From Reactive Care to Preventive Longevity - Episode 352

The problem is the healthcare system doesn't reward financially physicians for treating healthy patients. Like, there are no actual codes in any of the countries or the continent that I work in that will pay me as a physician if I treat a healthy patient. What are you treating for? What, what condition? You need to be sick so that I'll be able to make money.

Hey everyone, I just finished a conversation with Hany Demian, and we go down the rabbit hole on the transition from traditional medicine into longevity medicine, kind of what it took to get us there. And you're going to learn quite a bit about what we're doing, how we're thinking about the integration of AI, systems biology. And then we talk a lot about joy. We talk a lot about purpose. And you're gonna find that section of this, you'll find all of it inspiring, but you'll find that very inspiring. It's a really, really nice conversation. I hope you enjoy it.

He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist to rewriting the entire aging playbook. Dr. Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30, and he's got the science to back it up. This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Hi, honey. Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast. It's good to see you.

Thanks a lot for having me. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. So, I think you want to talk with us today a little bit about a change in point of view that you've had around what healthcare is, kind of moving from the reactive to the preventative side. Why don't you just give us a little synopsis of, you know, your transition through medicine? I know you started out in surgery and then Went into breast surgery, cancer surgery. There's a number of things going on here, but maybe you can just walk us through that because I think that'll set us up for understanding, you know, where you are today.

It's been a long journey. So I started in breast cancer and breast surgery and reconstruction after cancer removal. And all this started honestly when my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. She was diagnosed 2 years before I finished medical school and I decided I should find a cure for breast cancer. So that's why I really get heavy into it, dive really hard into it. But at the end, I realized that for my mom, I couldn't really understand for somebody with no family history, no risk factors, nothing, living healthy, doesn't even smoke or drink or or do anything outside the usual normal life, end up with breast cancer out of all her sisters and mother, grandmother, whatever. I couldn't really figure out. And I realized that there's something went wrong along the way that nobody could discover. I couldn't figure out. Then I moved from the US to Canada and they asked me to start all over again. So I couldn't really fathom the whole idea about why healthcare is so reactive. I jumped into emergency medicine thinking that I'm gonna make a difference. And at the end, I realized that it's only transaction. You see the patient, you keep them alive. Like we used to say in the emergency medicine, keep them alive till 8:05 till they hand over to the next and they keep coming back again. No difference has been made.

Yeah.

So I decided, you know what, I'm gonna go for something a little bit more that I can make a difference. Went into chronic pain management thinking that I can make a difference and help patient with pain. And again, realized that chronic pain management is limited by resources, by billing codes, by patient has got problems, but we actually can prevent it from happening. And this will really ignite the whole desire of what if I can prevent people from getting chronic pain in the first place? What if I can help them don't get chronic condition, right? We realize at one point that chronic pain is a multi-system organ failure. Things has to go really bad for a patient to end up with chronic pain, right? Whether it's arthritis, whether it's a bad habit, bad choices they made along the way.

Mm-hmm.

So then I jumped into longevity, anti-aging, and regenerative medicine and preventive medicine and really opened my eye to the possibilities that what healthcare could be in the future. Yeah.

Well, that's, you know, sort of a typical story for us, right? I mean, you know, you start out well-intended, realize the limitations of the system that you've been trained in, and then for one reason or another, step into an alternative universe of possibilities and then realize, oh my gosh, there's a lot over here that we can actually do that nobody's talking about. So what do you— how does that translate for you now? What kind of people are you seeing? What are you actually doing? Are you still focused on pain or cancer? Or you're talking about prevention, but I don't know, that's a kind of a broad term. Maybe you can be a little more specific.

Yeah, I'm pushing towards personalized medicine, honestly. So what I say by personalized medicine, what I learned in medical school many years ago was you don't go to the doctor unless you are sick.

Right.

And the problem is the healthcare system doesn't reward financially physician for treating healthy patients. Like, there are no actual codes in any of the countries or the continent that I work in that will pay me as a physician if I treat a healthy patient. What are you treating for? You know what I mean? What, what condition? Like, what is the condition that I can bill for? Nothing, right? You need to be sick so that I'll be able to make money. And that's really restricted by resources, billing system, and old habits that's been there for hundreds of years, right?

Yep.

