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[00:02]
A
Why not run your health the way you run a company? Why not develop a C suite of people that help you? Why not have a dashboard of data that you look at on a consistent basis so you can track a problem before it becomes a big problem?
[00:18]
B
This is Mayo Clinic on Human Optimization, a podcast where we break down the science of human potential to help you understand how purpose driven effort leads to high level performance and long term well being. I'm Dr. Christopher Campbel, Director of high performance for the Minnesota Twins and a sports medicine surgeon with Mayo Clinic. Everyone knows our health is fundamental to everything, our whole experience of life. So why does it always seem like it's the first thing to get deprioritized when life gets busy? And when we do try to make it a priority, why does it feel like our efforts don't lead to meaningful change? Well, this episode we're joined by Dr. Darshan Shah. He's a surgeon, author, entrepreneur, and host of his own podcast, extend. And he's here to help us learn to take control of our health, form healthy habits, and increase our health span. The three big questions we have for Dr. Shah are, number one, how much of our health is shaped by our own actions, mindset and decisions? Big question number two, why do so many of us fail to take ownership of our health? And what beliefs or habits keep us stuck? Then in section three, we'll get to some solutions when we ask what practical steps can we take to assume more ownership of our health and start making better decisions. Well, Darshan, thank you so much for joining us today on Mayo Clinic on Human Optimization.
[01:57]
A
Yeah, it's incredible honor to be here. I trained at the Mayo Clinic, so this is like coming full circle for me.
[02:03]
B
Oh, absolutely. Well, thanks for coming. You know, I love your work and all that you're doing out there. So full circle moment for us. Speaking of your work, in the past, I've heard you talk about becoming the CEO of your own health. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, oh, I think I know what he's talking about there and I really like it. But I want to hear from you, what exactly does that phrase mean to you?
[02:26]
A
You know, it's kind of the opposite way to the way I was living my health journey about 25 years ago. I was running a massive business back then, right? And when I was running this business, I owned a bunch of surgical centers in California. Every day I'm looking at my KPIs, I'm like, how much money did we make? How many employees do we have? Are we profitable? What are my cost of goods? Every day I'm looking at these numbers, right? And then I take personal responsibility for those numbers. If something's not right, I dive in. I know more about my company than anyone that works for me. And I visually look at the data every single day. Exact opposite with my health. I knew nothing about my health. I was like, I'll go to my doctor once a year, he'll look at stuff and tell me what's going on, you know? And I completely outsource my health to my primary care provider. And the most I would do is try to eat right once in a while and maybe go to the gym two or three times a week, if that. And so I think what happened was I got really, really sick, obviously living my life that way. And I realized that outsourcing your health is absolutely the wrong thing to do. And so why not run your health the way you run a company? Why not take full personal responsibility? Why not develop a C suite of people that help you run individual pieces of this optimally? Why not have a dashboard of data that you look at on a consistent basis so you could track a problem before it becomes a big problem. Right. And then you can actually make profit instead of going into loss with different aspects of your health. Right. And so when I had that realization, I ended up having to learn a lot about just, you know, medicine and health in general that I was never really focused on or taught really. And it just completely changed my perspective.
[04:18]
B
You know, it's funny, we have all of these different formulations and approaches of how we think about big companies and organizations. And one of the things we talk about on here a lot is every big company organization has a value statement or they have a mission, they have a purpose, they have all of this stuff defined. But we don't do that for ourselves as individuals. And so we talk a lot about how we have to develop our own personal values, vision, mission, purpose, et cetera. And you're really saying the same thing here. Like, you think about yourself as if it's a company, as if it's an organization, and it's a very important and prized company and organization. And I absolutely love that. And one of the things I think that causes us to struggle in this space is that people don't necessarily understand what they can and can't control in this space of their own personal healthcare. So can you help me understand sort of that balance between what we can control and what we cannot control in. In our own personal health?
[05:16]
A
That's a great Question. Because I think about this all the time, right? And I think we can control so much more than we think that we can control, right? And the reason I say that is because just like running a company, if there's something that you don't know how to do, say you're wondering, how do I run a subscription business, right? You're going to buy a book, go to a YouTube video, listen to a podcast from experts talking about how do you run a subscription business? What is like a cost of acquisition mean? You're going to learn all about it, and you're going to start tinkering with that in your own company until you get it right. If you have that same mindset for your health, there's tremendous amounts of information out there now between podcasts, books, online, et cetera. If you have the same mindset of learning about your body when something is not right, you realize very quickly that you can pretty much handle almost everything that you need to from a lifestyle, chronic disease perspective. Now, the part that you always will need help, just like with a company, is when things start going bad, right? For example, a diagnosis of cancer, you're not gonna handle that yourself. You're gonna go to a place like Mayo where you have experts that will really end up doing a deep dive and helping you through the process, right? But there's this entire world of chronic disease that now exists that, you know, most humans will die of a chronic disease. And that chronic disease, we've kind of parked it into this. Like, that's the responsibility of my insurance, my Western care doctors, and the hospital system. You and I both know the system was never built for that. The system was built to take care of major issues and problems, massive infections. You know, you get hit by a bus, you get diagnosed with stage four cancer, you need reconstructive surgery. Thank God we have this system to do that. Right? But it was never built to reverse chronic disease in the first place. So you almost need to create like this new system of your own health management that is outside of that to have really great results in reversing chronic disease and avoiding chronic disease in the first place, in my opinion.
[07:24]
B
And if we differentiate between sort of this chronic disease that develops over time versus the sudden traumatic catastrophes that you described, how much of our everyday behaviors and choices impact that chronic disease that plagues so much of the population in our world today.
[07:43]
A
Yeah, chronic disease is not like a genetic fate for all of us, right? I mean, obviously there's genes that can definitely make us more susceptible, but if you have those genetic susceptibilities, then it's even more important that you get your lifestyle in order. Right? And so what my mission is telling people, look, just because you have like an APOE gene doesn't mean you're going to get Alzheimer's. Just because you have cardiovascular risk factors and early cardiovascular death in your family doesn't mean that needs to be your trajectory, right? So the more you do on a day to day basis to learn about your biomarkers, to learn about what it can actually reverse the trend for you, whatever your genetic family history is, you can still avoid those problems for most people. Now obviously there's other genetics that can lead you into a bad place, but that's why we have this incredible western care system that if you cannot outrun your genetics out, exercise, out, eat, out, sleep your genetics, then definitely the western medical system has some solutions for you. But 95% of it can be done way before that.
[08:59]
B
Let's jump into our second section and talk a little bit about why so many of us struggle to take ownership on our health. So I want to ask you, why do so many of us feel powerless when it comes to our own health?
[09:12]
A
I think number one is that over the last 50 to 100 years, people feel disempowered because even the system was set up that way, right? I mean, you and I both remember when you couldn't get a blood test unless you ask your doctor for it and then your doctor went out to prescribe it for you and half the time they would say, why are you testing that? You don't need to know that, you know. And then when Dr. Google came out, oh my God, all the physicians were up in arms, like patients have information now, what the heck is going on here, right? And so it comes from a lot of that history, right? People have just been disempowered through this medical system that we created. Unfortunately, however, that has completely changed. Now you can go online and for 300 bucks you can order your own blood test, you can find out, you know, 100 plus different factors. You can go to Dr. Chatgpt now and ask questions, get some good answers actually. And everything has changed. And so I think that's one of the biggest factors is we grew up in this system. Now our kids, I have a 12 year old and a 9 year old, they're living in a whole different world now, right? They do not feel disempowered. They know that they have the power to ask AI. They know they have the power to know what Their markers are like, we have these bioimpedance scales in our bathrooms. And my kids know their skeletal muscle mass, believe it or not, just because they have fun playing with it. But, you know, it's a whole different world that we live in. You know, my kid has an Apple watch, and he's always tracking his movement all day. He doesn't need to. He moves around like crazy. But this is a new era of personal data empowerment that we haven't seen before.
[10:48]
B
And I think that it's incredibly powerful for so many of us to actually have that information at our fingertips to be able to make meaningful changes that impact our lives. But I also think there, there's a flip side to that or darker side to having either too much information or having misinformation. So thoughts on how do we sort that out in. In our modern world now where, you know, the knowledge rate continues to grow, the information is doubling every 24 hours. How do we make sense of the true things we need to be listening to from the background noise that we need to ignore?
[11:20]
A
Every human is different in their way. They handle the amount of data out there, right? There are just some people that won't drive cars because there's just too much data input while they're driving, right? And then there are people that know everything about their car, how many rpms it goes when you. Whatever, you know, the 0 to 60, whatever, right? And so you just have to find out, like, what is your personal view on having the data of your. Of yourself. And this is going to change over time. This is what's critical to understand, right? Like, yes, there is a lot of data out there, but there's certain core pieces of data that are big rocks that can really move the needle for you, right? And then there's these little pebbles of data that you can fill in if you want to later on, right? So. And if you're struggling with something, I say you're struggling with sleep. And you've never worn like a whoop band or a oura ring or something like that. Maybe it's worth looking at, like, what's going on with your sleep? Is it like you're spending too much time in bed with no sleep? Are you waking up multiple times throughout night? Maybe you have sleep apnea, right? Maybe it's focusing on one set of data at a time. Now you look, you have the biohackers that are measuring everything, and you probably know this type. They've come in with spreadsheets of their blood tests and all their markers for, like, the last 10 years. Right. And then you have the ones that are like, I don't want to know anything. And so I always try to step people into the middle somewhere. Like, you don't need a lot of data, data all the time, but there is some data that you should probably get used to looking at and, and empowering yourself with and just, just kind of trying to find where, what's the middle ground for people.
[12:49]
B
And so much of that too is figuring out who you are, what's important to you, where you're at, what you want to get better at.
[12:54]
C
Because.
[12:55]
A
Right.
[12:55]
B
How a 20 year old college athlete approaches that question is going to be very different than maybe a 70 year old who's, you know, still trying to, you know, carry groceries in or, or do different things, spend time with their grandchildren. So kind of know what your goals are, what important to you and then look for the information that's going to help you achieve it, right?
[13:16]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And that changes as your life progresses. Right. And it changes where you are with your current status of health too. I think a lot of people, I see this a lot, they, they get their lifestyle right, then they start measuring a few other things that, that they should be measuring and then they get that right. And then they're just like now what's next? I think a lot of inspiration comes from just feeling good, right. So once you start feeling good in your own body and you change your mindset because of that, you, you maybe you're inspired to do more.
[13:44]
B
So you, you work with patients and you coach people through this all the time. What are some of the most common things that people think make a big impact on their health, but probably does, does not.
[13:54]
A
So, you know, a lot of people are looking at things like red light therapy, cold immersion and look like, I'm not saying if they, if they make you feel good, do them right, I think that they're great. But those are really like the tip of the iceberg. I do think that people are looking still. This is throughout humanity, the quick fix. Right. And we're still not there. There's no quick fix. Right. And so once again it's truly understanding what is the 20% of the information that's going to move the needle for you 80% of the time and that is going to be definitely rooted in your lifestyle.
[14:27]
B
Yeah, we really talk about pulling the big levers first. Like, we're all busy, we don't have time to do everything. So we got to figure out what are the few things I can do that are Gonna have the biggest impact on my life. And just because there is evidence to support something that it is helpful doesn't mean that that's what's maximally helpful or maximally beneficial. Gotta do the big things first. Then once I do that, then we can start working on the margins. But I gotta nail the basics. So speaking of the basics, I think that a lot of us really know what we should be doing in terms of exercising, sleeping, eating right, having good relationships, but we don't always do it or we rarely do it. So how do denial and avoidance really keep us from taking these simple actions that we all know we should be taking?
[15:15]
A
To me, this question actually goes back to understanding. What is your motivation first, why do you want to be healthy and really understanding? Like you said at the beginning of this talk about mission, purpose, values, vision. What is your vision for your life? What is your mission in life? What is your purpose? If you don't have that down, your health just becomes less important because you're not really living for anything or anyone, right? And so I think it has to start with that mindset piece to understand the why. Right? And then the second piece of that to me is things like going to the gym and exercising an hour before sleep, winding down and putting your phone away. These are hard things to really do, right? In a day to day life. And so understanding that, like, what does the science of habit formation say? It says start small. It doesn't have to be. You have to go and do a one hour workout at the gym with a trainer, you know, five days a week to get healthy. That's not, that's not true. You can work up to that. If you start with just doing a 20 minute workout every day at home, that can be more beneficial than those massive gym sessions and skipping most of them just because you don't feel like it, right? So even just spending the first 20 minutes of your day doing a physical activity, like, you know, maybe it's three sets of push ups, squats and planks, that's it. That's how I started. Three sets of 10 of each. One of those took me 20 minutes and I did it every single day. And then I was like, you know what, I should just go to the gym now and then decide to go to the gym for 30 minutes and then once or twice a week and then just kept building up from there. So starting small works really well.
[16:54]
B
That's, that's fantastic. One of the other issues I feel like we struggle with in society is that with our modern kind of Hustle culture mentality is that we have normalized some of these behaviors that we know are bad for us, you know, so we have normalized and maybe even glorified in some circumstances. Poor sleep, chronic stress, overwork, burnout. How do we flip that switch to think, you know, these things are not necessarily a badge of honor. In fact, they're actually very counterproductive to my long term vision for my life in good health. Decision making.
[17:30]
A
Yeah, I think there's two pieces of that one too. So I love this whole world of evolutionary biology. So on my podcast, I try to find all the evolutionary biologists out there and ask them questions like, the reason I really love evolutionary biology is that humans have evolved over tens of thousands of years, right? And then the time that we're living in right now, literally like the last couple hundred years, is completely different than thousands of years of evolution in our genetics, right? So what do we evolve to do? We evolved to spend most of our day in a parasympathetic state. We're evolved to go to sleep when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun comes up and go outside as soon as the sun comes up. We're also evolved to move around all day looking for food. And this movement is just walking. It's not like a massive burst of heavy weightlifting for one hour, three times a week, even though we do need to lift heavy things, right? But I just think that if you look at the way humans lived, even just a thousand years ago, that's what we're evolved to do. And that's when you start doing those things, you start feeling better, right? I think also secondly, to your point, these badges of honor for chronic stress and, and always hard charging, et cetera, you know, I'm one of those people, I feel really good when I've gotten a really good day of work and you know, and made a lot of decisions and moved the needle for my business, for my personal life, et cetera. And I think one of the things that I really try to balance that with is just as intense as I work. I have intense periods of what I call self care moments, right. When I go for a hike on Sunday mornings for two hours, I have no electronics on me and I just enjoy nature. After I work out, I get in the sun, sauna for 20 minutes and just kind of sit there and try to just get into a meditative state. I think if you can be intentional about your self care activity and really find that balance, I think you can still be in a good place.
