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The Biology of Becoming: How to Age in Reverse with Dr. Darshan Shah
216 Plays11 days ago
In this dynamic episode, Scott Schwenk welcomes Dr. Darshan Shah, founder of Next Health, for a far-reaching conversation on the future of wellness, from bio-optimization and longevity science to spiritual alignment. Dr. Shah shares what it means to reclaim authorship over your own health using biomarkers, tech, and self-awareness—revealing how data can catalyze not just healing, but awakening. From hormone recalibration to AI-driven diagnostics, from ancient wisdom to futuristic medicine—this episode offers both actionable insight and expansive inspiration.
Dr. Darshan Shah, MD - Longevity Medicine Specialist, Surgeon, Visionary
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 is a board certified surgeon who has performed over 20,000 surgical procedures, including trauma and complex reconstructive procedures. As a Longevity Medicine specialist, he has advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their well-being and extend their healthspan and lifespan. Dr. Shah began his career at an accelerated MD program and earned his medical degree at the age of 21, becoming one of the youngest doctors in the United States. He continued his training at the Mayo Clinic, one of the most prestigious medical institutes in the country. After earning his board certification, he opened medical/surgical centers throughout California, started four other companies in the Health and Wellness space, and has published a book, authored numerous papers and patented medical devices. Dr. Shah’s belief in continual education and self-improvement has earned him alumni status at Harvard Business School, Singularity University, and other prestigious institutions. His passion is educating people on the topics of adding healthspan to your lifespan, having done over 100+ speaking engagements and hosting the critically
acclaimed podcast Extend.
Master Coach, Spiritual Teacher, Culture Architect
Scott’s teachings, courses and private mentoring guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
Scott’s teachings support the entire person to not only progressively recognize, stabilize and embody our inextricable oneness with the source of creation (Waking Up), but also to resolve the wounds of the past (Cleaning Up), continually expand our capacities for wider and more inclusive perspectives on any moment (Growing Up) and creatively and joyfully participate and collaborate with all of life as a loving thriving human being (Showing Up).
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Choice to Grow
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
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Hold the breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:41
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Ah. Now let's dive in.
Meet Dr. Darshan Shah
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to The Choice to Grow. I've got a special guest, and as you can see, I'm in person with my guest today. So my special guest today is somebody I've known for a number of years, and it's Dr. Darshan Shah.
00:01:02
Speaker
Darshan Shah is a health and wellness specialist, board-certified surgeon, published author, and founder of NextHealth, which is how we met, the world's first and largest health optimization and longevity clinic.
00:01:15
Speaker
Dr. Shah is board certified surgeon who has performed over 20,000 surgical procedures, including trauma and complex reconstructive procedures. As a longevity medicine specialist, he's advised thousands of patients on how to optimize their wellbeing and extend their health and lifespan.
00:01:34
Speaker
Dr. Shah began his career as an accelerated MD program and earned his medical degree at the age of 21, becoming one of the youngest doctors in the United States.
00:01:45
Speaker
He continued his training at the Mayo Clinic, which is one of the most prestigious medical institutions in the country. And after his earning his board certification, he opened medical surgical centers throughout California, started four other companies in the health and wellness space, and has published a book, authored numerous papers, and patented medical devices.
00:02:05
Speaker
Somehow he sleeps once in a while. Dr. Shah's belief in continual education and self-improvement has earned him alumni status at Harvard Business School, Singularity University, and other prestigious institutions.
00:02:17
Speaker
And it's why he's on the choice to grow. His passion is educating people on the topics of adding health span to your lifespan.
Career Shift to Functional Medicine
00:02:25
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having done over 100 plus speaking engagements and hosting the critically acclaimed podcast, Extend.
00:02:31
Speaker
So welcome, Dr. Shah. So good to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So the choice to grow. When you hear that term, what does it evoke for you?
00:02:43
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You know, it evokes a memory of a time in my life where I was not growing and I kind of hit a brick wall and, um, you know, I had the choice to keep going and just slog it out for the rest of my life, you know, and end up not having any passion or any real, uh, goals anymore. Just, you know, putting my time in until the end. Right. And so um I had to make a physical choice to make a pretty big career change in order to get in a place where i could grow again and basically start over new.
00:03:23
Speaker
This was about 10 years ago, maybe 11 now. um This was when I discovered functional medicine and um I was a very successful surgeon, um you know, doing well, scaling that business, operating, you know, every single day as much as I wanted to.
00:03:40
Speaker
And um I was burnt out. I was hitting a brick wall. um I just realized that um I wasn't learning anything new. In fact, I was doing the same 10 surgeries over and over and over again. And it was soul crushing after a while. And so I decided to go learn something new in medicine. um And typically surgeons, you know, we we use our hands. we we are in the operating room using our hands all the time. And we're doing things that are very physical.
00:04:11
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And I decided to do something that confused my surgical colleagues to go and learn um medicine again, but now from a functional medicine standpoint. And they were like, why would you ever want to do that?
00:04:24
Speaker
I just, I just need to do something different. And um when I made that change, it was basically a choice to grow. And and I just, You know, ended up learning ah massive amount of new information that I thought I needed to just, you know, so put out there into the world. And that's when I changed my trajectory of my career in medicine, opening a new clinic.
00:04:46
Speaker
That's where I met you. and um here we are. Wow.
Mental and Emotional Transformation
00:04:50
Speaker
wow That's not a lot of time really in a lifespan. I mean, I'm sitting here at this recording at 53 and a half years old and I'm imagining just like the last 10 years of my life, a lot has happened.
00:05:03
Speaker
What about the the the inner pieces? you know We can take different approaches to food, diet and exercise and they are foundationally transformational.