But what if I change this narrative to, let's look into your biology, how much your biology diverted from what it was in your, in your teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, and whatever, right? How can I optimize your biology? I need to really be able to see you Right, or understand your biology where it is today and how I can reverse it by changing your habits. Four things that we can do: sleep, nutrition, and exercise, and supplements. Right? If I can help you with this, make you aware of healthy choices, change your habits. I can actually prevent heart conditions, prevent brain conditions. I can prevent chronic conditions like blood pressure and And diabetes and arthritis and all this, because we are not made to run out. We're not made to expire. We're not made really to wear out. Your heart and brain and joints are not made to wear out. They wear out because of bad choices that we've made along the way, right? Whether it's eating sugar, chronic inflammation, or whatnot. So I shifted all my focus and the company focus now to preventive medicine.

Right.

We need to see where the patients are at now, where's their biology, and we can optimize it through many ways that we developed ourselves, through pathways that we've been testing for years. Science have been really generous in the last few years, and research has been crazy into regenerative medicine, longevity. If I can give your body, even if you have a problem, if I can give your body the ability or the tools to heal, That's what we're planning to do. It will heal itself.

Got it. Okay. Well, there is some biology around aging as well, right? Cells divide, telomeres get short, senescent cell burden picks up, hormone levels drop, thyroid drops off. I mean, there are some underlying currents of aging, you know, the whole hallmarks of aging that kind of spin up together and play off each other and accelerate the aging process as we go. So, you know, one of the things that we focus on is actually understanding where somebody is in that circle, if you will, of the hallmarks of aging, the longevity drivers themselves, the aging drivers themselves, and then working to construct therapies that are also addressing that area of it, as well as, you know, the usual more obvious things like, you know, your weight, your metabolic disorders, heart disease, things like that. They're all built on top of each other. So we feel like you have to kind of deconstruct across all of those things to figure it out.

But wouldn't that make you feel that aging should be classified as a condition, not just a phase? If you really know, if we really know, because what is a condition? If I know diabetes has got signs, symptoms, I can diagnose it, and I can treat it, right? I consider diabetes as a condition. If I have hallmarks that I can see for aging, if I can test your mitochondria today, or test your epigenetics, and see there is some disruption in it, That we can reverse it. In my opinion, aging should be classified as a condition, could be stopped, could be reversed, and could be prevented as well. Yeah.

No, 1,000%. I mean, it's the ultimate condition, right? It's the ultimate condition upon which all the other conditions really rest, or ride, or float, whatever you want to describe it. So, yeah, I think it's definitely a condition. I mean, as you know, the FDA doesn't classify it as one. I think, What I've been impressed with is the reductionist thinking that occurs in medicine, right? It's very reductionist. In other words, everybody gets sliced and diced up into a, you know, 100 different parts. And now we got a, you know, a skin specialist and a heart specialist and a brain specialist and an eye specialist, right? So it's very reductionist. And then it's also reductionist in terms of the kind of leaning into this very Newtonian concept of biology, right, where it's just its pathways and its receptors and its molecules and things are fitting together and not fitting together. I mean, it's It's actually so much more than that. There's so much going on when you think about the mind-body interaction, right? The way the brain, the way the nervous system is interfacing with all this. And then you've got, you know, quantum energy fields. We know that biology is not Newtonian, it's actually quantum. You know, you see this in many different aspects of human biology as well as, you know, plant biology, for example. And it gives you a much broader and deeper appreciation of the interconnectedness of all of it. One of the things that we're working on over here is developing a full-on systems biology approach to the entire human being integrating across multiple areas, right? Because we know that all of them are important. And if we just focus on one, we're, you know, we're kind of oversimplifying, right? And we're trying to move beyond that reductionist thought process where it's just, well, it's just this. It's not just this. It's this plus, you know, all the other things that feed into it, right? So, but it makes the field eternally fascinating, quite honestly, because at the same time that it's expanding, it's also becoming more refined to where, you know, what we're doing here now is actually looking for what we call the elegant solution. Once you actually leverage AI and other pieces that we're putting in place to find out where, you know, what's at the root, not only the root cause, not what's the symptom, what's the root cause, but what's the root cause of the root cause. And then what actually sits maybe even below that to where we can actually start to move things from a very fundamental foundational level and adjust the entire system, right? As opposed to treating on the surface, I mean, traditional medicine is classic for, you got a symptom? Oh, we'll throw a salve on that. We'll, you know, we'll take it out. We'll put it in. Well, you know, whatever.

