Dr. Josh Axe: Why Your "Normal" Bloodwork Is Lying to You and What to Test For Instead | TUH #292

I think the most important things that make us healthy is how connected to people are we, how connected are we to nature, how connected to God are we. One of the things that happens more in the cancer industry than any other industry is there is this immediate attack with fear. When I find somebody that gets stuck, 90% of the time there is an emotion that's negative that's continually keeping them from healing.

I've read your book about the biblical diet, and I think it draws from recommendations that are clearly outlined in the Bible. And if you just were to follow that, you would be living a processed food-free lifestyle, which I think really empowers the body to do the things that it does best.

In Chinese medicine, they believe different emotions impact different organs. So anger affects the liver, grief, that affects the immune system. So there's no doubt that the spiritual and mental affect the physical in just a profound and massive way.

I think one of the things that's missing dramatically from modern medicine is nobody asks about how are you sleeping, what are your relationships, what are the stressors in your life going on, because that just rushes our cellular biology. For someone that's listening to this podcast right now, what would be your blanket advice to somebody? I just found out that I have a tumor in my lung. What's the next step?

There's two parts here, but number one, by far, nothing else is even close to this.

Hey guys, welcome back to The Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's guest is not only a repeat guest and a very, very good friend of mine— I just finished digesting his last book, he's got another book out, you're writing books faster than I can actually read your books— but he's one of the most influential voices in natural medicine, and I think Finally, this is getting the, the stage that it deserves. So welcome to the podcast, Dr. Josh.

Gary, thanks for having me. You know, this is one of my favorite podcasts to come on because I love talking to you. You know, I feel like it's always iron sharpens iron. I think, you know, I always appreciate your depth of knowledge and understanding because I think there's such value in whether it's a physician or an expert like yourself being able to understand how the body works. And I think that there's You know, sometimes people are doing podcasts or memorizing facts and throwing that out there. The thing that I really appreciate about you when you came on my show as well is that you're able to really think in a really deep and meaningful way, looking at patterns and helping people heal because of it.

Thank you so much. You know, I, I believe you and I, we were talking in the kitchen before, you know, I'd say we align on 99% of things, which obviously makes the conversation very good where I get to the posse of my expertise. But I have a lot of curiosity, and I think my audience has a lot of curiosity, is the Eastern traditional medicine. Um, and you've got a plethora of knowledge in traditional Chinese medicine, herbs, and, uh, I think that it is finally getting the stage that it deserves. You know, uh, Donald Trump just signed an executive order on psychedelics, um, opening up pathways for psychadelic treatments. And I wasn't a fan of those for years and years and years because I didn't know anything about them. So that closed-mindedness that I have is the same thing that I accuse the medical community of, the allopathic community of. And I go, wait a minute, I don't, I don't have a framework to make a really logical decision because I just don't have the data. And, and then I started sitting with people that I held in very high regard that had these life-changing experiences, really life-changing experiences with things like ibogaine and plant medicine. And it reframed the way that I thought about plant medicine. And I'm going through that renaissance with traditional Chinese medicine now. My overarching philosophy is something that has been around and not changed for 5,000 years probably works, right? You're not gonna make it that long if it's a ruse. Yeah, yeah, agreed, yeah. Meridians haven't changed, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And so I wonder if we would start there, and then I want to walk our way into some of the more modern tools available to us, like blood work and biomarkers and what have you. And then I want to touch on the new book, Heal Our Cells, because I couldn't agree with you more. We are just a collection of cells, and the best that medicine has to offer us now is looking at the smallest components of the body. Yeah, mitochondria, and working our way out.

Agreed.

So let's— I want to start with a little bit of, um, herbal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. How did you start going down that bandwagon?

Yeah, well, for me, it actually started with my mom being diagnosed with cancer. My mom, she had this, she went into her oncologist, they did a PET scan and they said, "Hey, you've got these large tumors on your lungs and we need to go in and start doing radiation and chemo in 3 days." In 3 days.

Now, were they gonna cut 'em out too?

They were.

Okay.

Yeah, they were gonna go in and do surgery first. And so I immediately flew home, sat down with my mom. We spent time praying, and she felt really led to take care of her body all naturally. And I just went into research mode. I mean, I learned to read medical journals. And so I just, you know, this is, this is right before I was opening up my practice in Nashville.

You're a chiropractor at the time.

Exactly.

Good anatomical base.

That's right. Right. And I've also been blessed to know some really great functional MDs, integrative doctors. And so I just started reading everything I could on How do I help my mom heal? And that's when I came across herbal medicine and started— now, of course, I was already a little bit familiar with ginger and turmeric and some of the most basic herbs, but then I started coming across all this research on medicinal mushrooms and how they were using those in Asia to fight cancer and studying in Europe and how they were using turkey tail and reading about curcumin, of course, this compound in turmeric. And so really, I got turned on to herbal medicine when my mom's life was on the line. And so I put together a protocol for her of radically changing her diet. We did a lot of vegetables and vegetable juices, wild-caught salmon. I mean, that was her— pretty much her diet was salmon and vegetables.

Really?

Yeah, we did a little bit of pomegranate, a little bit of blueberry, but it was really—

what kind of vegetables? Sautéed vegetables? Steamed vegetables?