[19:29]
B
I like that term you use, intense self care. Because I think a lot of people have this notion that, you know, self care means you're weak or you don't deserve it. But I think in reality it's the opposite. And self care is not always easy. Sometimes self care can actually be challenging, but it's things done intentionally to help refill your cup. And sometimes it's easier to skip those things than to do those things. So they're not necessarily easy. And I also think so much of it comes back to just being intentional. You know, society is maybe telling us one thing, our evolutionary biology is telling us another thing. And so we, we have to be more intentional than ever to say, no, no, I'm not going to choose society's definition of success. I'm going to choose, choose my definition of success and I'm going to make myself as healthy as possible. Even if that means I got to skip out on some things that society suggests I should be doing that are detrimental to me.
[20:21]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. I think people have a good intuition about those things too. Right. Listen to what your brain is telling you around the things that you're doing and not doing. If something feels good that you're doing for self care, lean into that some more if you're forcing yourself to do it. I have so many patients that are just like, like, I got a cold plunge, you know, every day. And look, I've, I love cold plunging and I've leaned into it because now I have a cold plunge in my house. But I also know a lot of people should not be cold plunging and forcing themselves to do it. And I'm just using that, that as an example. I just think, you know, find the things that you like to do that feel like self care that make you feel good. And if you lean into those, like, you can make a, you can really get into a good habit around those too.
[21:14]
B
So let's jump to our third section here where we're going to try to give some practical solutions. I want to just ask first, just give us an overall picture of what it looks like when somebody does it well. So when somebody really does a good job of taking ownership of their health, just in broad strokes, what does that look like?
[21:32]
A
People that have this down correctly, and I see this in my patients, is that, number one, they have a really good routine around their health. They've figured out whether it be a morning routine or an evening routine, typically it's both where they've got their self care in their routine as well. And they do the things that Feel good for them. That's step one. Step two is they have a level of confidence about their disease risk. Okay? So what I mean by that is they've done the testing, they understand what those tests mean. They understand their cardiovascular risk, their brain risk, their cancer risk. And even though it's hard to live in a way that is risk free all the time, they're doing the things in general to prevent chronic disease and hopefully keep themselves healthier for a long time. And then the third is these people are actually happy doing it. Like, it feels like this is fun for them. It's the way they live their life. It doesn't feel like a struggle anymore. And it aligns with their mission, purpose, and values. And I think when all of those combine, there's a sense of optimism and positivity. Right? And so that's how you know that you got that piece of it right.
[22:50]
B
I think it's funny, so much of what we do, if we want to make meaningful change, we have to enjoy the process, like you said, and we got to tie it back to our mission, purpose, and values, which means we have to know what those things are to begin with, which many of us struggle. We actually have episodes dedicated to each of those topics. So if you're somebody who doesn't have that stuff figured out, check out some of our episodes that are dedicated to those specific things. So as a starting point on this journey, Darshan, how can we assess where we are currently to decide, all right, am I doing okay on this health ownership thing or am I behind? Do I have work to do? How do we take that initial assessment?
[23:29]
A
So the initial assessment involves getting some data on your body, right? And so this includes there's a specific high value blood test that I really like around metabolic health, inflammation, hormone health, cardiovascular risk, et cetera. And then there's some additional measurements that you can do on yourself as well, to measure your grip strength, for example, to measure your mobility, your ability to maintain cardiovascular fitness. And then there's some other measurements that I think people should also have access to at their home, things like a blood pressure cuff to understand what their blood pressure is. And so there's a little bit of a data collection involved here. And so I actually have a guide for people if they want to go down this path. It's@drshaw.com biomarkers very easy to download. It takes you through the whole process. It doesn't take too long, but there is a little bit of work to do. You have to ask your doctor for some blood work if they won't do it for you, there's tons of companies out there now that'll do this for you. You have to go to the gym and do things like hang from a bar for a little while and measure how long you can do it. You know, run on a treadmill for 12 minutes, do what's called a Cooper's test, et cetera. And then you'll get some really good data. Once you get that data about your body, now you know where you need to focus your energy. And so that is step one, I think.
[24:46]
B
Great. I love that. And I also like one of the things that you talked about that was a very holistic approach. And folks may not realize it, but you recommended a lot of things. So some of that is blood work, A lot of that is looking at measures of your physical strength and muscle. A lot of that is looking at cardiorespiratory fitness. Some of that is balance and mobility. So you have to get data and you need to get it in a relatively holistic fashion. So you don't want to just be looking at individual elements. You got to do an overall approach. And thank you for that reference. That's, that's excellent. Okay, so I've done the assessment. I see the areas that I'm doing okay in, I see the things that I'm struggling with. Now my next step is actually taking action. And so I'm wondering if we can run through what are, what are some of the actions and things people need to take. And maybe first we could talk about what are the mindsets that people need to fix as they start this process. So let's do that first and then we can talk about some of the key behaviors that people should be doing. So maybe take me through some of the key mindsets that people need to have in place as they start on this healthcare ownership journey.
[25:51]
A
Number one is understanding that you need to be proactive. Right. And so that whatever you're going to do for your health, you need to start now. And you do do this on a day to day basis, right? This is going to be your personal responsibilities. So you have to do it yourself. You cannot hire someone to do this. This has to be under your control. And part of that means learning about your health as well. So becoming more educated through listening to like podcasts like yours, getting some high value books, et cetera. And then lastly, I would say you need to understand, like what your data is, what it means and how do you affect it. Right. And so I think those, those are some of the Biggest mindset shifts. And then the action to take is now, once you have the learnings, is to start creating routines and habits around those learnings and doing those in a. In a kind of a building the pyramid fashion, starting with lifestyle medicine, then moving on to some of the more functional factors around metabolic health, inflammation reduction, hormone optimization, and just kind of going up that, that pyramid. The reality is humans are not very different than dogs and other animals. We're very trainable. Babylon discovered this a long time ago, you know, and so there's certain techniques around habit formation that we can use that can massively benefit your health journey. If you read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he says that if you make a 1% change every day, that's a 3,700% change over the course of the year, massive amounts of change. The key is to just do it every single day. Right. And so once you realize kind of some of the tricks of the mind of habit formation around creating the environment for good habits, giving a reward for a good habit being done, you really get to a different place very quickly in just four to six weeks, even sometimes.
[27:38]
B
Excellent. So in there, I'm hearing multiple mindsets that we have to fix in terms of the actions you want to start with, sort of the basic routines. Start small, do things that are achievable, where you're almost guaranteed to be successful, start there, develop the routine and the habit, and then slowly build that over time. And you also want to base this on the information you've obtained during the data collection phase to know what you're struggling with and what you're not. So the whole goal is to make all of your actions relatively high leverage so you get a high return on your investment. So make sure that they're very targeted and very specific.
[28:16]
A
Exactly right.
[28:17]
B
In your opinion, when is it right for somebody to get professional help or so, and maybe even before professional help. What about support? What's the role of friends, accountability partners, support groups, and things like that in this journey?
[28:34]
A
I mean, I think you start with that, right? I mean, I think building out a health team from the very beginning and this can. Accountability partners and friends are critical, especially when you're starting to do things like testing your biomarkers and testing your fitness. My wife and I do this together every quarter. We'll go and either to the gym or even just to our backyard and do these physical assessments with each other. It actually makes it more fun. And then you should also have on your team a doctor that you trust. Right? Someone that has time to spend with you and someone that you can reach out to and interview multiple physicians. I think many people, at least for some period of time, need a nutritionist, a personal trainer, someone to help them on the mental health aspect as well. So I think just having this team built out just like, you know, we talked at the beginning of this podcast about becoming the CEO of your own health. There's no CEO that runs a company by themselves. Right. They have their head of marketing, their head of finance, et cetera. Every person needs those teammates as well.
[29:36]
B
Yeah. So it's all about assembling the right people. And then also, too, I think we would say there's benefit in having that team in place in case one of those catastrophic things does happen. Right. Then you're already plugged in and you know where to go. You know what the next steps are. Because at some point, bad things can happen that are far beyond your control and you're going to need that help. So best to establish that early on so it's there later if you need it.
[30:00]
A
Exactly. Exactly.
[30:02]
B
Okay, wonderful. This has been a great discussion. So I've been taking notes as we've been talking, and I'd like to take a minute here, I'm going to run through my notes and summarize them, and then I'll give you the final word here today. So we talked about what does it mean to be the CEO of your health. It's really treating yourself like a company or a business. And so you don't want to outsource your health. You want to take responsibility and take charge of it and take ownership just as if you were running a company. And we have to realize that we actually can control much more than we think. And it's our daily behaviors and actions that are really critical and that really influences most of the chronic disease that impacts us, especially as adults here in the US and this is really true no matter what your baseline risk is. You talked a little bit about sort of the. Some folks may be genetically predisposed to certain problems, but regardless, your daily behaviors are still the best thing you can do to improve that. So that's your most powerful weapon against those. You also talked about really focusing on the big levers and the key pieces. And, you know, sometimes we do these little things that only marginally benefit fit us, which are probably a waste of time for most of us. And we should really focus on high leverage items first. And then once we nail the basics, then we can move on to other things. Multiple times we talked about the importance of knowing Your motivation or knowing your why. Why are you wanting to do this? That's going to be the driver that helps you keep going. You also talk the importance of starting small so you know you're not going to overhaul this company in one day. You need to get in there and figure it out, start small and do small things so that you almost can't fail. Modern culture and society really makes this difficult for us because it often asks us to do things or glorify things that we're not necessarily evolved to do and they're not really helpful for us. So we have to be intentional sometimes to go against what modern culture, society tells us to do that we know is best for us. You use the term intense self care, which I love. And you talked about your self care being very thoughtful, very intentional. Sometimes it is difficult, but you really have to do that to help fill your cup back up and then also listen to yourself in the process. If you hate something and you despise it and it's not making that big of a difference, don't keep forcing yourself to do it because you're only setting yourself up for failure. And then in the last section where we talked about what are the things we need to be doing, I ask when this is done well, what does it look like? You said number one, folks have a really good routine, typically a morning and evening routine. There's also these, these folks that do it well have a level of confidence about their disease risk, so they have the information, they know what's going on. The third thing they do is that they enjoy the process. So find ways to enjoy it as you go. And then fourth, align it with your mission, values and purpose. And then you gave us a great list of the things we need to be doing in terms of mindset, action and data collection. So we need to start by getting some information. We need the data. A lot of that is blood work, but some of that is physical test of strength, balance, mobility, cardio, respiratory, fitness, blood pressure, those sort of things. So get information first and then that'll help drive the plan. In terms of the mindset, we have to recognize, number one, that we have to be proactive. Number two, recognize this is a personal responsibility. Number three, get educated about our health. And number four, use that data intentionally and thoughtfully. And then lastly, like any good owner of a company, you got to build a team around you to help you. This is not just about you. So get some folks that can do it with you. That includes friends, family members, have a physician, maybe nutritionist, mental health Counselor, trainer, you know, whatever it is you need, get the people around you. Darshan, I'll give you the last word. What's the most important thing you want people to take away from our discussion today?
[33:44]
A
I think we live in an incredible time right now that we're seeing rapid advancements happening in medicine every single day, from the treatment of cancers to the potential complete eradication of metabolic disease using GLP1 medications, for example. Right. And you and I both know, like, as. As physicians, like, we can't even keep up with the rate of innovation that's happening right now. And I don't think doctors have ever felt that way. I think doctors have also felt very much like they only have a limited tool set for decades, and it's not the case anymore. And as technology continues to advance and as we discover more about our bodies and about the world of how we can affect our bodies with therapeutics, we're going to come to a place here very soon where a lot of the diseases that people are dying of and suffering from might be more easily treatable, or I could even dare to say, go away. And that time period might be coming during our lifetimes. Right. So my message to people is like, like, just stay healthy long enough so that you can see what happens.
[34:49]
B
Oh, that's wonderful. I agree. I mean, to a lot of folks, it may feel like it's an overwhelming time to be alive, and I understand that. But it's also. It is such an exciting time to be alive. So much opportunity, so much information. You got to know how to sift through it. But we're. We're trying to help with that here. Darshan's done a great job on his podcast Extend, so be sure to check that out. And I always like to end with a challenge or a call to action for our audience. And so you've set this one up pretty well, I think. Number one, we're going to say, first, you have to recognize that you need to be the owner of your own health. So that's step one is be proactive and take agency. And then step two is get the data. Get the information. You want your efforts to be data driven and well informed and intentional and a good use of your time, effort, and energy, not a waste. So you need to get that data. So you need to do the blood work, you need to do the. The functional testing, the. The strength testing, the cardiorespiratory testing. And we have other episodes on this. Dr. Shah has episodes on this in his podcast. He gave you a great reference on his website. So check that out, get that information, do the assessment, know what you're doing well, know what you're not doing well, and then that'll help you form a plan. Darshan thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, Chris.
[36:06]
A
This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
[36:12]
B
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend and leave us a review on your podcast app. It really helps others find the show. Got feedback? A question or a topic idea? Email us at optimizeayo Eduardo or leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272. We might even feature your voice on the show. For more human optimization episodes and resources, check us out online at ce mayo.edu optimize. Remember, long term well being starts with the habits you build today. Live intentionally perform exceptionally. I'm Dr. Christopher Camp. Thanks for listening.
[37:08]
C
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any medical questions. The appearance of any guest does not imply an endorsement of them, their employer, or any entity they represent. The views and opinions are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mayo Clinic. Reference to any product, service, or entity does not constitute an endorsement of or recommendation by Mayo Clinic.