00:05:14
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But what about the emotional pieces? What about the mindset pieces? Like what did you have to grapple with when you were before you made that transition across that threshold.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think from a mindset perspective, I was feeling, number one, burnt out, which always leads to depression and um and a feeling of its hopelessness, right?
00:05:38
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And so, you know, I think people choose to address those issues with medications, right, which I decided I did not want to do.
00:05:49
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um They just live with it and address that with denial, right? Or you can address that with um the the choice to do something different, right?
00:06:02
Speaker
And there's always therapy, of course, as well, right? For those who choose it. Exactly, for those who choose it. And all of those are very valid issues. Like, I'm empathetic to everyone that chooses any of those four pathways, right?
00:06:15
Speaker
um But for me, the change was the only choice. And like you said, like 10 years, it seems like a little bit of time, but it can also be a long time. And my life has changed dramatically in decades. Every 10 years, I've had a massive kind of shift in direction one way or the other.
00:06:33
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And um I think that, you know, for me, change was something I'd done before, something I i was kind of more used to doing than maybe some of the other ones.
00:06:44
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And making that kind of 180 turn led to obviously, you know, a mental change. Right. And so whenever you make a change first, it's always very stressful.
00:06:55
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Right. And you wonder, like, what am I doing? am I making the right choice? And then you just kind of stick with it and things end up unfolding the way that they do. And I'm a big believer in manifestation, um visualization.
00:07:10
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And I just really, really leaned into that hard, you know, and What's your way with that? Everybody's got a different way and I'm actively actually filming a course as I'm delivering It's kind of in beta right now called Prospering.
00:07:23
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And I've poured through all the main sure kind of arteries and veins throughout the decades of those kinds of teachings from like Hermetic Alchemy to Catherine Ponder's work to John Randolph Price and Law of Attraction.
00:07:36
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And I've noticed as I work with myself and other people, some people are gonna sit and do affirmations and that actually opens the doors for them. Some people are going to visualize. Some people are going to just practice the feeling. They can go right to the feeling that something is already so. What's your way in?
00:07:53
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I do all of those ways. And I would say the one that works the best for me is being in that feeling. I live in the feeling of where I want to be, not where I'm at. and that way, the...
00:08:08
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universe unfolds itself into matching me and where I'm feeling I'm at, you know, and i don't know if that makes sense. It completely makes sense. I think the thing that some people might wonder is like the time lag. Yeah.
00:08:18
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Yeah. There's always going to be a time lag, but time is a fake made up concept that we have. We've, we were living in the future in the past all really in the same moment. And time is just something that we humans have created to explain why they're occurring at the same time, but also different. Right. Now, when did that land for you as a real like embodied perspective? Because i have ah I have a memory, it's not super sharp, of when your co-founder, Kevin, sent you to me and I i gave you a session at the time that included somatic practice, breath work.
00:08:53
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And I remember you sitting up just wide-eyed, like, what just happened? So when did this perspective really start to dawn
Meditation and Personal Evolution
00:09:00
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on you? Was it always there?
00:09:04
Speaker
No. Okay. So when this perspective dawned on me was probably in my, i would say early twenties or maybe my late teen years where I'd read a book called untethered soul. Yeah. Michael Singer and, and Man, what an incredible book. And i read then I read all of his other books.
00:09:28
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And i just thought like this, I i started practicing meditation um with that with his work in my mindset as I'm meditating, right? And so, know, there's all different ways to meditate. There's all different goals you can have in meditating. But for me, it was that transcendence that um really spoke to me, but that I wanted to get to, right? Right.
00:09:50
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And so I think I had glimpses of that um in my late teens, early 20s through my meditation practices. um You taught me about breath work. And so breath work kind of landed for me in the same place as meditation.
00:10:04
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And then um sometime in my, i think, late 20s, early 30s, I discovered transcendental meditation, TM, which really solidified that for me.
00:10:15
Speaker
Question about that, because I started TM after I moved out of living in an ashram full-time for several years. And I started it because, one, it was getting really popular. So I picked up on the the the cousin of it, Vedic meditation. sure yeah. With Tom Knowles, and he's actually who initiated me into that mantra.
00:10:33
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But for me, what really was the magic about it wasn't so much that I felt a force of transmission the way I had in other places, was me giving my word to sit 20 minutes twice a day.
00:10:45
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Yeah. What about you? Yeah. You know, I think I think for me, first of all, like saying you're going to do it for 20 minutes twice a day, that's a big commitment for for many people. It turns out not to be a big commitment once you start doing it at a regular basis, because you fully realize that you just create more time by doing that.
00:11:05
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But, um and you know, like I don't do that right now. I've slipped out of it. And, you know, I think all a lot of people slip in and out of it. It's just, you know, a part of life and I can't wait to get back into it. But also the need for novelty. You know, like we hear in biological systems, unless novel energy is introduced, entropy kicks in.
00:11:22
Speaker
but So I think that's the case for whether it's staying within TM and getting the next technique where they reveal more of the whole mantra or something else, but like this important thing, because what I've recognized, and I'm curious about your experience, is that when we when we level up it becomes the new normal.
00:11:42
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And then it's neutral energy and we have to keep leveling up or it's we we actually start to think we've lost energy. Right, right, right. No, that's absolutely true. And in fact, you know i as a surgeon, I had leveled up to the maximum level that I could get to, I think, at doing surgery.
00:11:58
Speaker
And it became the new normal. And then you end up thinking that that's not good enough and that's not where you want to be. And you end up getting you know burnt out or you get stale, whatever have you. So I think it is ah constant evolution. And um i think, you know, to your point, you know, I think.
00:12:14
Speaker
um with TM or any type of meditative practice, maybe maybe it is a good idea to take a break sometimes and give it another shot and just understand that, you know, the difference between when you're in a meditative practice and when you're not and how it feels and and where you want to get to next.