We almost did primarily steamed, raw, and juiced. It was a combination of all three. And with that, we also started doing, uh, a lot of herbs. I mean, that was the biggest part of her protocol was dietary and then herbs and mushrooms. And we did other things. Of course, we were practicing prayer. That was a big part of it. But we went through this program and 4 months later, my mom went back to her oncologist. They redid a CT scan and they called us the next day and they said, this is highly unusual. We don't typically see this, but the tumors have shrunk in half. They said, we wanna see you get a 9-month complete remission. And now I was actually just, uh, water skiing with my mom 3 days ago.

Water skiing?

Yeah. My mom's in her mid-70s. She's water skiing.

Yeah, I love her.

She's running. I mean, literally incredible. I'll show you my phone as soon as we're done here. I was so impressed with her slalom skiing back and forth. And so she is doing incredibly well. But I think a big part of her healing was doing the higher doses of this herbal medicine, especially turmeric and turkey tail mushroom and a number of other things she did. And this, it's 20 years later now and she's cancer-free and still healthy. So that's really what led me down that path. And I started using them with patients, you know, And the thing I started finding out was, and I started creating these charts to where, you know, 1/3 of all pharmaceuticals today come from herbs. You know, that's where they got those compounds and they started making them synthetically. But you know, when you're taking, and the other thing that was pretty amazing when you look at the clinical literature, when you have turmeric going head-to-head with an NSAID, in the short term, an NSAID might create a little bit more pain relief, But turmeric is still 80%, I mean, it's very close to the long-term pain relief. Long-term pain relief, it beats it every time.

Mm.

And so there's always, I've always found there's a replacement for, rather than antidepressant, rather than a thyroid medication, rather than a painkiller, there is an herb that's all natural that you can take instead. And typically, in some cases, get a more effective outcome, definitely more effective long-term, at what you're dealing with. Wow.

So this is what really started you down that pathway.

Yeah.

And, and for someone that's listening to this podcast right now, because, uh, cancer is just on a parabolic tear right now, even turbo cancers, and we can go down the rabbit hole of why I think that is. But, um, what's the first thing someone should do when they get that diagnosis? Like, what is the first shift regardless of what direction they go, conventional allopathic, traditional, or something more non-traditional. What would be your just blanket advice to somebody? I've got— I just found out that I have a tumor in my lung or polyp in my colon. Yeah. What's the next step?

Yeah, well, there's two parts here, but number one, by far nothing else is even close to this. You get down on your knees and you pray. That's the first thing. Your chance of beating cancer is always gonna be higher with divine intervention. And I believe that's why my mom is still alive today and thriving. And I've noticed this with patients, by the way, the ones that are the most prayerful and also the most positive, believing my body can heal, they get the best outcomes. You know, one of the things that happens more in the cancer industry than any other industry is there is this, there's immediate attack with fear. You know, I'm counseling somebody right now, walking them through, by the way, probably the number one condition we see right now in our practice, and we're not treating it, but we are supporting people as they go through it, is cancer. So I have somebody right now, and he's a very close friend of mine, and he has colon cancer. And he went in, saw his oncologist, and they said, and they say this about almost all of 'em, "This is highly aggressive. We need to start tomorrow." You know? And hey, and they don't even consider doing some of these other things. So the first thing again is prayer. And we ask God for wisdom, for divine intervention on what to do, and ask for divine healing. The second thing after that is I really think you want to consult with somebody who really knows how to do this from an integrative manner, right? Maybe somebody is still going to do radiation. Maybe somebody is still going to do chemo. And I don't really try and steer people in that direction, whether they do that or not. What I do know is somebody's chance of survival is much greater if they have a perfect diet, if they're taking all the right supplements, if they're doing breathwork, if they're doing all of these things naturally. Whether they do, whether they do conventional or not, their chance of survival is still so much greater. So I would say, and here's another thing along with that, so put together your right protocol. One of the things that we do, and I know other natural oncologists that do this, and they, we do a test called a Greek test. It's an RGCC test. And we actually test to see for this type of cancer, what type of therapies are going to be the most beneficial for them. You can even tell what type of chemotherapy would be the most beneficial or would it even—

Is that the one blood test that's in Greece?

It is.

Okay.

That's where it was founded. Well, they do it in Europe, but it's not, they call it the Greek test because it's RGCC anyways, but I believe it started in Europe. And what they do now, it will show you based on your blood work you do, what therapies, both conventional and natural, are most effective against that type of cancer. And so doing that, and then other types of blood work, what if somebody is massively deficient in zinc? Or vitamin D, or even iron, I mean, you know, or omega-3s. And so being able to get the right testing done, I think, to know, hey, what are the tools that are gonna make the biggest difference? For instance, this person we just did this blood work on, we found that the number one therapy for them that's non-conventional is hyperthermia. So heating their body up. And by the way, if you go to places like Switzerland or Germany today, it is one of the top integrative treatments, if not number one, for, for, for cancer. It is doing hyperthermia. So heating the body up to around 106 to 107 degrees.

And they're doing this for cancer. I know they've done this for Lyme.

Oh, of course.

I know several clients of mine— not— and then they didn't need to cut you off— that have done this for Lyme disease very successfully.

Yeah. And it's, it is, um, it's also known as this. So if somebody does conventional, it's known as a radiosensitizer. So your radiation treatment is actually more effective if you get it done with hyperthermia.

Wow.

