system out? Can we use it? Like, let's say I didn't want to go on a statin. Could I use it as a way to prevent going on a long-term statins?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think that, you know, the answer to that question is we don't know.

• 36:29Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  But in reality, doing plasma exchange over and over again to remove cholesterol from your bloodstream when you have a minimally elevated cholesterol.

• 36:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  We don't really know if that's what the risk benefit ratio for that is, right? Because this is a procedure, like even though we're just putting an IV in you and we're doing this procedure, there's still risk of you even putting an IV in, right?

• 36:51Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Which you don't have that risk by taking a pill.

• 36:53Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  So the answer, though, that's a long way of saying, we don't know.

• 36:57Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  However, I don't think that that would be an acceptable replacement for like a statin. Now, in certain situations, like familial hypocholesterolemia, where statins are not going to drive your cholesterol low enough for long periods, it's definitely very useful.

• 37:13Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  And now we're also seeing with LP-Little-A being useful as well. In fact, the American Heart Association, I said to that, put out a guidance saying we should really think about using plasma exchange for LP-Little-A.

• 37:25Mindy Pelz?

  So the other interesting thing is the nurse that helped me, JoJo?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  JoJo.

• 37:29Mindy Pelz?

  JoJo told me that when he had his TPE, that his cholesterol was high. And then the post-blood work, the cholesterol went down. But what was shocking is he could no longer tolerate bad oils. That his taste buds, his smell, and what he used to eat was, some of that stuff was packed with bad oils, which might have been, you know, authentically increasing his bad cholesterol. He said that he Really noticed that his cravings for oils changed. Which really made me look at this treatment as it's not just a quick fix kind of thing. It's actually changing. I mean, in my situation, I don't eat bad oils.

• 38:08Mindy Pelz?

  But it could change the way in which you live your life because it changes what your behaviors are. Have you, do you have any evidence of that in other areas?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I, I, I don't, but you know, I'm always surprised with the mind body connection.

• 38:24Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And what our brain senses that we have no idea how it's sensing it.

• 38:30Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's just, it's just mind blowing to me.

• 38:32Mindy Pelz?

  It's fascinating.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  It really is. I will tell you though, that we are seeing epigenetic changes with plasma exchange. So when we measure biological signs of aging using epigenetic markers, even markers of individual organ health, like heart health, liver health, et cetera. We're seeing age reversal of biological age for organs using epigenetic marker testing. Okay, so that's, that's really mind blowing to see this. And also we're seeing people with high LP little a, keep their LP little a low for 60 weeks.

• 39:09Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so this is something that we're seeing, we probably have like five or six people that we're currently treating. Yeah. LP little a in plasma exchange. So you know, it might not be true for everybody.

• 39:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Everyone's biology is individual, how quickly you make it, how quick.

• 39:22Mindy Pelz?

  Interesting.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  How your body is naturally taking care of it. But it's been pretty long lasting. Now, what we don't know, and I was talking to you about this before, is we don't have the research saying that plasma exchange prevents heart attacks in people with LP little a. That's a study that has not been done, right? That's a massive study. It's going to take a lot of individuals, a lot of funding.

• 39:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  A lot of follow up to, to understand that.

• 39:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  However, we do know that LP little a that's elevated in the vast majority of people causes early heart disease.

• 39:53Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  And so anything that we can do to keep it down, I think is beneficial.

• 39:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And we, I, I know that I'm coming in to get a second treatment. That will be about four weeks from the first treatment. And so we'll see. I mean, we're kind of guinea pigging me as well to like, see if that LPA has stayed down because my lifestyle is pretty impeccable. I mean, the only thing I probably would change would be stress levels, but you know, I do. All of us. Yeah, right. I live in a modern world. So, so, so I'm really encouraged to see how long term this will work for people. And again, if it can save a heart attack or a stroke, it's just profound.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  And see, Mindy, your mindset around this is perfect because you're looking at yourself as an N of one.

• 40:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  And you're, you're also expecting that maybe we do a couple of these treatments and it might not make a difference. Then we need to seek out another treatment modality. That's how you have to look at all of this in medicine now. And, you know, we're so trained to waiting for the randomized controlled drug trial. To tell us what we should and we shouldn't do. And I think that's been helpful in this whole drug development world or pharma world. But it's not helpful in, in the real world of medicine to treat everything that way.

