Live Long and Master Aging
The Live Long podcast is devoted to health optimization and mastering the aging process. Peter Bowes discusses lifestyles and science-based interventions that promote a long healthspan - i.e. the number of years that we enjoy the best of health, delaying chronic diseases for as long as possible. We are pro-aging, not anti. Growing older is a privilege and we approach it with ambitious but realistic expectations. Enjoy every minute.
Live Long and Master Aging
Longevity's true meaning | Dr. Darshan Shah
Does longevity science have a branding problem? Dr. Darshan Shah believe it does. In this interview the founder and CEO of Next Health discusses the evolving landscape of health optimization, emphasizing the importance of healthspan over mere lifespan. He shares his personal journey from a traditional medical practice to a focus on functional medicine, highlighting the significance of diet, lifestyle changes, and innovative treatments in enhancing health. Dr Shah also explains the role of Next Health as a self-styled health optimization and longevity center, focussing on proactive health care. He also addresses the need for greater accessibility to wellness solutions.
Recorded at the 2024 Longevity Fest meeting of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, in Las Vegas.
Timeline
This episode is a co-production with Timeline, the Swiss longevity biotech company, which is pioneering a new category of clinically validated dietary supplements called mitoceuticals, to support healthy aging. Mitopure deliverers Urolithin A which has been shown to enhance cellular energy, muscle strength and the health of our skin.
Time-line is offering a 10% discount on its Mitopure products - Mitopure Powder, Softgels, Mitopure + Protein and skin creams - which support improvements in mitochondrial function and muscle strength.
Use the code LLAMA at checkout here:
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The Live Long and Master Aging (LLAMA) podcast, a HealthSpan Media LLC production, shares ideas but does not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind, or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should consult your doctor.
Longevity science. I think no one really has a clear definition of what it is. The word longevity has a branding problem. People think that we're just trying to add years and years and years to our life, and that's not what we're doing. We want to add healthspan to your life. And so that's where we really focus our energies now.
Peter Bowes:Hello again. Welcome to the Live Long podcast I'm Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind human longevity. The goal is to optimize our healthspan and master the aging process.
TIMELINE:This episode is a co-production with the Swiss longevity biotech company Timeline. We're in Las Vegas at A4M , the annual Longevity Fest meeting of the American Academy of Anti-Aging medicine.
Peter Bowes:Doctor Darshan Shah earned his medical degree at the age of 21 to become one of the youngest doctors in the United States. Now an experienced surgeon with a deep knowledge in the areas of heart, cancer, trauma and general surgery, as well as plastic and reconstructive surgery, he is also the founder of Next Health, the health optimization and longevity center that we featured on this podcast a couple of years ago. You'll find it in our archives. Doctor Shah is also well known as a speaker and now as a podcast host with Extend, a podcast all about extending Healthspan much as we try to do with this podcast. Doctor Shah, it's great to see you.
Darshan Shah:Nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me.
Peter Bowes:It was a fascinating experience going to your facility in West Hollywood. I'm fascinated by Healthspan and the explosion in interest that there has been, especially in this longevity space, in that kind of facility.
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So I think when we first opened Next Health, there was actually ten. Now, almost ten years ago, when we first opened our first office, it wasn't the one that you went to. It was a tiny closet of an office in West Hollywood, 1000ft². And,back then, no one knew what we were even doing. They're like, what is this place you're doing? Longevity medicine. What is that? And so we had a lot of, challenge actually explaining what this was. But what we found since the epidemic, basically when people became refocused on their health and they actually had a time to educate themselves by listening to podcasts, by listening and researching on the internet about health, that we saw a massive increase in the interest in this field, longevity science. And, you know, longevity science. I think no one really has a clear definition of what it is. I think what we do at Next Health is really try to define what we're doing in terms that people can understand. And so that's that's kind of where we see the new mindset kind of going in longevity. And it's not. The word longevity has a branding problem because I think people think that we're just trying to add years and years and years to our life, and that's not what we're doing. We wanted to add Healthspan to your life. And so that's where we really focus our energies now.
