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The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
191. Dr. Darshan Shah: Stem Cells, Exosomes, and Plasma Exchange
01:12:56
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- [00:00]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Your genetics are never your destiny. Right? Even if you have two copies, you can still prevent Alzheimer's disease with preventative medicine. There's incredible diagnostics right now that we can detect heart disease, Alzheimer's and other brain cognitive diseases and also cancer very early.
- [00:15]
Gary Brea
The possible early signs of shrinkage in the hippocampus being the leading indicator for things like Alzheimer's, dementia, early onset cognitive decline. We're detecting cancers now at what they're calling stage zero, and that's why we're.
- [00:26]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Seeing this massive resurgence of cancer, especially in, like, young people right now.
- [00:31]
Gary Brea
I think a lot of us think of the immune system as something that protects us from foreign invaders, which it does. But the majority of the immune system's role is to police ourselves.
- [00:40]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Our immune system is overburdened, overtaxed, and can't do everything all at once. And that's what leads to the acceleration of aging over time and also chronic disease.
- [00:49]
Gary Brea
But talk a little bit about where the science of longevity in aging medicine is going.
- [00:53]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
The emerging thought process in longevity medicine right now is one of the key reasons that we age is a ultimate human.
- [01:12]
Gary Brea
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brea, where we go down the road of everything anti aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. And today's guest is not just a personal friend of mine, but I have been a client of his clinic. I have availed myself of many of his services, which are absolutely on the cutting edge of anti aging and longevity medicine. I truly believe that the market and the science is 25 years ahead of where modern medicine is right now. And Dr. Darshan Shaw is on the forefront of all of that. So you're in for a treat in today's episode. Welcome to the episode.
- [01:53]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Wow, that's an awesome intro. Thank you, man. Can you just go everywhere with me and intro me everywhere I go, you know? Thank you, man. Thank you.
- [02:02]
Gary Brea
So, you know, there. There's so many things that I want to. I want to talk to you about and I want to get away from the conventional podcasting that I do and, and really talk about where the science of longevity and anti aging bio optimization is. And. And we might as well start with my journey because I've had a personal journey with you and your clinic. Next Health, your one in out in la. The last time that I flew to Dubai, I had some time in in Los Angeles, and I am an enormous fan of, of Dr. Mark Hyman, and I saw a post in an article where he had Done this therapeutic plasma exchange with you.
- [02:39]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [02:39]
Gary Brea
So of course, I start going down the rabbit hole. I'm pulling all of the PubMed articles on it. And this was a mechanism to take the plasma out of your body. Right, right. And replace it with sterile albumin.
- [02:53]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [02:54]
Gary Brea
And I'll say it was. It was a, you know, two needle sticks, but it was a painless procedure. I was chilling the whole time, just chatting it up with you. My wife was there. My pre and post labs were amazing. I'm happy to share those and put them into the show notes. I'm an open book on those things. But talk a little bit about therapeutic plasma exchange and then I want to really start picking your brain about where the science of longevity and aging medicine is going.
- [03:20]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, absolutely. And I think therapeutic plasma exchange is a perfect example of where the science is going. Because what's really cool about therapeutic plasma exchange is this is a technology. This was actually FDA approved in 1970 to be used in the hospital. So. Yeah, when.
- [03:36]
Gary Brea
Was it for sepsis or.
- [03:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
No, it was actually for people that had a condition called wallam storms disease. Yeah, exactly. I think that's how you're supposed to say it. And it's where the blood gets really thick. And so when you do this, use this machine, you can remove the thick portion of the blood, the plasma, and then re infuse the red blood cells. Cause obviously we need our red blood cells to carry oxygen. Now, this machine that does this is basically a giant centrifuge. Okay. It's super complicated, but it's a giant centrifuge that, you know, when you take a vial of blood and you put in a centrifuge and you spin it down, it separates into the red cells at the bottom. And the top part, the 45% is plasma. That's the liquid portion. So this just does this on a mass scale for your entire blood volume. Okay. So then they started using it for other diseases that built up something toxic inside your plasma. So they're autoimmune diseases that build up immune complexes. And for years I remember training as a resident, people will come in even with like, overdose of certain medications, and they would be in the plasma and they would die unless they got the apheresis done. Apheresis of plasma exchange are two kind of interchangeable terms. Okay, Right. So we used to call it apheresis.
- [04:47]
Gary Brea
Yeah, they call it plasma pheresis to.
- [04:49]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right, Total plasma pheresis.
- [04:50]
Gary Brea
Total plasma exchange.
- [04:51]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Exactly, Exactly. Yep. And so we would use this machine in the emergency room when someone would come in like a digoxin toxicity. And so that would completely detoxify that. Because basically anything that's living in your plasma that is toxic to your system can be removed with this machine.
- [05:07]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [05:07]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And what's cool about it is you're not adding something to your body. We're not giving you a drug or a chemical. You're just removing the bad stuff that's circulating in your plasma.
- [05:16]
Gary Brea
I mean, there's good stuff in the plasma too, right? Growth factors and platelets and all kinds of things in there that are doing a lot of good. So it does it. Is there any detriment to taking those things out of circulation? And how do they get replaced?
- [05:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, great question. So absolutely. You know, we need the things that are in our plasma as well. But your body is so incredibly good at regenerating Those mostly within 24 hours. Your growth.
- [05:38]
Gary Brea
24 hours.
- [05:39]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. Regenerate everything. The only thing that takes a little bit longer is immune globulins. Immune globulins are, you know, the, the infection fighting mechanism of a part of our immune system. Those take a little bit longer. So we give people that are at risk IVIg, IV immunoglobulin after the treatment. If you're at risk for infection. Okay, gotcha. But otherwise, most of the other things that circulate in our plasma, like hormones and growth factors, those are replenished within sometimes even less than 24 hours. Wow.
- [06:08]
Gary Brea
You know, I noticed that after I had it done, luckily I was, I was actually boarding a, a flight a few hours later and it was a non stop flight to, to Dubai on Emirates, which is actually nicer than spending the night.
- [06:20]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
My house, it's pretty awesome.
- [06:23]
Gary Brea
I'm trying to fast on the airplane. Food service is so good. They got showers. So I had like the best airplane sleep I've ever had.
- [06:32]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [06:32]
Gary Brea
And because I felt, you know, just a, a good kind of tired. And then when Lee landed, it was like the light bulb went on and I felt like I'd taken a limitless pill. I was, you know, I was solving multinational crises in my head. It was like, you know, I just felt like I was really just alert and, and just oriented and cognizant. I felt very Zen, just kind of clean from the inside out. It's a really hard thing to describe.
- [07:01]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [07:03]
Gary Brea
My wife was like, babe, your skin and your, like the whites of your eyes, you know, looks great. And it like, like I just took in a, taking a fresh shower or something and I felt it for a few days and then you know, I went back to just feeling great because I feel pretty good all the time. But I think that these kinds of therapeutic applications really dovetail with a theory that I've been embracing a lot lately. You know, I've talked to Dr. Peter Diamantes and a lot of leading minds in longevity medicine and anti aging, bio optimization, whatever you want to call it. And there's. There's this, I. I think general theory emerging about aging called immuno fatigue and the. The sort of progressive overloading of our immune system.
- [07:53]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely.
- [07:53]
Gary Brea
You know, and. And it's multifactorial. It's not like one thing. It's not like just glyphosate or just a vaccine or just poor sleep, but it's, you know, thinking of it like a bucket. It's kind of these just consistent ways that we are just over, you know, burdening our immune system.
- [08:12]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right, Absolutely.
- [08:13]
Gary Brea
And I wonder if you would talk about that a little bit or if you agree with that kind of concept.
- [08:17]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Oh, not only do I agree, but I think the emerging thought process in longevity medicine right now is one of the key reasons that we age is immunosenescence and immune aging, as you called it. Because you're right, we are constantly throwing stuff at our immune system, more than we ever have in human civilization. You know, there's 150,000 toxins in our environment that were never there. Just eight decades. 150,000 that we know of that were never there.
- [08:42]
Gary Brea
Let them all go in our food supply.