00:12:29
Speaker
Well, and in my practice, the important thing is getting people and myself to a place where the practice is not focused just on the cushion or the proverbial cushion. You know, the Tibetan tantric teachers, the Vajrayana teachers are really great about teaching.
00:12:44
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Know your meditation practice is all day long. sure you You have formal practice to to to deepen your resources, But if I can't do this with my eyes open, if I can't begin to recognize timeless, boundless awareness and the one taste of everything that's arising, the pleasant and the unpleasant, that's where my work is.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah. So powerful. Yeah. I think if you can live in that state all day and just go through this normal kind of life that we have in urban environments in Los Angeles or wherever, New York, wherever you are, i think that's a really powerful place to be.
00:13:20
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um And me personally, i'm not there. i mean, you are, and that's amazing. i love that. I have moments and weeks and time periods that I am there.
00:13:31
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um But it's always great to be back in that place where your day is a meditative state, not just those moments. Do you have people around you who are deep practitioners so that there's that inspirational kind of current?
00:13:47
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Um, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. Um, it depends on where I'm at in the world, what I'm doing. Um, but, um, it's not all the time. And I think, you know, life, life is busy, right? know, there's ups and downs and crazy times and not so crazy times. And,
00:14:03
Speaker
Right now, you're familiar with where we are with Nextel. Things are in crazy mode right now, you know? and so Well, they've never not been because you've been willing to expand and say yes to so to the next thing. Yeah. So there's always more and more and more. And then the changing of personalities and and you have a family.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. have a great family. And um I think, you know, when you have a family, there is there's also times when everything's in sync and sometimes things are not in sync. And so you have to use the those moments to, um when things are in sync, to get back into ah state where you feel that you have some time for self-awareness and self-care.
00:14:40
Speaker
And that's what I do. You know, i just I just live my life. And i think it's important to not focus too hard on Or be too hard on yourself for when you're not meditating routinely, you know?
00:14:53
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And I think meditation comes to me when I really need it. And then it comes to me um when i um not need it, but I have the space for it too. And both are great times to experience it.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and walking around practices, you know, what are my micro practices? Okay, maybe I can't sit, but what can I do? What do I have? Sure, right. Yeah, you talk a lot about micro practices. I'm a big fan of micro practices because they add up to something. They do.
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, like the difference between guzzling water and sipping all day long. Right. And there's so many things like that with health, right? um Just going for ah intense one hour run on the treadmill, that does not negate the sedentary behavior that we experience all day long sitting in a chair at, you know, in a cubicle, right? And so you need to have that micro movement practice all day long.
00:15:46
Speaker
um Same is true for nutrition. You know, having one extremely nutritious meal the beginning of the day does not negate, you know, eating a bunch of crap the rest of the day, right? You need to have meter the nutrition in throughout the day.
00:15:59
Speaker
And um obviously the same is true for meditative and mindset practices as well. What I do every day is I find many opportunities to do some breath work. And I think that is really helpful for me.
00:16:14
Speaker
Do you tend to notice how you're breathing and adjust it? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's really helpful because my breath, I think the more you practice breath work, the more you understand how much it is so deeply tied to your nervous system regulation.
00:16:30
Speaker
And the minute you're feeling even a bit nervous or a bit um the anxious about anything, you I drop immediately into breath work, whether it even be for like five breaths, and it takes me out of it. And you just realize that those two are completely tied together.
00:16:52
Speaker
I've had a vision for a long time, and I've probably said it to you and Kevin, of some arm of NextHealth where people are actually have interventions and manipulatables or manipulatives, you know like a physical thing to learn something about like their
Technology and Biofeedback in Health Practices
00:17:07
Speaker
breath or whatnot. Maybe it's there's bands that are on them, there's maybe there's an EEG habit, to actually start to... These things that will make the other physical interventions hold. Right.
00:17:17
Speaker
ah You mean like some type of neurofeedback almost? Yes, I think, yeah, that would be incredibly powerful. You know, we are looking for technology that is an easier version of EEG. And I'm having some meetings actually in the next couple of weeks to see how they would work. But I think breathwork is a really powerful test of using EEG.
00:17:35
Speaker
I'll turn you on to it later. The work of Daniel P. Brown out of Harvard is immense. i don't know if you've come across that name. He was 35 years associate professor of psychology at Harvard and simultaneously a lineage holder of tantric Buddhism, of Vajrayana, which called Mahamudra and Dzogchen. He passed it on to my friend Dustin before he passed.
00:17:57
Speaker
And he... They did tremendous research on what's happening in the brains of people in different stages of practice. wow Tremendous research. Oh my gosh. what What were some of the big takeaways of that research?
00:18:10
Speaker
Awareness moves exponentially faster than thought. And meditators can get into a state of recognizing what we call awareness, timeless, boundless awareness. The entry point for most of us is starting to be able to witness our own thinking. That's actually just metacognition. It's an important thing. yeah but to be able to observe our own thinking. And then from there, what's noticing the metacognition?
00:18:32
Speaker
Like there's these doorways in. Michael Singer touches on it and opens the door so profoundly in The Untethered Soul. And if you don't have that book, get it. Yes, absolutely.
00:18:43
Speaker
But yeah, that's some of the things. There's so many different things. I mean you just go onto his YouTube. He did tremendous research on attachment wounds. Yes, he did, yep. And I use those protocols.
00:18:54
Speaker
but the connection to have it observed in the brain, you know these fMRIs and repeated ah results that show the same things, just fascinating to see the interplay, what's possible when science and awareness work together. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's it's incredible.
00:19:13
Speaker
And i think... Awareness and even just dropping into a meditative state is such a, um it's it's really difficult for people to achieve it because we don't have good biofeedback.