But yeah, hyperthermia, when you heat the body up that much, I mean, you know some of the science too. It's your body creates interferon, it creates all of these different compounds that then kill cancer cells. And also cancer cells, just like they can't thrive in oxygenated environment, they have a very hard time thriving under heat like that. And so heating the tissue, so you can do local hyperthermia. There are units like this that certain clinics have throughout the United States. You can also do whole body hyperthermia like they do in Europe. But that's another thing. So all that being said, I think if somebody has cancer, their process should be 3-step. Number 1, pray. Number 2, make sure you get the right testing, get some second opinions, listen to other people, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then number 3, get a protocol and follow it to a T, right? So like my friend who has colon cancer, he may choose to do, I think what he's, what he's choosing to do and working with his oncologist on is only doing radiation and not chemo. And then getting hyperthermia with it, getting high-dose vitamin C with it, getting something called mistletoe injections, and then really following more of what we'd call, it's not quite ketogenic, but basically the diet I have him doing is like cabbage, bok choy, salmon, apples, blueberry. It's a very, very simple diet, but that's the sort of—

And that's what he sticks to.

And that's what he's sticking to.

And so it's protein and fat forward, mainly fat forward.

Mainly, well, I would, it is, it's protein, fat, and for him in particular with colon cancer, it's also high fiber. But to your point, it's lower, it's definitely lower in carbohydrates.

Okay.

Yeah, certainly.

'Cause we know that, you know, cancer needs or prefers certain environments, high glycemic environment, acidic environments, hypoxic environments. That's right. These are ways that it hides and continues its respiratory cycle. I think what goes lost on a lot of people is like, that cancer, regardless of its form or its origin, all of it was at one time a healthy cell.

That's right.

It shifted its metabolism.

That's right.

For some reason.

Well, this is why, by the way, I love your quote that you did on my podcast when I interviewed you. And let me see, I may get it and mess it up, but it's disease, I'll have you say, but it's essentially—

The presence of oxygen.

The presence of, you know, disease cannot live in the presence of oxygen.

Yeah, the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.

That's it.

Yeah.

And that is such a phenomenal quote. And I think that's the key with can— there's two things with cancer. It's all about oxygen and fermentation. Mm-hmm. Oxygen and sugar. If you can starve it of sugar and increase the oxygen greatly in the area.

Mm-hmm.

I think that is the greatest therapy for supporting, uh, you know, in, in anti-cancer therapy.

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Um, it's number two. Okay. It's highly personalized. I mean, I'm a big believer, as you are, we talked about in personalized medicine. And now, now listen, I think across the board there are some herbs that 90% of people are going to benefit from. Again, turmeric is going to be incredibly high on that list. Ginger is going to be high on that list. Yeah, there's, there's ashwagandha is probably gonna be very high on that list. So those are some herbs generally almost everyone can benefit from. But I am very protocol focused on, hey, let's put together the exact game plan that's going to be the best for you to heal. And I think there's a few things to consider when I— and in terms of part of your question was, how do I determine what herb is best for that person? I look at number one, their history. So, hey, you've got a lot of joint pain. Okay, that's telling me there's a lot of inflammation. Oh, you have psoriasis. Oh, you have rosacea, or you're dealing with infertility. Okay, well, now I kind of see some of your health history. I look at tongue diagnosis in Chinese medicine. So I'll read someone's tongue. If there are ridges on the side that are like bite marks, that means their digestive system's weak. If there is a coating on their tongue, of course, that's overgrowth of some, typically yeast, but it could be H. pylori, some sort of microbe. If it's pale, that's a blood deficiency. I need to do blood-building herbs. If it's too red, highly inflamed. Um, and, and there's a few others. If actually— this is the one that is the most problematic— if somebody has a tongue or lips that are turning blue or purple, that's oxygen deprivation. That's very, very severe. And so all that being said, I'll look at their tongue and I can tell so much about their entire body in patterns. And so that'll tell me, hey, if we got those ridges on the side of the tongue, we need to do astragalus. If we've got that issue regarding heat, we need to cool the body off. And maybe there's an herb like skullcap or something like that. So that's it. And then the other one is blood work. If I have somebody come in and their Dutch test, their cortisol is just completely backwards, maybe I'll have them do—

I see that a lot, actually, that inversion of cortisol. Happened to my wife in menopause.

So many people.

See that waking spike and decline, and it was perfectly inverted. It looked like a V and it should have looked like a mountain.

Exactly.

Huge.

So many people with that. One of the biggest warning signs of that is if you wake up around 3:00 AM, and you'd be surprised if you start asking people if they're not sleeping well, you say, what time do you wake up at night? They're almost always 3:00 AM. And that's the inverse cortisol rhythm you're talking about. Exactly. So with those people, it's ashwagandha in the morning, maybe reishi or holy basil in the afternoon.

Calming in the morning, even ashwagandha.