Peter Bowes:I like the fact that you mentioned that because there is a branding problem across the broader population. Some people think that because you're interested in longevity, living long, extending your life, that you are in some ways, I think it's disillusioned with with how things are normally going to proceed and that you are deluded into thinking you're going to live an extremely long time 100, 120, 150, or even longer than that. And you nicely say it's all about healthspan, which is just really optimizing the number of healthy years.
Darshan Shah:Exactly. By optimizing your healthspan, we might get 20 or 30 more good years. And so in my mind, that is lifespan. Right, right. Yeah.
Peter Bowes:Well, and emphasis on life. Living life, which this isn't just lifespan. Number of years that your heart is beating. It's enjoying life, doing what you want to do with if you've got children, your friends, if you want to travel and pursue a healthy career, it's all part of of living.
Darshan Shah:Yeah, I would argue your life actually doesn't end when you die. Your life ends when you develop Alzheimer's and you can't recognize your family. Your life ends when you don't, when y ou're not mobile anymore because maybe you have a broken hip that doesn't heal or your life ends when you get diagnosed with end stage cancer. Like those are in my mind. Also, life ending events. And although you're still alive and breathing, you're not enjoying the world and your family to its fullest.Right?
Peter Bowes:Exactly. Yes. So we'll talk a little bit more about Next Health in a moment. But I mentioned that you qualified as a doctor, got your degree in medicine at the age of 21. You must have started very young.
Darshan Shah:Yeah, I did, yeah. So I was fortunate enough to be introduced to biology very early from my dad, who was also a physician, and he brought home a fetal pig one day when I was, I think, in fourth or fifth grade. And this was, you know, 40 years ago, maybe. And, you can't you couldn't just, like, go online and order one. So somehow he found a fetal pig. And I don't know if you did this when you were, early years in biology class, but we dissected it at home, and that was just a game changing moment for my interest level into this. And so once I got very interested in it, I was lucky and fortunate enough to have moved schools a few times. And that in itself was not fun, but I was able to transfer credits in such a way that I could rush through school a little bit. And then I went to this special program in the United States, of which there are only five programs that modeled himself after the British system, actually, where right after high school, you spend six years learning medicine instead of doing four years of college and four years of MD training. And so it's one thing after the other. I saved for years and I was able to graduate at 21.
Peter Bowes:So you understood quite early on that it was your destiny to be in the medical profession.
Darshan Shah:I think. I think so, I don't know if I understood my destiny. I just had a lot of interest in it. I think, you.
Peter Bowes:A nd in part that's because of your father's work and because of your, your studies in very early life.
Darshan Shah:Yes, yes.
Peter Bowes:And did you recognize at that stage what you recognize now about healthcare? Because I talked a lot of people in your position who say what they were taught at medical school really bears little relation to what they do now in practice, and that they weren't that well prepared for their profession as they left medical school. And a lot of it was learning in the in the years and the decades to come.
Darshan Shah:Okay. So that's a great question that you're asking me, because I think people need to understand the history of what happened over literally the last 50 years. Okay. When I went to medical school, now, 30 years plus ago, I learned how to save lives. Okay. And so you save lives by diagnosing cancer and understanding what the treatment algorithm is for that cancer with radiation, chemotherapy, what have you. You save lives by someone gets hit by a bus, and you're able to do surgery on them. You save lives by someone has a heart attack. You're able to treat them with game changing, lifesaving medications in the emergency room. We were taught to save lives. Okay. But what's happened over the last 50 years is this explosion of chronic disease, right? And so now with chronic disease, the healthcare profession, during my time and even now is not there's too much training. You need to have to save lives. Turning around chronic disease, maintaining optimal health is just not in the it's just you're just not trained in that, right. And so yeah, you're absolutely right. So when I got like ten years ago, I found myself in a really bad place with my own personal health. I didn't have the knowledge in my brain on how to turn around my personal health, but I did know what medicines I would need to take to mask the symptoms. Right? And so that's kind of where I think, you're right, I wasn't trained in how to, stay healthy, but that's not what the medical profession was meant to do in the first place.
Peter Bowes:It was meant to to fix a problem when the problem occurred. And as I understand it, a lot of doctors say, you know, they spent 30 minutes on diet and nutrition, which is one of the major pillars, some would say, the most important pillar of longevity. And so how did you gain the knowledge? What happened to you during your years, your early years as a practicing doctor, to really change your philosophy and change your attitude towards your profession?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So, ten years ago I found myself very sick myself. As I mentioned, I was 50 pounds overweight. I had metabolic syndrome, diabetes. I had heart disease, hypertension that was not controlled with medication and an autoimmune disease. So all the bad things all at once, you know.