00:19:28
Speaker
You know, it's, it's, and maybe we used to, i think humans used to have much better biofeedback than they do now, you know, I think right now because of our urban environments and how digitally distracted we are, we've lost a lot of, and I feel it in myself personally, and I see it in people that even in the last 15 years since we've had cell phones, we've had even less biofeedback.
00:19:53
Speaker
ah We're so much less aware of what's going on in our body. And i think, you know, we can use technology again to bring back some level of biofeedback, but um it's a problem.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's a problem. I don't know what the solution is. um But, um you know, it's harder and harder for people to get into a meditative state, even to use breath work, because they just don't know what it's supposed to be like, whoa what it's doing to their body.
00:20:19
Speaker
And practice is the only thing that's going to get you there. That's right. That's right. I think it's a fact for most of us, unfortunately. I'd like to see it turn, but most of us learn through discomfort. Like, that's the biofeedback.
00:20:35
Speaker
I am curious you're what you've observed. I've observed in the last 10 years, exponentially more, and then in the last five, exponentially, exponentially more people presenting with anxiety and trauma.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's anxiety, um ah just nervousness. just And the way I look at this is these are emotional manifestations of autonomic dysregulation, our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system being completely out of whack from being in a sympathetic state all day long.
00:21:08
Speaker
We know that HRV is a measure of how quickly you can switch between parasympathetic and sympathetic, HRV being the time in between heartbeats. um And the time in between heartbeats is a direct refraction of you switching between those two because those both those systems connect to your heart and your heart beats at different rates depending on which system is pulling on it more, right? Right.
00:21:33
Speaker
And when you have low HRV, it means that you are living in a mostly sympathetic state that is not switching to parasympathetic. And unfortunately, you know, HRVs universally for almost everyone, especially since the pandemic have gone into really, really low numbers, you know, and, um, that's because of this constant sympathetic activation.
00:21:58
Speaker
Now being in, like you said, um being in discomfort can bring that back because when you're in discomfort, you the the discomfort causes initially a sympathetic drive, but then you use breath work, you use awareness to get yourself back into a parasympathetic state, to take control of the situation. Okay? Okay.
00:22:26
Speaker
Cold immersion is a perfect um test of this, right? Because when you first go into a cryotherapy chamber or a cold bath or even a cold shower, I don't care who you are, you immediately go, oh my gosh. Yes.
00:22:44
Speaker
Every time. Exactly. And then... You need to take control of that emotion, of your um drive to get out of there, your fight or flight or fight, so you can be in it for a little while.
00:22:58
Speaker
And then that control that you get through bath work to control of your um of your um limbic system, you get that balance back.
00:23:09
Speaker
And that's what drives your HRV back up. Right. And so that's one example of using discomfort to get your awareness back. Right. I love this. right And so many people have said things like, oh, breath works so hard for me, or I can't stand the cold or whatever, and they haven't yet made the switch. But the ones who do go, oh, there is, as our friend you know Jeff in his book says, good stress, like good stress.
00:23:34
Speaker
We don't have to keep ourselves in 72 degrees all the time. exactly Or we lose this this connection to transformation and the ability to grow with our ecosystem.
00:23:46
Speaker
That's absolutely right. And cold is just one aspect of of good stresses that you can have. Exercise is a good stress, right? um Heat can be a good stress.
00:23:58
Speaker
There's all sorts of different things that you can use as good stress to simulate and give you the practice of regaining control of your nervous system. And then once you have that practice back and you know what that feels like, then you can use that throughout the day.
00:24:12
Speaker
Whether it's you know talking to a difficult ah human being that you meet in the store or you know you're driving in LA traffic. You and know how to manage that sympathetic drive and how to get it back under control.
00:24:27
Speaker
And that's why I really like these kind of, um you can call them biohacking modalities. It's not about just going in there and getting the heat shock proteins from the heat or the cold shock proteins from the cold.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yes, those do help. it's I think the benefit comes way more from your ability to regulate your um nervous system when you're in those situations.
00:24:53
Speaker
So where does the gut biome play into HRV, regulation, fight flight, freeze? Yeah. Yeah.
Gut Health and the Nervous System
00:25:01
Speaker
So your gut microbiome is incredibly ah closely tied to your nervous system um in many different ways. um And so we all know that we have a vagus nerve, which is a nerve that connects your brain directly to your gut.
00:25:15
Speaker
um there There's been research showing that your microbiome connects directly to your nervous system through the branches of your vagus nerve, which connects everywhere in your gut, and these your microbiome is talking to your nervous system and therefore talking directly to your brain. okay We also know that most of our serotonin is produced in our gut, and there's many other communication molecules produced in our gut by our microbiome.
00:25:40
Speaker
GLP-1 is one of these communication molecules that is in the news lately because of Ozempic and things like that, and this is one that is also your gut produces in communication with your microbiome.
00:25:52
Speaker
So there's a ton of communication happening with your microbiome and your your nervous system that we're unaware of um that' throughout the day. right And so i think I think that's kind of where you have to understand that there is this connection and accept it.
00:26:09
Speaker
And then you start doing things that positively affect your microbiome. And this could be the avoidance of ultra-processed food, avoidance of non-shoroid anti-inflammatory drugs.
00:26:22
Speaker
ah Even stress is is damaging to your microbiome. And then giving your gut the things that it needs, the nutrients it needs, the fiber that it needs, the um the time it needs to rest through time restrictions and not eating constantly throughout the day.
00:26:39
Speaker
All these things promote a healthy gut. But when you're promoting a healthy gut, what you're really doing is promoting a healthy microbiome. And when you promote a healthy microbiome, the communication between your gut and your brain just becomes healthier too.
00:26:53
Speaker
is there Is there a double directional relationship between the vagal tone and the gut biome? Like can can by toning up toning up the vagus through like cold or sound or any of the things, can that...