That's right.

But it's a very superficial, unsophisticated construct of thinking. And so what we're trying to do is to move into a more systematic biology, systems biology approach. And it's been very rewarding so far. So it sounds like that's a path that you're kind of leaning into as well.

We are. We are. We're trying to bring the human biology and help the body really restore its function as a holistic approach, right? If we're able to do this and put some standards, because right now, as you know, the longevity field is just a cowboy field. Everybody's jumping in. Everybody's talking about Those want to push peptides, those want to push hormone replacement, those want to push some sort of supplement or a new treatment, right? What should it be? I think serious providers, serious healthcare should take this in their hand away from influencers and really should be science-based. What is your mitochondria telling us and what should be done to fix it back? And with less is more approach that I really use in our clinics, not pounding the patient with the hundreds of supplements and expensive treatment. Just less is more. What could really treat your— or bring your biology back, give your body healthy factors. And as you know, the body has got everything that it needs. It just needs a little push, right? Yeah. To be able to heal itself, which actually the most inspiring thing that I've seen in the last few years that A lot of people are inspired to really veer away from the chronic healthcare condition, medication, pharmaceutical that have been treating the patient for a long time, and they're really looking to heal themselves from within, which, like you said, you know what I mean? It goes system by system, and a lot of people are seeking that now, which is quite impressive to see that this is not becoming a trend. I think this is the new wave, and I think a lot of people believe in it. A lot of people are Standing behind it. And we couldn't be lucky enough just to live at this time to see everybody's just pushing for that.

Yeah, I would agree with that. It is inspiring. I think people are kind of reverting back to something that's intuitively true for them, right? And which is a systems approach. I also think that it's interesting to see that the thought process that's kind of been instilled in us in Western medicine has kind of been picked up by the biohacking community and now by the longevity community, which is that Oh, there's a problem. Well, you should take this, or there's a problem, you should do this. And nobody's actually really doing the deconstruction of that individual to actually understand what's actually going on for them. And that's why you have so many, you know, therapies that seemingly don't work, not because they're a bad therapy, but they were misapplied, right? They weren't applied or they weren't applied in the right sequence or with the right timing or with the right adjuncts. And so just if you're listening to this, you have to understand that it's really through deep, deep, deep understanding of the individual. The deconstruction process is actually even more important than the therapeutic process because once you deconstruct and you fully understand somebody, then you actually know which therapies to choose, how to use them, when to use them, and what sequence and combination. And that's how you get to where you actually want to go. So yeah.

Yeah, like I tell them in my clinic, it's all about patient selection, you know what I mean? And it's not only understanding the condition, understanding the patient needs, right? Because A lot of people don't understand that what will benefit you might not really what I'm looking for. You know what I mean? You're leading an active life. I'm in the clinic and in the office most of the days, and I just need to get through my day and go to the gym and see my young kids. So there's not even a single individual that age the same way, even if we live like almost identical lives. Nobody age the same way. Everybody's got different needs.

That's right.

Right. And that's why I usually get involved in the patient intake significantly. I understand what they want, what they need, what's the biggest win to get them into the program, to get them see actual results fast. And then after that, you build the trust, you build the credibility. And then we don't push any treatments. We don't sell or oversell. Patient actually has to qualify for what we're doing so that we can get them to the next stage or next level. Mm-hmm. Not if you have the money that you can join and have the membership. Not at all. You have to really qualify, and we need to understand for the first three months what is going on, and if you're going to be committed or not to what we're doing, and this is how we work together, right? But it really has to be two ways. What's really exciting that patients now are partners in their health, right? It's not like I used to see patients all my life, and. I usually do medication review. And the first time when I was a surgeon or ER or a pain specialist, I ask, why are you taking this medication? And I can tell you that probably 80% of the patients don't even know the name of the medication.

Mm-hmm.

Better don't know what they were given the medication for, right? And I always tell the patient, if I give you a sandwich, you're gonna ask me what is in this sandwich. How come when your physician give you a medication or tell you to do something, you didn't even ask?

Mm-hmm.

