Maria Shriver's Blueprint for Elevating Women's Health

You can actually eat for your brain.

That's right.

And you can actually live a life that will be as long as you possibly can. And I wish someone had talked to me about this when I was 30 or when I was a young mother.

Hey, everybody, this week's guest on the Doctor's Pharmacy is Maria Shriver, who's a powerhouse of a woman and a human being, is advocating for how we transform our thinking around Alzheimer's, women's health, self-care, agency around health, and has actually shared her own health data and we found some surprising things about her health that are preventing her from being fully superwoman. She's kind of almost superwoman, but she's going to be full of superwoman after this. You're going to learn about that and how you can use that information also to up level your health. We talked about function health and the work we've done to help empower people around their own health data and have agency and become the CEO of their own health. So I think you're going to love this conversation with Maria Shriver. Maria, it's so great to have you.

On the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. Welcome. Thank you. I feel like I've arrived. I'm on your podcast. Wow. It's a big deal for me.

Yeah, you said you skipped out on a meeting with the president to come here.

I actually did. I was the first lady. Travel day. Yes. Because I had made a commitment to you.

Well, thanks for being on the podcast. We're gonna talk about a lot of things today because you've really been in the thick of dealing with how to make our healthcare system better and how to make our approach to Alzheimer's better and how to deal with women's health, which really has been neglected as part of medical science. And you just came back from Washington with an incredible initiative that potentially is going to get $12 billion to focus on women's research. And it's basically talking about how we're really neglecting dealing with the fundamental things that people need to know about their health and the things that we need to know to actually make women's lives better, health better, and just the rest of us. So, I mean, your work as an advocate, as a spokesperson, as a champion for those who aren't getting champion is really inspiring. And I saw your speech in the White House the other day, and it was just really amazing. And in that speech, you talked about your mom, which I'd never really heard the story before. I knew about JFK, John F. Kennedy, who had a lot of health issues. He had Addison's disease. He had gut issues. He had back pain. And I've always thought he had undiagnosed celiac disease because it kind of connects the dots on a lot of his symptoms. But I didn't know about your mother. So maybe you could share a little bit about the struggles your mother had because I think it's emblematic of the kinds of things that people have in America today. Women have, and even men that don't get addressed. They're chronic symptoms, they're neglected, they go doctor after doctor, they don't get the help they need, and they're confused, and they're suffering needlessly, and there is a way out. And we're going to talk about how people can find out more about their health. But can you share your mom's story and what it was like growing up.

And what you kind of, you know? Well, it was interesting because my niece was at the White House when I talked about my mother very briefly in my speech, and she was like, I didn't know that we were allowed to talk about grandma like that. And she said, and I appreciated that you didn't talk about it in a gossipy way, but you talked about it in an empowering way. And so I'm an only daughter. I have four brothers. And really throughout my life... -DEBORAH: It.

Made you pretty tough.

-Juanita: yeah. Well, it's made me, I think, understanding of men, but also how to work, certainly in a man's world, which is what I started when I started in journalism, which was totally, male dominated. But my mother, while I was growing up, was always, quote, sick. She had stomach issues, technically gut issues, and the medication she was given for that gave her sleep issues and that sort of stuff. And so she would go from doctor to doctor trying to find out exactly what was wrong with her. So she ate what I think now is called a low FODMAP diet. She ate kind of bland food, as did my grandmother. My mother was told she had Addison's disease, but I think she only was given that diagnosis because her brother was given that diagnosis. Yes, President Kennedy. And I think they didn't know what was wrong with her, so they just said, oh, well, you have a brother who has that, so you have it. And so they treated her for that, even though she never had that. But pretty much my entire life, she was trying to figure out what was wrong with her, quote, stomach. That's how it was explained. And Nobody spoke about celiac disease, but they did eat food that was bland. They did talk kind of amongst themselves about stomach issues. But I watched my mother kind of try to get answers. I watched her being told to rest, being told that she was perhaps under stress. And this was- It was dismissive. Well, yeah, it was dismissive. And it was at the same time as somebody who was building the largest movement in the world for people with intellectual disabilities. So telling somebody- She created the Special Olympics. She changed. the really the government for how we deal with people with intellectual disabilities, how we deal with child development issues. The Institute at NIH bears her name because she lobbied her brother to create that. And that was because her sister Rosemary had intellectual disabilities. Correct. And so she took what was her family's pain and really turned it into purpose. And I witnessed that growing up. So even though she struggled mightily with her health, she also worked, as she would say, her can off to try to change the world for families like hers who didn't have sports programs for people with intellectual disabilities, didn't have camps, didn't have housing, didn't have education, and tried to change the world for people like her sister. But I watched her struggle while doing that with her own health. And I never as a daughter understood what was going on. And then eventually I became her caregiver.

Mm-.

And witnessed all of the different things she was taking to try to get some relief from what she was feeling. But I think she is kind of indicative of so many women, you know, being told to relax.

Yeah.

Doctors weaving their eyes, thinking it's hormonal.

Yeah.

Thinking they're hysterical, which is why women were not included in trials, 'cause they were not, quote, dependable clinical trial subjects, because they were, quote, hysterical at certain times of the month. So I think that's one of the big reasons we're so far behind. So she would be happy if I were using this story to close the research gap when it comes to women, but she would not want me to dwell on it.

No, but, you know, Mirah, so many people walk around not feeling great.

Yeah.

And whether it's, you know, really serious things like irritable bowel that can be incapacitating, or whether it's things just like feeling tired or not quite at your best or a little brain fog or, lower energy or sleep issues. And people just think these are normal things. And we were talking a little bit earlier about how you've been noticing more fatigue and other issues and you're a go-getter, you kind of run 100 miles an hour, but you're not feeling as you did. And you go to doctors and doctors and your doctors really don't ask how you are, what's going on.

Well, I go to the doctor and all my blood tests are always good within normal range. And I really take a preventative approach to my health or I try to. I think as we age, we think, okay, well, certain things just come with aging, right? But what I think is exciting in this space is there are people like you and so many others who are saying, you don't have to, quote, feel bad as you age. Longevity is something to work towards. You can live well, I think, if you also start young. I think that's another big thing. People weren't talking to me. when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s about, you know, living a healthy long life. They weren't talking to me about the power of nutrition, mental health, emotional and spiritual health. That wasn't in the zeitgeist like it is today. But I think for so many millions of women, even this conversation, they're like, oh, great, but I'm taking care of kids. I have a full time job. I'm taking care of my parents. Where am I going to get the time?

Yeah.

To go to five doctors to figure out what's up with me. where am I going to get that kind of time to prioritize my own health to get on the preventative bandwagon? The thing about it, Maria, 60 years.