• 41:05Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, well said, well said. So that leads me to the next intriguing thing about TPE. So how you and I even met was at an epic dinner party that you threw. And you said something that just really stuck in my brain because the question you asked the whole table was, what is something you're really excited about right now? And you brought up TPE and you mentioned that it, you felt like we live in the most toxic time in human history and getting the toxic load down of people is near impossible. Which is honestly, I mean, we did detox in my clinic for over a decade.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  You lived this.

• 41:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I lived this and it was so depressing when you would run all these toxic tests on everybody and they'd say, how did I get this? And I would say, you're living in the modern world. And I got actually so disheartened. Because I felt like I could not make any progress using supplements by themselves to detox. I couldn't make enough progress teaching people how to change out their beauty products and how to stop using plastics because a lot of people, especially my patients, were traveling all over the world. And it just, I really got disheartened. And when You said, we're not going to be able to get the toxic burden down by changing behavior.

• 42:23Mindy Pelz?

  Because so many toxins are coming at the human body right now. So things like TPE now become necessary to bring this environmental toxic and load down. And when you said that, my detox brain was like, oh my God, what if everybody could do this? What if we, you know, we can't fight these big corporations that are pouring toxins into our food and our, our homes. What if we had some kind of daily detox or monthly detox or yearly detox that was effortless? That could bring the load down. That's where my brain went with that statement. So talk a little bit about where you could see TPE in taking the toxin burden down.

• 43:05Mindy Pelz?

  And you mentioned 65% of toxins are filtered out with one session. Is that accurate?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  No, it's, I would say that it's different for every individual. And so I had one, actually I've had a few patients now where one treatment I saw 60% reduction in some certain toxins.

• 43:23Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Like PFOS, for example. Okay. But it's every single patient I've noticed difference in their percentage reduction in toxin. And I think that's because, you know, toxins don't just live in our plasma. They live in our tissues, right?

• 43:38Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  And so, and people have different levels of constant exposure too.

• 43:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  So they go home after a session and there may be they're like fully exposed again, right?

• 43:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And so you see this a lot with mold. Like you, you and I have both struggled with patients with mold toxicity.

• 43:52Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Where until you move, sometimes you're not going to get rid of your mold exposure, right?

• 43:57Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  And so it's just so different from individual to individual. Now, to be clear, like, I think that plasma exchange will eventually become a mainstay in treatment for people with high levels of toxins, right? However, you know, you and I, you're one of the pioneers in this and you taught me the whole bucket theory of how many, how much toxins someone can handle, right?

• 44:20Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  We have an incredible biology where our liver and our kidneys. And our sweat glands are all working together to detoxify us constantly.

• 44:29Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  However, when your bucket spills over, as you describe, and you're now experiencing symptoms from high levels of toxins.

• 44:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Or maybe you don't want to wait till then. Plasma change could be a modality to add to your overall treatment protocol.

• 44:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  So I look forward, you know, especially because, once again, we're not in putting a drug inside of you with this treatment, other than a little bit of a blood thinner that we reverse with calcium. This should theoretically, the price should come down on this treatment. And hopefully, we get to a place where people can do this as kind of a maintenance if they have a high toxic load, okay?

• 45:07Mindy Pelz?

  I love that.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Now, we need to do a lot of research to find out. Number one, what does this all really mean?

• 45:13Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  You know, we're running this mass experiment right now in humanity, where we've poured a hundred and fifty thousand chemicals into the environment over the last sixty years.

• 45:21Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  We have no idea of the level of, you know, just hormonal stress this is causing, physiological burden, mitochondrial dysfunction. It's massive, and we just don't even know.

• 45:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  But to see that there is one therapy that could potentially give our body that time to catch up a little bit, because when we take out one entire plasma volume of plasma filled with toxins.

• 45:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  It gives our body and our biology a little bit of time to catch up.

• 45:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Gives us a couple of weeks where a liver and our kidney can do its job a little bit better.

• 45:53Mindy Pelz?