The thing about ashwagandha— this is interesting— so this is where Chinese medicine is really interesting, is that they have— we, a lot of times when we think of an adaptogenic herb, we kind of a lot of times think of them— or when I did early on, I thought they were all part of the same category and affected the body the same way. Ashwagandha is known as a qi yang booster. That means it's both anabolic and it's boosting of qi. And, and qi could also be cellular energy, ATP, and also supporting cortisol. The crazy thing about ashwagandha Ashwagandha is— if your cortisol gets too low, ashwagandha will bring it up. If it gets too high, it brings it down. Wow. So ashwagandha works with the body in probably a more incredible way than most other herbs do. It really works in sync, in tune with your body, bringing that circadian rhythm back. So that one is typically more effective earlier in the day. Some people, it can mess with their sleep if they take it later on. Not everybody. So hypothyroidism is the, is the best example of what we call a qi-yang deficiency. The body— because their body— yang is heat. So the body's too cold and then the mitochondria are too depleted. So it's addressing both of those issues simultaneously. Wow. Versus holy basil is a little bit more calming. And so taking it more in the evening is also going to typically be a little bit better for maybe where that cortisol cycle is.

I mean, I take a, I take a sleep formula with ashwagandha, L-theanine, tryptophan, and I— other than if I have to urinate at night, I do not wake up. And I noticed that my sleep efficiency is like 97, 99%, and my high stress sleep is zero.

Yeah.

So I don't— I'm, I'm not stressed when, when I'm sleeping, and that's worked very well for me. I don't do well with melatonin. In fact, most of my clients don't do well with melatonin, and I find that it either creates like really vivid dreams, um, like very, very vivid, intense dreams. It even can create a dependency. They have trouble sleeping when they're not on it. Um, so I haven't become a big fan of, of melatonin, but ashwagandha, tryptophan, L-theanine— I've seen miracles with that on a regular basis because it seems like it's non-tranquilitic, like it's not, it's not drugging you to sleep.

—calming you to sleep. And that's what a lot of people notice. So when you're doing— if you're trying to increase your sleep long-term and improve it, ashwagandha and reishi mushroom are probably the two best for that long-term balance. To your point, if you take valerian root, you're going to wake up in the morning groggy. And nobody likes that. So I agree. I think apigenin, which is found in chamomile tea, magnolia bark, To your point, tryptophan, theanine, these are really amazing. These are great herbs or herbal compounds that calm the body, but also they're not gonna give you that drowsy feeling the next day.

So let's talk about blood work. I mean, more classic blood work, because everybody wants to know, I would say in 10 years in this space, the most common question that I get is, where do I start? Yeah. Right? I mean, how do I get through the paralysis of analysis and where do I start? What biomarkers should I pull? Why should I pull them? And I am a huge believer in data. No matter what direction you're going to go with your treatment, whether it's going to be Eastern, Western, combination of both, what have you, data is just, you know, helps you drown out the noise. Yeah. So what are the must-have pieces of data that you get on a blood panel? Yeah.

So when I'm looking at blood work, the first thing I'm trying to do is go as far upstream as possible. You and I talked about this on my show, right? Yeah. What's the first domino? We want to find the dom— those dominoes first. So I tend to look at cortisol and insulin very high up, and insulin probably the biggest. So fasting glucose and insulin levels and A1C, I think those are critically important markers, is knowing what your blood sugar is. Along with that, uh, I want to know what your micronutrients are. You know, I actually think that this is the most under-tested thing on the board by far, is micronutrients. If somebody goes and gets a blood panel Most often they get zero nutrients checked. Oh yeah, yeah.

And if they do, it's iron, B12, sodium, you got a couple.

It's iron, B12, and sodium. I mean, that's maybe what they're getting tested. What about magnesium? What about zinc? Yeah, to your point. Silica. Folate. So these nutrients are so important. So that's the other thing I always run is we run a really, I like to run a really expansive, micronutrient panel, 'cause you know this, if somebody's vitamin D is in the tank, but even more, but, and again, some people check for that, but if your zinc or magnesium's in the tank or folate, or your body has a very hard time healing. I'll share with you a story as an example for this. So when I had my spinal infection and didn't walk for a full year and I was so sick, for the next 2 years after, I was rehabbing, doing everything I could, but I battled low energy. I mean, Gary, I was exhausted constantly. And part of me thought, well, it's just overcoming this infection. But then 2 years later, I'm like, I'm still exhausted. Finally. And I had blood work done just because every time I was going in to get stem cells, they would do a basic panel.

You weren't anemic or anything like jumping off, right?

That's right. So finally I said, okay, I want to do a really advanced panel on myself. And I did. And only 2 things showed up. Riboflavin, vitamin B2, was almost zero. I mean, it was like nonexistent. And then my mitochondrial health, it said, was just absolutely depleted. Part of that might have been I had to get on an IV antibiotic when I had my infection. And that's actually the IV. It's not as hard on your gut, but it's harder on your mitochondria. Yeah. And so then I just— I started supplementing with high-dose vitamin B2 and taking more mitochondrial support like CoQ10, PQQ, NAD+. And my energy, Gary, went from a 6 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. And it's been that ever since. Really? And you know what? The single biggest one was vitamin B2. When I took that— and it's so random, it's like vitamin B2. But that's the early phase. You know this better than anyone I could interview or talk to. That's that first phase of the methylation cycle. No question. And I'm— oh my gosh, I have the, the, the C677 variant and of MTHFR, of MTHFR, and that was showing up in my blood work as well. So getting that advanced panel, looking at micronutrients, being able to tell that I was— that was the first time I'd actually tested for my genetic variant in methylation showing up. And so that completely changed the way I supplemented. So that was big. And then the other few other markers, and I'm seeing these pop up all the time, ApoB for heart health and Lp, huge. If you're running a hormone panel like I do, you really also want to look for not only the thyroid, the standard thyroid markers, but T3, and then of course TPO. You want to look for the antibodies, you want to look for that as well. And then here's just a few others that I like. There's one called F2-isopronanes. This is looking at body-wide oxidative stress. Wow. And there are so many people today who have major oxidative stress. And this is why I know a lot of your therapies you're doing with hydrogen. What's it called again? It's called F2-isopronanes. Another good one to pair that with is—

I want to make sure we put that in the show notes too.