Since your mom was going from doctor to doctor, even as the sister of the president of the United States, she still couldn't get answers. And the same thing is happening today because people don't have access to the right kind of information or care. You said you go to your doctor, you said, I'm feeling a little this and I feel a little that. And they're like, well, I don't know, you must be stressed. And it's the same thing, your mother God, your tests are fine. I don't know what's wrong with you, but it's probably all your head in the subtext, right?

Yeah.

I said to you, when I came in here, am I gonna die? And you said, yes. But I was like, Not right away. But not right away.

Yeah, we're all gonna die, I think, unless we can figure out how to hack aging.

But some people are trying to hack aging.

Some people are trying to hack aging. It's crazy. It is. I'm not a big fan of, you know, the don't die movement, but I do think we can live better. Is there a don't die movement?

There is.

There is a guy who's trying to figure out how to not die. I saw that. Brian Johnson's been on the podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to not die, which, you know, is a great experiment for the rest of us to from. But for you, it's striking to me that it's almost a parallel story. You go to the doctor, you get your checkup, you say, I'm not feeling as well as I used to. Maybe you're not having the serious issues that your mom had, but there's a sense of a dwindling health in things that are not optimal. And you don't really have access to.

The kind of care, even though you could access anybody in the world. I try to access you.

I'm coming on the podcast so I can access you. You get a free pass.

You'll be a patient. No, but I think you were, you know, we've known each other for quite a long time. And I think talking to functional doctors, I think looking, I've always been someone who looked at alternative. You know, I was always into acupuncture and to what else was out there.

Yeah.

I've always been that kind of person as a reporter looking for what else is out there that I don't know about. Are there alternative forms of medical care that can help you feel better in the moment? And I've never been a big, Pill person myself, you know, so I've never even when I remember when I was getting divorced, somebody said, well, you want to take, you know, some medication because you're depressed. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. I want to feel this. Yeah. No judgment at all against people who do. That's not necessary. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I have lots of friends for whom it's been incredibly helpful. But I think that that's a reaction really to watching my mother. My my reaction to all of that is watching my mother be prescribed everything. So I had a reaction like, I don't want to take anything. because I watched that up close. So I think we all have a reaction sometimes to what happened with our parents or watching our parents, and I certainly do.

Yeah. And so despite your going to the best doctors, you're still not getting the right Diagnostics and, and the right information about what's really going on under the hood for you. And you recently did some blood tests with function Health.

Yes, I did.

We found a lot of interesting things.

I did some blood tests with function Health.

Nothing, nothing catastrophic, but it's the little things that that we can find early and that can help us on that sort of transition from wellness to illness and kind of turn back that tide. And we're going to get into it in a minute, but it also strikes me that your work around your father, who, Sergeant Triver, who started the Peace Corps, for those who don't know, because maybe there's people in their 20s who never heard of President Kennedy or anything. I don't know. It's amazing. You'll believe it. I actually had a friend who, when I turned 64, she She put on a Beatles song for me on the YouTube. It was, you know, when I turned 64.

Yeah.

And she's like, look, there's the Beatles. And it was like a cover band. And she didn't actually know who the Beatles were.

So.

Wow. Really? Really. So I'm just saying, Sergeant Driver was.

The father of the Peace Corps. And- and the war on poverty. Yeah, the war on poverty. And Job Corps. And what we now know as AmeriCorps and foster grandparents. So much, yeah. Legal services for the poor. All of these. And I say that because these programs came out of his brain. They came out of his creativity. They came out of him being somebody who worked in government, but who was also incredibly creative in that role, which isn't usually what you hear in government. He was restless, he was creative, he was driven, he was relentless. And he was an incredible intellectual. He went to Yale, was the editor of the Yale Daily News, went to Yale Law School. So he was, served in the war on a submarine, his mind was extraordinary. So watching a mind like that, that could create all of these things that could come up with ways of getting the past and turned into real programs that helped and still helped millions of people, to watch that go to, like, I don't know what a fork is. I thought to myself, now I have to try to understand this. First I wanted to try to understand it. What is that? What happens in the brain? When does that happen to the brain? Was there something that we could have done? Was there something we missed? And so that began a journey for me. First as a reporter, then as an author, then as a documentarian, then as a film producer.

Advocate, and now you're working with Cleveland Clinic.

And then really, as I went through it, I was noticing actually what led me to women was I was noticing that more and more women seemed to have Yes. And when I went to all the researchers, they would say to me, no, that's just because women live longer. That's the only reason. And I was like, no, I don't think that's true. And so I partnered with the Alzheimer's Association and we did a report that took two years. I was first lady of California at the time. It was called the Shriver Report. And we changed the narrative single-handedly around Alzheimer's to put women at the front and center of that disease because it turned out that women were two-thirds of those who got Alzheimer's. And so now when you talk about Alzheimer's, People talk about women being disproportionately impacted. I started the Women's Alzheimer's Movement to fund research into what is that? What's happening in women's brains in their 50s or their late 40s that might make them more susceptible in their 70s.

Yeah, no, this is such an important point. And we're gonna get back to your own lab test, 'cause it sort of speaks to how do we focus on prevention or finding the things that are out of balance that actually can lead to disease. and I think your dad, I got the chance to meet him and your mom in church actually. That's the best place to meet them.

That's where they were every day.

I'm a Jew, went to church. It was okay, I went to Sunday Mass.

That's good, because you have to be educated about all religions.

It takes all of us. But I knew who he was and to see him in that state of kind of mid-stage Alzheimer's was really heartbreaking. And I think for me, a lot of my work has been around, how do we prevent these things? And now your work is like, well, why does this happen? How can we detect it early? what are the things we know about the disease that can make a difference and prevent this trajectory from, you know, a brilliant mind to basically an absent mind.

Right.

And so your work a lot has been trying to sort of navigate the, the understanding of the root causes and how do we look at these things and how do we get more research about it and how do we detect things early? And the good news is there's a lot of things that we can do. And we know, for example, in Alzheimer's, that diet plays a huge role. Exercise plays a role. The nutritional status plays a role, B12 and vitamin D and methylation. We know the toxins play a role, that the gut microbiome plays a role, that insulin resistance and blood sugar play a role. So these are all modifiable risk factors.

People don't think of preventing Alzheimer's. They think of preventing heart disease. Well, I think what's interesting about that is that when I've been in the kind of Alzheimer's advocacy space for 20 years, because my dad was diagnosed in 2003, and lifestyle was not a part of the conversation when he was originally diagnosed. And then when, as I started researching it as a reporter and started been looking at women and trying to understand what was happening in women, I said, is there anything women, is it lifestyle connected? Is there anything we're doing, how we live, is it menopause, any of these things that everybody's like, no, no, lifestyle has nothing to do with any of this. Jump to today. In the last five years, there's been a sea change around how we talk about Alzheimer's, about saying now you have people saying, well, maybe half of these cases could be preventable due to lifestyle choices made early on, right, what you're talking about. That was when I started, it was only plaques and tangles. Plaques and tangles, right? That's tau, plaques and tangles.