Summary7 min read

Podcast Summary: Mayo Clinic On Human Optimization

Episode 66: "Become the CEO of Your Own Health" with Dr. Darshan Shah

Date: August 12, 2026
Host: Dr. Christopher Camp, Director of High Performance, Minnesota Twins & Sports Medicine Surgeon, Mayo Clinic
Guest: Dr. Darshan Shah, Surgeon, Author, Entrepreneur, and Host of Extend Podcast

Episode Overview

This episode explores the pressing tension between society's increasing expectations for human performance and the simultaneous push for greater wellness, rest, and recovery. Dr. Christopher Camp sits down with Dr. Darshan Shah to discuss how we can reconcile these competing priorities through the lens of "Human Optimization." Central to their conversation is the idea of becoming the "CEO of your own health"—taking personal responsibility, building a data-driven health strategy, and creating habits and a supportive team to maximize longevity, wellness, and life fulfillment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Becoming the CEO of Your Health

Personal Responsibility:
Dr. Shah likens health management to running a business, emphasizing the need for using data, routine tracking, and taking ownership instead of outsourcing health to the medical system.

"Why not run your health the way you run a company?... Why not have a dashboard of data that you look at on a consistent basis so you can track a problem before it becomes a big problem?" (Dr. Shah, [00:02])
Change in Perspective:
He explains his personal journey from neglecting his health to realizing that personal agency, not delegation, is key to better health outcomes.

"I completely outsource my health to my primary care provider... And so why not run your health the way you run a company? Why not take full personal responsibility?" (Dr. Shah, [02:25])

2. What We Can and Can’t Control

Lifestyle vs. Genetics:
The hosts outline that while genetics matter, most chronic disease risk can be modified through daily behaviors and informed decision-making.

“Chronic disease is not like a genetic fate for all of us... the more you do on a day to day basis... you can still avoid those problems for most people.” (Dr. Shah, [07:42])
The System’s Shortcomings:
Medical systems handle acute disease well but are not designed to prevent or reverse chronic disease—this is where self-management is crucial.

“The system was built to take care of major issues... but it was never built to reverse chronic disease in the first place.” (Dr. Shah, [06:19])

3. Why People Fail to Take Ownership

Historical Disempowerment:
For much of the last century, individuals were dependent on doctors for information. Now, direct access to data and AI tools has shifted power back to individuals—but the mindset lags behind.

“People have just been disempowered through this medical system that we created. Unfortunately, however, that has completely changed.” (Dr. Shah, [09:11])
Data Overload & Misinformation:
The challenge now is not only access but filtering valuable insights from background noise.

"There’s certain core pieces of data that are big rocks that can really move the needle for you, right? And then there’s little pebbles of data... If you’re struggling with something, focus on one set of data at a time." (Dr. Shah, [11:20])

4. Pulling the Big Levers: What Really Matters

Avoiding Quick Fixes:
Healing is about sustainable changes, not short-term fads. Major lifestyle factors like movement, nutrition, sleep, and relationships have the highest impact.

“A lot of people are looking at things like red light therapy, cold immersion... But those are really like the tip of the iceberg... The 20% that’s going to move the needle is rooted in your lifestyle.” (Dr. Shah, [13:54])

5. Habits, Motivation, and Mindset

Start with Purpose:
Motivation for health arises from clarity around one’s life vision, mission, and purpose. Lacking this, health drops in priority.

“If you don’t have that down, your health just becomes less important because you’re not really living for anything or anyone, right?” (Dr. Shah, [15:14])
Start Small, Build Habits:
Effective change comes from small, daily actions that are realistically achievable and build on success.

"Start with just doing a 20-minute workout every day at home... that can be more beneficial than massive gym sessions and skipping most of them." (Dr. Shah, [15:14])

6. Countering Hustle Culture and Glorified Burnout

Intentional Self-Care:
Society often glorifies overwork; true human optimization requires deliberate, sometimes rigorous, self-care.

“Just as intense as I work, I have intense periods of self-care... If you can be intentional about your self-care activity and really find that balance, I think you can still be in a good place.” (Dr. Shah, [17:29]) "I like that term you use, intense self care... Self care is not always easy. Sometimes self care can actually be challenging..." (Dr. Camp, [19:29])

7. Personalization and Enjoyment

Tailored Approaches:
Health routines should evolve with life stage, preferences, and individual needs. Enjoyment and alignment with values are fundamental for long-term adherence.

“Find the things that you like to do that feel like self care that make you feel good... you can really get into a good habit around those too.” (Dr. Shah, [20:21])

8. A Picture of Success: What Doing It Well Looks Like

Routine, Data, Confidence, Enjoyment:
People excelling at health ownership have clear routines, confidence from tracking health markers, enjoyment in the process, and routines aligned with personal purpose.

