You’re Not Diseased — You’re Inflamed | Dr. Ash Kapoor on Fasting, Trauma & Longevity

So once you identify what is root cause, then the situation just opens up. So for me, root cause is very simple. Where are your cells made? Because these cells become tissues and organs. So if you get that bit right, then everything's fine. And lo and behold, it's called epigenetics. We've known about that since 1904, and yet no medical student will talk about epigenetics. So the environment where your cells are made is so important. And then it led me to think, well, what exactly goes wrong there? Only two things. The area is not fed properly and it's not defended properly. So the solution to longevity is feed the epigenetic place correctly and defend it. And then of course it opens up a chapter of how we do that, which we can discuss. So effectively, we can then improve the state of your cell and your stem cells, of which you've got a couple of hundred years of, can continue to make good, good organs, good tissues. The problem is how do we keep that area fed and how do we keep it protected?

Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker, and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies, and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier, and longer. On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset, and performance. And share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. My guest today is Dr.

Ash Kapoor, a globally recognized leader in regenerative medicine, bioaesthetics, and cellular longevity with over 30 years of clinical experience with the NHS. He's the founder of Levitas Clinic, Levitas Dental, Levitas Academy, Levitas Communities, and Levitas Retreats, and the creator of the Nomad Program and 10R methodology, frameworks designed to address the true root causes of accelerated aging and chronic disease. Dr. Kapoor is known for bridging precision diagnostics, detoxification, regenerative therapies, and brain-first longevity, combining cutting-edge science with a deeply human whole system approach to care. His work focuses on helping individuals move from symptom management to meaningful, measurable transformation across healthspan, cognition, and vitality. Please enjoy. Ash, welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. I'm so delighted to have you with us today.

Thank you, Claudia, and thank you for inviting me. It's a real honor.

Well, an absolute pleasure, and really love your background history and what your message is. So I'm excited to share with my audience today. And you've spent over 30 years in the NHS. Given that up to 80% of chronic diseases are lifestyle-driven. What was the moment that you realized the system was exceptional at acute care, but not designed for root cause healing?

Yes, I mean, you've summarized that beautifully, Claudia. I'm actually still part of the NHS. It's coming into my 35th year. And I have to say, I was, I'm passionate about medicine. I always have been. And in my career, I've done primary care, I've done minor surgery. I've looked after cottage hospitals, I've done it out of hours, and also brought hospital services to the community. And I thought I was doing a good job by looking at what I thought then was healthcare transformation. But in fact, all I was doing was shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. It wasn't actually changing the position of patients' wellbeing. And how did I discover that? Well, I look after a cottage hospital, and in there we have frailty. And a lot of these patients come in between the ages of 70 and 90, but I knew them when they were in their 50s. Working people, interacting with society. And then I see them on the ward where they can hardly recognize me. They sign a step form saying, please do not resuscitate me because I don't want to continue. And I'm thinking, how many more years of this have we created? So we've extended existence, but truly we have not extended life. And then it took me to explore why this is the case and whether this is a global problem or not. And then basically by looking at other cultures, it's not a global problem. When you go to the indigenous populations of the Aborigines or the Maasais, you've got 78-year-olds still able to squat, they still have their teeth. Most importantly, they're still bright, they're still interested, and they're still respected. So it made me think there's got to be a change here because I've put these people cumulatively on 20 or 30 drugs and yet there's no difference. It's not, if anything, there's a deterioration. So, and then if you look at the health and social care situation, healthcare is now overflowing into social care. In other words, after a certain age, it doesn't become a medical problem. And all we do is manage. And it's very dissatisfying for us as a profession. But more importantly, when you see people lose their joyfulness, it's not a great feeling. So hence it led me to kind of look at what I thought then was root cause analysis. Where does the problem start? And what is fascinating is having opened up the practice and literally open book, most of my learning has come from patient stories, from patient narratives. Except the difference is by being given enough time, you actively listen. You actually put together the puzzles and soon you find that there's a consistent narrative. That longevity medicine is about preserving purpose, fulfillment, independence. Conventional medicine is about suppressing symptoms. We see them as diseases. We've labeled 126,000 of them, by the way, and created over a quarter of a million FDA-approved drugs. And doctors are sort of rewarded by remembering these labels and remembering the drugs. But it's all about suppression, suppression, suppression. And of course, a few years later, something else happens and then something else happens. And then we say, oh, there's a link because we've read the papers. There's a link between all these diseases. Well, there isn't. You haven't sorted the first one out, you've just suppressed it. My intuition and common sense suggested that we should be looking at root cause. And that was really easy. So once you identify what is root cause, then the situation just opens up. So for me, Root cause is very simple. Where are your cells made? Because these cells become tissues and organs. So if you get that bit right, then everything's fine. And lo and behold, it's called epigenetics. We've known about that since 1904, and yet no medical student will talk about epigenetics. So the environment where your cells are made is so important. And then it led me to think, well, what exactly goes wrong there? Only two things. The area is not fed properly and it's not defended properly. So the solution to longevity is feed the epigenetic place correctly and defend it. And then of course, it opens up a chapter of how we do that, which we can discuss. So effectively, we can then improve the state of your cell and your stem cells, of which you've got a couple of hundred years ago, 100 years of, can continue to make good, good organs, good tissues. The problem is, how do we keep that area fed and how do we keep it protected? Unfortunately, we live in a toxic environment in urban areas. So there's constant threats, which you and I don't even see. As we speak, we're breathing in in you. Heavy metal sticks in your tissues. Whatever you breathe in today will take 30 years for half of it to leave you. So you can see how you accumulate these toxins and that environment where the chef is making the cells is becoming toxic. Food is no longer nutrition. Your predecessors a couple of hundred thousand years ago would pick something out of the soil which is mineralized, clean it and crunch and eat it. Full of nutrition, full of the right minerals, et cetera. They drink from lakes. They'd kill an animal, they'd eat it straight away. No microwaves, no fridges. Food equals nutrition. Now we live in abundance. There's toxins in the soil, there's hormones in the soil. We like to have everything all the time. Clearly that's not possible, so preservatives come in, and therefore food has lost its nutritional value. So, the area is toxic and we're not feeding it. That's why we decline. So simple. So, our role here is to deal with those two issues, explain that narrative to you as a patient, and make you understand that the solution is not about more drugs, it's about adequately putting in interventions in a strategy that clears that area out, then we feed it, and then we repair the damage that's been done. And the great thing about the body is it'll regenerate. You regenerate every 3 months. So, you know, it's all possible. So hence, that was the reason for my transition. And over the last 10 years, we've developed over 300 standard operating procedures that fit with you. There's no right or wrong answer. Is it in your budget? And is it in your value system? So in that way, we feel we could democratize this world of longevity. It's not just for the Brian Johnsons who spend $2 million a year. It could be anybody. And there's no wrong answer. We can just work with you. So that's really a short snapshot of my journey.