Amyloid, yes, it's basically the stuff that.

Happens in the brain. Right. She's talking about that. But no one spoke about the importance of exercise. Nobody spoke about diet. Nobody spoke about nutrition in the brain. So I think this is a sea change in the Alzheimer's space. Nobody even talked about prevention of Alzheimer's. We opened the first Women's Alzheimer's Prevention Center at the Cleveland Clinic. And everybody's like, you can't say that. And I was like, why not? Yeah, you absolutely can.

Yeah, but now you can. The data's there. I mean, it's interesting, you know, you know the data, but anybody, we've spent billions and billions of dollars on drug discovery for Alzheimer's, all of which have failed miserably, in my opinion. Maybe we delay the admission to nursing home by a few months, and that's a grand success. But the only trials that I've seen that really have shown a difference in slowing or even reversing it have been aggressive lifestyle intervention trials like the Finger Trial where they use a multimodal intervention of lifestyle, diet, exercise, so forth, and then aggressively treating risk factors. And they showed that they were able to slow or even reverse the cognitive decline. And then Richard Isaacson's work, you know, you know very well, he's done even a more personalized approach where he looks at their biomarkers and those are nutritional levels and customizes and personalized approach to what's going on. And it's had tremendous success compared to like what we see in typical medicine. Dale Bredesen, who also has been doing this, I've treated many Alzheimer's patients. And by doing this, by taking a deep look at their biology and their biomarkers, their nutritional status, their metabolic status, their hormonal status, their toxin levels, their gut health, all these things we can actually modify and change the trajectory of people's health. And that's really why we created Function Health was to help people identify things early on and not just kind of wait until something really serious happened.

When we talk about women and Alzheimer's, so it disproportionately, as I said, Alzheimer's disproportionately impacts women, but also disproportionately impacts black and brown women, right? And so, so many people don't have access to really what you're talking about, you know, some of these more kind of concierge medicine approaches. looking at biomarkers and looking at, so I'm really interested in how to democratize all of this to make it accessible to people who don't have money, who might be in maternal health deserts, who might be in just health deserts, period. So with the Prevention Center, I always looking at how do we bring this kind of home? How do we bring this, the education to people? How do we bring doctors who can talk about this in a way that people aren't scared? Yeah, I think the conversation, I do a lot of work around how do you speak about this in a way that people can go, oh, I don't have to be so scared. Oh, maybe I could do this today. Maybe I could do this tomorrow. Bringing it kind of to Main Street is the challenge. I think it's right.

I mean, we need to democratize the information out there because it's not there's a lack of information or knowledge or scientific evidence. It's just that it hasn't been presented to the public in a way that they can access and use, and they have to go through the firewall of the health care system and the doctor who is not to his or her detriment has not been trained. My daughter's in medical school now and like, Rachel, have you learned about insulin resistance or microbiome or nutrition or toxins? Like, no, like the things that actually matter most.

Or women's health. Women's menopause. But this is why, I think, you know, when I talk about women's health, it starts by also changing the way medicine is taught in schools, right? It's by incorporating so many doctors said, well, I had an hour about menopause. I never even talked about perimenopause, much less postmenopausal women. You know, that was like not even in the textbook. So you're talking about a sea change, not only with doctors who are practicing, but for those coming into the space. And then also when we talk about women's health or when we talk about Alzheimer's, getting people interested in working in that space, in the geriatric space, right? Geriatric psychiatrist.

Yeah.

Doctors, it's not young people are going to ortho, it's not sexy. They're going into orthopedics.

Like my daughter, that's what she wants to do.

Orthopedics, right? Because that's where the money is, right? And so this is a challenge on so many levels. It's a challenge on how do we talk about it? How do we bring it home to Main Street? How do we change medical schools? How do we bring doctors who are working up to date? How do we make it enticing to go into this space as we're an aging country?

Yeah.

You know, in California, I did a big report for Gavin Newsom about what does California, which is an aging state, you don't think of California that way. What do we need to do to be ready for the tsunami of baby boomers who are gonna get Alzheimer's and dementia, right? We're not ready. We're not ready as a nation. We don't have caregivers, which also disproportionately falls on women. So I think it's a exciting space to be in. But it's an urgent space.

It is, yeah. It's really kind of why we created Function Health was to democratize access to people's own health data and make it very low cost. For $499 a year, you get over 110 biomarkers and testing twice a year to track your numbers and see what's going on. And in that data, you get empowered with not only just the information about what's going on, but you get empowered with insights and actionable steps to actually improve that.

That's the key.

And things that your doctor may not know. We're taking all the scientific evidence, all the expert knowledge extracted from all the world's top experts, both traditional and functional medicine, and helping create a personalized guide for how you can uplevel your health and what you need to do to explore if there's different issues going on. So I think 4.99 is still a fair bit of money, but it's certainly a lot less than people spend, for example, on coffee. You say every day is like a dollar.

I saw on there that you have, like, you could gift it. Right. I was like, okay, well, that's actually something that's an interesting concept. By the time you finish buying somebody flowers or coffee, you could add no coffee for you for the next.

So it's really about empowering people with their health data and even people like you who are, you know, super active and powerful and doing stuff in the world and energetic. There's always little stuff that you find.

That you can find, too. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

That's what I'm curious about.

So when we did your tests, we found some good news, right? You're.

Yeah, let's start with the Good news. I'm not gonna die right now.

You're not gonna die yet.

Yeah.

In this moment. And you're six year plus younger than your throttle.

I want that to be better.

Yeah.

So you're an overachiever.

I got it. I want to be, I have grandchildren. Yeah. I have, you know, adult children and I want to be around for them. And I don't, I think that's the other thing, watching a parent or two parent, my mother ended up with lots of strokes too, later in life. And I think Being a caregiver for two parents is a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot.

Emotionally, financially, physically, spiritually in every way. And then I think once you've watched that up close, you think about yourself. And if you have children, you think about, okay, well, how do I keep myself? How do I keep myself so that my children- Don't have to do that. Don't have to do that. Maybe they're not capable of doing that, or maybe they don't have the money to do that, or maybe they're not in the same town. There's all these, So I think to myself, how can I be as independent for as long as I can be as strong as I can? So when I go to the gym now, actually, I say to the trainer, I said, Give me an exercise that can help me with my overhead compartment in the plane. I want to lift the bag in the overhead compartment. Give me an exercise. I have a granddaughter who weighs 30 some pounds. I want to pick her up. I want to walk around with her. I don't want to say when she says, Mama G, lift me up, lift me up. I don't want to go, oh, I can't. I want to be able to lift her up. And then the next one up and the next one. So when I go to the gym today, I'm looking for- To be functional. To be functional. Yeah. To be able to be strong for those things, to be independent for my kids so that they're not overwhelmed. Because I found it overwhelming to be a caregiver.

Yeah.