"Number one, they have a really good routine... Step two is they have a level of confidence about their disease risk... The third is these people are actually happy doing it... And it aligns with their mission, purpose, and values." (Dr. Shah, [21:32])

9. Actionable Roadmap: Assess, Act, Assemble

Assessment:
Start with objective self-data: blood work (metabolic, inflammatory, hormone, CV), physical metrics (grip strength, mobility), fitness, and blood pressure.

“There’s a little bit of a data collection involved here... I actually have a guide...drshah.com/biomarkers...” (Dr. Shah, [23:29])
Take Action Through Mindset:
- Be proactive—start now.
- Accept personal responsibility for your health.
- Educate yourself.
- Use your data intentionally to form habits and routines.
“Whatever you’re going to do for your health, you need to start now... This has to be under your control.” (Dr. Shah, [25:51])
Build Your Team:
Enlist friends, accountability partners, trusted physicians, nutritionists, and mental health professionals.

“Building out a health team from the very beginning... There’s no CEO that runs a company by themselves.” (Dr. Shah, [28:33])

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On Mindset:

“The key is to just do it every single day... If you make a 1% change every day, that’s a 3,700% change over the course of the year.” (Dr. Shah, [25:51])
On the Future of Health:

“We live in an incredible time right now... we're going to come to a place here very soon where a lot of the diseases that people are dying of and suffering from might be more easily treatable, or... go away. My message to people is: just stay healthy long enough so that you can see what happens.” (Dr. Shah, [33:43])

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 00:02 | Introduction to "CEO of your own health" analogy | | 02:25 | Dr. Shah's personal health journey | | 07:42 | Lifestyle’s impact vs. genetics on chronic diseases | | 09:11 | Why people feel powerless in health ownership | | 13:54 | Focusing on the "big levers" | | 15:14 | Motivation, purpose, and habit formation | | 17:29 | Reframing hustle culture, value of intense self-care | | 21:32 | What successful health ownership looks like | | 23:29 | Steps for initial health assessment/data collection | | 25:51 | Essential mindsets and habit-building strategies | | 28:33 | Building your health "C-suite" (team) | | 33:43 | Future of health: optimism and advances in medicine |

Final Takeaways & Call to Action

Take Charge:
Recognize your agency and step proactively into a health leadership role.
Start with Data:
Get a solid baseline with blood work and functional tests—target efforts for maximal benefit.
Prioritize the Big Levers:
Focus first on foundational lifestyle habits—movement, nutrition, sleep, relationships.
Build Routines & Enjoy the Process:
Tie all health habits back to your personal mission, purpose, and values.
Assemble Your Team:
Health is not a solo journey; build a network of professionals and personal supporters.
Stay the Course for the Future:
"Stay healthy long enough so that you can see what happens"—the coming wave of medical advances may be transformative.

Recommended Resources:

More details and Dr. Shah's health biomarkers guide: drshah.com/biomarkers
Listen to Dr. Shah's podcast: Extend

Host’s Challenge:

Recognize the need to be proactive and take ownership.
Get informed, get tested, and generate actionable data.
Use that information to build your plan.
Don’t go it alone—lean on your health "C-suite" and support system.