Peter Bowes:And do you mind if I ask how old you are?
Darshan Shah:I'm 52 now.
Peter Bowes:52 now. So this is in your 40s, early 40s.
Darshan Shah:Early 40s. Right. And so, um, I also at that time had my first child. And so, you know, like most of us, when we have our first child, it's a life defining moment. And you look in the mirror and you say, what am I doing? Right. And so I said to myself, what am I doing? I'm not going to be alive long enough to see this kid grow up, because I was a little bit older dad, 40, and I decided at that point to learn what I needed to learn to heal myself. And I went out there and learned nutrition. I got a nutrition certification, I became a personal trainer. I got a certification in how to exercise. And, through that, I was meeting practitioners in a new field of medicine called functional medicine, and I was very interested. Now, this was very new about ten years ago, but I was I was fortunate enough to meet some of the luminaries at that point in time who taught me about root causes of illness, and I applied that science to myself, and it worked. In eight months, I was able to get healthy. And I said, this is the kind of medicine I want to practice so completely. You know, how to kind of ramp off of my surgical career and ramp on to this new.
Peter Bowes:And were there, I guess there were some light bulb moments for you. You talked about your own personal health, but the people that you dealt with that the patients that you dealt with, the the changes that you saw in people, or perhaps some of the progress that was made by your contemporaries at doctors that you were working with were the light bulb moments that just explained things to you instantly and you think, yes, that's it. I get it now. This is the direction we need to move in.
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the surgeries I was doing was on very obese people. They would see me in their consultative visits before surgery, usually take about six months before the surgery got scheduled. And they would say, Dr. Shah what are you doing? You look so good. And I tell them, let me tell you what I'm doing, you know, and 3 or 4 months later, I would follow up with them for their surgery and say, you know, okay, what? Let's look at everything. You're ready to book surgery. And they'd be like, you know what? I don't need surgery anymore. I'm followed what you were doing, and I don't think I need surgery. I'm just going to stay on this path. And so even though I didn't wasn't able to do their surgery, I was like, aha, this stuff works. We're going to avoid surgery because of nutrition and sleep, stress management, physiological movement advice. And so that was one lightbulb moment I had for sure.
Peter Bowes:Which of the... I think about this a lot. Which of those key pillars of longevity sleep, stress, diet obviously exercise, social connections, I think we're increasingly understand is very important to have people around us like minded people, friends, family, they're all important. But which one of those has been perhaps the most difficult to understand? I would say it's diet. I think we understand what sleep is and how beneficial sleep can be. But diet? There are so many different views on the kind of diet that we should be following. We're all different. We all respond to food in different ways. What is your perspective there?
Darshan Shah:Right. So I actually don't like the word diet because it indicates that there's a certain pattern of eating that might be the right pattern of eating. And it's really not about that. In all of these areas, whenever, whenever I talk to my patients, I'm like, look, there's really 20% of the information that's going to move the needle 80% of the way for you. It's a Pareto principle if you're familiar with. And with diet especially, we tend to hyper focus and go down the rabbit hole on nonsense. That doesn't really matter. Really, the information is going to move the needle the most for you is eliminating ultra processed food from your life. You know, not just reducing it, eliminating it. Ultra processed food was not around 60 years ago. This is a man made, created problem in our biology.
Peter Bowes:And just to help people understand what you mean by ultra processed food. There's some food that's just slightly processed. You chop an apple and it's slightly processed. It's still in its raw form, but slightly processed. So what is ultra processing?
Darshan Shah:Okay. Very important to be clear with this definition, because I think a lot of dietary inaction happens because of confusion about all these terms. Right. So I'm so glad you asked me that. Ultra processed food is a classification system called the Nova classification system. And the way ultra processed food is defined is food that is not really food anymore. It is created in a factory. It is in a packaging of some sort. And you look at the ingredient list and it's more than 4 or 5 ingredients. Many of the ingredients you cannot pronounce, because it's basically a bunch of chemicals that's been put together in a very hyper palatable, non nutrient dense. Way to just provide you with energy and calories and to keep you eating more of. That food because it's profitable for the food company. So it's all of this stuff in the United States is located in the center of the supermarket. 90% of our supermarket real estate in the United States is ultra processed junk that's being sold to us at very low prices and high taste value. So people just keep eating more and more and more of it. And so it's for some examples are chips, cookies, pastries, white bread, packaged meals that are frozen. All of this is garbage. It's not real food.