00:27:08
Speaker
affect the gut biome because maybe not everybody has the luxury of the nutrients that are supposed to quickly heal those junctures in the gut biome for leaky gut. So they start taking cold showers every day or maybe they can get into a cold lake and they're singing and they're doing all.
00:27:25
Speaker
Will we see much of a transformation or does diet have to be looked at? I think it's both, but everything affects your your gut health and your gut microbiome. So all the things you said is having good, healthy vagal tone.
00:27:42
Speaker
I'm pretty sure if you look at the gut microbiome of someone that has really poor vagal tone and poor HRV, it's going to be different than the person who's healthy in that way, you know? And so we see so much tied to the gut microbiome, almost to the point where you can take the, you know, a fecal transplant from a healthy individual and put it in someone who's not healthy and the not healthy person becomes healthy for a while, you know? Just for a while though. For a while, not forever. But if their emotional environment didn't change. Exactly.
00:28:13
Speaker
So is it the same with stem cells? Um, stem cells is a little bit different. So I think the, the, the science around stem cells is that we're born with really robust, active, healthy stem cells that want to regenerate. Right. I mean, that's when we're an embryo, our stem cells make a human, right. And those stem cells still have a ton of power left over from that entire embryonic development. Okay.
00:28:40
Speaker
But then what happens as we age is stem cells go through divisions and um they go through multiple, multiple divisions until they cannot divide anymore. and But as stem cells go through divisions, they become less and less powerful. And what I mean by powerful is they have less exosomes within them, which have less signaling molecules.
00:29:00
Speaker
And so you can actually slow the aging process. You actually get rid of old stem cells, senescent cells, and you can stimulate the production of new ones as well.
00:29:13
Speaker
um I think a lot of that, you know, Deepak Chopra talks about this, a lot of that is tied to how much meditation and awareness that you have as well. And so it's really interesting.
00:29:25
Speaker
And I don't think we know all the different you know ties in between um our mental state and and our um awareness to our stem cells, but there's definitely a connection.
00:29:36
Speaker
Do you have much exposure? i don't assume because you're Indian by birth that you have exposure to like the deep stuff of Ayurveda, like the Rasayana practices, the rejuvenatory practices. But I'm imagining as some of these things come out through people who do, that a lot of this knowledge was there even if they didn't have the data.
00:29:55
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, my dad practiced Ayurveda and, you know, it's kind of ingrained in our family. I actually um did an Ayurveda course with Deepak Chopra in San Diego for a few weeks. And um I have exposure, but this stuff has been around for generations and generations. There's so much.
00:30:16
Speaker
deep knowledge that you could spend a lifetime studying Ayurveda and people do. And um I'm sure I'm nowhere near as deep as you have gone. i don't know about that. I think I know just enough to talk about a little bit of a conversation. Yeah, yeah. But it's powerful.
00:30:32
Speaker
So is Eastern medicine, Asian medicine as well. I mean, there's there's shastras that talk about literally rejuvenating a body by many decades. yeah But I haven't heard anybody actually successfully do that. Like my my guru's guru, Swami Muktananda, apparently had a whole kutir, a whole hut set up in Ganeshburi where he had some people who knew these things trying it out and apparently it didn't it didn't take, or I don't know how, if maybe it didn't run it long enough.
00:31:01
Speaker
But what are the principles that you're familiar with from this incredibly powerful ancient system of Ayurveda that we could be incorporating now? Yeah.
00:31:12
Speaker
So I would say, you know, Ayurveda has a long tradition of using herbs and spices and um foods to accelerate healing.
00:31:23
Speaker
And I think there's a lot to be learned there, um specifically around inflammation and specific foods around inflammation. Now, inflammation causes us to age faster and keeping inflammation at bay um can help us to age slower. So that's one major aspect of Ayurveda.
00:31:40
Speaker
I think Ayurveda is also very um deeply tied into kind of living with um rhythms of nature. And, you know, yeah, I think the the we have engineered our entire environment to be completely out of sync with circadian rhythms, right?
00:31:58
Speaker
We've eliminated circadian rhythms, if you want, from our from our, um, truly from from our environment. And I think I have it. It teaches us that that's definitely not the direction that we should be headed in. And so the there's so much there and it just goes back to, um you know, I think there's lot of evolutionary biology that Ayurveda took a hold of and really magnified the power of, you know, and um, we just need to get back to that.
00:32:25
Speaker
I love the concept in Ayurveda of Dhinacharya, the daily rituals. yeah You know, like there's certain things I will do no matter where in the world I am. Tongue scraping, neti pot washing, the the the internal, using nausea, drops the oil, oil in ears, oil on the head, oil on the feet, like simple little things, even though I am a carnivore.
00:32:47
Speaker
You know, some people would say, oh, you don't stand a chance as a carnivore, but I don't know. The the latest research seems to show that not everybody's suited for vegetarianism. And i actually one of the questions I came in with was, how does somebody who's committed to a vegetarian lifestyle have healthy markers?
Impact of Diet on Health
00:33:05
Speaker
I've heard it's almost impossible. A vegetarian lifestyle? To have a really high healthy biomarkers. Here's what I can tell you. i know so many carnivores that have beautiful biomarkers.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I know many, many vegans that have incredible biomarkers. Really? I do, absolutely. This is heartful. Yeah, yeah. and But I also know vegans with horrible biomarkers and carnivores with horrible biomarkers.
00:33:34
Speaker
So I think there's a lot of N of 1 here. I think there's also a lot of um variability in the vegan diet and also the carnivore diet, right? And so even though they are both basically forms of elimination diets, still there's variability. Carnivores can eat very highly processed meat that is saturated with fat if they wanted to, right?