Loading summary

Transcript44 lines

[00:02]
A
Why not run your health the way you run a company? Why not develop a C suite of people that help you? Why not have a dashboard of data that you look at on a consistent basis so you can track a problem before it becomes a big problem?
[00:18]
B
This is Mayo Clinic on Human Optimization, a podcast where we break down the science of human potential to help you understand how purpose driven effort leads to high level performance and long term well being. I'm Dr. Christopher Campbel, Director of high performance for the Minnesota Twins and a sports medicine surgeon with Mayo Clinic. Everyone knows our health is fundamental to everything, our whole experience of life. So why does it always seem like it's the first thing to get deprioritized when life gets busy? And when we do try to make it a priority, why does it feel like our efforts don't lead to meaningful change? Well, this episode we're joined by Dr. Darshan Shah. He's a surgeon, author, entrepreneur, and host of his own podcast, extend. And he's here to help us learn to take control of our health, form healthy habits, and increase our health span. The three big questions we have for Dr. Shah are, number one, how much of our health is shaped by our own actions, mindset and decisions? Big question number two, why do so many of us fail to take ownership of our health? And what beliefs or habits keep us stuck? Then in section three, we'll get to some solutions when we ask what practical steps can we take to assume more ownership of our health and start making better decisions. Well, Darshan, thank you so much for joining us today on Mayo Clinic on Human Optimization.
[01:57]
A
Yeah, it's incredible honor to be here. I trained at the Mayo Clinic, so this is like coming full circle for me.
[02:03]
B
Oh, absolutely. Well, thanks for coming. You know, I love your work and all that you're doing out there. So full circle moment for us. Speaking of your work, in the past, I've heard you talk about becoming the CEO of your own health. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, oh, I think I know what he's talking about there and I really like it. But I want to hear from you, what exactly does that phrase mean to you?
[02:26]
A
You know, it's kind of the opposite way to the way I was living my health journey about 25 years ago. I was running a massive business back then, right? And when I was running this business, I owned a bunch of surgical centers in California. Every day I'm looking at my KPIs, I'm like, how much money did we make? How many employees do we have? Are we profitable? What are my cost of goods? Every day I'm looking at these numbers, right? And then I take personal responsibility for those numbers. If something's not right, I dive in. I know more about my company than anyone that works for me. And I visually look at the data every single day. Exact opposite with my health. I knew nothing about my health. I was like, I'll go to my doctor once a year, he'll look at stuff and tell me what's going on, you know? And I completely outsource my health to my primary care provider. And the most I would do is try to eat right once in a while and maybe go to the gym two or three times a week, if that. And so I think what happened was I got really, really sick, obviously living my life that way. And I realized that outsourcing your health is absolutely the wrong thing to do. And so why not run your health the way you run a company? Why not take full personal responsibility? Why not develop a C suite of people that help you run individual pieces of this optimally? Why not have a dashboard of data that you look at on a consistent basis so you could track a problem before it becomes a big problem. Right. And then you can actually make profit instead of going into loss with different aspects of your health. Right. And so when I had that realization, I ended up having to learn a lot about just, you know, medicine and health in general that I was never really focused on or taught really. And it just completely changed my perspective.
[04:18]
B
You know, it's funny, we have all of these different formulations and approaches of how we think about big companies and organizations. And one of the things we talk about on here a lot is every big company organization has a value statement or they have a mission, they have a purpose, they have all of this stuff defined. But we don't do that for ourselves as individuals. And so we talk a lot about how we have to develop our own personal values, vision, mission, purpose, et cetera. And you're really saying the same thing here. Like, you think about yourself as if it's a company, as if it's an organization, and it's a very important and prized company and organization. And I absolutely love that. And one of the things I think that causes us to struggle in this space is that people don't necessarily understand what they can and can't control in this space of their own personal healthcare. So can you help me understand sort of that balance between what we can control and what we cannot control in. In our own personal health?
[05:16]
A
That's a great Question. Because I think about this all the time, right? And I think we can control so much more than we think that we can control, right? And the reason I say that is because just like running a company, if there's something that you don't know how to do, say you're wondering, how do I run a subscription business, right? You're going to buy a book, go to a YouTube video, listen to a podcast from experts talking about how do you run a subscription business? What is like a cost of acquisition mean? You're going to learn all about it, and you're going to start tinkering with that in your own company until you get it right. If you have that same mindset for your health, there's tremendous amounts of information out there now between podcasts, books, online, et cetera. If you have the same mindset of learning about your body when something is not right, you realize very quickly that you can pretty much handle almost everything that you need to from a lifestyle, chronic disease perspective. Now, the part that you always will need help, just like with a company, is when things start going bad, right? For example, a diagnosis of cancer, you're not gonna handle that yourself. You're gonna go to a place like Mayo where you have experts that will really end up doing a deep dive and helping you through the process, right? But there's this entire world of chronic disease that now exists that, you know, most humans will die of a chronic disease. And that chronic disease, we've kind of parked it into this. Like, that's the responsibility of my insurance, my Western care doctors, and the hospital system. You and I both know the system was never built for that. The system was built to take care of major issues and problems, massive infections. You know, you get hit by a bus, you get diagnosed with stage four cancer, you need reconstructive surgery. Thank God we have this system to do that. Right? But it was never built to reverse chronic disease in the first place. So you almost need to create like this new system of your own health management that is outside of that to have really great results in reversing chronic disease and avoiding chronic disease in the first place, in my opinion.
[07:24]
B
And if we differentiate between sort of this chronic disease that develops over time versus the sudden traumatic catastrophes that you described, how much of our everyday behaviors and choices impact that chronic disease that plagues so much of the population in our world today.
[07:43]
A
Yeah, chronic disease is not like a genetic fate for all of us, right? I mean, obviously there's genes that can definitely make us more susceptible, but if you have those genetic susceptibilities, then it's even more important that you get your lifestyle in order. Right? And so what my mission is telling people, look, just because you have like an APOE gene doesn't mean you're going to get Alzheimer's. Just because you have cardiovascular risk factors and early cardiovascular death in your family doesn't mean that needs to be your trajectory, right? So the more you do on a day to day basis to learn about your biomarkers, to learn about what it can actually reverse the trend for you, whatever your genetic family history is, you can still avoid those problems for most people. Now obviously there's other genetics that can lead you into a bad place, but that's why we have this incredible western care system that if you cannot outrun your genetics out, exercise, out, eat, out, sleep your genetics, then definitely the western medical system has some solutions for you. But 95% of it can be done way before that.
[08:59]
B
Let's jump into our second section and talk a little bit about why so many of us struggle to take ownership on our health. So I want to ask you, why do so many of us feel powerless when it comes to our own health?
[09:12]
A
I think number one is that over the last 50 to 100 years, people feel disempowered because even the system was set up that way, right? I mean, you and I both remember when you couldn't get a blood test unless you ask your doctor for it and then your doctor went out to prescribe it for you and half the time they would say, why are you testing that? You don't need to know that, you know. And then when Dr. Google came out, oh my God, all the physicians were up in arms, like patients have information now, what the heck is going on here, right? And so it comes from a lot of that history, right? People have just been disempowered through this medical system that we created. Unfortunately, however, that has completely changed. Now you can go online and for 300 bucks you can order your own blood test, you can find out, you know, 100 plus different factors. You can go to Dr. Chatgpt now and ask questions, get some good answers actually. And everything has changed. And so I think that's one of the biggest factors is we grew up in this system. Now our kids, I have a 12 year old and a 9 year old, they're living in a whole different world now, right? They do not feel disempowered. They know that they have the power to ask AI. They know they have the power to know what Their markers are like, we have these bioimpedance scales in our bathrooms. And my kids know their skeletal muscle mass, believe it or not, just because they have fun playing with it. But, you know, it's a whole different world that we live in. You know, my kid has an Apple watch, and he's always tracking his movement all day. He doesn't need to. He moves around like crazy. But this is a new era of personal data empowerment that we haven't seen before.
[10:48]
B
And I think that it's incredibly powerful for so many of us to actually have that information at our fingertips to be able to make meaningful changes that impact our lives. But I also think there, there's a flip side to that or darker side to having either too much information or having misinformation. So thoughts on how do we sort that out in. In our modern world now where, you know, the knowledge rate continues to grow, the information is doubling every 24 hours. How do we make sense of the true things we need to be listening to from the background noise that we need to ignore?
[11:20]
A
Every human is different in their way. They handle the amount of data out there, right? There are just some people that won't drive cars because there's just too much data input while they're driving, right? And then there are people that know everything about their car, how many rpms it goes when you. Whatever, you know, the 0 to 60, whatever, right? And so you just have to find out, like, what is your personal view on having the data of your. Of yourself. And this is going to change over time. This is what's critical to understand, right? Like, yes, there is a lot of data out there, but there's certain core pieces of data that are big rocks that can really move the needle for you, right? And then there's these little pebbles of data that you can fill in if you want to later on, right? So. And if you're struggling with something, I say you're struggling with sleep. And you've never worn like a whoop band or a oura ring or something like that. Maybe it's worth looking at, like, what's going on with your sleep? Is it like you're spending too much time in bed with no sleep? Are you waking up multiple times throughout night? Maybe you have sleep apnea, right? Maybe it's focusing on one set of data at a time. Now you look, you have the biohackers that are measuring everything, and you probably know this type. They've come in with spreadsheets of their blood tests and all their markers for, like, the last 10 years. Right. And then you have the ones that are like, I don't want to know anything. And so I always try to step people into the middle somewhere. Like, you don't need a lot of data, data all the time, but there is some data that you should probably get used to looking at and, and empowering yourself with and just, just kind of trying to find where, what's the middle ground for people.
[12:49]
B