It's really phenomenal. And thank you again for the work that you're doing and also in educating. I was at your conference you held recently, which was phenomenal, and different speakers coming in. The world needs to know that this is the way forward. Acute care, as we mentioned before, is excellent, but really addressing that root cause. Can you share a little bit more about the typical journey that one of the patients would go on and what does that look like for different sort of use cases?

One thing that I was very keen on is not create a matrix that is as complicated as the current conventional system. It's impossible because at the moment, as a GP, you triage your symptoms, you make a provisional diagnosis, but if you don't know what to do, you send it to a district hospital. If the district consultant doesn't know what's going on, sends it to a super specialist. These guys live in narrow cocoons. They do not look at you as a whole. They look at one thing and make a linear relationship. And what I wanted to avoid was so many things entering the market and people just picking and choosing random things depending on what the media is saying. So we spent a lot of time developing a strategy, a strategy that is constant, consistent, and evidence-based, science-based. But also wisdom-based. And when we did that, it was beautiful because what we said is, look, you've got to go through this program. The first part of the program, we call it release. And essentially it is the release of your toxins. And what I would do for you is take an hour's history and work out what your challenges are, but also what's happening in your subconscious mind. Because people don't realize that they suitcase trauma and injury and stuff that's happened early in childhood, even in the uterus, in the subconscious mind. So you find out where those triggers are. So when I take a history, I don't look upon it with the obsession of giving you a label. It's with an obsession to find out where things started to go wrong. Just this morning, I've seen a gentleman, mid-50s, and he's come in very quiet, gentle human, come into the practice and has told me essentially that he's got colitis and he's got fatigue, et cetera. And when you ask him on superficially, how's your life been? He goes, I'm generally happy. Everything's okay, et cetera, et cetera. And when I explained to him that trauma can be suitcase and from an early life, he reflected and a minute later he said, you know, I had to leave my country in India, Gujarat, to come to the UK. I was 10. I couldn't speak a word of English. I was put into this school. And I said, that's huge. It's traumatizing because he couldn't speak to his parents because they couldn't understand the narrative of schools. It was all internalized and in his subconscious. And there was this subconscious sense of stress where he felt inferior throughout his whole life, worked hard but couldn't get over it. And this stress manifested in an inflammatory condition. So you can see we could decompress people by realizing they're not broken, they're not diseased, they're just in a state of distress. So the typical journey is to find out where those pressure points are. And then we look for signs of inflammation because we know that every disease, decline, and disorder is inflammation. At an organ level, we can pick it up. Cholesterol, blood pressure, inflammatory liver, et cetera, dermatitis. These are all expression phenotypes. But actually, this positional inflammation started at the cellular level maybe decades ago. So my view is that if you pick up any one sign of inflammation, assume the whole body's inflamed. It just happens to show in your skin or your joints. That makes my life so easy because I'm not finding all these men, labels. I'm just saying everything's happening simultaneously. Some we can see and some we can't. That's the first thing. The second thing is once I've established everything's inflamed, I said, let's change the narrative now. Let's ask you, how inflamed are you and where's it showing today? And so you suddenly take away all the diseases. You talk about that. And once we've got that narrative going, we then say, how do we get rid of inflammation? Well, we have to take the burden off the fish and toxicity out of you. Because if a third of you is toxic debris, one third of your energy is going nowhere. It's like having a car on in a garage, literally creating fumes, moving nowhere. That's what inflammation does to you. And of course, it will steal from you. And if it steals from you, less is available for you and you go into dysfunction. They understand that now too. So I said, let's get rid of it. So the first thing we say is, remember, we have to protect yourself. We have to feed yourself. Let's go back to protection. Protection for you is your small intestine, your gut. We're not talking about your stomach or your colon. We're talking about the 30 feet in the middle, the 300 square feet surface area, trillions of bacteria sitting in there protecting you. 70% of your immune system sits there. So until we fix that leak, there's no point doing anything else. Whatever supplements you're taking will just be eaten by this inflammatory process. So let's fix the the leak. So we give herbs from Australia where we clean out the debris. It's like wallpaper layers, layers after layers will come out every morning. Sometimes you see parasites, sometimes you see debris, but this is decades. And then you can see the back wall of the gut. And often, in fact, most of us, we have an element of leaky gut syndrome. That gut, the plaster's broken, the toxins are coming in. So, but you can't work with it if it's, if it's full of debris. So clean the debris, then everything works. So clean the gut over 7 weeks and simultaneously clean the liver. Because if the gut's not doing its job, the poor liver has to keep up, pick up the pieces. Now I have to say in the modern world, Claudia, the liver is the silver bullet. I cannot tell you what can happen to you when your liver's clean. But essentially we start using things like glutathione, ALA, PPC, um, in various forms to start helping the filter of the liver. Now, because the liver won't let anything through and it's a seal, if there's 200 toxins coming a day, fine.. But if it becomes 2 million, what happens? You get a waiting list. You get this invisible debris picking up in front of the room because liver can't work any harder. And it's a bit like your highways full of traffic. The side roads can't get in. So your brain cannot detoxify the amyloid plaque. Your joints can't detoxify the crystals. So what happens? Arthritis, colitis, the inability to get rid of toxins. So we have to manage the liver, but you can't manage the liver without sealing the gut first. So once we clean out the liver, there's a third release we do. And the third release is called autophagy. It's a form of fasting where we force the body to eat things that don't belong to it. And essentially, you've got to remember, you come from scarcity, not abundance. 100,000 years ago, there would be no food for 3 or 4 days. So you're designed for fasting, not starving, but fasting. We don't do that until the gut and liver are sorted because the body behaves much better with autophagy. And what we do is stop you eating. We stop feeding the front of the fridge. And what do you do when the supermarket's shut? You open your fridge and eat from the back. So we force the body to do that. And you have 3 fridges, not 1. Your first fridge is sugar, glycogen. You've probably got 100, 200 Mars bars stored in this glycogen fridge. And essentially it won't be activated until you stop feeding the front. So you'll empty the sugar out first. And why? Because the brain's lazy. It's quick energy. It's microwave food. But after 2 or 3 days when you've emptied the sugar, the brain goes into automatic stress. It says, what are you doing to me? There's no food coming. And then the brain says, well, I have to use my other larder, the dead protein debris. Now, if you're making 4 million cells per second, the old cells don't all leave you. They sit in garbage bags in all your trillion cells as loose garbage, dead protein. But when you finish the sugar, the body's forced to go into that garbage. It sweeps it up, recycles it, and guess what it makes? Brand new DNA from that recycling and ATP energy, the only currency of energy that makes your cells breathe. It's phenomenal.