Right? Why are you taking this? So now we see the patient mindset change to actually asking and becoming a partner and coming with questions and going on AI and the platform and asking why we're doing this. I need to understand this. And it's really, really inspiring both ways from healthcare providers, from systems, and from the patient getting really involved and they become more committed. You get the buy-in and you know that the patient compliance will really be significant when they, when we both agree on a, on a plan.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you really want people that are, that are bought into the, into the process. In order for that to happen though, they have to be empowered, right? And people won't do that if they're disempowered. And I think what happened in the old paradigm was they were very disempowered. The doctor knows everything. The doctor's gonna give you this. You're just supposed to take it, you know, and they were very disempowered. Coward, right? And I think one of the beauties of, you know, when Google came around 20 years ago or 25 years ago, and then AI has come around now in the last couple of years, people are, are more empowered to actually understand, to question, to criticize, to, to want an explanation. And I think, I think that's actually really, really wonderful because now you have people that are empowered and they, they want, they want the result, right? And we want the result for them. Well, let's work together to get it right. And so now you, to your point, you're collaborating and building trust and relationship as you move forward, as opposed to this very, uh, I don't know, kind of archaic power dynamic, right? The doctor's up here in the white coat and you're down there and you don't know anything and he's gonna tell you, I mean, or she. So I think it's very refreshing, quite honestly.

It is. It is. I remember one of my mentors years ago when the patient asked question, he asked, are you a doctor? No. Okay. Take the medication and I'll see you in a month.

Yeah.

That was the answer. You know, it was just disheartening to see that, right? When the patient asks questions, or you have an elderly patient coming with their grandkids to ask questions, understand, you know what I mean? And you don't even give them 5 minutes to answer. Now the patient comes with a lot of questions, and you know that the treatment will work. Those are responsibilities. It's a partnership. Like I said, it's a collaboration, and the patient will take the responsibility to do what exactly needs to be done.

Yeah, I know. It's a great thing. So what are the things that, that you're kind of leaning into in your clinic? Obviously you've added different diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. What are, what are some of the things that you're focusing on or utilizing or systems you're developing? Tell us a little bit about what goes on for you.

So we adopt that longevity is really about adding life to your years. It's not about adding years to your life.

Sure.

It's add about adding life to your years. And doing that, it doesn't need to be tiring. It doesn't need to be overwhelming. As I always say, it's not really only for the rich and wealthy and celebrities. Most of what you need is actually free. You need to get good sleep, nutrition, exercise, and supplement all this, right? We know the hallmarks of aging, like you said. We know that the epigenetics and the DNA breaks down, and that could be fixed. Now, so we're using stem cells for that. We're using MSCs for that, and we know that the mitochondria breaks down. So we're using various peptides. We're using exosomes for that, and we know that a lot of cells accumulates that release some toxins and whatnot. And those usually we we treat them with therapeutic plasma exchange, but we go beyond that through using AI. So we're building our own AI right now to monitor patients. through their wearable 24/7. So the patient come in, we do genetic testing. And again, we do the genetic testing to know if there is any cancers, what's going on, and what's the risk for pushing the patient beyond their boundaries, right? I need to understand how far I can push. And we work with really motivated individuals. That being said, we classify them into 2 major categories. The optimizers, the people that really involved in their health and they come with a lot of questions like you said and they come with a lot of research that they've done or seekers. Our seekers are, they have a problem. They're fed up with the traditional healthcare, fed up with the cortisone injection in the back or the spine or the surgery that they needed to do or we have patients that we work together. We work in brain health recently and we're trying a few things And we have a protocol for that that really getting close to advanced dementia and they want to reverse that or stabilize it or whatnot. So we're looking into brain health, heart health, and MSK. Through monitoring them 24/7, we collect this data, we combine it with all the diagnostics that we've done, and we look at the patient 24/7, right?

We have—

we're developing our metrics now to what's normal, what's not. And every patient that we add, AI gets a little bit smarter.

Mm-hmm.