I mean, it's hard. And I think, you know, what you're talking about also is how do we prevent those things that actually are preventable. Like Alzheimer's is preventable, heart disease is preventable, diabetes is preventable. So many of the things we see, autoimmune disease is preventable, but people don't know what's going on under the hood until it's too late.

So we found that you're six years younger, which is great, and you can get younger. Oh yeah, we're going back to my test now, right? We're gonna go to the bad news now. My son said, you're not really gonna.

Talk about your own blood tests on the thing, are you? I was like, yeah, actually I think I am. well, it's empowering for other people to hear because people are walking around, think they're fine. So we didn't find anything really terrible. And you're 61 years old biologically, which is good.

That's okay.

And you could get younger. I just got a year younger in the last five months by doing a whole bunch of things based on my own function results. So I was able to sort of optimize my health just learning.

How old were you on your results?

53.

53.

Yeah.

So there's different biomarker tests for aging, but you want to look at all these things because they reflect really what's going on under the hood.

And we said-- so you can get me to 50.

Yeah, the other thing, you know, Maria, is that your family history is significant, right? You have a history of maybe celiac or autoimmune disease with your mom's stomach.

Yeah.

You know, certainly your uncle had that and your cousin has that. And we know it's in an Irish family. So right there, somebody should be looking at autoimmunity, at gluten, and things that are not normally checked on a regular panel. And we did find some things. Also, you know, your family history of Alzheimer's is concerning, and we wanna make sure that the things that tend to promote Alzheimer's are not showing up in your blood test, right? We want to look at your B vitamin levels. We want to look at something called homocysteine. We want to look at inflammation. We want to look at your metabolic health like insulin resistance. And these are things that are not usually checked on your annual physical. So when you went to your doctor, they said, your tests are, quote, normal. Looking at 20 or 30 things. We looked at over 110 things on your labs. And a few things popped up. One was you have low levels of inflammation. Now, inflammation is one of the things that drives Alzheimer's. We know that Alzheimer's is a disease of inflammation in the brain, just as.

Almost all chronic diseases, heart disease, diabetes, cancer.

So why would I have low levels of inflammation? Higher levels. I have higher levels. Oh, I don't have low. No, so you want low, you want something called C-reactive protein. Again, a test not normally checked.

It should be under one.

Yours was 1.4. Not terrible, but it's like a trend, right? I don't want you to have that. I don't want to be on that trend. And we also saw this low level of autoimmunity. Now, why you have this autoimmune marker, it doesn't mean you have an autoimmune disease. It just means you have this low-grade autoimmunity, which means your body is somehow attacking itself. And then we can figure out why, right? It may be something you're eating and maybe gluten and maybe heavy metals and maybe things that if left untreated could progress and lead to more serious inflammation in your body. But we don't know what it is. And we can find out. For example, you had high levels of mercury that were from probably eating fish. People eat a lot of fish because they think it's healthy, but all their oceans are polluted. So mercury is a big, for example, factor.

I had high levels of mercury. You did. Oh my gosh, I thought I had low levels.

Well, your level range on the lab reference range, according to Quest, is 0 to 10. But there's no biological requirement for mercury. There's no safe level of mercury.

It's a neurotoxin.

Okay, so no more swordfish. No more tuna.

I know, I love swordfish.

I don't like tuna, but I do.

Swordfish is amazing. It is one of the swordfish, shark, worst. Oh, I'm not a big, I don't like shark at all.

So that's not an issue.

I know you'll, you'll help spend time at Cape Cod.

Swordfish at the Ivy.

Oh, yeah, swordfish is so high.

This hurt me. This is gonna be a hard, for giving up the risk of Alzheimer's, you might wanna give up swordfish. Okay, swordfish, bye-bye. But the high mercury, for example, is yours was nine and, you know, 10 is the limit, but nine isn't good. The normal level is zero. And so we don't know what's stored in your body. We need to look at that. these are things that are not checked. Like, for example, heavy metals are not checked in your general checkup, but they should be.

Right.

Because they're risk factors for autoimmunity, for Alzheimer's, for fatigue. And some of these things you were just mentioning, low-grade fatigue. Well, no, yeah, you're busy running around, but maybe it's not normal. Like, if your body was working properly, you should have energy to do whatever you want. Right. You know, and I think, you know, I'm turned 65 this year, and I just last month I went to Patagonia and I climbed a mountain. It was 15 miles and it was a mile straight up and a mile straight down and took, you know, 13 hours and I was able to do it. Look at you. I know, but, but we should be able to do that. Our bodies can do that. But if we don't optimize them, they don't. We tend to decline. So we want to look at factors that may be triggering some of this low grade inflammation. And for me, it's a, it's a red flag if you have a family history of Alzheimer's.

Gotcha. And you've already done your ApoE testing.

Yes.

Which test did you have? Which?

Well, actually, Richard Isaacson did it, so I don't know which test he did. Did you have ApoE4? No, I don't. So you didn't have the Alzheimer's gene, which is really good, but a lot.

Of people who get Alzheimer's don't. Correct.

So it may not be just that, but there may be other factors. So I really want to look at that. You also said, you know, I'm a little tired and maybe I don't have as much energy. And I saw, well, your iron levels were low.

Right.

So I need to eat more meat. So maybe you need to eat more meat or maybe we need to think about if you're losing blood somewhere and it, you know, could be a sign of, you know, that you need a colonoscopy or I just had a colonoscopy. So that was clean.

So that's great. So you don't, if you're not having.

Vaginal bleeding, so then I wonder, you know, maybe you're, you're not having proper absorption in your gut. Maybe you do have a little bit of gluten sensitivity. Maybe you do have. I definitely have some feeling of gluten sensitivity.

Yeah.

So this is, again, this is something that we need to dig deep in. And then if we find, oh, probably the reason for your iron deficiency and your elevated inflammation and this low grade autoimmunity with an ANA is maybe because you're gluten sensitive, not full celiac, but enough to- yeah, I've tested for celiac and no. But enough that it creates a little bit of damage to your gut and you're not absorbing things. So these are the things that are super fixable. So I say, don't eat fish. Let's get your body to detox from mercury. Let's get you off gluten, see what happens. Let's retest your tests and see how they're doing. So there's really powerful things we found in your labs.

Okay, so I'm going to come back, we're going to retest all of these things, we're going to change it, I'm going to come back and see how.

Old I am and whether I- We're.

Going to get you younger. Actually, you're going to get you under-.

We're going to get you under 60. Under 60.

Under 60.

I want to get to 50.

We'll get you to 50. Yes, in my mind, I'm like 45.

Yeah, well, I did another test that's a different scale. We can do that for you too. It grades it differently, but I'm 43 on that test. so I'm happy about that. That's the number I try to use. But 53 is this other calculus that is based on when we do with function health. But the other thing we found, Maria, is, you know, and this was a little surprising, because you're traveling, dehydrated maybe, but your kidney function was just slightly off.

Right.