- [08:45]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. Food, air, water, they're everywhere. Right. And so what's helping us take care of that? Eliminate that. So our immune system then. Our immune system is constantly fighting off more and more infections. We're seeing more and more infectious disease. Our immune system is also responsible for fighting off cancer. Right. And that's why we're seeing this massive resurgence of cancer, especially in, like, young people right now. So many more people are getting cancer, and people are wondering why. Well, it's because our immune system is overburdened, overtaxed, and it's. Can't do everything all at once. And that's what leads to the acceleration of aging over time and also chronic disease. So you're absolutely right.
- [09:24]
Gary Brea
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us think of the immune system as something that protects us from foreign invaders, which it does. Right. And bacteria, viruses, what happens? Have you. But the majority of the immune system's role is to police ourselves.
- [09:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely.
- [09:38]
Gary Brea
Right. I mean, it keeps order in the body and cellular senescent. These cells that are also called zombie cells, whatever you want to call them. These are those cells that are kind of hanging around. They're still living, but they can no longer perform their function. Maybe they're a red blood cell that's not carrying oxygen, or a platelet that's not capable of transporting growth factors, or, you know, an immune cell, or a, you know, white blood cells that can't really mount an infection, a response. And I think the idea of, you know, cleaning these out, getting rid of the lazy employees in our company and putting people back in those seats that are going to really work hard and do their job, it's kind of a great analogy for how we can bolster the immune system and maybe fight back. Father time.
- [10:25]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely. I mean, you know, senescent cells too. The other thing they do, besides just not work well, is they actually secrete toxic substances, neighboring cells, which cause the neighboring cells to then also become senescent or more not as functional as they could be. And so it's imperative to remove senescent cells from our system. Our immune system does that, but it needs a break from fighting infections, fighting toxins to do that. Right. And so what the plasma exchange does is it gives our immune system that break. It's like an oil change for our body. It completely removes all the toxins from the plasma. So our immune system can now be like, I can take a breather and I can do my job.
- [11:03]
Gary Brea
Right. And, you know, there are other technologies that are out there. I've also done EBO2 ozone.
- [11:08]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely.
- [11:09]
Gary Brea
Which I'm also a big fan of. You know, my daughter and I, and my wife actually recently had. I had mild mold exposure, but I also had pretty significant metal toxicity. I. I had this water machine that a doctor that I trusted because he was very well credentialed. Thankfully, I didn't tell anybody about it on social media or anything. So I had this water machine and, and it was, it was a modified welder from China. And he convinced me that it was restructuring my water. And, and basically, you know, there were a lot of. There's a lot of heavy metal toxicity coming out of it. And my son and I, my daughter, to a lesser extent, my wife, I was drinking 2 to 4 liters of this water a day.
- [11:50]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Structured water?
- [11:51]
Gary Brea
Yeah, structured water. And, and you know, I, I noticed that I started having some of the symptoms of heavy metal toxicity. Lo and behold, I did this provoked metal test, you know, chelation, and then an eight hour urine test.
- [12:04]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Dmsa?
- [12:05]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah, dmsa. Which by the way, if You. If you. If you really think that you have heavy metal poisoning, you know, sometimes it's difficult to find the metals. Yeah, right. Not like a lot of time, you urine test, and they. They don't really show up.
- [12:18]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. Well, the problem is because the heavy metals and these toxins, they end up in your organ tissues. And so when you're doing a urine test, for example, or even a blood test, if you're not doing a provoked test, you're not going to get an accurate representation of what's really living in your tissues. So we actually do the same thing before a plasma exchange.
- [12:35]
Gary Brea
Oh, wow.
- [12:36]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
We provoke it out of the tissues, get it into your plasma, and then get rid of all of it. Oh, wow.
- [12:40]
Gary Brea
So you'll do like. Like a chelation.
- [12:43]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Exactly.
- [12:43]
Gary Brea
And then a plasma exchange.
- [12:44]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. Immediately after. Wow, that's.
- [12:46]
Gary Brea
That's.
- [12:46]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So if you're suffering from heavy metal toxicity, this is like, you know, chelation on steroids.
- [12:51]
Gary Brea
Wow, that's. That's really good. I did an oral chelation protocol, and then I did some EBO2. Talk to me a bit about the differences, maybe between therapeutic plasma exchange and EBO2, because there's also a filtration system there, and they add ozone. So what are the main differences there?
- [13:06]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely. Yeah. So they're two different treatments. And even though there's some overlap in what they're useful for, we use do both of them in our clinic, and some patients get both of them. And so EBO2, the main effect is exerted through exposure of the blood, ozone, which creates an oxidative stress that causes cells to renew and also can kill bacteria, viruses, fungi that live in your system. Okay. Now, the filter that they also put on the machine can also filter your blood as well. What plasma exchange does is it does a complete removal. Okay. And so there's no oxidative stress that's really put on to your cells. It's just removing whatever's in the plasma.
- [13:44]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [13:44]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so there's different applications for both. A lot of times, if someone comes with, like, mold or Lyme toxicity, we recommend EBO2. If they come in with heavy metals, we'll do the provoked plasma exchange. And if someone's just doing it for longevity purposes, we'll kind of talk about both of them. But I. I'm a big believer in plasma exchange being one of the keys, I think, to longevity. We can talk about some of the science behind that too.
- [14:08]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I'd love for you to go into the science behind it and maybe even talk about how I Mean, right now, these are not inexpensive treatments because, you know, the, the machine is very sophisticated. A practitioner has to be on site the entire time. Lots of sterile vials of albumin because, I mean, I got, I think about 2 liters of, I mean, it was.
- [14:26]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
A big, you had almost 3 liters of plasma that we removed.
- [14:29]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah. I was, I was really surprised that all of that came, came out of my body. But I think as time goes on, you know, these therapies will become more accessible, more affordable. Obviously, that's what we're going for. As, as in everything in modern medicine, you know, the, the science kind of leads. You know, it stays maybe a decade, decade and a half ahead of where, you know, the actual mainstream is. But it's, it's nice for people to know that we're not stuck in the state that we're in.
- [15:01]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [15:01]
Gary Brea
You know, there are things that we can do to extend our health span, potentially even extend our, extend our lifespan. And I think, sadly, when you look at aging, one of the things I talked to Peter Demontes about was, you know, he said, you know, right now, you know, before we even open the discussion about life extension. Sure, we should really open up the discussion about health extension.
- [15:23]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Health span. Absolutely. That's what I talk about all the time.
- [15:25]
Gary Brea
You know, people are dying, let's say at 82, but you really began to die in your 70s. Right. And your quality of life went down so bad. And I think most of the people that are listening to this podcast would say, hey, rather than extend me another 10 miserable years, I'd rather slide into the grave, you know, like margarita in one hand, jukebox on my shoulder, you know.
- [15:46]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. Yeah. I mean, to me, I think, you know, people ask me, like, what kind of doctor are you? And I say, you know, I'm a longevity and health optimization doctor. But I want to redefine the term longevity. To me, longevity means adding healthy, productive, vibrant years to your life up until the very end. Yeah. Because you can add 30 years to a 80 year old's life and get them to live 30 more miserable years. Like you said, you can live up to 85 and feel incredible, like, you know, the blue zones. And there's this guy Arrington who works out of Gold's Gym in Venice beach, and he's 91 years old. He's buff like you, and he is super sharp. Yeah, he's a, he's, he's, he can lift more weight and he can also think faster than people half his age. And I've talked To this guy.
- [16:28]
Gary Brea
Wow.
- [16:29]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so I look at that guy, I'm like, it's absolutely possible for people living right now to achieve this. It's just getting into the right routines and habits and it doesn't even need to take expensive procedure which we are trying to bring down the cost exponentially. Just like, you know, you just had a fully body MRI. You're telling me that used to cost $20,000?
- [16:47]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [16:47]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
To do it now it's like 2,000 bucks, right?
- [16:49]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah.
- [16:50]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Everything goes down right. Exactly.
- [16:52]
Gary Brea
And I think, you know, for, for right now, it's, it's such an exciting time to be like, I wake up every day like a little kid. Like I get like giddy excited about it. You know, we were walking around looking at all my biohacking devices before the podcast, which of fun. But you know, the, this is such an exciting time in, in, in medicine and, and functional medicine and longevity research because you know, you've got artificial intelligence coming together with big data.