00:33:58
Speaker
And vegans can eat what's called a dirty vegan diet where it's all ultra processed junk, right? And this is what's going to throw off your biomarkers. And then there's also genetic biomarkers.
00:34:10
Speaker
genetic and microbiome issues at play here as well, right? And there's also circadian issues at play. You cannot make diet the only variable.
00:34:22
Speaker
It just doesn't doesn't work that way. Thank you. There's so many variables that tie together. And I think you just really got to do an end-of-one experiment on yourself to see what works the best for you.
00:34:36
Speaker
Now, there are certain things that we know that don't work for anybody. And those are the things that we've created as humans, specifically ultra-processed food, living outside of your circadian biology, exposing yourself to glyphosate and and toxins, microplastics, et cetera.
00:34:56
Speaker
Those are all things we created in the last you know five to eight decades, okay, um or 10 decades. And those, we know for sure, human biology was not meant to have as even part of the equation.
00:35:09
Speaker
But guess what? that There are probably times that if you were in the plains of India and you were Hindu for thousands of years, you did not eat any meat and you were vegan and you you ate only vegetables and and Were you vegan or did you have milk because of the reverence of the cow and the availability of milk? No, I mean, I grew up i grew up in New Jersey, so I never was a vegan or vegetarian or anything. yeah and But my brother was is a vegan, actually. But in the plains of India, in your example, would there have been milk? Would there have been dairy or would they have been vegan?
00:35:42
Speaker
Ah, you know, i think they I think even vegetarians had milk, for sure. Yeah, they they were not vegan. That's a game changer. No, if it's really healthy milk. Right, right. Yeah, I think i think i think the vegetarians, for sure, milk was part of the Indian diet um for ancient Hindus, for sure. And all the derivatives, ghee, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So if somebody was going to choose, you know, I have a lot of people that I know who are intense spiritual practitioners and they find that they can get into into more refined states of awareness without meat in their diet, many of them, not all, but many of them have said such a thing. So somebody wants to pursue such a thing, what are the the key nutrients to make sure they're getting, even if it's through supplementation, like amino acids? Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
Are you talking about vegans? Yes. Yes, absolutely. By the way i want to say something about ah veganism. So I might be wrong about this, but intuitively, I don't think veganism was ever really a thing until recently.
Veganism: Feasibility and Challenges
00:36:46
Speaker
you know And the reason I say that is because i think a lot of veganism comes from the ethical treatments of animals, right? Yes. animals were ethically treated for millennia in in human society, right?
00:36:58
Speaker
And so I think it's only recently that we've decided to farm animals in an an industrialized factory fashion without respect to them being living beings, you know?
00:37:10
Speaker
And um maybe that's where veganism came from. I might be wrong. I need to research this. Well, then there's the there's is the further direction of it is like the... um everyone's a got a different interpretation of ahimsa nonviolence.
00:37:24
Speaker
So some would say causing as little or no suffering to any animal, no matter how ethically they are raised, like killing it is killing it Everyone's got a different point of view. Vivekananda, who was one of the first to come to the West, to the india the world's first parliament of religions, i was reading in his autobiography, he ate steak and he was taking apart this idea that you can't progress.
00:37:49
Speaker
So i out of respect for any of you who are listening, I respect all choices and there I don't think there's any one choice that fits everybody. Absolutely.
00:38:01
Speaker
Now, to you answer your question about veganism, yeah vegans can get all of their nutrients from food, so okay? However, because our food now is nutrient um depleted, it's very difficult to do this. And so um many vegans will find themselves in a B12 deficiency, iron deficiency.
00:38:23
Speaker
and sometimes um a protein deficiency as well. And so you have to be very intentional about getting enough. And I'm a big believer, as you know, in measuring your biomarkers and making sure you're getting enough.
00:38:36
Speaker
And if you're not supplementing with B12, iron, you know leucine if you need to, amino acids if you need to, for sure. I started taking amino acids ah maybe six, eight months ago, maybe a year ago. And it's been a game changer just in terms of my ability to put on a body mass. Right, muscle mass. yeah Yeah, the whey protein wasn't enough. Yeah, post-workout?
00:39:01
Speaker
Pre actually. Pre-workout, okay. Yeah, I take it twice a day, first thing in the morning. Oh, okay. With, oh no, forget it what it is. it's It's working with the mtp ah the ah ATP in my cells The mitochondria? It's a D-ribose. Oh, D-ribose. D-ribose.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah. um I think the research now um points to taking amino acids post-workout as being more beneficial. Good to know. Just so just for your own, you know, maybe get a little bit more out of your more out of your money you're spending on the amino acids. Please. Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
Which brand are you using? Kion. K-I-O-N. Yeah. Ben Greenfield's brand. Oh, it is his. yeah Okay. that's beds yeah Because of him, i got a Chroma Ironforge red light, too. I love it.
00:39:47
Speaker
Ben's coming here in a couple of weeks to do a live podcast with us at Next Health, and he'll be here. yeah Fantastic.
Life Essentials and Reflections
00:39:54
Speaker
So there's a question, Dr. Shah, that I ask every single guest.
00:39:58
Speaker
And it's based on one of my favorite quotes that I've brought through almost everything I've ever taught. Suzuki Roshi, who opened the Zen Center of San Francisco in the 60s, would say, death is certain, but time is not.
00:40:11
Speaker
What is the most important thing?
00:40:17
Speaker
um For me, I did a DMT journey. And um have you ever done this? Yes, twice. Okay, excellent.
00:40:29
Speaker
A lot of people describe doing DMT as experiencing death, right? It was certainly that experience for me, yeah. and what I saw at that moment in time is the only thing that was important was my family was around me. There's a few select friends around me. And i had a book in my hand.