And so this is something that is going on in our society that can be caused by many factors. It can be caused by inflammation, autoimmunity, heavy metals, obviously high blood pressure, diabetes, you don't have those.

No.

You have low blood pressure. and so those things often need to be addressed. And so we're finding things early so that we can do something about it and you're not going to end up having some problem with your kidneys later on.

Right.

So it's, and you didn't even know that. Right.

Right.

So these are the things we were finding on, on the function health panels that allow people to become empowered. And then you get guidelines on exactly how to fix it and when to go to the doctor. So, for example, for the kidney function, I might say, gee, in the recommendations, you need to go see a kidney specialist to just double check what's going on. Right.

So we really have learned all these things. Then I always wonder, like, you know, a lot of times you do these and they're like, go to this doctor, go to this doctor. And I'm like, oh, you know, then it's like, it's a time issue, but.

I know that it's, I mean, I will do it. Well, there's certain things that are really important, but most of the things, I.

Would say 80% of the things we.

Find people can take care of on their own.

Right.

Okay. They might recommend, you know, do you need to do maybe a different kind of gluten sensitivity test, you maybe need to do a different heavy metal test. We need to look at why you're losing iron. If it's something that's losing, or maybe it's just your diet. So we would fix these things. We saw your vitamin D was a little bit low. So it's just really tweaking things. And I think your energy level will come up. You'll feel better, you'll feel stronger, your brain will be clear.

And more importantly, you know, we're going.

To mitigate the risks of you ending up with the same issues that your dad had. Yeah, no, I don't want that. What's really interesting now is, and soon we're going to be offering this on.

The function health panel. There's even blood tests.

Where you can detect in the blood biomarkers of Alzheimer's years and years before you ever have a symptom.

So people always talk about that, you know, do you want to know if you have the Alzheimer's gene? Do you want to know if you can find it? Because then what? As long as we have no cure, is that actually gonna freak people out? Is that gonna, you know, be helpful in any way? And I think this is a debate going on with doctors.

Yeah.

Right.

Goes on. I hear it a lot.

Right.

That people are like, I don't want to know. That's not gonna be helpful to me until we find a cure.

Yeah.

Which I also understand.

It's true, Maria, if you're operating from the traditional medical paradigm where drugs are the solution.

Right.

But if you actually look at the data around Alzheimer's or heart disease or diabetes or cancer, most of these conditions are lifestyle-driven conditions. So there's really significant things you can do with your diet, with exercise, sleep, stress management, nutritional supplements, fixing your microbiome, dealing with heavy metals. There's so many things you can do. to lower your risk. And it's all data driven. It's not like the data isn't out there, but it takes decades for scientific discoveries to actually be implemented into medical practice. I don't know if you ever heard of the story of Semmelweis, who was a Viennese physician, and he delivered babies, and he saw all the midwives in the clinic were delivering babies, and none of their patients were getting childbirth fever, which was killing a lot of women at the time. And he noticed they all washed their hands before they delivered babies. This was in the 1800s. And then he mentioned his physician colleagues, gee, maybe we should wash our hands. Maybe we're causing some problem with the patients who are dying of childbed fever. And they're like, oh my God, you're a heretic. How could you ever imply that doctors would be hurting their patients? You're banished. And he ended up like disgraced and.

Banished for the rest of his life.

And it took 50 years for doctors to realize they need to wash their hands before surgery. So that's kind of where we are now in medicine. It takes decades before the evidence that's out there that you're trying to promote a Cleveland Clinic that we're trying to do research on, but it's so slow. And so really this approach of being the CEO of your own health, taking.

Control, having agency, democratizing health care. I'm a believer. That's why we my son and I started MASH. Yeah, our protein bar was also to really get people to start thinking about eating for brain health. 100%. You know, when we went to start MASH, people are like, what is MASH? MASH is a protein bar made for your brain that we started. My son Patrick and I started because I'm a protein bar fanatic. Yeah. And I was taking all these supplements, supplements you had suggested, Richard Isaacson had suggested, Rudy Tanzi had suggested. He was like, why don't you make a protein bar for your brain and put in some of the things you're doing? Yeah. So we made MASH, which has now been out for two years and has been incredibly successful. We've been online and now we're going into retail. And then we fund research at the Cleveland Clinic through the Women's Alzheimer's Movement. To the profits from MASH go to fund research. Yes, not all of them, but a certain part of that. Your son gets a few dollars. Yeah, he gets a few dollars. I'm paying. I'm a young boy, right? So you have to, but I think my goal was really to try to create a company of all brain healthy products that could actually fund millions and millions of dollars of research. That was my vision for the company. So starting with the protein bars, but also trying to, at the same time, educate people about eating for brain health and bringing that into the zeitgeist, just like people talk about eating for heart health. But making that something that people think about because we hear now, I think post COVID, people now talk about brain fog. They talk about their brain in a different way than before COVID I've noticed, right?

Yeah.

Well, COVID really affects the brain.

Right. And we have a whole mental health epidemic, right, that we're talking about. So I think that in a way, this is a new era for young people and people my age as well. to talk about what does it mean to eat for my brain health? What does it mean to eat to prevent Alzheimer's? What is what I put in my mouth? Does it have any effect on my brain or just on my thighs? Like, for what? Right, but we, I was raised like it's everything you eat is either gonna make you fat or thin. No one talked about, is it good for your brain or your heart? So I'm hoping that Mosh will begin this conversation, ignite this conversation, which is what it's been doing. and these bars are delicious. They're nutritious. They have, you know, Omegas, they have vitamin D, they have B, they have the things that support a healthy brain.

Yeah.

And they're, it's a mission focused company.

And they taste good.

And they taste good. They're addictive. But I'm really proud of that. And I'm hopeful to build a company, as I said, that will really educate and also taste good.

I mean, it's such an important thing you're talking about because you're right. And we think about heart health and eating for heart health, but nobody's talking about how do we take care of our brain?

Right.

How do we protect our brain? How do we improve our brain function? Whether it's for mental illness, depression, anxiety, PTSD, or all the way through to Alzheimer's and dementia or just brain fog and just trouble focusing and cognitive issues. So many people struggle with this. Right. And I think we have so many tools and so much knowledge about how improve our brain function. I wrote a book, you know, 15 years ago called the Ultra Mind Solution, how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first.

Right?

And so the idea is there's so.

Many- I also wrote a book about how to get younger. I better go pull that off the shelf.

You're gonna be 100 years old before you finish all the books.

That's true.

So, but the whole point of that book was that there's things you can do for your brain to improve your general cognitive to function just to be sharper and more alert and more on it, which makes you have a better life, right? In every way. Because if your brain's not working, you can't have good relationships. You can't do the work you want to do in the world. You can't do things that you like to do in hobbies.

You just feel like sit in front of a TV or scroll through your phone. Don't you think that we have to be, people say to me like, oh, can I eat the bar and I won't get Alzheimer's?