It's amazing.

Yeah. You don't get there until the sugar's empty. And remember, most of us live in abundance. We never go into that mountain. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And Professor Usini won the Nobel Prize in 2016, said, empty that out. Chronic disease will go away. And yet no one listened. Well, they did listen, but actually it doesn't make money. So they didn't really react to that. After that, you have a third ladder, fat. Now, once the body's emptied the protein, it starts biohacking your own fat and fat around your organs. The fat around everywhere. It'll just break the carbohydrate and make food on demand. And the beautiful thing about fat metabolism is your brain's fat. So your brain will be fed before your body. Your dopamine regulates. Things like neurodiversity, ADHD just settle because the brain's got the right food. And then it feeds the rest of the body. And the body's satisfied because the pancreas is not producing insulin as much as it needs to. So you go into a state of zen. You stop feeling hungry. Addiction stops, all sorts of things stop because you're being fed correctly. And it's all about feeding that space. Do you remember what we were talking about earlier? Yeah. So having cleaned out and repaired, we then restore the highways in your body because there's potholes and all sorts of obstructive things.

Before we go to restore, can I ask a couple of questions around the fasting? Because I think some people might be like, oh, and as you said very rightly, it's not starving yourself, it's fasting. And the body does this naturally. And if you go back in history, this is how cavemen and women used to survive, otherwise we wouldn't be here, right? But you mentioned 2 to 3 days to go into the protein, but I know from keto diets and if people are measuring the monomers in the blood, within a shorter space of time you could flip into ketosis. So are you saying that the initial part of ketosis is around that protein debris clear out? And then the latter part is then the fat burning? Is there a certain time window?

That's exactly right, yes, yes. The body's so clever, preempts that routine, has a shelf life, so starts ketosis simultaneously. So the first few days, up to day 5 or 6, not only are you burning fat, which is a great indicator that you're winning, but you're actually taking depo. How do we know that? We do body comp indexes. You see on your body comp index, your skeletal muscle mass drops. And people think, oh, I'm losing muscle mass. You're not because your testosterone triples in the first few days of fasting. Male and female. Male and remember females also had problems 1,000 years ago. So there's no discrimination on that front. So yes. And why it's put a Teflon coat on your muscle says, go and hunt, go and gather. You need food. And then what we see is interestingly fat levels go up. So the protein goes down and fat goes up because the sugar larder is empty. Your predecessors were running, hunting, so they were using it. We don't. So it goes into the fat larder. After 3 days of fasting, fats up, protein down, and the amount of protein goes down is the amount of debris you're carrying. And then it shoots right back up again. And the fact that once it's full, the sugar level is empty, it crashes. It's so incredible seeing what the body does. Yeah. So the only thing about women, if you're cyclical, you have to remember that the latter 2 weeks of your cycle, you're getting ready for pregnancy. So whatever happens, the body, the brain will protect the baby over the mother. So it says, I'm not letting go of the sugar. So you're going to have a very tough time fasting the latter 2 weeks. So smart fasting involves the first 10 days of the cycle.