- [17:19]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [17:19]
Gary Brea
With things like early detection and, and you put these three components together and you know, we're c, we're, we're detecting cancers now at what they're calling stage zero. Right, right. Circulating tumor cells before they become a nodular tumor. And I think the old, you know, a lot of the old diagnostic mechanisms waited until you actually had a disease process. But it's exciting with AI to think that, you know, you're on the pre path to this and we can nip it in the bud now. You know, I remember when we first started our clinic. Initially we started in a, an urgent care center and we had a doctor that was an urgent care doctor. And so we tried to go the traditional like insurance route, which was brutal.
- [18:02]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Brutal. I lived in that world for 20 years. So, so difficult.
- [18:07]
Gary Brea
And for a board certified physician to spend the majority of their time, you know, negotiating with an insurance company about whether or not they have the authority to order a biopsy or certain set of tests is amazing because I remember how frustrated this physician was because he's like, man, I just literally spent two hours on the phone with a, you know, 20 year old non college graduate debating about whether or not I had the authority.
- [18:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That was a lot of my life. Yeah, it's crazy.
- [18:30]
Gary Brea
And so that administrative burden and, and one of the things we saw over and over again was there, there was no attention to the predisposition of disease. We have, we would have hundreds and hundreds of, you know, patients come through this clinic and they would be pre diabetic, for example, and the Insurance company say, we don't do anything for them.
- [18:46]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, exactly.
- [18:47]
Gary Brea
And, and sometimes they would even say, well, he's really close to being insulin dependent and as soon as he becomes insulin dependent, you know, we'll take care of him.
- [18:56]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [18:57]
Gary Brea
Man, it's just so amazing, it's just so incredible that men like, if you want protein to build lean muscle, but without the caloric impact or need to cut, you need perfect amino. It's pure essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in a precise form and ratio that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact. So we build protein six times as much as whey, but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking. This is the new era of protein supplementation and it's real. If you want to build lean muscle without having to cut, you need perfect amino. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.
- [19:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Well, I mean that's, that's why I left traditional medicine. Right? Because with traditional medicine you can't get anything paid for and you know where the financial incentives are, that's where the business goes. You can't get anything paid for until there's a diagnosis of a disease. So there has to be either a numerical one, like you said, you have to be diagnosed with diabetes or an anatomical one that you need to have a surgery done. Everything else before that, that system was not built for that. Right. It was built to, you know, thank God we have the western medical system. If you get hit by a bus, if you get a heart attack, you get diagnosed with stage four cancer. Thank God we have that system. But we really need to focus on creating a new system, which is what you did and what I'm doing at Next Health that is a health focused system and this prevents you from going into that western medical system. Right. So I feel that, you know, I think there's a lot of frustration with the western medical system and I totally get it. Right. But I think just people need to get their heads wrapped around. That's there for a reason. Another reason is taking your health into your own hands and focusing on your health and clinics like you know, what you had and next health, we're going to keep you away from the disease management system because there's never built to reverse chronic disease in the first place.
- [20:50]
Gary Brea
Right. Yeah, it's so true. So I would love to talk more about, you know, the, this, the additional science behind longevity.
- [20:59]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes.
- [21:00]
Gary Brea
Behind aging. Because, you know, in addition to this theory on immuno fatigue, there's A lot of research now around mitochondria, mitochondrial health, you know, the powerhouse of our cell. I think we, we ignored these 110 trillion little organelles for, for decades and now we're realizing that, you know, as the powerhouse of our cell becomes metabolically sick, the cell follows. And as the cell follows the organ system and the organism follows. And it's so fascinating now that we're, we're down to this little organelle, this little battery house and trying to find ways to service this and maybe even increase, you know, its density, proliferate these as a way of, you know, helping the body function better. And it reminds me of the fact that most of the really good anti aging medicine is really just trying to get back to what God gave us and less of what man makes us.
- [21:55]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [21:56]
Gary Brea
Because the greatest pharmacy is right here.
- [22:00]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
I always say we're all born with a hundred billion dollar pharmacy. It's living in your gut.
- [22:07]
Gary Brea
25 million right now.
- [22:08]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Exactly. We're all born with it. We just have to use it. Right. And give it the substrates and the tools and the environment it needs to give us what we need back. And then you can avoid all the pharmaceuticals, you know. Yeah.
- [22:20]
Gary Brea
So. So somebody that's beginning this journey, you know, it's, it sadly can be really confusing. I mean if you get online right now and start googling around, you will get paralysis of analysis. Right. It's like trying to buy a stock chart with 50 different charts one time. You buy, sell, hold. And I think people get paralysis of analysis. They don't know what works, what doesn't. So somebody that has the basics covered, and by the basics, I mean they're paying attention to their sleep, they're eating a whole food diet, they're getting decent amount of exercise. Right. And it may be a psycho biohacker. They got a good handle on basic biomarkers or taking some supplementations. Where do they start this next level of their journey?
- [23:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So we have this entire program laid out for our patients and I put it together when I first started my clinics and it's worked extremely well for thousands of our patients right now. And we call it the wellness wheel. Basically a wheel of 12 aspects of your health divided up into four categories. What you just mentioned was lifestyle medicine. Right? That's.
- [23:23]
Gary Brea
Love that word.
- [23:23]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yep. Nutrition, metabolic health, exercise and movement, and sleep and recovery. Those all come first. If you don't do those three things first, everything else is harder to make any gains on. Right. Second aspect of our program is preventative medicine. That's where we Focus on heart health, brain health, and your immune system, which prevents you from cancer. With preventative medicine, there's incredible diagnostics right now that we can detect heart disease, Alzheimer's and other brain cognitive diseases and also cancer very early. So then we check those three boxes for all of our patients. Then we move on to my favorite topic, which is functional medicine, Right?
- [24:03]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [24:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Functional medicine is focusing on gut health and optimizing that. Optimizing your hormone health, detoxifying your system, and getting your mental health and stress management. Right. And so, you know, that's what Dr. Hyman talks a lot about in his books, and he and I work very closely together. Once you get to that functional medicine part of it, I say it's my favorite because not only does it help you reverse and prevent chronic disease, but getting those right, you start feeling great.
- [24:29]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [24:29]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
You feel vital again. You know, I try to set that.
- [24:32]
Gary Brea
Hook for my clients early on. Like, you know, dietary and lifestyle and supplement changes. You know, I try to give them a win out of the gate so that they really subscribe to that journey. Right. I mean, that's what we did with Dana White. You know, we had a fascinating conversation before we came on the podcast. And you were talking about the new Pronovo scan, or. It was Pronovo, Right?
- [24:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes.
- [24:57]
Gary Brea
That is. Is scanning the brain and. And looking at the hippocampus and the possible early signs of shrinkage in the hippocampus being the leading indicator for things like Alzheimer's, dementia, early onset cognitive decline. Because, you know, I feel like the majority of these diseases we don't start to address until not only do we have them, but we're pretty far progressed.
- [25:24]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That's the problem. Right.
- [25:26]
Gary Brea
In the. In the disease pathway, because, you know, you can't find your keys in your wallet, and then. And then you find your keys and. But they're in the refrigerator. Then you start parking in the neighbor's driveway. And then finally, a spouse or a loved one goes, we need to get this checked out. And then, bang, you've got early onset dementia or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or what have you. And now that that process has taken hold.
- [25:51]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. Then it's hard to write the ship. Right, Right.
- [25:55]
Gary Brea
And. And now you're on the hamster wheel, too. You're on the pharmaceutical hamster wheel. A lot of that is disease main symptom management, but I was really fascinated by it, so. So, you know, in stage two, when you look at some of these diagnostics, talk to me a little bit about the shrinking Hippocampus.
- [26:10]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, Absolutely. Okay, so what you're referring to there.
- [26:12]
Gary Brea
I'm going to have mind check next.
- [26:15]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Is preemptive diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease before it's too late. And there's a couple of incredible innovations in that field right now. One is we can use artificial intelligence to look at the hippocampal volume. The hippocampus is the memory center of your brain. And before you start losing your memories, your hippocampus starts shrinking. And then we can compare that volume through an MRI of the brain to people that have normal cognitive powers in your same age group. Right. And so then we know that your hippocampus is maybe a little bit smaller than somebody else. And then we can start taking proactive steps to reverse that tie, to right the ship. Because like you said, the earlier you write that ship, the easier it is to sail it in the right direction. Right. It gets too hard when you've already been diagnosed with full blown Alzheimer's. Now, there's another test. I don't know if you know about this one. The P Tau 217 test. Have you heard of this?