I'm like, no, no.

But they go, Do you have a pill I can take?

Yeah.

I'm like, no, we have to be multiple factors. We have to be operating on multiple platforms, right? We have to also not just say like, oh, if I do X, Y, and Z, that means it's a continuous, constant commitment, right? That we have to make as individuals, regardless of our age. I also talk a lot about you're never too old to embrace a brain healthy lifestyle. You're never too old to start walking or lifting weights or- Just that sense.

A brain healthy lifestyle is a radical idea, Maria.

Yeah, I know. And when I wanted to originally start with the, to create a bar, to several companies and said, you know, I want to create a bar for a brain healthy lifestyle. And people are like, no one's going to buy that. No one knows what you're talking about. And it actually took my son.

You were a little ahead of the curve.

Yeah, but it took my son to say, Mommy, just bet on yourself. Take your own money. Just go do it. People will understand what you're talking about. And it took him to tell me that I could invest in myself. And now, kind of brain products are the fastest growing area of CPG space, period. Right? But even somebody like me needed somebody to say, like, you, could go do this. Let's go. You know, even though every other company told me, like, nobody's gonna buy a bar from a woman your age talking about the brain.

But it breaks into the zeitgeist that this is a thing that could happen. You could actually do something for your brain.

Yeah.

So what's in Masha and what does it stand for?

It stands for Maria Owens Shriver Health.

All right.

I love that. There you go. And you've been very helpful to it. And we've just reformulated it, but the goal was to make it low sugar. It's 14 grams, 13 grams of protein, and to put in the things in there that support a healthy brain. You have to be really careful about what you say.

So what are those things that support it?

Omega-3s, vitamin D, vitamin B6, B12. It has cognizant in it now. It's got ashwagandha, lion's Mane. It has pretty much everything you advised me to put into it. And these are things that just from.

As a doctor that are, that are evidence-based that have been shown to improve brain function and health and prevent disease. So they're not just sort of a random bunch of ingredients. You really thoughtfully put together, like lion's Mane increases neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. And I use it for people with traumatic brain injury and who various health issues in their brain. So, I mean, I take it. So, I think it's such a beautiful thing to be able to actually break the conversation open about we can do something about our brains that we can actually eat for our brains as opposed to eat for heart or eat for weight or eat for whatever we eat for, but that our brain is something we need to think about. And that concept is a huge breakthrough notion.

It's changed how I look at my own life. So it's changed how I eat. It brought meditation. into my daily life, you know, resting my brain, prioritizing my sleep for my brain, exercising, as I said, now not to be thin, but for my brain, building up BDNF, right, doing that, how I engage with people, continuing to engage, because we know social engagement is good for your brain. So when I think of a brain healthy lifestyle, it's what I eat, It's how I sleep, it's the practices, it's how I exercise, it's who I engage with. It's being a continuous learner. It's trying to prioritize my health to adapt, you know, to be optimal. You know, it's like doctors always say to me, well, this is good. You're in the normal range. Yeah, I don't wanna be normal. I don't wanna be normal. I wanna be in the optimal range. And I think making that a part of our conversations with our doctors, which are only allowed to last for 15 minutes, right? how do we get to optimal,? And how do you get to optimal at starting at a young age,? That was not in my zZegeist when I was thirty or forty..

There's this concept that I read about from a a scientist knowed Rober Heany who was a vitaminine researcher and he talked about this concept of long latency deficiency diseases, wherehe we would be long latency deficiency diseases. So what that means in English, yeah, is that For example, if you don't have enough vitamin D in the short run and you're super deficient, you get rickets. That's a short-term disease from vitamin D deficiency. But if you're suboptimal, right? You're talking about optimal levels. If you're suboptimal, you'll get osteoporosis or heart disease or dementia, other things that are caused by chronically low levels or insufficient levels of the things that normally aren't checked. And in the function health panels that we've done on over 30,000 people, we have 3 million biomarkers we've checked. 67% and this is a health forward population, Maria, 67% are deficient in nutrients at the level from the reference range, not the optimal level, but the level from the lab reference range, which is pretty darn low. And so a lot of people are walking around with low grade things that may not be visible unless they do a deeper dive on their biomarkers and their health. And then they can easily change those things and fix those things. So we're gonna do that with you. We're gonna fix your iron, we're gonna fix your vitamin D, we're gonna figure out why there's inflammation, we're gonna get mercury out of system, we're gonna make sure we double check what's going on with your kidneys, we're gonna make sure you're well hydrated. And I guarantee you, the next time.

You do your panel, all these things will be normal and you're gonna feel better and we're probably gonna see a change in your biological age.

Okay, so I can't promise under 60. You say you promised under 60.

You promised me six months, we'll get you at least a year younger. I think that would be actually really a good little experiment that we can do because I think I'm like so many women, you know, you're running around, you're, you're taking care of multiple people, you're working, you're doing all kinds of things and you think you're okay and you think you're paying attention and you think you're going to the eye doctor and the dentist. Cause I also know like that's part of your oral health. When we talk about Alzheimer's, we talk about oral health, we talk about hearing.

Yeah.

That's a big part of now. Alzheimer's. So if you have hearing issues, we now know that that, you know, leads you to Alzheimer's quicker. So because you miss things, you isolate, then social isolation and having a lack of community and a lack of interaction with other people. So really important to check your hearing, really important to check your oral health, really important to check your blood tests, all of these things. And then you're like going to the doctor, all the time.

But you've been to many doctors and you've had lab work done, and they've missed all this stuff that we found on your functional health panel.

They never looked at it.

They never did those tests.

I'm going back to my doctor.

Don't yell at her because it's not her fault. It's how we're trained. We're trained to look for diseases, to diagnose diseases, and not to look for imbalances or early transitions on the weighted disease. Like, okay, we'll treat you once you get diabetes. Before that, there's nothing we can do. We'll treat you once you know, have some serious illness, but we don't really look at all the biomarkers that we now have available. And when your mom was going through this, we didn't have this level of testing and diagnosis.

We didn't.

Or conversations. Conversations. And, yeah. And people were kind of dismissed. And I think today people are dismissed. People walk around with what I call FLC syndrome. That's when you feel like crap, you know? Right. And it's like, maybe subtle and you don't have a diagnosed disease, but you know something's not right and you're not at 100%. so the question is, how do you get to optimal and how do you live 100 healthy years? You have to understand what's going on in your body.

I remember a doctor saying to me, you know, most men don't come in unless their wife or their mother sends them in. And most women feel like they have some, they're gaslit. They're not taken seriously. These are the stories that I hear from women of all ages. You know, I, I tell them I have gut issues or I tell them the birth control that I'm on isn't working or I want to know what is the long-term effect? of the birth control that I'm on, or all of these conversations and they're often met with, we don't know, because we don't have the research, which is why the initiative that I'm working on with the president, the first lady, the federal government is to just try to close that research gap that affects women so that so often when women do go to the doctor, they are met with, we don't know because we don't have the research. We haven't done the research. to tell you about endometriosis. We haven't done the research because it hasn't been funded. And so when researchers go to figure out what are they going to research, there has been no money to research women. And we're going to change that.