And so much of that too is figuring out who you are, what's important to you, where you're at, what you want to get better at.
[12:54]
C
Because.
[12:55]
A
Right.
[12:55]
B
How a 20 year old college athlete approaches that question is going to be very different than maybe a 70 year old who's, you know, still trying to, you know, carry groceries in or, or do different things, spend time with their grandchildren. So kind of know what your goals are, what important to you and then look for the information that's going to help you achieve it, right?
[13:16]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And that changes as your life progresses. Right. And it changes where you are with your current status of health too. I think a lot of people, I see this a lot, they, they get their lifestyle right, then they start measuring a few other things that, that they should be measuring and then they get that right. And then they're just like now what's next? I think a lot of inspiration comes from just feeling good, right. So once you start feeling good in your own body and you change your mindset because of that, you, you maybe you're inspired to do more.
[13:44]
B
So you, you work with patients and you coach people through this all the time. What are some of the most common things that people think make a big impact on their health, but probably does, does not.
[13:54]
A
So, you know, a lot of people are looking at things like red light therapy, cold immersion and look like, I'm not saying if they, if they make you feel good, do them right, I think that they're great. But those are really like the tip of the iceberg. I do think that people are looking still. This is throughout humanity, the quick fix. Right. And we're still not there. There's no quick fix. Right. And so once again it's truly understanding what is the 20% of the information that's going to move the needle for you 80% of the time and that is going to be definitely rooted in your lifestyle.
[14:27]
B
Yeah, we really talk about pulling the big levers first. Like, we're all busy, we don't have time to do everything. So we got to figure out what are the few things I can do that are Gonna have the biggest impact on my life. And just because there is evidence to support something that it is helpful doesn't mean that that's what's maximally helpful or maximally beneficial. Gotta do the big things first. Then once I do that, then we can start working on the margins. But I gotta nail the basics. So speaking of the basics, I think that a lot of us really know what we should be doing in terms of exercising, sleeping, eating right, having good relationships, but we don't always do it or we rarely do it. So how do denial and avoidance really keep us from taking these simple actions that we all know we should be taking?
[15:15]
A
To me, this question actually goes back to understanding. What is your motivation first, why do you want to be healthy and really understanding? Like you said at the beginning of this talk about mission, purpose, values, vision. What is your vision for your life? What is your mission in life? What is your purpose? If you don't have that down, your health just becomes less important because you're not really living for anything or anyone, right? And so I think it has to start with that mindset piece to understand the why. Right? And then the second piece of that to me is things like going to the gym and exercising an hour before sleep, winding down and putting your phone away. These are hard things to really do, right? In a day to day life. And so understanding that, like, what does the science of habit formation say? It says start small. It doesn't have to be. You have to go and do a one hour workout at the gym with a trainer, you know, five days a week to get healthy. That's not, that's not true. You can work up to that. If you start with just doing a 20 minute workout every day at home, that can be more beneficial than those massive gym sessions and skipping most of them just because you don't feel like it, right? So even just spending the first 20 minutes of your day doing a physical activity, like, you know, maybe it's three sets of push ups, squats and planks, that's it. That's how I started. Three sets of 10 of each. One of those took me 20 minutes and I did it every single day. And then I was like, you know what, I should just go to the gym now and then decide to go to the gym for 30 minutes and then once or twice a week and then just kept building up from there. So starting small works really well.
[16:54]
B
That's, that's fantastic. One of the other issues I feel like we struggle with in society is that with our modern kind of Hustle culture mentality is that we have normalized some of these behaviors that we know are bad for us, you know, so we have normalized and maybe even glorified in some circumstances. Poor sleep, chronic stress, overwork, burnout. How do we flip that switch to think, you know, these things are not necessarily a badge of honor. In fact, they're actually very counterproductive to my long term vision for my life in good health. Decision making.
[17:30]
A
Yeah, I think there's two pieces of that one too. So I love this whole world of evolutionary biology. So on my podcast, I try to find all the evolutionary biologists out there and ask them questions like, the reason I really love evolutionary biology is that humans have evolved over tens of thousands of years, right? And then the time that we're living in right now, literally like the last couple hundred years, is completely different than thousands of years of evolution in our genetics, right? So what do we evolve to do? We evolved to spend most of our day in a parasympathetic state. We're evolved to go to sleep when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun comes up and go outside as soon as the sun comes up. We're also evolved to move around all day looking for food. And this movement is just walking. It's not like a massive burst of heavy weightlifting for one hour, three times a week, even though we do need to lift heavy things, right? But I just think that if you look at the way humans lived, even just a thousand years ago, that's what we're evolved to do. And that's when you start doing those things, you start feeling better, right? I think also secondly, to your point, these badges of honor for chronic stress and, and always hard charging, et cetera, you know, I'm one of those people, I feel really good when I've gotten a really good day of work and you know, and made a lot of decisions and moved the needle for my business, for my personal life, et cetera. And I think one of the things that I really try to balance that with is just as intense as I work. I have intense periods of what I call self care moments, right. When I go for a hike on Sunday mornings for two hours, I have no electronics on me and I just enjoy nature. After I work out, I get in the sun, sauna for 20 minutes and just kind of sit there and try to just get into a meditative state. I think if you can be intentional about your self care activity and really find that balance, I think you can still be in a good place.
[19:29]
B
I like that term you use, intense self care. Because I think a lot of people have this notion that, you know, self care means you're weak or you don't deserve it. But I think in reality it's the opposite. And self care is not always easy. Sometimes self care can actually be challenging, but it's things done intentionally to help refill your cup. And sometimes it's easier to skip those things than to do those things. So they're not necessarily easy. And I also think so much of it comes back to just being intentional. You know, society is maybe telling us one thing, our evolutionary biology is telling us another thing. And so we, we have to be more intentional than ever to say, no, no, I'm not going to choose society's definition of success. I'm going to choose, choose my definition of success and I'm going to make myself as healthy as possible. Even if that means I got to skip out on some things that society suggests I should be doing that are detrimental to me.
[20:21]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. I think people have a good intuition about those things too. Right. Listen to what your brain is telling you around the things that you're doing and not doing. If something feels good that you're doing for self care, lean into that some more if you're forcing yourself to do it. I have so many patients that are just like, like, I got a cold plunge, you know, every day. And look, I've, I love cold plunging and I've leaned into it because now I have a cold plunge in my house. But I also know a lot of people should not be cold plunging and forcing themselves to do it. And I'm just using that, that as an example. I just think, you know, find the things that you like to do that feel like self care that make you feel good. And if you lean into those, like, you can make a, you can really get into a good habit around those too.
[21:14]
B
So let's jump to our third section here where we're going to try to give some practical solutions. I want to just ask first, just give us an overall picture of what it looks like when somebody does it well. So when somebody really does a good job of taking ownership of their health, just in broad strokes, what does that look like?
[21:32]
A
People that have this down correctly, and I see this in my patients, is that, number one, they have a really good routine around their health. They've figured out whether it be a morning routine or an evening routine, typically it's both where they've got their self care in their routine as well. And they do the things that Feel good for them. That's step one. Step two is they have a level of confidence about their disease risk. Okay? So what I mean by that is they've done the testing, they understand what those tests mean. They understand their cardiovascular risk, their brain risk, their cancer risk. And even though it's hard to live in a way that is risk free all the time, they're doing the things in general to prevent chronic disease and hopefully keep themselves healthier for a long time. And then the third is these people are actually happy doing it. Like, it feels like this is fun for them. It's the way they live their life. It doesn't feel like a struggle anymore. And it aligns with their mission, purpose, and values. And I think when all of those combine, there's a sense of optimism and positivity. Right? And so that's how you know that you got that piece of it right.
[22:50]
B
I think it's funny, so much of what we do, if we want to make meaningful change, we have to enjoy the process, like you said, and we got to tie it back to our mission, purpose, and values, which means we have to know what those things are to begin with, which many of us struggle. We actually have episodes dedicated to each of those topics. So if you're somebody who doesn't have that stuff figured out, check out some of our episodes that are dedicated to those specific things. So as a starting point on this journey, Darshan, how can we assess where we are currently to decide, all right, am I doing okay on this health ownership thing or am I behind? Do I have work to do? How do we take that initial assessment?
[23:29]
A
So the initial assessment involves getting some data on your body, right? And so this includes there's a specific high value blood test that I really like around metabolic health, inflammation, hormone health, cardiovascular risk, et cetera. And then there's some additional measurements that you can do on yourself as well, to measure your grip strength, for example, to measure your mobility, your ability to maintain cardiovascular fitness. And then there's some other measurements that I think people should also have access to at their home, things like a blood pressure cuff to understand what their blood pressure is. And so there's a little bit of a data collection involved here. And so I actually have a guide for people if they want to go down this path. It's@drshaw.com biomarkers very easy to download. It takes you through the whole process. It doesn't take too long, but there is a little bit of work to do. You have to ask your doctor for some blood work if they won't do it for you, there's tons of companies out there now that'll do this for you. You have to go to the gym and do things like hang from a bar for a little while and measure how long you can do it. You know, run on a treadmill for 12 minutes, do what's called a Cooper's test, et cetera. And then you'll get some really good data. Once you get that data about your body, now you know where you need to focus your energy. And so that is step one, I think.
[24:46]
B