Peter Bowes:And you know, it still shocks me that I go to a doctor's office and I sit in a waiting room, and there's a vending machine full of exactly what you're talking about here at this conference in the eating area at the back of the expo. All of that kind of food. If people like yourself, medical professionals at an event like this, I mean, maybe you're not in control of the food that's being sold. I know, I understand that, but what I'm saying is it's it's kind of endemic in society this way of this convenient way of eating this ultra processed food. So I suppose the question is, what needs to happen to get around that and to to stop it happening if it is so unhealthy for us?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So I mean, the reason it's there and the vending machines and is ubiquitous everywhere is because it can be stored for a very long time. If you try to store a banana in a vending machine, it's not going to last very long. And it's also very profitable to ten major food corporations in the world to have that there in front of you so they can catch you at a weak moment, and they can you just buy it, right. And they make it for pennies and they sell it to you for dollars. They're making so much money on this. So I think to answer your question, it has to be a grassroots movement that people just stop buying it. Okay. These are trillion dollar. This is $1 trillion industry with companies worth billions of dollars that aren't going to go away until they get bankrupted, basically. And so how do we do that? We either force them through through policy, like it's happening now in the United States where certain ingredients are getting banned. But, you know, you ban one ingredient, they'll create another one. It's just that's what they they have hundreds of chemists hired to do this. Right. So it just has to be people have to stop eating it. That's that's the solution.
Peter Bowes:So I asked you, which is the most difficult of these major pillars to to really get to grips with, to understand, to, to recommend to patients the avenue that they should go down, I think because that is one of the big areas of confusion, isn't it, that people will look on the internet, they'll get a little bit of advice from here, a little bit of advice from there, and ultimately be confused as to the way forward that's going to be best for them. How do you address that confusion that we see in society through this deluge of information from billboards, from television, the internet? Clearly. Podcasts? Yes. You don't necessarily believe what you hear on a podcast. Apart from yours, of course. Yeah. But you see what I'm saying? That there's so much confusing information out there that it leads people to throw up their arms and say, well, I don't know. I'm just going to do what tastes good.
Darshan Shah:Yeah. You know, I think there's definitely a temptation to give up, right? But I think that we now have really good information out there, and a lot of people with good backgrounds spreading good information. And so I think you have to look at who's giving you the information. Most of the people on social media have no degree whatsoever. And you can tell when someone's selling you something. It's you know, humans are very smart. If someone's selling you something, they're either saying that their method is the best way and the only way, and everyone else has no idea what they're talking about. The people that are not trying to sell you something are very nuanced, and they give you the pros and the cons for everything. But with with all of the advice out there, there are some overarching themes that if you like the Pareto principle, if you follow this one thing, you'll get most of the result and then you can figure out what's right for you. Okay, so I'll give you a perfect example. I had a patient about a week ago that said, you know what? I heard that I need to get more protein in my diet because I was listening to this podcast. And so I started buying all these packaged meats. That and they keep packaged meats around all over the place. So instead of snacking on nuts. Now I snack. I snack on processed meats because there's more protein content in them. And I was like, you broke the primary tenant to not eat the ultra processed food, right? And so, you know, I think I think that's how people get confused. And so we cut through the confusion. I said, I don't care what you eat as long as it's not ultra processed. Get that part right first. And then let's focus on your protein requirements, your fiber requirements, your nutrient requirements. But once you eliminate the ultra processed food, whatever else you eat generally is going to be pretty healthy for you. As long as you're getting enough fiber and you're meeting some protein requirements.
TIMELINE:This episode is brought to you by Timeline, the Swiss longevity biotech company, which is pioneering a new category of clinically validated dietary supplements called mitoceuticals to support healthy aging. Mitopure delivers Urolithin A, which has been shown to enhance cellular energy, muscle strength, and the health of our skin. To find out more, go to the show notes for this episode.