First 10 days of the cycle. Exactly. And one thing that, you know, I've shared my view is because I used to do very like extended prolonged intermittent fasts and like 14, 16 hours, but became hypoglycemic during the night. And so would you say that one of the things, especially for women, that it's important to first make sure that all your minerals, your vitamin levels, etc., are really in a good place before looking at doing these prolonged fasts?

Yes. And I think also signature medicine requires you to look at the body composition index. Because you're probably very fit, there's hardly any glycogen to use and you utilize it much quickly. So for you, we may have gone for a 48-hour rather than the 72-hour. So bespoke fasting is just about understanding what's in your fridges. And everybody's fridge at home is different. So you can't apply the same logic. And so if you take into account cycles, but and also your current position, you'd go into autophagy a lot quicker. There's also something called a dry fast. Most are water fasts with electrolytes, but you can also do a dry fast where you don't drink or eat. And it sounds dangerous, but actually the body will make water from carbon and nitrogen. It breaks the fat, the hydrogen mixes with oxygen you drink, and you can make water. So the body's so capable. And I wouldn't advocate an immediate dry fast, but it's something that we have done. In the past as well for the right people. And you stay more balanced with your electrolytes because the body holds back the electrolytes.

So it's fascinating. Interesting. And I have to ask also the question, how often do you fast? What does your fasting protocol look like?

So for me, I'm currently on a trial fast as we're speaking. I'll talk to you about that. And it's a new plan that we're looking at. But essentially on a routine basis, having done the big deep clean with the big fast, I would normally do a 36, 48-hour fast once a week. So, and usually, so Sunday evening, last meal, open the fast Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday evening. Very easy. Why? Because it's a working week. And when you're in ketosis, the brain works better. So if you do it at the beginning of the week, the week just ends up being brilliant for you. And you're not taking away from socialization or family. And it's, it's a, it's a habit that becomes easy. Once you've told your brain you're doing it, the brain tells the body. That's what he's doing. Get on with it.

Yeah. No negotiation anymore. We're just doing this thing. And then you keep yourself busy.

Exactly.

I mean, it is really phenomenal. I think for people who might be concerned or wonder, like being in ketosis for your mind, you wake up sharp. There's like zero brain fog. It's absolutely phenomenal. So I just wanted to break down a little bit that, that fasting thing. Cause I know it triggers some people and they're like, this is impossible, but there's just so many health benefits if done correctly and particularly for cycling women.

Absolutely. Yeah. So once we've done the clean out, we then repair the highways and the highways consist of hormones. We include vitamin D in that hormone profile, the sex hormones, B12, ferritin. Without those big highways, nothing communicates. So we also ensure that those are all in place before a fast as well. If you empty a mansion house out into skips, the skips have to move on roads. Without roads, it's still in the system. So that's really important. To get an effective fast. And then we repair. And in the modern world, there's only one thing to repair, the vagus nerve. So our sympathetic nervous system from the day we're born, because we go to nurseries and schools and big universities and big jobs, we are sympathetically driven, which is why most of the problem is. So we concentrate on the opposite, the vagus nerve, the rest and digest. So there we fix circadian rhythm for sleep. So melatonin, adaptogenics like ashwagandha, serrafosse, magnesium. We effectively fix the gut with good quality pre and probiotics and peptides to put the plaster on, fix the, fix the, so that's what we do. And after that, we go into the fun phase of renewal. And what does renewal look like?

Well, peptides are quite controversial in the UK and they shouldn't be hopefully, but we're big fans at my other company, Lumara Collective. We've one of the world's leading experts doing a course now soon. So I hope that it will change in the UK, but yes, it's amazing the worked with Vladimir Kavason in St.

Petersburg. I've been fortunate enough to meet him before he passed. And essentially, we use bioregulator peptides, which in the UK, you can give as nutritional supplements. So you can get them as nutritional supplements. And what they basically are, as you know, are just amino acids, short chains that find their way to the right part of the gene code, give it a clean and give it some food. So it's, it's, it's something that, you know, we have to do because we've now talked about defending that space. Now we must talk about feeding that space. So peptides are a beautiful amino acid food. 100 million people around the world be treated not on side effect. Why? Because it's food. So it's a bit challenging for drug companies because it can be a game changer if this works. So there's lots of politics behind this. Now, for me, which stack do I prefer to use for my patients? Well, look at the world we're living in. We need to protect our immune system. So thymus peptides. We need to protect our pineal gland, which is our longevity gland. Interestingly, that it makes melatonin. So it just shows you the value of sleep. We fix the adrenals because we're slightly adrenally fatigued or wired, one of the two. Um, there's nobody that's balanced.

I've had adrenal fatigue, so yes, I know this.

Yeah, you can see. And then of course we fix the gut, the primary immune system with gut peptides. And it's 3 months on, 6 months off, 3 months on. Um, you can do subcut peptides, but under R&D only in the UK. So it's not a treatment. But I think that is going to be the future. But going back to this point, Claudia, whether it's stem cell or peptides, if you do not have your foundations corrected, if you do not have the highways or your gut or your liver working. You could have the most expensive stem cell in the world. It doesn't have anywhere to go. So you cannot get away from foundation building. There's no silver bullet.