- [27:10]
Gary Brea
No. Is this a genetic test?
- [27:11]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
No. This is an incredible blood test that measures a protein biomarker of Alzheimer's disease.
- [27:16]
Gary Brea
Wow. And actually markers for Alzheimer's.
- [27:20]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
There's apoe, which is a genetic marker.
- [27:22]
Gary Brea
Right, Right.
- [27:22]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And that gives you some indication of your risk of Alzheimer's. So if you have 2 copies, 16x and 1 copies 4x, your genetics are never your destiny. Right. You can still, even if you have two copies, you can still prevent Alzheimer's disease.
- [27:36]
Gary Brea
You just have to be intentional and diligent about it.
- [27:39]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
You need to look at all the root causes of why we age and don't have longevity and work on all of them. But P Tau217 is incredible because this is actually a blood biomarker that's highly correlated to the scans of the brain that tell us whether or not you have Alzheimer's. So this and actually has a level. It goes from, like, zero all the way up to, you know, hundreds. And so the higher your level, the more likely you are to have Alzheimer's disease. But what's really great about this biomarker, it can tell us decades before you have Alzheimer's, if you're in graduate decades. Decades. And you can track your interventions and see if they're working, because you could see the biomarker actually come down. So Dr. Dale Bredesen, he wrote the book End of Alzheimer's. Incredible guy. He's one of the main scientists talking about this. And it's truly an incredible world we live in right now.
- [28:25]
Gary Brea
So somebody has this protein, let's say they have the APOE gene and they have a predisposition, one or two copies. And obviously that raises a level of concern. And then they do this protein test. What are they going to get from this protein test? And like, what are kind of some of the actual steps they would take?
- [28:42]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, so they're going to get a. A number or a level. It'll tell you them how far they. How far along you are in the disease progression towards Alzheimer's. And what you want to start doing then is putting into place lifestyle changes. A lot of the ones, you know, we talk about eating whole foods and staying away from seed oils and processed food and getting better sleep and exercising more and having less sedentary time, obviously. But then there's additional things that you need to do to reverse this. And one of the biggest reasons people develop Alzheimer's disease is a massive amount of toxic exposure as well. So you want to test for heavy metals, mold, Lyme disease, et cetera. Those can also increase your risk of Alzheimer's. Plasma exchange has been shown in a really great research study called the AMBAR study that Dr. Kiprov did to actually slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease by removing a lot of these toxic substances from your blood as well. So there's a lot of things you can do that are free, and a lot of things that you can do that might cost a little bit of money, but it absolutely arrest the process and turn it around.
- [29:43]
Gary Brea
Wow. You know, I, I've. I've met people in my travels, you know, from. From all over the world that have had all kinds of conditions that have now gone into remission. And what, what's amazing about a lot of these conversations is I. I had a woman, for example, I. I spoke at a conference. She was not a client of mine, for the record, but I had seen her at the same conference almost two years earlier, and she had just begun to lose sight almost completely in one eye because of multiple sclerosis. And we were having a conversation. She found a great functional medicine doctor. And this functional medicine doctor didn't believe that she actually had multiple sclerosis. He said, I'm not going to accept the diagnosis until I do mold, mycotoxin, heavy metal virus, and some parasite testing. And lo and behold, she had severe heavy metal toxicity and. Which had flown under the radar for years. Probably why she was unresponsive to therapy. And she had a. I wanna say it was chronic Lyme, either chronic Lyme or chronic West Nile. And she got those addressed, and within six months, her eyesight was fully restored. And now they've recanted this. Of Ms. Diagnosis. And I think a lot of time, you know, and I'm not a physician. You are. I'm not licensed to practice medicine, but I think a lot of time just looking from the outside in and watching, you know, 150,000 clients come through our clinic system and just reading medical records for so many years. I think what happens very often in medicine is someone is diagnosed with a condition and call it whatever you want, an anchor diagnosis, once that's in the medical record, as they get passed from doctor to doctor or specialist to specialist, no one ever really goes back and says, I wonder if, you know, Dr. Shaw did. He says, she has rheumatoid arthritis. I want to look at the sed rates and, you know, the, The. The rheumatoid factors and all these other things. And so once you are diagnosed as that patient, you are kind of always that patient.
- [31:56]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely. And.
- [31:57]
Gary Brea
And there tends to be this kind of continuity of care where we take whatever disease we're told the client or the patient has, and we just sort of continue along that path.
- [32:08]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So true.
- [32:09]
Gary Brea
And this is purely observational, and I don't have a clinical study to back this up, but I would say if. If you were diagnosed with any kind of a severe condition, I would first go look for these kinds of pathogenic invaders. Your toxicity level, your heavy metals, your mold, mycotoxins, viruses. You know, where do you fall on that?
- [32:31]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right, absolutely. I'm 100 believer in that. And, you know, when I trained in medicine, this was 30 years ago. Now I'm aging myself, but a while ago.
- [32:40]
Gary Brea
Well, you look great, man.
- [32:41]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Thank you, man. But 30 years ago, and this is still true today, medicine is trained in silos. Right. And so the problem with that entire model is it doesn't take into account the effect of all these systems working together and pathogens affecting multiple systems at the same time. Right. So no one's really looking at what could be affecting the brain and the joints and the gut. No one's looking at that.
- [33:08]
Gary Brea
Yeah, you've got a GI for this. You got a rheumatologist for that. You got a therapist or a neurologist for that.
- [33:13]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That's exactly what happens.
- [33:14]
Gary Brea
Super bifurcated.
- [33:15]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right, right, right. So there are certain categories of diagnostics that people need to do when they have something that's bad or they're not recovering from, and they're just frustrated. And these indolent infections, you know, molds, Lyme disease, heavy metal toxicity, gut health issues, leaky gut, these are all diagnoses that were never considered until we got to root cause medicine, functional medicine, where we're like, wait a minute, all these systems function together and there's these root causes of disease that could be leading to all of this. So let's look for that stuff.
- [33:48]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [33:49]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so, you know, thank goodness for Jeffrey Bland, Mark Hyman and these guys, really bringing that to the consciousness of medicine. The problem is functional medicine is not taught in medical school. So once again, the western medical system has its role. Right. You have, you have people, thank God they're rheumatologists and there's neurologists. Yeah.
- [34:05]
Gary Brea
Very good at interventional medicine, crisis medicine. I mean, we're probably the best in the world.
- [34:09]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Best in the world. Yeah. The stuff we do for people save lives. Yeah. But if you are frustrated with the typical, you know, referral to multiple doctors and you're not getting anywhere, you're getting worse. Absolutely. One needs to see a functional medicine doctor, bring it all together and just press the reset button and see what else could be going on.
- [34:28]
Gary Brea
Yeah. And I think when you look at human physiology and the effect on methylation and all of these other, you know, multifaceted systems, very often, you know, it looks like if you think about all these spokes on a wheel and they all have a hub, you know, very often we're out there chasing the spokes of the wheel. This person has a mental issue, they have an autoimmune issue, they have an inflammatory issue, they have a gut issue, they have cardiac issue. And it's not like the whole world went to hell in a hand basket at one time.
- [34:54]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [34:54]
Gary Brea
You know, very often one thing goes wrong that causes everything.
- [34:59]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [35:00]
Gary Brea
And if we can find that thing, that underlying chronic viral, that, that severe heavy metal toxicity, that, that undiscovered, you know, mold toxicity, which, which I hear a lot of folks on online talking about how that mold is just completely made up. And I'm telling you, it's not. Everybody has mold. And, you know, human beings have had mold for centuries and we've never gotten sick from it. I, I find that to be patently false. And, and so, you know, getting back to, you know, the one thing that could have potentially caused everything, I think such a message of hope for a lot of people. Hey, guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks now this is for distance athletes, hits, cardio exercisers, people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely. An A game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins. It has all of the electrolytes, the entire suite of B vitamins. Before you freak out and read that as 21 grams of sugar, which it does. The sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey, my preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise. It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits. And the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising intensely, a game is your choice. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.