Great. I love that. And I also like one of the things that you talked about that was a very holistic approach. And folks may not realize it, but you recommended a lot of things. So some of that is blood work, A lot of that is looking at measures of your physical strength and muscle. A lot of that is looking at cardiorespiratory fitness. Some of that is balance and mobility. So you have to get data and you need to get it in a relatively holistic fashion. So you don't want to just be looking at individual elements. You got to do an overall approach. And thank you for that reference. That's, that's excellent. Okay, so I've done the assessment. I see the areas that I'm doing okay in, I see the things that I'm struggling with. Now my next step is actually taking action. And so I'm wondering if we can run through what are, what are some of the actions and things people need to take. And maybe first we could talk about what are the mindsets that people need to fix as they start this process. So let's do that first and then we can talk about some of the key behaviors that people should be doing. So maybe take me through some of the key mindsets that people need to have in place as they start on this healthcare ownership journey.
[25:51]
A
Number one is understanding that you need to be proactive. Right. And so that whatever you're going to do for your health, you need to start now. And you do do this on a day to day basis, right? This is going to be your personal responsibilities. So you have to do it yourself. You cannot hire someone to do this. This has to be under your control. And part of that means learning about your health as well. So becoming more educated through listening to like podcasts like yours, getting some high value books, et cetera. And then lastly, I would say you need to understand, like what your data is, what it means and how do you affect it. Right. And so I think those, those are some of the Biggest mindset shifts. And then the action to take is now, once you have the learnings, is to start creating routines and habits around those learnings and doing those in a. In a kind of a building the pyramid fashion, starting with lifestyle medicine, then moving on to some of the more functional factors around metabolic health, inflammation reduction, hormone optimization, and just kind of going up that, that pyramid. The reality is humans are not very different than dogs and other animals. We're very trainable. Babylon discovered this a long time ago, you know, and so there's certain techniques around habit formation that we can use that can massively benefit your health journey. If you read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he says that if you make a 1% change every day, that's a 3,700% change over the course of the year, massive amounts of change. The key is to just do it every single day. Right. And so once you realize kind of some of the tricks of the mind of habit formation around creating the environment for good habits, giving a reward for a good habit being done, you really get to a different place very quickly in just four to six weeks, even sometimes.
[27:38]
B
Excellent. So in there, I'm hearing multiple mindsets that we have to fix in terms of the actions you want to start with, sort of the basic routines. Start small, do things that are achievable, where you're almost guaranteed to be successful, start there, develop the routine and the habit, and then slowly build that over time. And you also want to base this on the information you've obtained during the data collection phase to know what you're struggling with and what you're not. So the whole goal is to make all of your actions relatively high leverage so you get a high return on your investment. So make sure that they're very targeted and very specific.
[28:16]
A
Exactly right.
[28:17]
B
In your opinion, when is it right for somebody to get professional help or so, and maybe even before professional help. What about support? What's the role of friends, accountability partners, support groups, and things like that in this journey?
[28:34]
A
I mean, I think you start with that, right? I mean, I think building out a health team from the very beginning and this can. Accountability partners and friends are critical, especially when you're starting to do things like testing your biomarkers and testing your fitness. My wife and I do this together every quarter. We'll go and either to the gym or even just to our backyard and do these physical assessments with each other. It actually makes it more fun. And then you should also have on your team a doctor that you trust. Right? Someone that has time to spend with you and someone that you can reach out to and interview multiple physicians. I think many people, at least for some period of time, need a nutritionist, a personal trainer, someone to help them on the mental health aspect as well. So I think just having this team built out just like, you know, we talked at the beginning of this podcast about becoming the CEO of your own health. There's no CEO that runs a company by themselves. Right. They have their head of marketing, their head of finance, et cetera. Every person needs those teammates as well.
[29:36]
B
Yeah. So it's all about assembling the right people. And then also, too, I think we would say there's benefit in having that team in place in case one of those catastrophic things does happen. Right. Then you're already plugged in and you know where to go. You know what the next steps are. Because at some point, bad things can happen that are far beyond your control and you're going to need that help. So best to establish that early on so it's there later if you need it.
[30:00]
A
Exactly. Exactly.
[30:02]
B
Okay, wonderful. This has been a great discussion. So I've been taking notes as we've been talking, and I'd like to take a minute here, I'm going to run through my notes and summarize them, and then I'll give you the final word here today. So we talked about what does it mean to be the CEO of your health. It's really treating yourself like a company or a business. And so you don't want to outsource your health. You want to take responsibility and take charge of it and take ownership just as if you were running a company. And we have to realize that we actually can control much more than we think. And it's our daily behaviors and actions that are really critical and that really influences most of the chronic disease that impacts us, especially as adults here in the US and this is really true no matter what your baseline risk is. You talked a little bit about sort of the. Some folks may be genetically predisposed to certain problems, but regardless, your daily behaviors are still the best thing you can do to improve that. So that's your most powerful weapon against those. You also talked about really focusing on the big levers and the key pieces. And, you know, sometimes we do these little things that only marginally benefit fit us, which are probably a waste of time for most of us. And we should really focus on high leverage items first. And then once we nail the basics, then we can move on to other things. Multiple times we talked about the importance of knowing Your motivation or knowing your why. Why are you wanting to do this? That's going to be the driver that helps you keep going. You also talk the importance of starting small so you know you're not going to overhaul this company in one day. You need to get in there and figure it out, start small and do small things so that you almost can't fail. Modern culture and society really makes this difficult for us because it often asks us to do things or glorify things that we're not necessarily evolved to do and they're not really helpful for us. So we have to be intentional sometimes to go against what modern culture, society tells us to do that we know is best for us. You use the term intense self care, which I love. And you talked about your self care being very thoughtful, very intentional. Sometimes it is difficult, but you really have to do that to help fill your cup back up and then also listen to yourself in the process. If you hate something and you despise it and it's not making that big of a difference, don't keep forcing yourself to do it because you're only setting yourself up for failure. And then in the last section where we talked about what are the things we need to be doing, I ask when this is done well, what does it look like? You said number one, folks have a really good routine, typically a morning and evening routine. There's also these, these folks that do it well have a level of confidence about their disease risk, so they have the information, they know what's going on. The third thing they do is that they enjoy the process. So find ways to enjoy it as you go. And then fourth, align it with your mission, values and purpose. And then you gave us a great list of the things we need to be doing in terms of mindset, action and data collection. So we need to start by getting some information. We need the data. A lot of that is blood work, but some of that is physical test of strength, balance, mobility, cardio, respiratory, fitness, blood pressure, those sort of things. So get information first and then that'll help drive the plan. In terms of the mindset, we have to recognize, number one, that we have to be proactive. Number two, recognize this is a personal responsibility. Number three, get educated about our health. And number four, use that data intentionally and thoughtfully. And then lastly, like any good owner of a company, you got to build a team around you to help you. This is not just about you. So get some folks that can do it with you. That includes friends, family members, have a physician, maybe nutritionist, mental health Counselor, trainer, you know, whatever it is you need, get the people around you. Darshan, I'll give you the last word. What's the most important thing you want people to take away from our discussion today?
[33:44]
A
I think we live in an incredible time right now that we're seeing rapid advancements happening in medicine every single day, from the treatment of cancers to the potential complete eradication of metabolic disease using GLP1 medications, for example. Right. And you and I both know, like, as. As physicians, like, we can't even keep up with the rate of innovation that's happening right now. And I don't think doctors have ever felt that way. I think doctors have also felt very much like they only have a limited tool set for decades, and it's not the case anymore. And as technology continues to advance and as we discover more about our bodies and about the world of how we can affect our bodies with therapeutics, we're going to come to a place here very soon where a lot of the diseases that people are dying of and suffering from might be more easily treatable, or I could even dare to say, go away. And that time period might be coming during our lifetimes. Right. So my message to people is like, like, just stay healthy long enough so that you can see what happens.
[34:49]
B
Oh, that's wonderful. I agree. I mean, to a lot of folks, it may feel like it's an overwhelming time to be alive, and I understand that. But it's also. It is such an exciting time to be alive. So much opportunity, so much information. You got to know how to sift through it. But we're. We're trying to help with that here. Darshan's done a great job on his podcast Extend, so be sure to check that out. And I always like to end with a challenge or a call to action for our audience. And so you've set this one up pretty well, I think. Number one, we're going to say, first, you have to recognize that you need to be the owner of your own health. So that's step one is be proactive and take agency. And then step two is get the data. Get the information. You want your efforts to be data driven and well informed and intentional and a good use of your time, effort, and energy, not a waste. So you need to get that data. So you need to do the blood work, you need to do the. The functional testing, the. The strength testing, the cardiorespiratory testing. And we have other episodes on this. Dr. Shah has episodes on this in his podcast. He gave you a great reference on his website. So check that out, get that information, do the assessment, know what you're doing well, know what you're not doing well, and then that'll help you form a plan. Darshan thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, Chris.
[36:06]
A
This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
[36:12]
B
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend and leave us a review on your podcast app. It really helps others find the show. Got feedback? A question or a topic idea? Email us at optimizeayo Eduardo or leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272. We might even feature your voice on the show. For more human optimization episodes and resources, check us out online at ce mayo.edu optimize. Remember, long term well being starts with the habits you build today. Live intentionally perform exceptionally. I'm Dr. Christopher Camp. Thanks for listening.
[37:08]
C
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as medical or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any medical questions. The appearance of any guest does not imply an endorsement of them, their employer, or any entity they represent. The views and opinions are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mayo Clinic. Reference to any product, service, or entity does not constitute an endorsement of or recommendation by Mayo Clinic.