Yeah, another great one too is doing one to pair with that on glutathione, right? You know, the GGT marker, looking at that. But I think overall, if you're doing micronutrients— now, I do think there's value in doing some of the standard CBC, CMP, like looking at those markers as well. But, but I think if you were able to look at those things, and if I had to add one— now, of course, this isn't a blood test, but the other thing I probably value the most Let me, let me give a few more. Sorry, it's so hard for me to stop. But, but I would say you're like I am, dude.

You start going down the rabbit hole and you're like, I did just think of another one that we always pull.

I do think it depends upon the person, but I think that blood panel number one. And then number two, hey, what are your symptoms? For a lot of people, a GI map is incredibly beneficial. I think for some people, I mean, I, I love a genetics variant test, not only looking at MTHFR. Oh yeah, but COMT and AMO and VDR, like Like, I found out that I don't convert vitamin D well, so— and I don't convert omega-3s well. And so, like, it very much changed the way I supplemented. And when I was able to get the blood work genetically and an advanced panel, I'm telling you, again, and it's like, Gary, I already know what to do, generally speaking. I ate so healthy, I exercise constantly. But being able to dial in my foods and supplements, uh, based on getting the right testing done, yeah, it was completely transformative. And it's been transformative for my patients too.

What micronutrient assay do you do? Do you do the, um— because I've done the CNA, the Cellular Micronutrient Assay. There's one by, um, SpectraCell. SpectraCell is, is a good one.

And then Vibrant has one. Uh, we, we run— in my clinic, we run it through Quest. And it's just, it's one that I've just put together based on the markers I like most. Okay. So the markers that I really like for a lot of the nutrients, they're called RBC. So it's red blood cell, like RBC magnesium, RBC selenium. So it's, it's actually testing— and this is so important It's testing what's in your cell, not what's in your blood.

I, this is— I talk about this all the time. I mean, so much B12 deficiency shows high B12 in the blood. Yes. And it's a really hard concept to wrap your arms around, but we're pulling, you know, nutrient concentrations from the serum of the blood, not from inside the cell. And when the cell is not metabolizing it, using that fuel, it builds up in the blood. We go, oh gosh, I better cut my B12. You know, no, you need to just change the form. That's right. On B12 that you're using. Yeah, I put patients on— no, I don't have patients, I have clients— on B12 supplementation, and their B12 has gone down because they start to metabolize. That's right.

It's, it's so important. It is so— and you know, I see this too, like, there's a— there's so many companies getting into the marker game, and they're like, I've got 50 markers. No, I've got 100. No, I've got 1 trillion. Yeah, like, and you're like, okay. But here's the thing I encourage— don't go for volume, go for the markers that matter. Like, I would much rather have somebody have fewer markers and test red blood cell— like, looking at cellular magnesium and cellular zinc and MMA, which is the cellular B12. Knowing those markers versus the standard, I don't know, LDL cholesterol, it's so outdated when ApoB and Lp are so much more important. I'd much rather do the right markers than just get 100+ markers.

And what do you do? Because I, I have the— I have the lipo little a variant, um, and ApoB. It's not an insane Thai, uh, genetic— I manage all of the other lifestyle risk factors to try to mitigate the impact that that has. Um, PCSK9 inhibitors, don't touch it. Um, diet somewhat. So what do you do for lipo a and ApoB?

Yeah. Uh, what, what I like doing there is— and listen, here's the thing, you're probably doing most of the stuff already, but I think from a dietary standpoint, I would really try and increase omega-3 intake, really increase nitric oxide, really reduce oxidative stress as much as possible. I think that's key. So the diet should look like lots of wild-caught salmon and fish, lots of blueberries, lots of pomegranate. Apples are actually pretty beneficial here. Um, I would do garlic. I would do lots of steamed vegetables and I would— you actually don't want to go overboard on fat. Like, you want to be careful. See, this is where it's so interesting, and you've seen this too. There's this sort of conversation of people right now happening, happening, and a lot of them are in Maha and then a lot of them are on more of the conventional medicine where they're saying don't eat seed oils, but eat all the butter and tallow you want. Okay. And then there's another group here saying, well, butter and tallow will kill you. And then— but seed oils actually aren't that bad. In fact, they're better than that. I, I don't actually— I think sometimes they can both be right, because if somebody has a really backed up liver, doing heavy animal fats in Chinese medicine, it really can create some sluggishness of the liver, because the, the liver and the gallbladder are half of what deals with fat, right? So all that being said, I think for those people, you actually don't want to do high fat. You want to do low moderate fat, but just do the right fats. And it's extra virgin olive oil. Really should be almost the only oil you're doing.