And we develop our own pathways and we monitor them. And then we get a pattern for what is the health, what's normal for this patient. Like if they're good to function through like 5 or 6 hours of sleep, okay, we need to get them back in 3 months and we test the mitochondria again. We need to look into this and see if their sleep pattern was in 5 or 6 hours is enough or you don't feel enough. If the patient is tired, how can we manage this? And we try things and we manage it in real time, right? So if I give the patient melatonin today or I give them a peptide today, I can monitor them for the next week and see what is the side effects, what is the benefit, and I can in real time change it, call the patient, change it, ask the patient to come to the clinic or to go to the nearest center that we deal with and have an infusion, have a discussion with an analyst, have a discussion with a A nutritionist, a naturopath, or they need a longevity doctor to discuss with them what's the next step, what's their diet looks like, what's the calories intake, what's calories in, calories out, steps, all this through AI monitoring. I, I'm really quite nosy that I couldn't wait long enough to see the patient in 3 months. So we developed this AI so I'd be able to really sneak peek on my patient 24/7.

Hmm. Right.

And give them the advice that needs to be done right away. The patient will get advice on a daily basis. Sometimes if there's something that really doesn't fit within this patient, say their heart rate is going fast, their sleep is really erratic, or their oxygen, or if they're having pain and the blood pressure or whatever is not working right, we can intervene right away.

Yeah.

And this is really a win-win. That we're looking forward to launch very shortly, right? It will be a phase 1 for us. It will be the phase 2 for the patient. And think about it like this. I always tell my staff, think about it like Jarvis in Iron Man, right? And I wanna wake up and say, okay, how is this patient doing today? And I get a full report right away in front of me. This patient didn't sleep well. This patient didn't eat well. This patient was stressed yesterday. He had meetings. You know what I mean? We'll send them advice in real time. What to do and what not to do.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that's perfect. I think one of the things that we learned from continuous glucose monitors was that there's no better feedback than real-time feedback, right? Yep. So the idea of having to wait in between visits, yeah, using the wearable data. Yeah, we're big fans of this as well.

So, but, but imagine, imagine in, in a year from now, I will have 365 days worth of data, right?

Mm-hmm.

I will know, I, I know this patient's health better than anybody else, better than the regular physician specialist, better than the patient himself. Right. And we'll understand what's going on. So we're hoping with AI to predict if the patient continues on this pattern, what his or her health will be 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now.

That's right.

You know what I mean? And we'll be able to show this to the patient right away. If you continue on this path, you will end up with a heart attack. You'll end up hurting your back, knees, joints, right? If you're not following those instructions, 20 years from now, I think you'll need a hip replacement, knee replacement, or spine surgery.

Yeah.

Or if you don't slow down smoking or drinking, your liver is gonna have a problem. You, you're gonna end up aging faster than you should be and so forth, right? So with this data, we're able now with the AI to literally analyze this data and predict Years ahead where this patient health is going.

I think that's right. It's powerful when people can see that in a visual. We're working on a very similar thing here that's integrated into our EMR and has the ability to do that as well, right? All HIPAA compliant. I think that's, it's really powerful. I think, you know, one of the other things that we really focus on here is realizing that it's the nervous system that controls everything, right? As people age so much more quickly, When they're stressed all the time, when they have unresolved traumas, when they're, you know, living in reaction to things around them, when they don't have a sense of equanimity or transcendence or peace, right? Relationships aren't good. You know, a lot of self-talk that, you know, takes people down negative highways and pathways. And so we spend time also really working on what I would call the psycho-spiritual space, because we think that that really encapsulates all of the health pieces. And so, you know, the book I wrote, 100 Is the New 30, one of the Targets for us is that when we're 100 is we wanna have a 30-year-old body, maintain a 30-year-old body, but we wanna have a 300 or 3,000-year-old mind, right? With all the wisdom, transcendence, insight, perspective, right? Because then—

Yeah.

What we've seen is that you, you take so much pressure off of the hallmarks of aging, so much pressure off the biology when the nervous system is really dialed in and people can live from that place. So we feel like this is also super important and people are also intrigued by that as well.

So it is, it's been neglected for a long time. And it is, now we can measure the oxidative stress, what's the negative effect on the mitochondria, what's the negative effect on the chronic low-grade inflammation that cause a lot of chronic conditions. So you're absolutely right. It's actually, now I was reading over the weekend research into inflammaging and how oxidative stress—

Yeah.

Like significantly affect inflammaging and just that the whole system gets disrupted just by stress. You know what I mean? And, we all heard it years ago from our grandparents, you know what I mean? Don't stress or you're going to kill yourself. Don't stress or you're going to die. Don't stress or you're going to get a heart attack. And, we brushed it off, right? Now, the science confirms that. It's actually confirmed that all this will affect you and will kill you at one point if you don't stop.