Peter Bowes:So let's talk a little more about Next Health then. So as you say, a decade old now. And you're progressing all the time. And for anyone who's never been to somewhere, and that's probably most people around the country or around the world listening to this, you describe to me what it's like. There are interventions like cryotherapy, red light therapy. The intravenous drips. What is your primary goal? What was and what is now your primary goal with next health?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So my primary goal is and always has been to completely reinvent health care as we see it. And so the old model of healthcare was not really health care. It was disease care. Right. So you go to a doctor, they figure out if you have a disease and then they give you a pill or recommend a surgery for you. What real health care is, is it's very proactive. Um, it's something that you don't just do once a year at a visit to a doctor for a yearly physical. You're doing it on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. And also, you know, going to a doctor's office is not very inspiring. It feels like you're in a diseased environment. It feels like you're going to a hospital sometimes. We wanted to create a very inspiring, beautiful place that people want to go to often. And so when you go to a next health, the journey is when you come in, we're going to measure many biomarkers on you blood tests. We're going to put you on a on a special scale that we have that gives us your skeletal muscle mass. We do genetic testing swab and we're going to get all the data. And then we get to look at it at a lens with a doctor. We have a doctor at every location. We look at it at a lens of not just diagnosing disease, but which way are you headed, and how do we prevent you from ever having a disease in the first place? So we put a program together for people using that data. And then we have tools and technology on site. The things that you had mentioned that people can interact with on a weekly basis. So number one, they can do some self-care. Most people don't do self-care anymore at all, until they go on vacation. One week a month, one week a year. You know, your self-care has to be for at least 2 or 3 hours a week. And so we provide people a place to go, get some self-care, sit in a sauna for 30 minutes, do some cold therapy for a few minutes, sit in the hyperbaric chamber, get an IV therapy nutrient drip to supplement your nutritional needs. And people do that for 2 or 3 hours a week. And this sets up kind of like this self-fulfilling prophecy where you're coming in, you're thinking about your health, you're doing something about your health, you're getting tested, and this is what's going to move the needle.
Peter Bowes:And what's the proportion of in terms of the benefits between long term potential and proven, scientifically proven long term benefits and just the here and now and the feel good factor of, as you say, a little bit of self-care, a little bit of pampering in the in the hot sauna, the cryotherapy, whatever is good for you. What proportion is scientifically proven to at least extend our health span.
Darshan Shah:As far as the technologies that we do?
Peter Bowes:Yes.
Darshan Shah:So let me be very clear. Most of the benefit is going to come from getting your nutrition, sleep, your exercise and movement and your stress management. Right. That's going to be 80% of the benefit. This adds that top 20% on to that where you can make changes faster and they're more long lasting. I would say the technologies that we have in our clinics have been proven from years and years of studies. So you might be familiar, there's massive studies on sauna use having more benefit than any other therapy for reducing cardiovascular disease except for lowering cholesterol levels with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. When I trained at the Mayo Clinic, we would actually use hyperbaric oxygen to treat people that had strokes, had unhealing wounds or surgical problems. And so bringing that technology to the public before they're sick in the hospital setting still has the same benefits. And so, we only bring technologies in that have proven benefit, and that's why we're doing them.
Peter Bowes:And how do you open up those benefits and the opportunities to everyone? Because clearly there is a fee for this. And it is beyond the means of, of quite a lot of people. So how do you equalize it in terms of opportunity?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So our plan is we're scaling now very rapidly. We have six locations. We're going to be opening 25 more in the next year, and hopefully 100 more in the next three years. With scale, we're going to drive costs down so people can do this at a even lower cost that we're doing it now. So if you look at our price points right now, we have memberships that are $99 a month and even $300 a month. Now, a lot of people spend that amount on their gym memberships. What our goal is, is we have the health savings accounts in that people can put money in every single year instead of paying for insurance, right, so they can put some money in before taxes are taken out into what's called the health savings account. Right now, that's at $4,000 a year maximum. We're working with the government to increase that. But what we're trying to do is within that $4,000 a year, be able to take care of all of these treatments for people, right. And so when we do that now instead of spending money on health insurance, you're spending money on your health savings account, which is preventative. Health insurance, as you know, is very reactive, disease focused. And so we just want more people to just use money that the government allows you to put away pretax to do this.