  And the way I always explain it to patients was, your body knows how to do, well, knows how to do a lot, but when it comes to the toxin load, it knows how to filter it and get it out of your system. When it comes to things like pathogens, like Epstein-Barr virus and Candida, it knows how to get rid of that. But then there becomes a point when the toxic load gets so high, that all of a sudden, it's overwhelmed, and it doesn't detox well at all. So with that mindset, I have been doing something called EBU, which I know you guys are now starting, or you're beginning to carry in some of your locations, which is really another level of pulling the toxic load out. With EBU, they

• 46:35Mindy Pelz?

  have stated that they believe it only pulls out the organic material. It pulls out li- like the lime, the mold, the EBV, but they don't believe it does heavy metals. And so what I've been doing is going once a month to get this eboot treatment, to just keep bringing my load down so that the body can detox the way it's meant to detox.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:57Mindy Pelz?

  I think where chronic disease, I think where problems tip over, is when all of a sudden that toxic bucket hits the top. And the body, the liver, the gut, the gallbladder, I mean, we have all these gallbladders that are being taken out. And the gallbladder is actually the house for heavy metals. It's when the liver is burdened, it pushes those heavy metals into the gallbladder. And then the gallbladder all of a sudden starts to act up and medicine pulls the gallbladder up. But that was a detox sign that the body gave you. So I really think that the name of the detox game is bring the burden down. However, you can bring the burden down so that the body can do what it's meant to do.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  I totally agree with you. And you know, you and I, we've talked about how we struggle with people changing their behaviors.

• 47:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And I think people struggle with changing their behaviors as it relates to toxins because they feel it's overwhelming. Like we have so many toxins in our environment, like it's a game that they're never going to be able to win. But I tell people that you can win a big piece of this game by detoxifying your air, water, food, and your skin products, right?

• 47:58Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  And so putting, opening your windows, changing your air filters, even buying an air purifier.

• 48:04Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Step one. Step two, we're only drinking water that's been filtered or reverse osmosis in glass bottles.

• 48:11Mindy Pelz?

  That's right.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Major difference. Step three is your food. Trying to eat organic and not, you know, buy from your farmer's market and avoid all the ultra-processed packaged food. And then your skin products, you only have to do it one time. Find products that don't have all these chemicals in them. Switch it one time and you'll be switched forever. And then over years, this compounds and you have much less of a toxic burden than your neighbor who hasn't done all of this stuff, right?

• 48:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yes. I love the way you said that because, and I hope people really go back and re-listen to that. Because the number one rule to detox. Is stop toxifying yourself.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:47Mindy Pelz?

  So like even though we're talking about these fancy treatments and how they relate to cardiovascular health and other issues, what the big overarching message here is stop toxifying yourself to the best that you can do.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:00Mindy Pelz?

  So the other interesting thing, and I don't know if I've brought this to your attention, is how my clinic actually started to get into detox is because what we see through the perimenopausal journey is that estradiol goes up and down and up and down in a very wild ride.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:16Mindy Pelz?

  And that extreme high and low actually triggers toxins to be released from the tissues.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 49:23Mindy Pelz?

  So there's actually an incredible study that shows that lead lives in the bones.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:28Mindy Pelz?

  And when estrogen goes extremely high and then drops extremely low, lead comes out of the bones and goes into the bloodstream. Well, what we know about heavy metals and toxins in general is they go to fat. And the most fatty place in our body is our brains. So it goes up into the brain and lead is a dumber downer. And so all of a sudden you're losing your memory. All of a sudden you're depressed because these tissues, these toxins that have been stored in tissues that weren't coming out until you had this massive hormonal swing, they all of a sudden, I mean, menopause is a massive detox from your tissues.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 50:05Mindy Pelz?

  So I love everything you're up to because I have been constantly searching for menopausal women to have resources that they can lean into when the memory goes off, when the depression kicks in. And I don't think we're talking enough about the toxic situation that's happening behind those symptoms.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:27Mindy Pelz?

  So I'm curious if you've heard that before, what you've seen in your clinic.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, look, we have a lot of menopausal women in our clinic. We have a lot of menopausal women and a lot of menopausal men as well.

• 50:39Mindy Pelz?

  Same thing, yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  And I think what we need to understand as just a civilization is that menopause and menopause, they happen, it's meant to happen.

• 50:51Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  But our biologies used to be able to deal with it. Effectively.

• 50:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, we've added so many toxins and stressors to our life in the last fifty to sixty years that we are no longer capable as humans to get through this without a little bit of help.