And I think that is so fundamental. And some of the foundation aspects, yes, with the detoxification, et cetera, but it's like the sleep, right? Like things that you are doing, checking your breath, which will control your vagus nerve, being in nature, the social interactions, et cetera. And I particularly love that your program starts with looking at past trauma events because as we know, the body keeps the score, right? And we suppress it. And some people have been completely obliterated. Oblivious to the fact that there was trauma in their childhood, like you were saying with the gentleman, he's like, no, no, I'm happy, I'm fine. But it was really traumatic when I was 11. And so what are some of the modalities and recommendations that you give for someone who may have experienced trauma in their childhood or even in their adult life to help them address that, to solve it for people listening, maybe interested in taking action?

So I don't think any human can fail. They're not, if a particular intervention is not working, it's because it's been timed wrong. An example I give is we know that mindfulness is really powerful. And, but imagine doing mindfulness with 2 tigers in your room. Your body is not going to go into mindfulness mode. It's going to say, excuse me, we've got a problem. That is what, why people don't succeed because we've timed it wrong. And I always say that the brain has to look down and be satisfied that the foundations are secure. Your gut's working, your hormones are working, et cetera. Okay, let's now take it to a higher level. So Maslow's hierarchy of foundation building, then building, is the same as Dr. Hawkins' model for conscious buildup. You've got to get out of survival mode. Now, what is survival mode? Food, water, shelter. But look, we know there are millionaires who are still in survival mode because once they've got their 5-bedroom, they want their 10-bedroom. Once they have their 10-bedroom, they want their 15-bedroom. Then they want 3 15-bedrooms. They're still under shelter. They haven't moved out of shelter mode. And so survival will not allow to get to that high level of consciousness and deal with the trauma that's subconsciously packaged at the back because we're too busy being busy. So what I found in my experience is you can't force it. Let's take any steps. Let's do what we just said, repair, restore, renew. And then you'll find that the same person is no longer a reactor. They're a receptor. And you say, okay, Now let's deal with what's in your brain. And they are now listening actively and being able to absorb these things. So the modalities I love using are still looking at the physical. So breathwork, fantastic if it's done properly. So whether you use the box breathing or move on to connected conscious breathing, it is phenomenal. The elixir of life is out there and it's free and you can do it anywhere. And you build that up as a portfolio for a couple of months and you'll find that these people's vagus nerve starts waking up. Then they're looking for something higher. And then when you look at the higher modes, then you can look at further cognitive development. And that's when things like trauma healing can play a beautiful part because you're now receptive. The other thing that can be really helpful is grounding, earthing, barefoot moving, walking in nature. Literally underestimate that we are from that same place. The universal energy is all around us. We're just a vessel for some of it. So we connect with nature and everything balances out. And only then people will find that the things that they have possibly been trying in the past, whether it's cognitive behavioral therapy or any form of psychotherapy, they can lift. When those still get stuck, then we use things like rTMS. I don't know if you've heard of rTMS, transmagnetic stimulation.

I've heard of this. Maybe you can share.

Yeah. So we're just magnetic fields. And this is electromagnetic fields stimulating that part of the brain, releasing certain proteins like BDNF that allow the conscious mind to open and become rational about taking things from the unconscious and rationalizing. So we can do that. And there's something called Exomind that's now out, but RTMS has been around for 20 years with good history. They use it in PTSD. Another part of the world that's not for ages, but now opening up is psychedelic-assisted therapy.

I was going to ask you, yeah.

For me, remember, this is not new. It's been going on for a while, but during the Nixon time, there was war on drugs and the whole thing was such as CAPS, but they didn't actually understand what was going on. And now it's having a little bit of a, uh, renaissance. Yeah, renaissance, exactly. And so what does this do? Well, you've got to remember that we pack trauma in suitcases and wrap it up and keep it. It doesn't go away. It stays in the back of the brain and we forget about it in our conscious state. It's a bit like a child hiding under a bed thinking, if the world can't see me, then it doesn't exist.. And that's how we deal with trauma in the uterus, in, in, in early childhood and events that we forget about. So how do we get into that? Well, we have to open that subconscious mind up and psychedelics, whether it's ayahuasca, bufo, DMT, or modern ketamine, will go into that space and open up those chapters. And by opening those chapters, it brings it up to the conscious mind where the conscious mind can forgive, let go, et cetera. And it is very useful, very useful for those who have got stuck. And, but one thing I've learned from my experience is that if the energy is not correct, if these guys are still adrenally fatigued, et cetera, the brain won't be able to cope with that opening. So you've got to fix the physical. And what we do is give nootropics before the ketamine. So we give brain food, NAD, B12, et cetera. So energy is needed. It's there. Importantly, during the land phase, we get a good psychologist who can rationalize what they've seen. And so I think we have to remember that your brain is the CEO of your health. You can manifest wellness and you can manifest illness, but we cannot neglect it anymore. And neuroscience has shown that if we can train the brain, the default mode network that identifies your identity, the memory in the hippocampus, the amygdala for fear, if we don't start training those areas in the brain like you train your muscles in the gym, we'll get stuck. However good that the body is, this is not new. The, uh, the Taoists, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Native Americans have always understood energy medicine. And they realized that even in death, we're just a canvas. The energy's out in the environment, which is why they respect nature so much. Also, they don't see bereavement in the same way as we do because they say, well, no one's gone. They're just here in the animals. Different forms. They sense them. You know, Tali Schwartz's book, uh, Signs, reflects on that ability to see signs. But you can't see signs if you're busy and in survival mode. So I think for us, if we are truly going to get people better, if we're truly going to improve joyfulness and probably lead to a much better outcome for the world, we've got to open those senses up. But more importantly, we have to give agency back to the patient saying, you can fix yourself and then we'll fix the brain. And then empathy comes in. Communities become stronger. We don't rely on governments. We don't, we're happy with less. And that I think is, this is just the beginning of a whole paradigm shift in how we behave with each other.