I do so much extra virgin olive oil, and I, I start every morning with a shot of really good Expeller Press cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, um, and a squeeze of lemon. Love it. That's the first thing I do in the morning before coffee, before water, before even before I do my morning stack. And then about 25-30 minutes later, I start, you know, coffee in my Morning Stack. People ask me health questions every single day about their labs, their sleep, their supplements, their genetics. I want to help every single one of them, and that's why I built Just Ask Gary. It's an AI trained on everything I know, including my protocols, my research, and my methodology. You ask the question, you get my answer anytime of the day. Go to theultimatehuman.com/ai and check it out. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Yeah.

And then supplements, and you actually referenced this on my podcast, but bergamot is probably the most effective that I found for for, for LPA, 3,000 milligrams of an omega-3 fat. And you want to— you know, a lot of these omega-3 supplements are oxidized. You want to do a triglyceride form or do a really high-quality algae oil with phospholipids included. There's a— there's like one or two brands that do that, and that's about it.

But phosphatidylcholine or—

yeah, phospholipids, uh, phospholipids, but phosphatidylcholine will be part of the phospholipids for sure. Absolutely. So, so I do think that the omegas that I think— and I think doing some of the herbals that are going to reduce oxidative stress, you know, keeping cortisol low. That's probably the other really big thing I think that's going to help LPA. Yeah.

And that has to do more with lifestyle choices, like habitual patterns of that, that actually make you— allow you to feel safe in your own body. That's right. So some— what are some of those practices that people can do, especially women? I think women struggle with this more than men. I think very often women don't feel safe in their own bodies.

I think for women, yeah. So, so, so, and here's the feeling you want to have. And I tell women this that are struggling with— I think a lot of times when women are dealing with infertility, sometimes to your point, they're not feeling safe and secure. And you want to feel, women, like this is— I'm thinking about my wife, what she would want to— she would want to be curled up next to a fire with a blanket with her favorite beverage. It's snowing outside and her family's there and she has nothing going on and she's just at peace. That is my wife's utopia. You just—

if Sage is listening to this podcast, she's like, I'm going to Picken and I'm not coming home. Every time we go to Colorado to our mountain home out there, there's like a 40% chance she doesn't come back with me.

By the way, hey, we should do a ski trip this year. We just bought a place in Park City. Oh, did you really? Yeah. And so, and by the way, I've seen your— the pictures of your place in Colorado. The land is absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. I— so all that being said, you want to get that feeling. So I think there's a few things here. Now, this may not be where everybody thought I was headed. There's a quote by A.W. Tozer, probably my favorite author of all time, and he says this: "What you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you." And it's a crazy quote because if you think about this, what you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you? How's that the most important thing about me? Isn't it my personality? Isn't it something? But if you know that you're a child of God and you have this relationship with God, and if you believe he is for you, not against you, that he is your protector, that everything he's doing every day is working out for your good, and you're walking and living with that mindset of, and also knowing God did not create you to be a productivity engine. You know, a lot of people get their sense of self-value and worth from, oh, I, you know, uh, I finished the checklist today. I'm volunteering here. They're, they're trying to be everything to all other people. Like when I think about my own daughters, I, and you know this 'cause you've got 4 kids, I get the most joy when my kids are laughing and having fun and carefree. And listen, we want our kids to use their God-given gifts and be productive people, but we also want them living in a state of joy and happiness. And God, your Father in heaven, he feels the same way about you. He wants to see you happy and laughing and loving your life. So I think when we can get this perspective of, God wants me to be happy. He wants me to be whole. He wants me to work hard, but he wants me just as much to play hard, have downtime, relax, deeply connect with other people. So I think that if you can really focus on spending time in prayer and connection with God and understanding who he is and how much he loves you, if you can spend time connecting with other virtuous people that love you, that care for you, that are cheering you on, that are your encouragers, I think connecting deeply with God, connecting deeply with others. And this is interesting, in Genesis, there's this sort of thing where I think the most important things that make us healthy is how connected to God are we? How connected to people are we? How connected are we to nature? Walking outside, just walking, going on regular walks in nature and pausing every little bit and just taking a breath and saying, wow, God, you are good. Nature, it's amazing what you've created here. So I think it's some of, I think it's more, than anything, a mindset, being able to adapt and have that mindset overtake you, I think, I think would help the most.

What you think about God is the most important thing about you, essentially, is the most important thing about— so what you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you. Yeah, that is really profound. Took me a minute to stitch that together because I do sit in, in, in prayer every morning for a few minutes and my prayer and full confession here used to be like a wishlist. Sure. Oh, everyone.

I've had those prayers. It was all the things I need.

It was like Santa Claus, you know, this is what I hope you bring me for Christmas. And now it's purely about just giving thanks. And I know that sounds so altruistic and poofy and I was never that guy because I have a deeply scientific background. But I think, and I pray for wisdom, not knowledge. I love that. I don't pray to be smarter. I just pray for wisdom. And I've never really framed it as what, how I think about God. But now that I'm processing it, it really does have a big reflection on what you— Well, 'cause think about this. Think about yourself.