Yeah, that's right. And, it's not just your health, it's actually the aging process itself that is literally slowed down When we, you know, de-stress the system, so to speak, which is really exciting to see because it's a big leverage point.

So what do you do for that now? Do you do vagal maneuvers? What's the breakthrough now in oxidative stress and minimizing?

The idea, I mean, oxidative stress is multifactorial. As you know, oxidative stress is the common denominator around inflammation, right? So the reason inflammation is bad is because it causes oxidative stress. So then you look at all the different genetics around how people are able to manage or not manage it. And then you actually help them in that regard. Then you actually try to decrease the oxidative stress that's being generated. And part of that is, of course, looking at the psychological stress that's going on. And so that has a big impact also on brain function, memory, and cognition, and movement, and balance, and all these other things, right? So we tend to focus on training the nervous system. Like, the whole thing comes down to training the nervous system, quite honestly— how you move, how you think, what you believe. And so in that, one of the common denominators, of course, is the balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. When somebody's in more of a zen state, we know that their, their whole system is more relaxed, right? And so we teach people how to access a parasympathetic nervous system state, whether it's through meditation or using different devices that can put them into a theta state, you know, a deep meditative theta state or alpha state. We teach them how to live life from a flow state as opposed to a stress state. The idea is not to meditate for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening and stress about your day. It's actually to go through life in a state of flow where, you know, you understand that everything is working in your favor. You know, I think most stress comes from people being attached to an outcome. Once you get attached to an outcome and it's not happening exactly the way you wanted it to, now you're stressed, right? But if you let go of that, if you set the same intention, but you don't attach yourself to the outcome, Now you kind of open up your system for, you know, God, the universe, life itself to bring in other solutions, other things you didn't know that were going to happen that actually ended up making it better, that shifted you 10 or 15 degrees away from where you thought you were going to end up, but it's actually better. There's a sense of kind of living in partnering with life rather than trying to overpower life, right?

Yeah.

We spend a lot of time trying to overpower life by being attached to an outcome and, gosh, we're going to work hard and we're going to We're going to struggle. We're going to make it happen. And we generate so much stress, and it really closes us off to the gift that life has to bring us every single day, simply by being in a state of equanimity and peace. Right? And so we teach people this, and we've had people make you know dramatic changes. Right? A lot of us, like people coming stressed. Yeah. So that's that's a big piece of it. Yeah.

Yeah. That that's it. That's incredible. That's really incredible. And you do that through books or sessions?

We do it however they connect. Right. So sometimes it's in conversation, talking with a therapist. Sometimes it's using devices that can put people into a meditative state. As I said, theta, you know, delta for sleep, alpha, gamma for flow. We've even had some people, you know, do some deep healing with psychedelic-assisted therapies. We don't do that ourselves, but we can refer people for that. That's nice.

Yeah.

Suffering with trauma, right? And getting the trauma healed and then being able to transcend it. to where you become grateful for everything that happened as opposed to living in reaction to it. Oh my gosh, takes so much stress out of your life. So it's super cool. Yeah.

It is. It is. Yeah.

So that's a piece of it too. I think one of the other things I'll just mention for the audience too is the idea of forgiveness, right? We, we can carry a lot of stress by not having either forgiven ourselves or other people in our lives. And, you know, right now, honey, you and I have unconditional positive regard for each other. Right? So that's fine. But if something were to violate trust between us, then what would happen is we would raise this sort of psychic barrier. We would actually pull it up. It's an energetic, almost field, like a field to protect ourselves from the other person, right? And we no longer allow unconditional positive regard to flow between us. And that hap— that can happen in the moment, but it can also happen historically. It's something you can, you can hold that up, you know, vis-à-vis your brother, your mother, your teacher, a bully at school, you know, whatever happened, a coach or whatever, and you're, you're Your psyche is being forced to hold up that barrier, right? And it's a psychic strain. And forgiveness, I've come to understand, is when you decide, after you've deeply understood the situation— what did I do? What did they do? What happened? Who were they?