It will make the world such a beautiful place as well. I, I completely agree with you. And the way you break it down as well, for people to understand that reaching that level of consciousness, and then you have the joy and the purpose— you have to fix the foundation. Because if you have no energy and you're feeling depressed and upset, you're not going to want to do anything. And part of that also is around that mindset piece, right? And it's rewiring the brain, that neuroplasticity, to look for the good in the situation, etc. What are some practices that you do personally to make sure that you can show up as your best self, as your most optimistic and connected?

Well, when I wake up, I'm an early riser. I wake up at about 4:30 and the first thing I do is think of 3 or 4 things that I'm really grateful for. Immediately the brain goes into a very nice place there and the cobwebs of the issues that may arise just go away. And then what I do is having done that, I set my intentions for the day. For me personally rather than anything else. Whatever happens today, I will do ABCD. I'll make those phone calls to my parents or etc. They will happen. And I again feel quite joyful. And then having got up, I go for a walk. The first thing we do is go for a walk around a park which we have, feed the birds. And what is lovely is that you, particularly now, you see the stars, you see the trees, there's no traffic, so you breathe good air. And I do box breathing through walk. So after that, I feel incredible. I feel like I can take on the whole world. My vagus nerve is active, my sympathetic nervous system is flowing. And what I do find is if I do that, everything else works out. I find magic minutes everywhere. So, you know, I think, you know what, I can't spend an hour in the gym, but I can spend 6 minutes. And I just do my 6 minutes and feel even better. So I become a lot more aware of what I can do in between the roles. And even the most challenging emails sort themselves out. Interesting things happen. The person I was not wanting to talk to sort of emails in a nice way and it just carries on from there. So you can manifest these things and it can't prove it in science. But I do believe that how you behave and the energy you're with dictates what happens all day. During the day, I do a lot of exercise. So I'll do a 15-minute consultation, 5 squats. I dress generically everywhere. Whether I'm going to a restaurant or a gym, takes away all the shackles of all the other problems. 5 squats, 5 press-ups, and in the day that could accumulate to 100 squats, 100 press-ups without going anywhere near a gym. I make a point of doing an infrared sauna. I have a sweatbox at home, so I do 50 minutes 3 times a week. It's a super way of detoxing but also relaxing. And I try and get to sleep by 9:30 latest, between 9 and 9:30. So I protect my sleep aggressively. And I don't see time. That's the thing. You don't sort of look at things in a time way. You just, just flow through the day and you feel less tired. Eating-wise, I try and restrict myself to one meal a day when I'm fasting. I will have two coffees in the morning and I'll have water and salts in the day. But, you know, if I was invited to lunch, I'd just go eat it. It's not prescriptive. I don't feel bad. Overall, it's a matter of just keeping balance because there's so many things you could do that just distract you. And the other thing is if I have a 15-minute break, I will just close my eyes and rest and just literally just step down a few gears. And that could happen twice a day.

You have the perfect day protocol, but you said something there and I want to unpack this. You said magic minutes. Can you explain what you mean by magic minutes and what would you like people to know about how they can create magic minutes in a day?

Yeah. So magic minutes are those few minutes that we don't intentionally see, but if we look for them, they exist. So if a consultation is 50 minutes and the team had given me an hour, that's 10 minutes of protected time, which I would never see because I overrun or I casually go and get a cup of tea or a little gossip here and there, and it just gets absorbed. When I'm working with intention and I finish at 47 minutes or et cetera, I say, right, now I know that these squats are going to take 2 minutes, this press-up will take 2 minutes, and I'm going to do 3 minutes of breathwork. Those magic minutes become a very powerful intervention because I've seen them already. My brain is aware of them. It's called the Sapiens Pathway. Make it a priority in your brain and it will see it. If it's not there, it won't. And so the Sapiens Pathway is a way of going in with that arrow with intent and then saying to yourself, next minute, I've got this really challenging email to do. It's going to be done in 10 minutes. I'm not going to give more time than 10 minutes. And after that, I'm going to treat myself for a walk around the block. The walk around the block becomes a priority. You do the work and you do it. So we have to seek these minutes. I'll give you an example. I was looking after an executive who literally was flying around the world all the time. Very busy man, very big job. And he says, I can't, I can't exercise. You know, it's impossible. I mean, in one hotel and another or an airport. And I, so we didn't do the exercise. I just asked him to bear with me for a month. I said, when you wake up, just do 5 squats, straight squats, and do some breathing. Then you go to the bathroom and before you brush your teeth, do another 5 squats. Brush your teeth, but think about how many brushes or strokes you need in every part of your mouth. Think with intent, and don't do more than you need. And then afterwards, think of 5 squats. Then you go into the shower, think about how much actual water you need to clean yourself properly. Use the least amount possible. Then come out, dry yourself, do 5 squats. And then when you get changed in between each, the trousers, the shirt, do 5 squats. And he came back an hour, a month later, 2.5 kilos extra muscle mass, Wow. But more importantly, he said he was getting ready 15 minutes earlier. Why? Because when he was normally brushing his teeth, he was thinking about the business he had to do. When he was normally in the shower, he'd procrastinate for an extra 4 or 5 minutes. Now he's going with everything with focused intent and those magic minutes, he's doing something active. Now he does it in his office. So that's what I mean, that we have a lot of time that's just stagnant that can be utilized. You don't have to join expensive gyms or do You just have to exercise, snack, breathwork, snack, and close your eyes and meditate for 5 minutes. It doesn't have to be long. And we all have at least an hour and a half of magic minutes in our day, I promise you.