- [36:21]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
It really is. And you know, I could tell you at our clinics and, you know, just from patients I've talked to, when you completely figure something out for someone and reverse the entire destiny of their health and their, some of these people, they, they are so sad and depressed over what they're going through that they just don't want to live anymore. And you find out that one thing and you treat it within six months. I mean, it's a, it's a game changer for people. So, you know, like I, I always say, you know, if you're frustrated with what's going on right now, you have to take your health into your own hands, become the CEO of your own health, learn about your biomarkers, learn about your disease, and start getting a team together of people to figure this out.
- [36:59]
Gary Brea
Yeah, you know, I think the pandemic, if it did have any favors, and it's hard to think about the pandemic doing its favors, but I think if it did, it sort of woke people up to their own wellness and said, you know, I need to become a little bit of a citizen scientist, take this kind of into my own hands and, and go on this journey on my own behalf.
- [37:18]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [37:19]
Gary Brea
So I want to, I want to move on to the next level. You know, there's a lot of talk and I think a lot of misconceptions, misunderstanding about stem cells, exosomes, what I would call these biologics that can have phenomenal impacts in, in the human body. And you know, I, for a while was the health services director for the NFL Alumni Association Athletica. So we saw lots of repetitive use injuries, you know, like knees, hips, shoulders, rotator cuffs. And our, our physician did a lot of intra articular injections with a lot of stem Cells, exosomes, other biologics and, and saw some phenomenal results. The one thing that we did notice was that when you put even great biologics into a, an unhealthy biome, people that had severe insulin resistance, a really elevated hemoglobin, A1, C, high fasting glucose, super high inflammatory markers like C reactive protein, or their liver was under stress, or their kidney function was low, low, low egfr, some on some of these other conditions, they had demonstratively worse outcomes or, or, or by worse outcomes, I mean they just didn't have any, no resolution, you know, resolution or the benefit of. So I wonder if you might just talk a little bit about stem cells to my audience. And what is the difference between. I mean, not all stem cells are created equally.
- [38:48]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
No.
- [38:48]
Gary Brea
Right. They come from amnion, corion, umbilical cord, warden's jelly, you know, blood, cord blood. They come from all kinds of places. First of all, do you guys use stem cells?
- [38:59]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
We do.
- [38:59]
Gary Brea
Okay, and so you're a believer.
- [39:02]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes, absolutely.
- [39:03]
Gary Brea
And what type of stem cell, and, and why, where do they come from?
- [39:07]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. So you know, the whole stem cell world, because of the FDA has severe restriction on the United States. It has not allowed the stem cell science to really proliferate as it should have. Right. And you can get all, you know.
- [39:20]
Gary Brea
You can think it might change, you know, under Bobby Kennedy. I think, I think a lot of.
- [39:23]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
These, I think it's changed ceiling might.
- [39:25]
Gary Brea
Get raised a little bit.
- [39:26]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Well, we should do what Japan did. Japan, you know, they recognize the value of stem cells and they just created a new body to deal with regenerative medicine, a new governing body to deal with regenerative medical science that was separate from the fda. Because the FDA is great at, you know, evaluating chemical compounds for drugs, but they're not great at looking at regenerative therapies. And you could argue is, you know, not to get conspiracy theory theory on it, but stem cells can put a lot of these pharmaceutical companies out of business. Right. Because they have so many varied applications. And so. Yes. You know, I was just talking to your people here about stem cells. You have to be extremely careful. Where do you get your stem cells from? We know some common friends that have had lots of problems. Yeah.
- [40:04]
Gary Brea
That have had very. I know people that I've had, you call it miracles happen. And I know people that have had debilitating, even life threatening types of infection. So it's a. And these were very well credentialed clients in among themselves, some of them icons in Our, in our industry, two of them that come to mind readily. So talk a little bit about the stem cells. Where do they come from? Where are they harvested? What are some of the applications that you find that they're a really good thing for?
- [40:33]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So there's a couple different places you can get stem cells from in general terms. One is from your own body, right? Yeah.
- [40:39]
Gary Brea
Host derived.
- [40:40]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yep, exactly. And so you can get. Either your blood stem cells live in your blood, they live in your bone marrow, they live in your fat. And you could take those stem cells and then you can multiply them and give them to your. Give them back to yourself where you need them. And you can multiply them in United States, but you can go out of the country to get the multiplier.
- [40:58]
Gary Brea
That's not what they call expand or expanding the cell. Manipulate. Right, Use that term.
- [41:02]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [41:03]
Gary Brea
Okay.
- [41:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So in the United States, we, we, we need to not manipulate the stem cells. In other countries, they can. And they put them into petri dishes and then they expand the cell lines. Okay, so say you extracted a million stem cells, you can then expand that into ten hundred million stem cells.
- [41:19]
Gary Brea
Right. And these, in this case, if they're derived from the host, those are your own stem cells. So they can either tap your bone marrow, like the hip, hip, or, or.
- [41:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Your fat, your liposuction.
- [41:30]
Gary Brea
And for the most part, you can take those stem cells if you don't expand them and you can put them back into the host. Right. And joints, knees, hip, shoulders, rotator cuff.
- [41:40]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And people do that. People do that a lot. And people even do that with prp. They'll just take even the plasma from your blood and they'll put it into your shoulders and your knees. We do that therapy as well. That's, that's also helpful. The problem with your older stem cells is that they're older. Right. They don't have, they're the age of the host.
- [41:56]
Gary Brea
Right. So I'm 54, so my age, I mean, your age.
- [41:59]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. And they come especially if you're unhealthy to begin with. They have the same health qualities as your overall biology. Right. So if you are, if say you have diabetes or you're, or you have inflammation, your stem cells are not going to be healthy. So you're just injecting unhealthy stem cells back into the joint. Yeah, they, they can't do anything powerful there. And that's probably why what you guys are seeing there in your, in your clinics with the NFL right now, you can get also stem cells from basically Donated blood or placenta from babies that are just born. Right now, this is where it gets a little bit hairy because you need to make sure that the source, the.
- [42:39]
Gary Brea
Baby, they're not actually from the fetus.
- [42:41]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
No, they're not from the fetus or the placenta. Right? Yes.
- [42:44]
Gary Brea
Totally illegal from the. Yes. Because I think there is also like people get online, there's all these sinister things that they're, they're ground up fetuses or that they harvest the fetus and make the stem cells. That is abs. I mean that would be very unethical and immoral. But the. These are placentas and umbilical cords that are otherwise going to be discarded.
- [43:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
They're going to be thrown away. So they're donated for science. And then they find. They actually harvest the blood or they harvest other parts of the umbilical cord or even the placenta. Yeah. And then they take those, purify them, test them and then inject those. Now these have a lot more power behind them because they're younger, they have more exosomes and they don't have all the. They haven't been been exposed to a lot of inflammation in their life.
- [43:25]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [43:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Brand new, Right? Exactly. So that is important to understand the sourcing of these, but it's also important to understand that when you take these cells and you multiply them in a petri dish, you're also. It's a petri dish, it can grow infections, it can grow other bacteria and, and you can inject those into people and that can get you into trouble as well.
- [43:47]
Gary Brea
So. Right.
- [43:47]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
You have to be really cognizant about the lab that's getting these. Right. And also, obviously you want to make sure the mother and the baby are. Don't have any other infections, they don't have anything else going on in their biology. Viruses, you know, things that are being tested for as well. So as long as you're sourcing your stem cells responsibly, you're dividing them responsibly. You know, a lot of countries like Panama, they, they have excellent labs that can divide the stem cells, then you're going to be safe. And they could have massive amounts of applications, not just joint injuries. People are looking at stem cells. I. Degenerative effects. Because the stem cells can hone in on where you have inflammation.
- [44:24]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [44:24]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
They can go to those tissues and encourage healing of any area of inflammation, you know, wherever. Wherever you might have it. Liver, bone, anywhere.
- [44:33]
Gary Brea
And do they work by. If I did an intravenous infusion of stem cells let's say what's called mesenchymal stem cells. Right. From umbilical cord blood or Wharton Shelley or what have you, you put these into the body. What I find fascinating is they get into the bloodstream and how do they know where to go?
- [44:51]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, they have an incredible ability to hone in on areas of inflammation and that need repair. And that's what stem cells are built to do. Right. And so they are attracted by cytokines. So cytokines are signals that injured areas produce, and the stem cells just follow those to those injured areas and they get there and then the stem cells have exosomes within them. These are little packets of basically healing substances that get secreted into the growth factors. Growth factors and. Right. And then they encourage the tissues in those areas to heal and the stem cells in that area to divide.