Blah, blah, blah—

and you get to a point where it's like, oh, okay, I get it now. You know, Coach Whatever, you know, he grew up in some family that, you know, he was— and he was just doing what he thought was the right thing, and I happened to get the brunt of it. Okay, I get that. So, but forgiveness is when you take that barrier down. Like, if you're thinking, if you're listening to this, you're thinking about somebody that you have some conflict with. It could be an ex, it could be a whatever. And all of a sudden, you're going to just take that barrier down and say, I'm just going to let unconditional positive regard flow from me to that person and back. It's maybe I'm not going to call them up for lunch, but if there's any positive regard, I'm going to let it flow. I'm not going to put any barrier there. You can just feel how much more peace there is in your system, right?

It's just, yeah.

Yeah, it just takes all that energy away from being diverted into something that's not helping you. So it's, it's really quite beautiful. People make massive breakthrough here. You know, people break down, some of them end up in tears for the first time. They feel like, oh my gosh, I'm getting— I'm actually able to love myself, right? I didn't think I was worthy of that. There's so much of this going on. We love it because it just has such a massive impact on their ability to respond to regenerative therapies. There's data now that shows that when people are in a parasympathetic nervous system state, They will respond and heal much faster from a regenerative procedure than if they're stressed. And so we know that this is really a root cause of the root cause of the root cause, right? So it's like, this is really who we are.

So that's really nice. That's, that's the perspective that I hope a lot of providers can share and not just, you know what I mean, focus on supplementation or, or the clinical side. But yeah, but the psychological side is really strong.

Yeah, yeah, we think so too. We think so too. Yeah, it's a piece that we're integrating into our systems biology because it's all part of it, right? Well, it sounds like you've made a lot of progress in your field. It also sounds like that you're very happy doing what you are now relative to what you were doing before. I can tell you're excited.

It is. It's a passion project. And I was telling somebody earlier this morning that a few years back, I really was thinking, okay, I'm doing good. I'm successful. I'm doing chronic pain. I own my own practice. I own a few practices. practices, you know what I mean? But I really need to do more. I need to find a purpose, right? And my purpose was really— and I, I had to think about it a lot, and it took me quite a bit of time until I figured out I really need to make a difference, right?

Yeah.

And I really came to the regenerative medicine, longevity, anti-aging, and I think I can make a huge difference, you know what I mean? Little tweaks, little changes, helping people to make the right decision. Right? It will make a huge difference. And instead of just being reactive, why can't we be proactive? Right? And I hope really people will be— will really get inspired and like adopt that.

I think it's a wonderful thing that you're talking about. If you're listening to this, Hany, myself for that matter, you know, we were physicians that were trained, well-trained to do certain things, right? And when we decided to leave those fields, it took a big act of courage. Right?

It does.

A big act of courage, right? And I think all of life is built on courage. So many decisions are made by people for safety. I'm going to do this because it's going to, it's going to create a sense of safety for me, or that kind of thing, right? Whether it's career decisions, marriage decisions, whatever. And yet, I think all growth really comes from courage. And so when you, when you think about that, and maybe you're at some point in your life, maybe you're a a practitioner listening to this, maybe you're a client listening to it, but you're in a job that you don't really love. What he's talking about is transitioning away from doing something he was good at and well trained in into something he was passionate about and found purpose in. And I think that is really critical as well. Because when you're living from a sense of purpose, and not just to make money or feed your family or that sort of thing, and of course, you know, if you're, if you're living at a level where that's all that Really matters, then go for that. But if you have the luxury of actually thinking about, I could do something that would matter, I could do something that would actually help more people, that would not only help them, but it would help me in terms of helping them, right? I would feel better about myself and everything else. Then when you take those courageous decisions and you move away from your livelihood into your purpose and your passion, it's very life-giving. It's very life-giving.

It is. Yeah, it is. And I was asked this question before. There is a huge difference between success and fulfillment, right?

Oh, totally.

Success, we can measure success by, all right, what's your bank account? How many clinics? What's your net worth and whatnot? You know what I mean? But it's very easy to measure, but is it fulfilling?

Yeah, it's— yeah, I don't think that's the measure of success, quite honestly. I think it's one metric that people use, but it's like Saying how healthy are you by, you know, what's foot— what shoe size do you have? It's like, well, I guess, but that's not that relevant, you know?