I love that. And the fact that there was also such muscle growth as well, just from doing those squats. I mean, that's really phenomenal.

In men, the gluteal muscles are the biggest muscles. And when you do a proper squat, you exercise literally the whole of your lower torso and your spine. And if you look at most indigenous populations, there's no chairs. When they eat, they squat. Squat, and they can squat beautifully. So you stretch your Achilles, you stretch your hamstrings, you sort your back out. It's there in nature. We've been doing it forever, but chairs and the way we function means that we've forgotten that.

Okay, Ash, I'm going to be doing more squats in the day as well, not just at the gyms. I have my stand-up desk as well, so I can start my— I'd love to talk about, just to really bring it home for some people, compelling or remarkable success stories that you've seen with some of your patients over time? You know, maybe you can describe a little bit where they were and then what type of transformation is possible because some people hear and they're like, oh yeah, but you know, I can't do it because of this or that or whatever excuse we're in that neuro loop repeating to ourselves. So could you share some of the compelling stories?

Yes. So, um, we can start with a gentleman who's in his early 20s with severe ADHD, gone out of the house with all psychiatrists, drugs were not making, had slept for 4 years, literally had a reverse cycle, would not sleep all night and then basically go to sleep at 9 AM and wake up at 3 and was eating carbs like going crazy, 152 kilos in weight, and couldn't get anywhere. And she came to us because it was getting difficult, you know, not succeeding in university, not being able to get work, confidence down. Essentially having tried all the pharmaceuticals, weren't working. We put it to him that let's just check your profiles. Found he was hormonally depleted. His testosterone had been stolen. His gut was not working. So effectively did what we were discussing, clean the gut, clean the liver, got the hormones out, and then we put him on a fast. He went on to do a sort of 15-day water fast, then went on one meal a day. But what he found was the transition was not just about his physicality. He ended up losing 55 kilos. It was the fact that he was sleeping without drugs. Drugs. He was now connecting with humans, had a job, and realized what it was like to feel that good. And being the sort of mind he had, he never wanted to go back. So his father will take him to the best places in the world, and he would stick to his regime because he said, I'm never going to go back there again. And that was great because we demonstrated that neurodiversity is where his brain was just fed sugar, and now it's hacking on his own fat, omega-3, 6, 9, all the hormones are working. He's not on any hormones now because he's not stealing it. And that was really great because it changed this human's life forever. We've also had a couple of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, wheelchair-bound, told that nothing would happen. Through the program, they're walking. And that was just fascinating. And what was interesting, this was part of a charity scheme we did. 12 or 15 of them all succeeded with the pathways. And when I asked them what made them stick with this in the community, they said, we didn't want to let our colleagues down. That shows the power of community. So that was a great demonstration of community spirit and helping each other through WhatsApp groups. And we can democratize this and put it out there. We've had one patient who was diagnosed with a lung fibrotic condition post-COVID, but she had super stress post-COVID as well, and she just crashed, started getting wheezy, breathless. Seen the specialist, put her on high-dose steroids, so got bigger and bigger. Lungs weren't getting better, put her on other immunosuppressants, didn't get better. Referred to the heart hospital. Refers to a lung hospital, put on the waiting list for lung transplant. 3 years on, didn't want to go down that route. So we did the plan and focused on all those areas and we bespoke it according. It's 3 years on, doing 15,000 steps a day, playing tennis every day, swimming in the sea, and no lung, and all the drugs gone. Went back for CT scans, literally no change from 3 years ago, despite being on everything. And for her, that is monumental, but what she's found is, I mean, she looks incredible, but you know, because when you get told that 47 with 2, 3 children, you're going to have a lung transplant, you could imagine what that would do to the brain pathways. Now her confidence is there. She's doing her own breathwork. She's doing everything, but her children have seen what she's doing and they're following. They're following different diets, et cetera. So this is infectious in a good way. Beautiful.

And then they're telling hopefully their friends at school as well. So they know that there is another way.

Yeah. And another lady who came for weight loss. I did believe her because she said, I try everything. I've been to every place in the world with diets, et cetera, et cetera. And I just can't shift. I do all the right exercises. But what was happening was that the brain was just saying, I don't believe in lots of stress. I'm just going to keep making cortisol. So whatever diet she was doing, the body was making more sugar than she was eating. She was a doughnut-making factory. So effectively, we put her on the Nomad plan, again, fasting, hormones, et cetera. She went through a very difficult transition when she was moving from sugar to protein, debris, literally, it was very painful for her, but then the body just clicked. Now she's doing exactly the same as she did before the plan, but the results have led to a 70 kilo weight loss. She lost 72 kilos in total. Wow. Incredible. So, but her blood pressure, joint pains, everything gone. Remember, this is not a weight losing exercise, it's an inflammation losing exercise. It's a debris losing exercise. We are all toxic. At the moment, I'm, this is not for public consumption, but I'm, I'm doing a 40-day fast. I'm on day 21 today. And essentially, it's a modified fast because I still work and still function. Where I'll have water and salts all day and 2 coffees. And in the evening, I'll just have bone broth. And I've been watching my biomarkers. And it's interesting, I've gone through 3 layers of autophagy altogether. And I'm feeling good. Clarity of thought is fantastic.

I can still run. You're functioning very well on the podcast.