Peter Bowes:And are you working closely with the insurance companies with with government. And clearly we've got a new administration here in the United States that may I think a lot of people are just waiting to see what happens. There's some interesting ideas flying around in Washington about health care at the moment. What I'm saying is, do you have other entities on board with your goal?
Darshan Shah:100%. I mean, at this conference, I had conversations with at least 25 or 30 people that are also getting involved at the highest levels of Washington, DC as I am to move the needle in healthcare. It's a really good moment right now where there's actually a lot of talk around focusing on health versus disease care.
Peter Bowes:And do you think the the message that you've eloquently described in terms of the understanding of what health care should be, that it isn't fixing diseases, it isn't? Well, we need to fix diseases, but it isn't fixing problems as they occur. It is preventing those problems in the first place. Do you think that is getting through to people that en masse there will be a general understanding? I think a lot of people will still think the doctor is there. You get sick, you go and see the doctor and hopefully you'll feel better. But this other way of thinking, which I agree with you, yeah, is that getting through to people.
Darshan Shah:I think I think absolutely it is. I mean, in the United States, we have 90% of people that have some level of metabolic disease. We have 50% of people that say they don't feel well. And, you know, as doctor Mark Hyman always says, people are sick and tired of being sick and tired, right? They're going to their doctor. They're not getting what they need, but they have nowhere else to go by. Companies like Next Health and other companies providing a place to go for health, I think people will experience it as they are the markets that we're in right now, and tell their friends that this is where you go for true health care, optimizing your health, avoiding disease, preventing disease. And the other system is there for disease care. So, you know, we're at the beginning stages of this, but there's going to be two parallel systems. One is the hospital insurance, you know, pharma system. And there's going to be a health focused system.
Peter Bowes:What interventions do you use yourself and what are you most excited about in terms of the science?
Darshan Shah:So I would say for myself, the interventions that I use are mostly diet, sleep and exercise related. Every day. That's what I focus on. I do top it up with some supplements that I take, and I do also top it up with some using some of the technologies that we mentioned. Okay. If I don't get my supplements in or the technology in on a particular day, or even for a few days, like traveling to this conference, it's not the end of the world, but it would be the end of the world if for me personally, if I ate a bag of chips and a, you know, and a Twinkie for lunch, or if I went to bed at like three in the morning, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But it's like, you know, I try to avoid that at all costs. And I think the stacking of doing these things day after day is what really moves the needle for my personal health. And I think for most people, that's what's going to move the needle. Stacking these things up as much as you can, day after day after day and having very few off days, you know, and, that's my primary. Secondly, I there are some supplements that I consider foundational and I recommend to all my patients, and I take them. And then lastly, at least once a week when I'm not traveling, I try to do some sort of heat cold therapy. And, you know, because I have neck health and that's where I go to do it, I'll try to do something like LED light therapy, hyperbaric if I have, if it's available and I have time, and then when I'm traveling, or if I don't feel good or sick, or if I've just been sick, or I've just had a really rough week and haven't been able to eat good, I'll do a micronutrient IV as well.
Peter Bowes:And what aspects of the science? And maybe you've seen some technologies this weekend that looking to the future excite you? Things that are maybe not quite there yet, but the potential for the future. I know a lot of people are talking about artificial intelligence in terms of data gathering, to help you communicate with your health professional. What excites you looking ahead?
Darshan Shah:So artificial intelligence is here right now. Everyone has access to ChatGPT for free, so everyone should put in their latest bloodwork that they got. Chatgpt give it your health history and just ask it. What are you seeing here? What are some of the things I should be concerned about? And get that data and research that from ChatGPT.
Peter Bowes:Is that as simple as a cut and paste from the report that you get from your doctor, from your blood. Cut and paste and.
Darshan Shah:Exactly, exactly. You don't even have to type it in or anything. It's actually you could just upload a PDF of it to ChatGPT, it'll read the PDF, it'll give you some information.
Peter Bowes:And the information you get. Is it reliable?