E66 Become the CEO of your own health with Dr. Shah

E66 Become the CEO of your own health with Dr. Shah

Podcast Summary: Mayo Clinic On Human Optimization

Episode 66: "Become the CEO of Your Own Health" with Dr. Darshan Shah

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Becoming the CEO of Your Health

2. What We Can and Can’t Control

3. Why People Fail to Take Ownership

4. Pulling the Big Levers: What Really Matters

5. Habits, Motivation, and Mindset

6. Countering Hustle Culture and Glorified Burnout

7. Personalization and Enjoyment

8. A Picture of Success: What Doing It Well Looks Like

9. Actionable Roadmap: Assess, Act, Assemble

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

Final Takeaways & Call to Action

Podcast Summary: Mayo Clinic On Human Optimization

Episode 66: "Become the CEO of Your Own Health" with Dr. Darshan Shah

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Becoming the CEO of Your Health

2. What We Can and Can’t Control

3. Why People Fail to Take Ownership

4. Pulling the Big Levers: What Really Matters

5. Habits, Motivation, and Mindset

6. Countering Hustle Culture and Glorified Burnout

7. Personalization and Enjoyment

8. A Picture of Success: What Doing It Well Looks Like

9. Actionable Roadmap: Assess, Act, Assemble

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

Timestamps for Key Segments

Final Takeaways & Call to Action