• 51:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Right. And so doing all the things that you talk about in your books and also augmenting them with supplementation, with therapeutics like this that we're discovering. It's almost necessary now as you're going through that time in life.

• 51:23Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  And, and you know, maybe back then in the caveman days, a little bit of lead came out of your bones when you're a woman. It wasn't a lot of lead. You weren't exposed to a million other toxins in your environment, microplastics, et cetera. Your body was able, and your brain was able to deal with it.

• 51:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  That's not the case anymore.

• 51:41Mindy Pelz?

  No, it's not.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Unfortunately. And so we need to be able to, number one, remove a lot of the toxins from our day to day, but also, number two, have therapeutics that we can seek out

• 51:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  to, to help us with that burden.

• 51:53Mindy Pelz?

  The, um, I was recently on Jay Shetty's podcast and I know that he's a friend.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 51:58Mindy Pelz?

  I know, I know he's a friend of yours and you've been, and I know he's, he comes to Next Health, like he and I had a whole talk about it. And there was a point in the conversation that we started talking about food toxicity. And, you know, I made a statement that now has turned into a viral reel that I still stand behind, which is that if you don't know how to read an ingredient label at this time in human history, you have signed yourself up for chronic disease. So we have hit a tipping point where detox used to be something that was optional. Detox was something that maybe you only went into if you had like a massive autoimmune condition or a problem. I believe, and I'm curious if you agree with this, I believe that detox is no longer optional.

• 52:39Mindy Pelz?

  That if you are not detoxing, same thing as I told Jay, if you're not detoxing, you're signing yourself up for a chronic disease. And if you're a woman that's not detoxing, you are signing yourself up for an autoimmune condition and you're signing yourself up for some pretty gnarly menopausal symptoms. Do you feel like that is an egregious statement or would you, where do you line up with that thought?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  I not only fully agree with you, but I try to shout this from the rooftops, do is, you know, we no longer can ignore the fact of the toxic burden that we live under.

• 53:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  We are doing. Cross-sectional microscopic views of arteries and seeing microplastic

• 53:20Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  in our arteries.

• 53:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Like, we can't ignore that. That was not supposed to be there.

• 53:24Mindy Pelz?

  No, no.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  And so I think that very quickly, we need to realize as humans that now our health journey has to incorporate not just the three legs of the stool,

• 53:36Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  which is sleep, exercise, and nutrition, but also detoxification

• 53:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, agreed.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  as one of those legs of the stool.

• 53:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  The sooner you realize that, the better life you're gonna lead

• 53:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  and the older you'll be able to live to, but more importantly than that, the more health you'll add to all those years.

• 53:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Because, you know, a lot of the toxins that we're exposed to now, even our parents and our grandparents had no, they're not even close to the levels that we're in right now.

• 54:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  So the sooner you recognize this fact and accept it and make detoxification part of your lifestyle by

• 54:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  some of the things that we talked about, maybe you find a sauna that you can go to once a week, maybe do some of these things, you're gonna have much less of a chronic disease exposure. But not only that, you're also gonna feel better, more vibrant. You're gonna have less brain fog, you're gonna be able to keep weight off. You're gonna be able to manage your hormones better just by detoxifying.

• 54:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and you know, it's interesting, as you were talking, I never, I don't really tell this story often, but one of the reasons I fell in love with fasting is because it came out of all the supplement detoxing I was doing with my patients. And I was like, okay, we have to find a way for the body to detox itself that doesn't cost any money, because what are you gonna do for the single mom that's working two jobs

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:55Mindy Pelz?

  and is trying to just put food on her table, and she wants to prevent chronic disease? And so when I learned the term "metophagy," I was like, wait a second, the body detoxes itself? So I actually evolved from all this supplement detoxing I was doing in my clinic into fasting, which now is really fun for me to meet you, because we're gonna join forces, and we're gonna bring a combination of everything you're doing, a combination of everything I did in my clinic, a combination of fasting, and put something together for people that becomes this preventative plan that will slow aging and really help them get out of the chronic disease cycle.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:35Mindy Pelz?