If you think that God is judging you all the time, If you think that God is angry with you, if you think that life is a test and God is, you know, or you don't think he exists at all, you know, then that takes really meaning out of your life and purpose if he doesn't exist. So yeah, I mean, if you think that God is this loving Father and loves you and is fighting for you and you're partnering with him to change the world, man, it changes you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I also believe that faith is medicine and I wasn't really intending to go down this rabbit hole on this podcast. I know that you believe that too. I read your book about the biblical diet, and I think it's absolutely spot on. And it draws from recommendations that are clearly outlined in, in the Bible. And if you just were to follow that, you would be living a processed food and highly processed diet-free, um, you know, lifestyle, which I think really empowers the body to, to do the things that it does best— eliminate waste and what have you. But someone that is coming into your practice when you, when you zoom out and you're looking at this whole person? So we, we went through the biomarkers. Yeah. Um, what else are you looking at in their ecosystem? Because I, I think one of the things that's missing dramatically from modern medicine is nobody asks about how are you sleeping, you know, what are your relationships like, what is your home life like, what is your career like, what are the stressors in your life going on. I mean, are you under like insurmountable financial pressure right now? Or— because that just crushes our cellular biology.

Yeah, you you're 100% right. I mean, I'll never forget this. This is one of the first patients I ever had, and they had IBS, and they came into my clinic, and this was like 18 years— this is a long time ago, 18 years ago. But they came in and I got them on a gluten-free diet, casein-free diet, started doing more, you know, so proud of yourself. Yeah. And I was like, and they were doing great. And like, I mean, amazingly well. And then a few weeks later, they come in and they were a wreck. And I was like, I said, "Hey, hey, what happened?" 'Cause I thought it was gonna be, "I went and ate a piece of pizza, I went to this concert," like something happened. And he goes, "Nothing, my diet hasn't changed at all." And I'm like, "What has changed?" He's like, "You know, I'm going through a divorce." I was like, "Whoa." And his symptoms were worse from stress than they were if he went and ate a piece of pizza. So there's no doubt that the spiritual and mental affect the physical in just a profound and massive way. You know, in Chinese medicine, they believe, and I believe this is absolutely accurate, different emotions impact different organs. So anger affects the liver. Grief, not letting go of the past, uh, or losing a loved one, that affects the immune system. And so different emotions affect different organ systems. But, and here, when I find somebody that gets stuck, let's say we did the dietary changes, we get them on the right supplements, and they get 50% better but not 100%. 90% of the time it's due to they've had childhood trauma or something happening and just these negative emotions. It's worry, it's anxiousness, it's fear. There is an emotion that's negative that's continually keeping them from healing. And so I think it's a huge part of it. You know, one thing that I'll do for patients is, well, one, I pray for people, but I think in addition to that is I really think being able to go and address that childhood trauma or why do you still, why are you constantly living in a state of worry? And going back to what we talked about a few minutes ago of, Hey, who is God? What's that relationship here? Going and spending time, and sometimes you can do that by yourself, you can do it with another person. Sometimes it's a counselor, right? Or a psychologist. But spending time and dealing with past childhood trauma and working through it where you see it, typically one of the most powerful tools is you see it from a different lens. Hey, what good could come out of this? Or just recognizing, hey, you're living, I'll share this for myself. When I was a kid, I had a teacher who asked me to stay after class, and I said, "Okay, I'll stay after class." She said, "Josh, what do you wanna do when you get older?" I said, "I wanna be a doctor." And the reason I did is that was the first time my mom had cancer. I saw what she went through, and I went, that's what I wanted to be. She said, she laughed at me out loud, and she said, "Listen, you'll never be a doctor." She said, "My own daughter has a 3.8 GPA, and she barely got into med school." And I said, okay. And then I walked out of there and then a little later I got diagnosed with ADHD. And so I had this thought in my head constantly, Gary, growing up that I was not smart. And so I honestly stopped trying in school.

It's astounding how just one moment like that, because of the authoritative place that teacher was in your life. I mean, your friend telling you you're never gonna be a doctor would've rolled right off your back, but your teacher or your provider, I mean, parents do this too, kids all the time, I think unknowingly. Yeah. Having that authoritative role and saying— because if anyone would know, your teacher would know— you can't be a doctor, it's huge. So that's incredible. Yeah, that was a credible assault.

Huge. So that affected me for years. And it wasn't until I got to college, which, by the way, my GPA was so low, I barely got into college. I had like a low 2.0 GPA in high school. Really? Oh, yeah. And I had ADHD, so I just could not focus or concentrate.. And then I went to college. Well, first off, I didn't get into college that I wanted to go to. I got a letter from them. I, I applied to a lot of schools. A lot of heard no from. I got a letter from them and they said, basically, you're not in, but if you come and take summer school and you average above 3.0, we'll let you in. Mm-hmm. And I said, okay. So I went to school, it was University of Kentucky, went and took summer class. And the first class I had to take, this first class that I was talking about, this other teacher was English class. Mm-hmm. I had to take English 101. And the first thing I had to do was a paper. So I turned in a paper, felt good about it. And she said, Josh, would you stay after class? Oh, no. My stomach sunk.

I literally thought, you're never going to be a doctor.

This is again. And she goes, hey, what's your major? And I said, I haven't chosen a major, Mrs. Williams. And she said, well, I think you should think about being a journalism major or English major. Because she said, out of the 40 kids, you got the highest grade in the class. You did a great job. Wow. And can I tell you, here's what I call it, Gary. It was a memory transplant. I went from believing I wasn't smart, I couldn't I couldn't do it, low self-esteem throughout high school when it came to academics, to all of a sudden saying, you know what, one person told me I could do it, I can do it. And then from there, I started taking all the hard classes and the chemistry and biology and biochem and started excelling and average above a 3.0. You know, much later on, I went to, graduated Johns Hopkins with a 3.9 GPA. And so all that being said, but my point was this, there's a lot of people who have had somebody lie to them or tell them something, or they had some sort of childhood trauma and it's literally 30, 40, 50 years later, still sabotaging their mind and their health.