Yes. And the idea is what I'm trying to do is change my biomark because I truly believe that if we have enough stem cells for 200-300 years, right? We stop growing at 18 or so. So 21 was a good age to aspire to. So I know what my weight was at 21, late 20s, you know, these are some landmarks based on holidays and children, etc. Late 30s, early 30s, early 40s. So what I I want to do is bring my weight and my biomarkers down to 21. So very simple, not as expensive what Bryan Johnson is doing, because theoretically, why not is the question. And I can do the restorative drips and hormones. So I have a drip once a week. And then if I can take my physiology back to 21, the idea then is what's going to happen to the brain, you see. And 40 days was something that I didn't come up with. If you look at all the historical books, whether it's the Bible, the Quran, or even the Gita, they always talk about a 40-day exit. Stay in the forest for 40 days, stop eating for 40 days, then come back. There must be something in that figure. And I couldn't find anything, but I spoke to a healer in South Africa and she just said, the 40 days, the conquering karma, is the point when the body's literally lifted out and goes to a higher level of consciousness. And it's interesting that the first 10 kilos of loss was pure debris. And next few kilos of loss, there's still food in my larger, I can see that. But I think we're holding much more toxins than we can possibly imagine. And once you clean all that out, the prana of energy will feed the brain at a higher level. And so this is not just an experiment for the physicalities, it's more for the spirituality. Because it's been written down thousands of years ago, there's got to be something in it. And I have to say, I'm feeling, I'm not feeling hungry and I'm not feeling tired and functionality is fine. So it's, there's a lot of myths around convention. Which we need to address.

I'm so shocked and amazed that you're on day 21 of a 40-day fast.

Yeah. So, and then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to Mexico on the 4th, the 40th day, and I'm going to do, um, Kambo, ayahuasca, and bufo. Mm-hmm. Um, to look at that higher level of psychedelic effect because the other—

I'm so excited for you.

Well, I'll keep, I'm keeping a journal. So at some point maybe we could talk about the experience and the data.

I would love to as well. And I don't know if you've looked at ibogaine and it's very interesting cause there's research out of Stanford and we've had Talia Eisenberg on, who's one of the founders. And it actually, for the neuroplasticity effect, is really, really phenomenal. And so they have a mixture of like the vets that come there from with PTSD and trauma, but then you're having all these executives come as well because it's showing that one sitting of the ibogaine is giving brain, brain plasticity reversal of, of the brain aging by 1.5 years, which is really phenomenal. So, but your cocktail, what you have ahead of you sounds very interesting. Can you just walk us through that. Is it all in one sitting? I've done my ayahuasca experience as well in Costa Rica, which was really profound and beautiful, but I haven't mixed any other things. So we'll have to do a round two, Ash, because I definitely want to hear about your experiences.

Fascinating to see the physiology because again, I just feel that we are burdened with so much toxicity. And if we were to get rid of this, what could be the possibilities for the human form? And I'm so excited about the human because, you know, we talked at my conference about Homo luminous and Homo sentience, and, you know, we're the weakest form of sentience. Imagine if we could lift into Homo luminous where we're so much more aware with so much more empathy and redefine success through service. You know, the whole world will just change overnight. And I believe now's the time, really, when there's such uncertainty. But it can't happen without us getting to that place of consciousness where the body wants to do it.

And I think it's getting to the place of consciousness, but making sure the foundation, as you were saying, is there too. So it's not just focusing on the spiritual and doing those things, but also taking care of yourself in the day to day. And then what I also liked with the protocol you gave with the executive that was traveling around the world was the extreme presencing. How many times are you brushing your, you know, your teeth? What are you doing? The extreme presencing with the water, because as we know from Eckhart Tolle, right? The power of now that life is just a series of nows. And so the more we can practice being in that state of gratitude, of presence, all the noise filters away and we realize actually I'm fine, I'm safe, I don't need to be triggered on my vagus nerve. And actually the world is a beautiful place to be. So yeah, I'm excited for what you have to share next time around, Ash. It sounds really phenomenal.

And thank you for what you're doing. I think, you know, the more people are aware, and I think like I find when you actually talk a narrative that resonates with people, you know that internally there's a human waiting to come out. And I think we need to humanize much more because this, it is a very powerful gift we have.

Oh, 100%. And I think it's very important for people to be more vulnerable. I've done recovering A-type perfectionist. So this is part of my journey as well. And just to be more raw and real and here to help and support each other. Yeah.

Authentic as well.

Authenticity is what it's all about. Yeah, 100%. Where can people find you, follow you? Where would you like to point them to? And we'll link everything to the show notes.

I do my clinics as part of Levitas Clinic Group. We have a clinic here in Mayfair. We've got a collaborative clinic in The Haven in Knightsbridge and in Surrey in Guildford and Elysia. I also have an online academy where there's online courses, which anyone's welcome to look through. They've been done in a very, what I call a simple narrative so that it's available to everybody. And there's conferences. As we do from time to time.

So any of the above. Yeah. Wonderful. Ash, do you have any parting thoughts or message or ask, piece of advice for my audience today?

I think trust yourself, trust yourself completely. Listen to your body. Enable yourself to have that awareness because the best biomarker in the world, and there's lots of biomarkers, is you. The best copilot is you. Just listen to yourself and listen to nature. And be in a community, family, friends, be part of a tribe, and you'll find that the whole world will decompress around you.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Ash, for coming on. Thank you to your audience for tuning in. It's been an absolute pleasure today.

Lovely.

Thank you.

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