- [45:26]
Gary Brea
Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that if you do the chain of custody and the research on the cell line first, and you know that you have a sterile product, you know, you have, or at least aseptic product, you know, that it's gone through the right pathology testing, you know, viruses, bacteria, what have you, it seems like for the, you know, in the grand scheme of things, for the volume of procedures, these are very safe.
- [45:53]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
They can be very safe. Right? Absolutely. And so we've never had, knock on wood, any problems with any stem cells that we've done, ever. We source all of our stem cells from the United States. We follow the entire chain of custody and they, they are extremely safe because they're your nest body's natural molecules and signals that we've evolved to live with for all of humanity. Yeah.
- [46:16]
Gary Brea
You know, I know that there's a concern sometimes that these stem cells could carry MRNA vaccines, other things, because, you know, these vaccines can become intertwined into the DNA and, and stem cells have DNA, unlike exosomes, which don't carry DNA, they just carry high molecular rate hyaluronic acid, growth factors, other really beneficial things.
- [46:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Things.
- [46:38]
Gary Brea
So do you store stem cells that are pre Covid or is there any way to test to see if maybe that mother was vaccinated? For people that don't want to take.
- [46:48]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That risk, you can definitely ask about the sourcing of the stem cells, if they came from an unvaccinated individual or not. Now, because these are mostly babies that are, you know, the donated umbilical cords, the, the stem cells of these babies, the babies have not been vaccinated yet.
- [47:07]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [47:07]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so, so we feel pretty safe that there's no MRNA in these particular Cells because the, the, the donated umbilical cords and placentas, those babies that are just born have not been vaccinated.
- [47:18]
Gary Brea
Right, right. Yeah, because, and I, and I think that's, you know, when we talk about different biologics like stem cells versus exosomes, I mean, exosomes are these nanosecretions, what do they call them? Secretomes. They're secreted from stem cel. Really fascinating. See, this gets back to just the fascination with the human body and this hundred million dollar pharmacy you're talking about. You can take stem cells from my understanding, and you can bathe them in certain media and solicit a response and kind of target. Direct the response, meaning what kind of exosomes they secrete. And you can get exosomes targeted at skin regeneration or hair regrowth or inflammation or tissue regeneration. And that to me is really fascinating because you're taking a, a live tissue product and you're manipulating it in a way. You're exposing it to this media that causes it to secrete something. It's almost like you're going to the pharmacy and you're writing this script for, hey, I want to something for collagen, elastin, fibrin in the skin. Okay. We're going to put the stem cells in this media. It's create exosomes that are more geared towards those kinds of growth factors and.
- [48:40]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [48:41]
Gary Brea
You know, like I say high molecular weight, hyaluronic acid and some of these other things are really beneficial for skin. And then you apply those topically or to the scalp or, or what have you. So do you also use the exosome bio. Biologics?
- [48:54]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, we also use exosomes as well.
- [48:56]
Gary Brea
What kind of applications?
- [48:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So we use them in conjunction with our stem cells and frankly, exosomes are less expensive. So if people, you know, the price tag on stem cells is too much, then we can use exosomes. But we use them for many of the similar applications of stem cells. Yeah. As well.
- [49:11]
Gary Brea
So. And what do you find that they're really proficient at treating like, you know, skin regeneration, fine lines and wrinkles, hair.
- [49:18]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Restoration, great for skin care. You know, we do a lot of exosome injection into the scalp as well for hair regeneration. They're actually pretty helpful for joints as well. And so a lot of people like them as a substitute to stem cells or as an upgrade to PRP for joints as well. So I think one, one thing that everyone should know is that stem cells are going to affect differently depending on your own personal biology. I think you mentioned this earlier as well. So if you're going to go in for stem cells and you're looking for hair regeneration or skin or even exosomes, wrinkle reduction is really imperative, in my view, to get the rest of your biology in order. Right, Yeah, I agree.
- [49:59]
Gary Brea
This is why, you know, I like this sort of wheel or the sequence of events that you put people through because you're not starting them at the top.
- [50:06]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Never.
- [50:06]
Gary Brea
You're saying, let's, let's get foundation done, make sure that we've got dietary lifestyle, sleep, you know, whole foods. Let's maybe clean up the blood.
- [50:16]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes.
- [50:17]
Gary Brea
Maybe one of These filtration technologies, EBO2 or therapeutic plasm exchange. And if you want to continue on this journey, let's talk about how we can take a clean, healthy, functioning biome and enhance it, even enhance it even further.
- [50:32]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That's exactly right.
- [50:33]
Gary Brea
And that's what I love about this. It's like I feel like we're just scratching the surface.
- [50:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Scratching the surface right now. It.
- [50:38]
Gary Brea
But in your, in your practice at Next Health, what, what has been as a, as an overseeing physician, like, what's been your biggest aha moment that you see in your patients that are on this journey? What do you find that most people have that they're surprised about? Or what are some of the outcomes that you find really like, fascinating and exciting for them?
- [51:00]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [51:01]
Gary Brea
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- [51:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
The thing that surprises a lot of people is when we do total toxin Testing. Oh.
- [52:02]
Gary Brea
Shocked me, man.
- [52:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right, yeah. We did yours too. Yeah.
- [52:05]
Gary Brea
No, crazy.
- [52:06]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. I think that's when we discovered mold. Right. And we were like, talking about it. Yeah.
- [52:09]
Gary Brea
So I think photoxin A, aflatoxin B. And yeah, I had bisphenols, the. The microplastics glyphosate. I had the April little A. And you know, I'm, I. I take really good care of myself.
- [52:24]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. One of the healthiest people I know. Exactly.
- [52:26]
Gary Brea
But we all my air for the. And. And so it. It means that, you know, the average populace that's unaware of these things, and I don't mean to seem that I'm not average. I'm very average. But. But the. The average populace is unaware of these. And. And I don't think the modern medical system even really looks at or even considers toxicity.
- [52:49]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Not at all. Right.
- [52:50]
Gary Brea
So.
- [52:52]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, well, that was one of the biggest ones, I think. You know, there used to be three legs of the stool. There's nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Toxins is definitely the fourth leg of the stool, in my opinion. I think it needs to be addressed, and it usually is now at the root cause of many people's health issues because most people know how to eat better, they know they need to sleep, they know they need to work out and exercise. Almost most people get that stuff right as they're going through their health journey if they're trying to fix something. But toxins are not considered. And then when we measure them and we show people they're heavy metals or mold, it's a big surprise. But the good news is there's things you can do about it. Right?
- [53:31]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [53:32]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so a lot of what you talk about is reducing your exposure. That's. That's the Pareto principle. Right. That's the 20 of actions you could take that will get you 80% of the result is reduce your exposure.
- [53:42]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [53:43]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And then on top of that, we can do some things to detoxify you, like eboo, Total plasma chain. But even sauna detoxifies. Even high intensity training.
- [53:51]
Gary Brea
Glutathione.
- [53:52]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right. IV therapy. Right. Yeah.
- [53:54]
Gary Brea
Sauna. They don't have to be the really expensive treatments. You know, I think. Think that has been a big aha moment for me too. Someone just forwarded me recently a postmortem study, and I've only cursory read it, but it was looking at the postmortem autopsies on Ms. Patients. And at least in this study, 100% of these multiple sclerosis patients had parasites. And, you know, sometimes when you think about lesions in the myan sheath or on these nerves.
- [54:25]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Nerves.
- [54:26]
Gary Brea
You wonder, well, what could cause these legions? And all of us have parasites. I mean, sorry, guys. Everybody listening to this podcast right now has parasites. And you've got good ones and bad ones. Right. You know, sometimes, you know, I think as our immune system gets less and less accurate and maybe, you know, more and more fatigued, these little things slip by. You know, circulating tumor cell slips by in the DNA methylation process. You know, an old virus like a monovirus starts to raise its ugly head as Epstein Barr or you had chickenpox as a child. Now you have shingles. And I think a lot of people don't realize that very often some of these ailments that we suffer from are not things that are happening to us.
- [55:09]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [55:09]
Gary Brea
They're actually things that are happening within us.
- [55:12]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely right.
- [55:13]
Gary Brea
And clinics like yours, and I think functional medicine in general is really trying to strengthen the body back to the point where it can do its job on its own.
- [55:22]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. We haven't even talked about gut health yet. That's the other number.