It's incredible, Maria, because we need to change the way we do research to not just be driven by pharmaceutical solutions. And that's primarily what's been done. And there's literally, the government has spent billions of dollars trying find the cure for Alzheimer's through drug research, and it's failed miserably. And yet, there's all this evidence in literature from smaller studies that point to treatable causes and mechanisms for prevention of a whole host of illnesses, including Alzheimer's. And so, when you look at nutrition studies, when you look at lifestyle intervention studies, when you look at multimodal interventions where you're doing all sorts of things together like the FINGER trial or Richard Isaacson's data, those are really hard to do. And they're not funded and the amount of suffering we have is just staggering and it's getting worse and worse. So even though we have the best healthcare system in the world, we have the best doctors, best medical institutions and hospitals, we're getting sicker and sicker, spending more and more money, and we're not focused on the problem, which is what the root causes, which is things we should be studying, which you're, which you've been talking about.

Yeah. And I think also it's kind of a mindset, which I try to talk to a lot of people about. of believing that you deserve, you deserve an answer, you deserve a response, you deserve the research. I talk a lot about that with women who go, well, they can't help me or they don't know what's wrong with me, so I'll just go home. And I think it's like a bigger conversation about what do you deserve when you go in? Who's your advocate? Can you use your voice to advocate for yourself? Do you feel worthy of advocating for yourself? So often that we assume the doctor knows more than us, which of course they do. So we silence ourselves so often. We don't push back. We think, well, I deserve that. I don't matter. I guess I made it up myself. And so changing our mindset when we go in, going in with a list of questions, going in with your symptoms written down so that you can better advocate for yourself and then knowing I deserve an answer. I deserve to be told what else is out there for me. It's a really important, I think, take on the mind, the emotional mindset when you go to the doctor and when you think of yourself as a machine, as an entity, what do I, and I think for women, that has often, it certainly was for me, you know, like to adapt that mindset before I go in, I deserve an answer.

100%. And I think, you know, I always say to people, they need to be the CEO of their own health. and not just abdicate that to the, the healthcare system or the providers. But even if women do that, and I, and this is where I think the challenge in healthcare is right now, even if women do that, there's such a lag between the scientific evidence about what really works around lifestyle, nutrition and things that are 80 of what you can do to improve your health, that doctors don't learn about, that when you even ask them these things, they may have good hearts, they may be very smart, they may be extremely well trained in their specialty. Yeah. But they may not actually be able to get to the cancer.

Right.

So you love swordfish, but did your doctor ever ask you how much swordfish you're eating or ever check your Mercury level? Right. Probably not, because that's not in the Paradigm that we think about, even with the best doctors. So the reason we created function Health was to actually help people get access to the biomarkers that matter. They're not being checked that your doctor is probably not looking at and doesn't understand because they're not trained in it. It's not their fault. So you could be the best Advocate and then go to the doctor with all your questions and all your self-agency and all your symptoms, and they're still not going to get to the right answer because they're not looking in the right place instead of- and they also.

Don'T have the research. So it's a multi-pronged thing, right? So it's kind of getting a mindset, pushing, you know, this initiative that we're doing. You have to push your local congressmen or women, your local senators, and you have to vote. These are issues that make a difference in your daily life. So if you want, for me, I want my daughters and your daughters and everybody else's daughters and granddaughters to be able to go to the Doctor, advocate for themselves, have the right mindset, feel they are worthy and deserving. And also- Get the right answers. Get the right answers, right? And I think it's multifold. So that's why I'm trying to work at the national and the federal level. I'm also working at the communication level of the empowerment level of you're worth this. And then I'm trying to develop a food company that also is part of that education. of telling you, you can actually eat for your brain.

That's right.

And you can actually live a life that will be as long as you possibly can. And I wish someone had talked to me about this when I was 30 or when I was a young mother focused on getting all four of the kids to the doctor, making sure I was on top of that, making sure my husband was on top of his health and keeping myself at the low end of the totem pole because I.

Was focused on my parents. Women's health.

Or my kids or somebody else other than myself. And I think that that's an important conversation changer as well as all of these other things. But they have to go together.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm trying to do.

Yeah.

It's amazing what you're doing, Maria. You're basically doing policy change at the highest level in the White House and funding women's health research and Alzheimer's research or doing work at Cleveland Clinic, advancing multi-pronged approaches that are really quite different and looking at prevention of Alzheimer's that nobody's really talking about. You create a food company that's a brain health food company that helps sort of start the conversation that we can actually do something for our brain proactively or focus on so many things that actually make a huge difference in the world. And we got to keep you healthy because I know.

All right. And we're opening a Women's Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic. So this You know, somebody said to me recently, Mark, like, why do we have to have a women's health and research center? Why is that important?

Everything else has been the men's research center, but they don't call it that.

But people don't understand that the drugs that you're taking have been tested on men. The dosages have been tested on men. And when I tell that to people, they're like, wait, what?

Yeah.

And if you go back in history and learn, it's because doctors decided that women weren't dependable for trial, so they were just not included. So all of these things have changed because somebody became aware and then fought for the change. And I always try to tell that to people that there's so much you can do to create change that will benefit you and also millions of other people at all levels.

Yeah.

So whether it's on the federal level, the local level, the national, whatever, there's so much change that's needed. And it begins with how we see ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we think about ourselves, and then moves out from there.

Yeah, it's so inspiring your work, because you could just be hanging out, enjoying life and doing cruises in the Bahamas, but you're really in the trenches doing this hard work to improve our awareness around health and Alzheimer's and women's and being proactive about people's health. And it's really, you know, we're both on the same missions. We've worked together for years on these projects. And I think it's a big problem.

And it seems sometimes- Big opportunity.

Yeah. And it seems insurmountable, but actually it is fixable. And I think with things that you're doing with Function Health, which essentially is a really disruptive technology company, that's a data-driven healthcare company that allows you to get your data and do things with it that actually will fix your health and not have to go through and.

Wait 50 years till the healthcare system catches up. I was at the office and we were talking about me coming on here to talk about my blood test. And the guy that does marketing for Mosh Tanner, he's like, I just volunteered to be in the beta test. On the beta test.

Yeah.

And I just went and did my blood test. And he's a young, I don't know how old he is. He's probably in his 20s. So I thought to myself, that's a really good sign that a young man heard about that and took the initiative to go do that. Or I talked to my son that I was coming on here. 26 years old, he goes, I want to do that. I want to understand. So imagine that to me was so exciting.

It is exciting.

Christopher said, I want to do that blood test because I can then track myself.

Exactly.

Till I get to your age.

Yeah.