  So I just, I just have to thank you for that, because Detoxes, toxins have been, they have saved, it has saved my life once, it may be saving my life twice to detox. And yet, it is so complicated. It can be ridiculously expensive. But at some point, we have to bring this into the mainstream. So, talk a little bit about Next Health, just so people know who you are, what you're up to, because I love your vision. And talk a little bit about how people find a Next Health clinic.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Well, thank you so much for that, Mindy. And it's been such a pleasure meeting you. And, you know, we have a mind meld on so many things. So I can't wait to do our program together. But basically, Next Health is a new system of medicine. It's basically comes out of my frustration. Being a Western medicine trained doctor, for 25 years, I did surgery. I worked in the emergency room. I did trauma. I did reconstructive surgery. And I could not get myself healthy with all of this deep medical knowledge, you know? And so, I found that, like you found, our body has a natural ability to heal itself if you give it the tools it needs, right?

• 56:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  And so, I decided, once I healed myself, to form a new kind of clinic where people can go to stay healthy and be healthy and be their most vibrant self. And that's what Next Health is. A lot of people call us like the Apple Store of health and wellness.

• 57:03Mindy Pelz?

  It feels like that. When you come in, it actually has a real fun vibe like that.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, because we want people to come every week, you know? And so, what we have is, we measure all the biomarkers that we're talking about. So people are empowered with the knowledge. And then we create a plan for them utilizing the latest technology to stay healthy and to feel incredible. And so, we have what we call the longevity circuit. It includes sauna, cryo, hyperbaric oxygen, LED light. We also have Ebu. We have plasma exchange. We do a lot of biologics. And we just basically have a doctor and medical practitioners at every location to help guide your journey that understands this new form of medicine that we're practicing.

• 57:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and you have telemedicine too, right? Which is really, is really cool. So, if, what's the entry point? We have people all over the world, but I know you are heavily, your clinics are heavily on the coast right now in America. But you're opening up over eighty of them in just in America. Are we worldwide yet?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  We're gonna be worldwide, actually. And so we're starting, we have a clinic opening Dubai in a few weeks. And we also have some clinics in Canada opening. We have about sixty locations opening in all the major cities in the United States and some secondary markets as well. So basically, you know, the way medicine is practiced in the United States is by state by state.

• 58:18Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  So our goal is to have a clinic in every state. So even if you have to travel a bit, you can get to a clinic within an hour or two. And then once you get to a clinic, we can do all the testing. It's not just blood tests. We're also doing urine tests. We're doing things like grip testing. We're gonna be doing VO2 max testing, all the data we need to really understand your current health situation. So we can impact it twenty, thirty years before you get a disease. And right now, we are in LA, New York, Maui. We're also opening very soon in Florida, in Chicago, in Texas, in Nevada. Where else?

• 58:56Mindy Pelz?

  Nashville.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Nashville. Nashville, yes, you're right, Nashville. So we'll have clinics everywhere. And so just keep your eye out. Our website is next-health.com. And you can come to one of our clinics, establish care, then we can do everything by telemedicine, as you said. And very soon, we'll have a really well thought out detox program.

• 59:15Mindy Pelz?

  I can't wait. I can't wait.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll just keep helping everyone as much as we can through spreading the message.

• 59:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and we'll leave links for all of that. And we'll leave all the science too. So I'm hoping that people can take this episode and take it to their doctor. You know, my whole YouTube channel is built off of me leaving the science. And so people took those videos to their doctors. And then their doctors started referring all their patients to the videos so that they could be in collaboration with, with the information I was giving.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 59:45Mindy Pelz?

  So it was really cool. So anyways, I just could talk to you all day long. I just, I'm loving what you, I love your vision. I love your heart.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 59:55Mindy Pelz?

  And I just love what you're up to in, in a world. Where I have been frustrated trying to figure out simple solutions. You have taken that and are bringing it to the world in a really easy way. So, thank you.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Well, thank you so much. Yeah, you know, I was a very successful surgeon, but I decided this was so important that I wanted to change my career completely and just tell people how to be healthy. Tell people that they have a place to go to be healthy. And so I really appreciate joining forces with someone like you that is so committed to women's health, to people's health. And yeah, let's do this together.

• 1:00:30Mindy Pelz?

  Agreed, agreed. Appreciate you.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:00:33Mindy Pelz?

  Uh huh. My pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So, please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.