Yeah. Being fulfilled is totally different. It's, it's when you're actually doing something good that will align with your ideology, with—

That's right.

With really— it was your, your mindset, right? And really doing that and helping others, this one you really feel fulfilled. And you, you feel it honestly in, in all walks of life that I've met, everybody that I met, conferences, CEOs, whatever, just giving back is the single most fulfilling thing that you'll ever do in your life. Just giving back, you know what I mean? And you can see it, you can see it on social media, you can see it, people will see how much fulfilling it was to give a stranger something back.

That's right.

You know what I mean? It's great. And Looking at that, it just, it just, I said, okay, I think, I think I lived a good part of my life being successful, but really didn't feel fulfilled. Now it's time to feel fulfilled.

That's right.

Just by giving back, helping, inspiring, right? It just, it just, it feels different. And it's much more a bigger life than what you lead just being trying to be successful, or like you said, measuring your life one way or another. Yeah, through success metrics.

Yeah, I agree with that completely. I think, you know, if you're listening to this, one of the questions that I've learned to ask myself to help me identify purpose and things like that— if you're sitting there thinking, you know, I'm doing this but I don't really like it that much— one thing you can ask yourself is, what, what is it that I could do that would bring me and others the most joy, right? What would bring me and others the most joy? And if— and then if you have the courage to say, okay, There it is. I'm going to go do that. I'm going to, you know, buy lunch for a stranger, or I'm going to build a village for people, or, you know, whatever it is. But what would bring me the most joy? And what would wake me up that I could go to work and experience the most joy and then see other people around me experience joy? I think for me, that's been a very centering kind of question. Maybe other people would find that helpful too. I don't know.

It is. It is. And I get the privilege of mentoring a lot of young entrepreneurs, right? And they like the business idea, they like what they're doing, you know, but they don't love it and it's not really fulfilling. But they found themselves in this opportunity. So I tell them this, you know what I mean? For the next week or 2 weeks, do a small thing for a stranger every day. You know what I mean? The guy who opens the door for you or—

That's right.

The cleaner in the clinic or whatever, and just give them a coffee card, right? I'll be in a coffee shop in the morning and said, you know what, this is yours, this sandwich, this coffee or whatever. I'll be at the airport and I'll buy a Starbucks coffee card and I give it to the first guy that I meet today at customs, at the border, whatever. And then after a week, tell me if that's not fulfilling, what will be? In your life. And honestly, 9 out of 10, they come back and feel happy. I said, I think I'm on track to find something fulfilling to do. Right?

Yeah, no, I think that's right. It's really, you know, it's in helping others that we find joy ultimately, right? Whether it's raising kids or taking care of a spouse or, you know, a family or a practice or other people we don't know. Yeah, that's really beautiful.

It is. And Honestly, for anybody listening, you know what I mean? If, if you haven't figured out what makes you happy, if you haven't figured out what fulfills you, just do this simple exercise every day. Do something small to a stranger, right? Whether at the grocery store, whether you're traveling at the airport, at work, something that you absolutely don't know, you know what I mean? And sometimes just at Starbucks, I buy a few really small gift cards from Starbucks or whatever. Right? And I said, okay, I'm gonna give those three to the first three that I'm gonna meet today. Starbucks gift cards, right? It's just so fulfilling, and it helped me a lot on my career to feel good about myself, to understand myself more, and what makes me happy.

Yeah, I love that. I love that, honey. Well, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Where can people find you? How do people learn more about what you're doing?

It's been really a pleasure, and I really enjoyed our conversation. But I'm always on social media: Instagram, Dr. Hani Damien, Facebook, Dr. Hani Damien, LinkedIn. You can get me on my website, drdamien.com. Keep in mind that Dr. Damien, D-R-D-E-M-I-A-N dot com. And if you have any questions, if anybody listening has questions, but be prepared that I'm going to answer questions back. I will drill deep into habits, into stress, into longevity. And if anybody of the listeners would like to join this journey and feel that they're disciplined, they're committed to the to the goal, I'll be very happy to help in any any which way.

Sure, appreciate that. Okay, well thanks again.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. How do we live young for a lifetime? How do we make 100 the new 30? The answers are out there, and we're bringing them to you every episode. Make sure you're subscribed, check out more episodes right here, and follow us on social media so you never miss a breakthrough. Thanks for listening.