00:40:53
Speaker
And the book was like a compilation of all of my knowledge. And it was almost like putting it out there into the world. So I feel like for me, um what I'm aiming towards is being very close to my family. um And thank goodness I have you know the time.
00:41:12
Speaker
but no one has a time, but I've dedicated time to making that important. um um dedicated time to my close friends.
00:41:23
Speaker
And also I'm dedicating a lot of my time to taking what I've learned over the last 30 years being a physician and getting it out there as much as possible through my own podcast, through writings, through books, through social media, whatever have you.
00:41:39
Speaker
And when I saw that in this journey, is it's like, yes, that's what's important, right? At the end of the day, that's what's important. Because I think a lot of us spend a lot of time and energy um trying to make money. And we try to make money because we want to be, number one, secure, but also to have fun and to enjoy life.
00:41:57
Speaker
But I feel like you know we're so lucky that we live in this modern Western society that you don't have to spend a lot of money to enjoy life. you know Life can be super enjoyable every day and you don't have to spend any money sometimes, right? yeah And so I think, um This made me realize that um you know that that really what's important is to spread this knowledge, the knowledge of health, and through our clinics and through the podcast and through writing and all those things and um being close to friends and family.
00:42:33
Speaker
Do you train other people who want to learn about functional medicine, to other doctors? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Doctors, our PA and nurse practitioner staff, we do trainings all the time.
00:42:43
Speaker
yeah Maybe more will come out of that. yeah If all of your teachings, all the things you'd recorded, all the books you've written were gone and it's the end of your life and you could leave humanity, not just doctors or PAs or nurses, you leave humanity with like a few key things that will optimize life.
00:43:03
Speaker
What might those be? Yeah, that's a great question. Number one, always make time for yourself. So self-care is super important to put into every single day. We forget this. People go weeks, months, years without having even a moment of self-care.
00:43:19
Speaker
It happens to moms that have kids. It happens to um men and women that join a corporation and trying to climb the ladder. um You know, we see this all the time, right? And so I would say, number one, make moments for yourself every single day to take care of yourself.
00:43:36
Speaker
Number two, really lean into having routines and habits. the And habits and routines are so powerful. the This is where we can create exponential growth and in our lives, in any aspect of life that we want.
00:43:54
Speaker
um I would say number three also is have some sort of belief system in something, you know, and so whether that's religion, whether it's the belief in transcendence or, um you know, manifestation, just something to believe beyond just what's in front of you all the time.
00:44:10
Speaker
i think that's expands your mindset so much, you know, and um taking time to read about or to live or to practice that belief system.
00:44:23
Speaker
Hmm. I love this because as I contemplate the things you're talking about, like I'm fitting it through the lens of alchemy, for example, like habits and routines. Okay.
00:44:35
Speaker
In the laws or teachings of alchemy that you've got the law of rhythm and the law of polarity and the law of neutralization, everything vibrates, everything moves. And the difference between the chair and my body is the rate and the amplitude yeah of that vibration. If I want to change something, i need to interrupt its rhythm.
00:44:54
Speaker
right So I can just insert a new rhythm. yeah And then the third part, well, the first and the third part, to me relate to back to healthy attachment. You know, like most of us didn't have enlightened parents. They did the best they could with what they had, but they were multitasking. And especially people who grew up in the era of cell phones and screens Their parent may be looking at the phone and handling business to make sure that there's money on the table or money to put food on the table.
00:45:23
Speaker
So the need for the five forms of healthy attachment, safety and protection number one is I think the thing we're looking for and routine can offer that felt sense. Self-care can offer that felt sense.
00:45:35
Speaker
And then my body relaxes. yeah and then the systems start to collaborate again. Right, exactly. It's so true. It is so true. um Yeah, I mean, I think you know that once you start doing practices on a daily basis, it completely changes your life. And um even a simple morning practice of journaling can have a massive impact on someone's life. Huge.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that not enough of us do that. In fact, if you ask 10 of your friends, maybe not your friends, but maybe if anyone wants to ask. No, definitely my friends. My friends are not my students, mostly. I see. I see. OK, great. So if ask 10 of your friends, what is something you do every single day?
00:46:20
Speaker
Almost I was a eight out of ten of them will say there's nothing to do every day except brush my teeth Take a shower maybe of my friends as a gay man living in West Hollywood the gym Ah, yes, they all go to the gym. We all go to the gym, which is fantastic, right?
00:46:34
Speaker
But I think we need to build upon that yeah and it goes beyond you know our our body, which is absolutely very important, but there is so much more out there, right? Yeah within everything. There's so much more I um what was it, maybe it'll be about a year ago.
00:46:51
Speaker
One night, i see I had this habit for a few years since quarantine of watching Netflix or HBO or something like this while I eat my dinner. yeah Because I'm typically at home cooking for myself. and And so it's like entertainment or just a focus, you know, and something different than the work day.
00:47:07
Speaker
And this one night I'm like, I don't wanna watch a screen. So I put on music. Now, where I sit and eat at my dining room table is also my desk, and it's also my podcasting station at the other end. you still living in the same place? Oh, yeah. Where we did our breathwork session? still there. That's awesome. Rent control, man. Yeah. So in front of me, I've got pictures of great beings where I sit to eat or compute.
00:47:31
Speaker
And so I started lighting candles. Wow. Just one because of the ambiance. Yeah. And then I started to reflect on everything that went well that day.
00:47:44
Speaker
And all the things that had to happen for that plate of food to exist in front of me. And just to drop into that gratefulness. And I noticed my digestion radically improving.
00:47:55
Speaker
I noticed my ease in falling asleep radically improving. And then it just became a thing to where i think it was a month ago, i canceled all my television subscriptions. Amazing.
00:48:06
Speaker
Sometimes I'll listen to like a fiction book on on Audible, right like be read to, but even lately I'm sitting in silence, but the same practice, like lighting the candles and just being here.