- [55:24]
Gary Brea
Yeah, that's. Let's get into that one.
- [55:25]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, that's.
- [55:26]
Gary Brea
That's another.
- [55:26]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So we measure a serum zonulin level, and also we do stool testing on most of our patients, and especially if they're having any sort of weird symptomatology. Right.
- [55:37]
Gary Brea
Serum zonulin.
- [55:38]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
The serum zonulin is a marker of. It's actually the protein that holds our gut cells together, our enterocytes. And when the enterocytes separate from each other, this protein gets released. It ends up in your bloodstream, and that's how you can know if someone has leaky gut or not. Yeah. So it's an incredibly useful biomarker of leaky gut.
- [55:57]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [55:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And then you actually follow the levels as you heal someone's gut as well. Wow. And so we do this testing on our patients, and it's a game changer.
- [56:04]
Gary Brea
So that level should be zero, theoretically.
- [56:06]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [56:06]
Gary Brea
And I. And I think it's fascinating that we only have a single cell layer that really, truly is separating our inside environment from our outside environment. You know, I like to think of our. Our gut as being actually outside of the body.
- [56:19]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes.
- [56:19]
Gary Brea
It runs through us.
- [56:20]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. Size of a football field. Yeah.
- [56:23]
Gary Brea
But like a pipe, you know, it's contiguous with the side of your cheek. You know, and, you know, when you get internally, you only have a single cell layer really protecting.
- [56:34]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [56:34]
Gary Brea
That's in. That's just incredible. So think about all the ways that that could go wrong.
- [56:40]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely.
- [56:41]
Gary Brea
And then all of the consequences it could cause. What does a gut healing protocol look like?
- [56:45]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Like your gut has, you're right, one layer of enterocytes that you have, but you also have another layer of your microbiome. And your microbiome is also working hard to protect you from the outside environment, keep toxins out and help you absorb nutrients. Right. Now, if your microbiome is off and, or your enter. If your microbiome is off, your enterocytes then start separating and you get this leaky gut. So a gut healing protocol involves, number one, one, getting your microbiome healthy again. Right. And then number two, it involves giving your enterocytes what they need to re regenerate themselves. So they need collagen, they need glutamine. Your enterocytes also need a break from substances that cause them to get inflamed. So they need a break from, like gluten. Some people dairy as well. We do a lot of gluten sensitivity testing, dairy sensitivity testing. And we figure, I can't tell you the number of people we find that have gluten sensitivity. It's almost everybody. It's kind of crazy. And so I think you give your gut a break from all the things that are damaging it and then you give it some of the substrates it needs to heal. And you at the same time, help your microbiome be healthy by taking in more fiber, by eating fermented foods, and then you can heal your gut over time. So bone broth is also extremely useful in healing the gut. A lot of collagen.
- [58:07]
Gary Brea
Yeah, I do lot of kettle and fire bone broth.
- [58:10]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
I love kettle and I love those guys too.
- [58:12]
Gary Brea
Big shout out to Justin. What's up? Yeah, but you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a huge fan of that. I actually use it to get into and out of a fast. Yeah, I find that just going cold turkey into a fast for me is a little bit harder. So, you know, the day before, I'll, I'll have a bone broth at noon, I'll have a bone broth at 6 o' clock at night, which really helps you get through that first 24 hours. And, and it's very satiating.
- [58:37]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Is this for your water fast when.
- [58:38]
Gary Brea
You'Re doing a water fast, and then days two and three when I'll do these fasting challenges, then we'll switch to just a mineralized water in the morning, maybe black coffee if you know, because a lot of people can't just cold turkey on coffee, but black coffee or teas and Then just with no cream or sugars or anything, obviously. And then easing into that last. That second and third day, and I find that that gets 70 of the people 100 of the way.
- [59:07]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [59:08]
Gary Brea
That statistic even makes sense. Did I make that up? It's only Ron Burgundy and anchorman, so 60 of the time. It works every time. But. But, you know, it's. It's. You know, then it's just not too much too fast.
- [59:24]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Sure.
- [59:25]
Gary Brea
You know, because especially.
- [59:26]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
That's a great test dip. Yeah.
- [59:27]
Gary Brea
Especially people that have poor insulin regulation, because that drop in glucose and the drop in insulin just drives hunger. And then you just binge eat in the middle of a fast. Absolutely. Which is kind of the b. The worst thing for. But I. But bone broths are excellent. What. What kind of gut healing protocols do you put most of your clients on? Is it probiotic? Do you ever use things like BPC.
- [59:55]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
157, gastric peptides, oral BPC 157?
- [59:58]
Gary Brea
Yeah.
- [59:58]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
We also do IV glutamine as well. And then those are the supplements to the actual, you know, dietary program that we use as well. And so we always tie them with a nutritionist if they need help as well, to really modify their diet. And then. Yeah, those are. Those are the big highlights. Pretty much. Yeah. And then.
- [60:21]
Gary Brea
And then also probiotics.
- [60:23]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And also we use probiotics later on. We try not to put too much into the gut at the same time.
- [60:28]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [60:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And then after we start seeing some healing and we try. We try to rebuild their microbiome. And this is also really important for people like on GLP1s. Right. One of the main reasons we have this massive deficiency of GLP1 in our population is because ultra processed food has destroyed the bacteria that make GLP1 normal or help us make our own GLP1. Wow. Yeah. And so anytime we have someone on a GLP1, we also start them on probiotics to regenerate that bacteria that can help us make our own GLP1. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about being on GLP1s forever.
- [61:03]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [61:04]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
I don't think you need to be. You just have to use the time that you're on GLP1s to regenerate your bacteria in your gut that help you make the GLP1.
- [61:12]
Gary Brea
You know, a lot of GLP1 responds to nutrient density.
- [61:15]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Absolutely.
- [61:15]
Gary Brea
You know, so when we eat non nutrient dense foods, and. And in some of the studies that compared ultra processed diets to whole food diets, you, you see that, you know, Mark Hyman talks about this all the time. You see that the people on ultra processed foods have a tendency to dramatically overeat.
- [61:31]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yes.
- [61:31]
Gary Brea
And even on, even if given the same caloric density, one is a whole nutrient dense food and one is a highly processed food that the highly processed participants, you know, had a tendency, I wanna say it was either 500 or 800 extra calories a day, but those will add up fast.
- [61:48]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Fast.
- [61:49]
Gary Brea
And they got hungrier faster.
- [61:51]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [61:52]
Gary Brea
They also got hungrier more frequently and they felt less satiated. And a lot of times are, you know, again, back to the pharmacy. The pharmacy responds to nutrient density. If your brain is like, hey, we don't have.
- [62:04]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [62:04]
Gary Brea
I don't have the raw materials I need. Just get. Put more in.
- [62:08]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Keep putting more in. Right.
- [62:08]
Gary Brea
Keep shoveling more in. And it's, it's not ringing the bell because you're not actually giving your body the, the, you know, the nutrients that it needs.
- [62:16]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [62:16]
Gary Brea
Nutrients it needs.
- [62:17]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And guess what's coming. So the big food companies have reengaged with the food scientists to make new chemicals and new foods that they can add and make their foods GLP1 resistant. Wow. Yes. So I just read some articles on this and it's kind of in secrecy, but they've. This, some. It got leaked that the food companies have been engaged to start making GLP1 resistant foods. So now you'll be on a GLP1 and you'll eat this processed food and you. The GLP1 won't work and you just keep eating it. So what I tell all of my patients is, look, it's insane. Yeah. I mean, this is a multi billion dollar industry.
- [62:59]
Gary Brea
So intentionally sinister.
- [63:01]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, yeah, it's a multi billion dollar industry. And these, these companies are going to, you know, do what they need to do to maintain their value, unfortunately. And so what I tell all my patients is, look, I understand you need this GLP1 right now, but we're going to use this time to not just regenerate your gut bacteria, but to completely change your relationship with food.
- [63:21]
Gary Brea
Yes.
- [63:22]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And I think that's key to that. Right? Yeah.
- [63:24]
Gary Brea
And then you, you, I imagine you titrate them up and you can titrate them off. Which physicians in my previous clinic.
- [63:31]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Clinic.
- [63:33]
Gary Brea
Have done that with clients. I mean, I know that everybody's supposed to be on these for life. I mean, look, with the, you know, the American pediatric associations approved these down to, you know, age nine.