Darshan Shah:Yes. Yep. I you know, it wasn't in the first version of ChatGPT. I find it to be 99% reliable. Now as far as giving you interpretations, right. You can of course ask it for medical advice and treatment advice. I would not do any treatments based on artificial intelligence without talking it through with a skilled professional. I want to be very clear about that, especially when it comes to pharmaceutical supplements or anything else. Now I will say this another treatment that's that is becoming more popular now in the longevity circles. And that's when one that is called therapeutic plasma exchange or plasma exchange is a treatment that's been locked up in the hospital setting now for almost over 50 years. We use it for emergency situations, is where we hook a person up to a machine. We separate their plasma from their blood cells, and we put the blood cells back in their body, but we replace the plasma with albumin. And what this does is it removes all the toxins that have built up.
Peter Bowes:This is a cleansing.
Darshan Shah:Process, a cleansing. It's like an oil change for your body and you can see the plasma come out that we've taken out is dark and and foamy sometimes. And it looks not clear. But then when you put the albumin back in, it's completely clear and fresh. And this gives your body a chance to catch up with its toxic burden. It removes all the inflammatory cytokines, removes all of the protein malformations, all of the toxins like mold and microplastics. Bpa removes anything that's in your plasma is removed. And so I'm really excited about this because this is not giving someone a drug. This is removing the bad stuff. And we're seeing massive changes and benefits for patients.
Peter Bowes:And what does the practical process look like?
Darshan Shah:You come to the clinic, you sit there in a chair, we put an IV in your arm. It's about a three hour treatment where you have an IV and you just basically can watch some TV, you know, listen to a podcast. What have you. And it's very comfortable. And that's it. You're done.
Peter Bowes:And how frequently?
Darshan Shah:It depends on each person. So we look at their. We look at many biomarkers before we do it. And depending on the toxic load, we come up with a protocol that's going to work for the person. And what I find is some people clear fast. Some people take longer to clear their toxins. And that has a lot to do with the health of your liver, has a lot to do with the health of your kidneys, how much you detoxify yourself and how much you're exposed to. Right. So all those factors build up in your plasma. So there's different for each individual.
Peter Bowes:Let me ask you just in closing about your podcast, which is a relatively new adventure for you. Why did you want to do it? How is it going? What are you getting out of it?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. I wanted to do it because of two reasons. I see a lot of patients, and I say the same things to a lot of people over and over and over again. And when you're doing that, you realize that everyone needs this information. And so a podcast is a really good way to get that information to a lot more people. I'm not writing a prescription for everyone that comes to my office. 90% of my time is spent talking about exercise, sleep disorders, nutritional information and supplements that they should be considering. So why not tell everyone this information, right? And so that was one reason. The second reason is because I'm actually the physician for a lot of people that have large podcasts themselves, and they all told me you need to do a podcast and they will be on my podcast. And so, they're very gracious to offer that. And so I get to have these incredibly focused 1.5 hour conversations with some of the smartest people in the world. And there's no phones, distractions. There's no one has a time limit. We've just carved out a couple of hours to have this beautiful conversation that can benefit a lot of people. And so, honestly, I think it's the best thing I do now. It's the most it's the most fun and inspiring thing that I can do is do this podcast. I look forward to it every single time.
Peter Bowes:And as someone who has has moved really from practicing medicine full time to someone who is now a communicator, an entrepreneur, how do you feel about that transition in your own life? In other words, what do you get out of your own career path, which has changed quite significantly from those early days? What inspires you to continue doing what you do?
Darshan Shah:Yeah. So when I was doing surgery on people that needed to get healthy first, but they had no way of getting healthy except for doing the surgery, it's actually kind of soul crushing. You know, I got really burnt out from that because you feel like you're not really making a difference. You know, you might make a difference for that one person for that one that one moment. But in reality, they need to change a lot of things, and people just didn't have that information before. And so now I'm inspired to wake up every single day and do the things that I do. And, I feel like, you know, this change for me is, is so much more fulfilling. You know, I feel fulfilled every single day.
Peter Bowes:It's an exciting career and I wish you all the best. Dr. Shar thank you very much.
Darshan Shah:Thank you so much. It's so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Peter Bowes:The Live Long podcast is a Healthspan Media production. I'm Peter Bowes. You can contact me through our website, livelongpodcast.com, where you'll also find show notes for this episode.
Speaker4:This podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. We do not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should first consult your doctor.