00:48:21
Speaker
Yeah. being here. Right. And it's actually quite magical. It is. It is. had this conversation today. You know, we don't have moments anymore where we're just being right. And it's because of now we have cell phones in our pocket that we just every time we're bored, we have ah we have something that we can't pay attention to for more than two seconds. We pull it out just to see what's happening on the phone. Right.
00:48:46
Speaker
And i think it's in c incredibly detrimental in the long run. um And the reason I say that is because we're just running this mass experiment that started 15, when was iPhone invented? 15, 20 years ago? i don't know. like I lost track. Yeah, exactly. like But, um you know, I think since apps were invented,
00:49:07
Speaker
um it's really created zero time for us to um live in just the moment. And um this is an experiment that's going to happen during our lifetimes. Oh, yeah. We will know the results in 20 years.
00:49:22
Speaker
um I don't think the result is going to be good, unfortunately. We're already seeing it in the radical forward head posture of people, like like spines that have just lost their their uprightness because of bending over like that. yeah And then I don't know, I've just heard this from a buddy of mine who's high up in the PR world, but he had some research, he said he had some research suggesting that particular particularly in Gen Z,
00:49:47
Speaker
that they're not forming the brain rewards of forming human relationships. They're getting it through the screen so that their brain, and I don't even know how to describe this, is not recognizing that a human in front of them is actually real right and alive and not just a part of the screen yeah that I can swipe past. Yeah.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah. I
Importance of Digital Detoxes
00:50:06
Speaker
believe it. I mean, I can, you could see it happening and, um, it's really, like I said, it's it's a mass experiment. I don't think it's going in the right direction. you know, in medicine, when an experiment is not going in the right direction, you pull the plug and you stop the experiment.
00:50:21
Speaker
How does it work in the shop house? and So we try to pull the plug, you know, um and set limits. And um it's hard, but we have to do it um because it's during those unplugged moments that you see the family like forming bonds and having conversations. And, um you know, if we were at zero moments of that per day, that would be a real shame.
00:50:45
Speaker
Well, some of my friends who are have young children, they're like wanting to let the kids experience being bored so they'll get creative. Right. How do you feel about that? Yeah, I mean, i that's what exactly what we do. you know we we We create boredom you know in digital detox days and weeks. We create it and it's really uncomfortable for them to be bored.
00:51:08
Speaker
i grew up, I was bored all the time. Same. I was like playing with action figures, making a puzzle, you know just walking around, looking out the window.
00:51:20
Speaker
Looking at a drop of rain fall down the window for half an hour. Completely. i remember pulling up the getting the kids in the preschool to pull our little chairs up to the window when this huge thunderstorm was happening side because I was like, this is like watching a movie. Let's watch this. Yeah.
00:51:38
Speaker
Yeah. It's so different now for kids. the wonder has gotten lost. The wonder that makes us wanna like learn more, look at the night sky, well I wanna know more what's out there. Yeah, yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
it's And like I said, it's a mass experiment. It does not exist anymore. um And we have to like create it and force it to play. And that's because there's not a single day that goes by without an exposure to a screen, whether it be a TV,
00:52:03
Speaker
or an iPad or a phone. um And, you know, i think it's great to have, you know, time limits on these devices. But what if there was like a week of no screens? What if there was a month of no screens, right?
00:52:17
Speaker
How would that feel to these kids? I can tell you. Yeah, you can do it. But it had been a many years. I went on a solo retreat. Mm-hmm. ah In Europe, in the Alps, and it was like 10 days, but it took me two of those to stop picking up my phone. yeah And then once I did, i didn't want to look at it ever again. Right.
00:52:40
Speaker
And then that's you as an adult, right? yeah So imagine these kids that are they're forming these connections between their neurons right now. um And they have the maximum amount of BDNF in their brain.
00:52:54
Speaker
BDNF? Yeah, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, right? Okay. the The miracle grow for brain cells that makes them connect. Do you have any in your pocket? Can have some? I wish I did.
00:53:05
Speaker
But kids have a massive amount of this and it keeps going up and up and up until you turn into your mid-20s. And then you have your maximal amount of brain growth, maybe mid-20s, and then it just starts declining over time.
00:53:17
Speaker
So as adults, we formed a lot of neuronal connections. um We can break them down, of course. um We can make new ones, but it happens at a much smaller rate.
00:53:30
Speaker
When you're a child, you are... Anything you do is creating a connection, you know? and so now all these connections are happening in different areas of the brain than they've happened from when you and I were growing up, right?
00:53:45
Speaker
And so it wass just it's just, it's a complete rewiring of the brain. In fact, if we had a brain wire map of um us now and we compare it,
00:53:58
Speaker
to our kids when they grow up, I can guarantee you these these brain wiring maps will be very, very different. And the consequences of that, we don't know.
00:54:10
Speaker
Well, I say we all continue to choose to grow. Yes, I agree. agree. Dr. Shah, Darshan, it's always a pleasure to get some time with you and to drop in and see what's what.
00:54:22
Speaker
Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. It's an honor to be here. Do you have anything we should look out for coming up? Yes. um So I have a website, drsha.com. I'm constantly making announcements on it.
00:54:35
Speaker
My Instagram is at darshan shahmd. What's coming up is we are expanding our clinicals um all over the country and the world.
NextHealth's Future and New Projects
00:54:43
Speaker
There will be a next health, hopefully in a hundred different places by um the next three to five years. Wow.
00:54:49
Speaker
um I'm writing a book. I have um this podcast extend that you will be on soon. And um that's kind of where where we're headed right now.
00:55:00
Speaker
Fantastic. yeah Fantastic. Thank you, everybody. Please follow, like, and share. Choose to grow.
00:55:12
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
00:55:33
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.