And look at I'm doing it at my age. Imagine how great it's going to be for him.

A lot better than early, right?

Yeah.

It's going to be, he's going to have a total different trajectory and they're kids.

Mm-.

So the work we do now will benefit these other generations, which is what's exciting to me. And when I think about, wow, that's why I do what I do.

Yeah.

Because it will change somebody's visit to the doctor five years from now, 10 years from now, when I'm gone. And I think always it's good to have a mission that's bigger than you.

Yeah.

That will go on. that you probably won't even be able to achieve in your lifetime. I remember the first time when I testified for Alzheimer's funding, all the doctors said, oh, we have the cure. It's in a vial in a lab. That was 20 years ago. But I don't get discouraged. I just think, let's just keep going. Let's just keep going, because it's going to help someone.

It will happen.

It will happen. And it won't happen if we all get discouraged.

That's right.

If we all stop believing, if we all stop having hope, then nothing's gonna happen. So do I think, you know, the president has said $12 billion for women's health. It'll close the research gap. It'll bring about equity in health. Do I think I'll get it in my lifetime?

Yeah.

Yeah, actually I do.

Yeah, it's true.

My brothers are like, no, you're not. I'm like, yeah, I will. But I think it'll transform my daughter's health, my granddaughter's health, your granddaughter's health, it'll transform that. And this will transform the way my son engages in his healthcare journey. And that to me is incredibly powerful and inspiring.

Yeah, so true. We all get to choose where we spend our energy, our life energy, our time. And Common, who's a singer, said, yeah, we're gonna put your one grain of spiritual sand on the universal scales of humanity. Now, you don't have a grain, you're like a dump truck.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services said to my My brother at the White House the other day, he goes, you, know, I called your sister a pit bull. And my brother was like, what? He goes, She's a border collie. And then my other brother was like, Can he say that? I was like, that's okay.

You know? You grab onto something and you keep going.

And that's something that's beautiful. But I think it takes, I mean, I watched my mother, right? I watched my father, you know, he thought he could solve poverty with the War on Poverty, the Office of Economic Opportunity. And when they asked him when he started that in the Johnson administration, he believed that he could do that. He was unsuccessful.

Well, I don't know. I mean, compared to then, yeah.

He started a conversation in neighborhoods. He started programs that still go today.

Yeah.

That have changed people's lives. My mother was like, I'm going to make it so that people with intellectual disabilities are treated as equal citizens under the law. Right. So I'm going to make it that they have access to all kinds of things, jobs, speaking opportunities, sports programs, you name it. She got like 75%, 80% of the way there. He got, you know, maybe 50% of the way there, right? And so with my work with Alzheimer's or changing women's health research, if I can get 75% of the way there, that'll have been a good use of my time here on Earth.

That's good. And so we're gonna get me to.

50, so then I have another 50.

We're gonna get you to 50, and we're gonna get you feeling better even though you're already doing amazing. And we're gonna tweak things that are gonna make a big difference for you, and we'll have you back to talk about what happened. Yeah, tweaked. What you tweak.

Yeah.

And how did it make you feel.

Learning these things about yourself that you didn't know? Great. I'm a big believer in information is knowledge. I'm like, oh yeah, I like that. And, but what really makes me excited is like that you're gonna help me do something about it. That's what really helps me. And then I realized then I have to be a partner in that. I have to take responsibility for that. And so I think it's not like, you know, oh, you're just gonna give me a pill and I'm gonna become 50 and be all good. But you're asking something of me. And I think that is important.

It is.

We're all participants.

I step up. And you know, you and I can work together because we're friends, but not everybody can access me.

But the beautiful thing about- you- can't access Mark. I've known Mark for a really long time and I've not been able to access Mark. So it's big to access Mark.

But the beautiful thing about function is- you- can read your books. No, no, I poured all of my experience and knowledge in. We pulled in all these other experts' knowledge and experience. We pulled in all the scientific research. I read a lot of scientific papers, but I can't read the nine or 10 million papers that are online. I'll never get through them in my entire lifetime. So all that is going in through technology.

Through AI.

Through AI and machine learning. It's not just an AI independent thing, so it's not going to take over your life, but it's using this ability to sort of suck up all this information, read every textbook, read every scientific paper, talk to every knowledge expert, incorporate that into insights. and guidance for how to support your health and correct the things that we find. And in my experience, 80% of the time, people can do this without having to go to the doctor. They're things that are self-care solutions, whether it's what you eat, exercise, sleep, stress, supplements, other things that people can do that will up level our health and correct the things that we find. And for the 20%, you might need to go see the doctor, but then we're going to tell you, if you go see the doctor, here's how to be your advocate. if you have a thyroid issue, this is probably the type of testing you need or the type of further treatment you need. Or if you have high mercury, this is the kind of thing you want to think about doing. You might need a doctor's help or you might not get that when you go to your doctor. So really we're building a knowledge system, not just ability to get your lab tests that helps guide people and is your co-pilot for your health and the repository for all your health data and something you can track over time. Because right now healthcare is so analog. It's so disconnected. you go to one doctor in this lab just there and they can't see them from the other doctor. It's just a mess. I know. I mean, it's really, I mean, I was like 2024 and you've got an iPhone that can basically be like a super computer that could take you to the moon, but you can't even get your healthcare data all in one place in a coherent way that makes sense that tells you what's going on with your body. So, that's really what we're doing and it's really a way of again empowering and changing and I hope this will help people shift into a more proactive state to to prevent things like Alzheimer's to be empowered around what's going on, to not just accept, oh, I'm tired. Oh, you're a woman. This is normal. Oh, you're supposed to have PMS. Oh, you're supposed to have whatever, but actually find the real reasons for it. So it's pretty exciting and I think it's going to be great. And for people who want to sign.

Up, they can go to functionhealth.com/mark to.

Skip the wait list.

There's 150,000 people on the wait list. Oh, you get to skip the wait list.

Yeah, well, if you listen to this podcast, you do. Oh, wow. You can go to Mosh and get a bar and eat while you wait to get on the wait list. Check out Mosh's wait list.

Yeah, you definitely want to check out.

Maria's We'll put the links to her White House initiative on women's health. It's incredible. Watch her speech. Check out Mosh.

We'll put the link in. And what's the website for Mosh?

If you want to- moshlife.com.

They can read it. Yeah, on the Sunday paper.

You've been in the Sunday paper. Sunday paper is great. How do they find that? Go to Maria Shriver Sunday paper. Okay, great. That's great. And also you can learn about her work at Cleveland Clinic. We'll put the link in there for the Women's Alzheimer's Movement. It's a lot going on. It's a lot. No wonder you're tired.

And.

Keep it up. We're gonna keep going until we're having our 100th birthdays together.

Oh, that's great.

And celebrate together. So thanks for being on the Dr. D's Pharmacy podcast. Thanks for you do to make the world a better place.

Thank you. God bless.

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