- [63:42]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [63:43]
Gary Brea
And I understand that there's a push to get that to age 6. I mean, can you imagine starting on a GLP1 when you're 6 years old and still being on it when you're 50? I mean, crazy. That is mind numbing.
- [63:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. I mean it's a massive subscription revenue for the companies that are making these GLP1s. And we always have a goal with our patients. This is when we're going to get you off GLP1. But you have to have that clear offboarding program. So it involves probiotics, nutrient dense food, changing relationship with food. And a really good tool that we use on that too, Gary, is a CGM IT really.
- [64:18]
Gary Brea
Glucose monitoring.
- [64:19]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Continuous glucose monitoring.
- [64:20]
Gary Brea
Continuous glucose monitoring, yeah. So that they actually get an idea. You know, those are pretty fascinating because you start to see some of the magic in the human body. I remember when we started, started using those too. I would get calls all the time and someone would say, I, I woke up in the morning and I haven't even eaten. I started moving around and my blood sugar rose and I was like, good, that means your liver is working, you.
- [64:39]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Know, means you're alive.
- [64:41]
Gary Brea
Yeah, yeah, it means you're alive. But they're like, how's my blood sugar going up? I'm not even eating. I literally didn't even have water. And I was like, you know, we, we store glucose in the form of glycogen. And, and obviously one of your liver's roles is to take this stored glucose, this glycogen, and then turn it back into glucose when you need it for fuel. This. So this gluconeogenic process is what you're seeing. And it's, that's really amazing that you are seeing that even in patients or clients that are on ketogenic diets, they'll see these same kind of weird rises in blood sugar. And I'm like, well, you know, your liver is actually converting it back into sugar and putting it in your blood. Um, excuse me, that's how dependent we are on, on and, and how crack addicted we are to sugar.
- [65:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [65:29]
Gary Brea
And back to your previous point, you know, I've read several articles on, you know, labs around the country that are specifically looking at ways to stimulate dopamine receptors and dopamine agonists in the body so that you get not just a flavor reward, but you get this sort of emotional reward from food so they can get addicted to this dopamine cycle specifically designed to create addiction. So you don't just like the food, you're addicted to the food. Right. Was the commercial candy just one? I mean, why can't we just eat just one? You know, scientists figured out how they, how to get us addicted to it. So what else is really exciting you about this field of longevity and, and, and anti aging? Bio optimization.
- [66:20]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah. So, you know, you, there's a couple things you had mentioned AI earlier. I think we are headed into this golden age where AI and quantum computing combined with just sheer computing power that we have right now, even before quantum computing can be used to create digital cellular twins and also create new peptides and so.
- [66:40]
Gary Brea
Digital cellular twins.
- [66:42]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [66:42]
Gary Brea
Not letting you off the hook on that.
- [66:43]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Okay.
- [66:44]
Gary Brea
Hell is a digital cellular twin.
- [66:46]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
We will be able to replicate a cell within the brain of a computer and test molecules against it. Wow. At scale. Okay. And so when we can do this, and Stanford just did this, there was a news article yesterday how Stanford created a new glp. One that has a specific response just to the hunger centers and doesn't have any response, doesn't create a nauseating response or some of the other side effects.
- [67:08]
Gary Brea
Wow. Paralytic bowel or gastroparesis. Gastroparesis, that was the word I was looking.
- [67:14]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And so they, they found this peptide molecule with a computer, AI enabled computer program. And so we are going to develop these peptides, these molecules, rapid speed. And so, you know, that's my other thing is peptides. Peptides are the holy grail of medicine. I believe these are natural drugs that our body makes in our hundred billion dollar pharmaceutical inside of us. Right. That we've made for all of humanity. And so now we're going to discover more and more of these peptides by using computing power. And you know, peptides are incredibly low cost to make. Yeah. And you know, you can get them from your compounding pharmacy, for example and they have lots of great effects and their side effects are also not as bad as regular pharmaceuticals.
- [68:02]
Gary Brea
Right.
- [68:03]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
So I'm really excited about peptide science expanding and also getting some political power behind it as well.
- [68:09]
Gary Brea
Well, yes, I'm really excited about that too. You know, the whole Maha movement, you know, this opportunity to affect public policy and come top down where you can actually really impact the masses. What would be really exciting is if we saw, you know, the healthcare model change. There's whole societies in the world, Singapore being one of them, Japan being another one, where they have actually engineered their health, their, their health system and they are extending life expectancy. Their life expectancy is continuing to go up. By now some of these countries, it was not by military force, but was essentially by force because they would restrict people's ability to access to healthcare. But they would, they reward things like walking, they reward things like exercise. They reward things like clean diets. They don't have a, a, let's say a, a subsidy program that would cover things like, you know, high fructose corn syrup laden foods, highly processed foods, cigarettes, you know, vape pens, alcohol, you know, and foods with high fructose corn syrup sodas, things like that. They, they actually cover the kinds of foods that serve their cellular biology.
- [69:23]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [69:23]
Gary Brea
And, and it, and it's astounding. I'm going to dig more into this because I was fascinated that, that there are governments out there that are looking at this crisis and that don't have a health care system like ours that is profiting off of symptom maintenance and disease management. They don't have a profit center for type 2 diabetes, they don't have a profit center for cancer. They don't have a profit center for autoimmune conditions. They actually have the opposite.
- [69:48]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
They, they, they're losing money as a government. Right. Yeah.
- [69:52]
Gary Brea
Because here we, we socialize the expenses and we privatize the cost.
- [69:57]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Exactly.
- [69:58]
Gary Brea
I mean, sorry. We socialize, privatize the, the profit.
- [70:02]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [70:03]
Gary Brea
You know, so the profit goes to private industry, but the cost goes to taxpayer, public, Medicare, Medicaid, all of us.
- [70:09]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Being into health insurance as well. And so it's crazy. Yeah. And so, you know, I think the incentives are totally misaligned and that's why our health care system cost is going up every single year. It's $3 trillion. Massive portion of our GDP goes to our health expenses because people make money off us being sick. Yes.
- [70:27]
Gary Brea
So true.
- [70:28]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
And you look at other countries and like, we can't have, have this much sickness and illness. We have to fix it. We recognize ultra processed food is one of the number one enemies. We also recognize that probably close behind or equal to that is sedentary behavior. And so we're just going to legislate against that and then people get healthier and we don't spend so much money on this stuff, you know?
- [70:48]
Gary Brea
Yeah. It's not about eliminating free choice.
- [70:49]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Right.
- [70:50]
Gary Brea
About getting poison out of the food supply. Well, Dr. Daran Shaw, this has been amazing. I, I, I absolutely want to have you back for a series on the podcast. I'm, I'm excited about the expansion of your next health franchise. How does my audience find, find you?
- [71:07]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah.
- [71:08]
Gary Brea
So find out more about it next.
- [71:09]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Yeah, yeah. Next Health we're at on the Internet, next-health.com.
- [71:14]
Gary Brea
Okay.
- [71:15]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
Me personally, I'm at social Media at Darshan Shaw MD. I have a website, Dr.shaw.com. people can ask me questions on my website. I try to respond to as many as possible. Or social media. Yeah, yeah. And those are the main places to find me. And I'm happy to, you know, engage with the audience and help anyone along their journey.
- [71:33]
Gary Brea
Super. Well, I. I have a. A VIP group, a community that I'm building, and this is a community that I really pour myself into. We do, you know, live group Q. And as we do private podcasts, we do challenges. We. I wrote an entire course, I put a course together on becoming the ultimate human and gave it into this community. So we're going to go into a private room now so they can ask you a couple of questions. If you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP, you can go over to the ultimate human.com VIP sign up to be a VIP client, and we will see you in that private room. Otherwise, I wind all my podcasts down by asking my guests the same question. And that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?
- [72:22]
Dr. Darshan Shaw
I think for me, being an ultimate human means to feel good in my own skin, have time for myself, time for my family and time for my children. And also to wake up every day with a positive outlook on life. Yeah, that's it.
- [72:35]
Gary Brea
So amazing, man. So amazing. Well, guys, I'll VIPs, I'll see you over in the private podcast room. And the rest of you guys make sure that you look in the show notes below. Follow Dr. Darshan Shaw and check out next Health. If you're interested in living forever and until next time, that's just science.