Wow. Yeah, because, you know, at that age, it's— the gravity of something like that is so magnificent that you just carry it and carry it. And, and since you don't share it, nobody can check it. Like, this got accidentally checked when you got to college. That's right. But nobody had the chance to really say, no, Josh, you can absolutely be a doctor if you wanted to be a doctor. So How do you go through that process with your, your patients? So we talked about the, the labs, but are you, are you asking them questions about stress, lifestyle, diet, um, you know, career? Do they feel like, do they feel like that's too invasive for them?

No, no, I mean, I mean, the sleep and the stress in any type of, like, those questions are in our intake form, you know. I think if somebody gets stuck, then we kind of sometimes go layers deep, layers deeper into this. But I would say this, Most of the studies show the single most beneficial, and this is kind of crazy, the single most beneficial thing for overcoming childhood trauma is a person just writing about it. Wow. Yeah, there's some great research on this. I got turned on to this from Jordan Peterson. And then there's a, I think it's Dr. Pennebaker, I think he's out of university somewhere in Texas, but basically spending some time, 5, 10, 15 minutes writing about your memories, like writing your own story. And your highest of highs and your lowest of lows, and being able to write through and then identify, oh, this is when it happened, this is what I'm feeling. And then going through a process of, is this true or not? Is it, like for myself, is it true that I wasn't smart, or was it that I wasn't interested in the topic and I just had a hard time, I wasn't meant to be sitting in a classroom for 8 hours a day? Right. You know, and so being able to come to that truth the real truth, and then affirming that over time is part of the process I think people can really—

Yeah, I think that's really good to frame that. Let's talk about Heal Your Cells. Yeah. What was the impetus for this book, and what do you mean by heal yourselves? Yeah. How do you heal? I wanna know.

Well, one, I think you probably know more about healing yourselves than almost anyone else I know. So I do wanna say that because, I mean, You are, I think, one of the leading experts in cellular medicine. But, but, but, but, but, but I'll share this. So I was diagnosed with a spinal infection, and you know this because you're one of the people I talked to a few, uh, quite a few, 3 and a half years ago, and was told I may never walk normally again, that I'd likely have to have my spine fused. And, you know, and I was just from a bad infection, from, from an infection I got in my disc. It spread into my bone. It was throughout my entire L5 vertebra. Then I had an abscess by my spinal cord. And so when I got that diagnosis, Gary, 3.5, 4 years ago, I was just— for 48 hours, honestly, I felt like my life was over. Yeah. And I just, I spent time in prayer and I felt like God said, you're gonna be okay. But, and, and then, and, and then I just said, you know what? How do I reverse an irreversible condition? A condition where the doctor is saying there's so much of an infection that your bone is gonna be completely gone and destroyed. And your disc is gonna be destroyed. We're gonna have to put in, you know, we're gonna have to fuse and put in maybe even rods. And I said, you know what? All I can do is spend time in prayer asking God for healing and do as much research I can on how do I heal that tissue? How do I heal those cells that are damaged? And so I went down the rabbit hole reading every study possible. Then I came across a study for one on hyperbaric chambers. On how one of the best things you could ever do with that type of infection is do— get in a hyperbaric chamber. So I got in a hyperbaric chamber almost every day for 90 days. Wow. And then I started reading on natural ways to kill the infection, natural ways to—

because the key is that help, or did you find that you got some relief from that?

Oh, oh yeah. I mean, it was immensely helpful. Really?

If you know me, you know I don't recommend anything I haven't personally tested. That's not a marketing line. That's just how I operate. I've been on the road my entire career. Different time zones, brutal schedules, no margin for days off. And so I'm constantly testing what actually works in my own body. NAD+ was something I keep coming back to. It's the molecule your cells use to produce energy and repair, and it declines faster than most people realize. When I found Symbiotica's Liposomal NAD+, the absorption technology is what got my attention. I tested it, I felt it, and it's been in my bag ever since. I'm always evolving what I put in my body, and this one has stayed on the list. I'm genuinely excited for you to experience it. This is the standard we hold every product to before it even reaches you. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

And so I started reading on, okay, well, why won't my disc or bone heal that well? You know, the big thing I found? Hmm. They don't get much oxygen. That's right.

Presence of oxygen.

And so how do I drive the most amount of oxygen in the area? Well, it's hyperbaric chamber for one, by far. Hot and cold therapy, alternating those back and forth. It was doing certain supplements where I just really got my body in the most oxygenated place possible. And then it was stem cells and exosomes.

And so— You know, it was initially a failed non-sterile procedure for stem cells that led you there. That's right. You walked your way out of it with—

with stem cells. Stem cells. Isn't that crazy? I mean, listen, you know how many people told me— so, so, so for everybody listening, I, I ended up getting the spinal infection because I was having back pain that it got much better. And I'd had a stem cell before and it helped tremendously, but I went in and somehow my disc got infected that second time, or that time I got it done. And so most people said, well, there's no way you'd get stem cell again. And I said, well, now I'm going to a different place. I went to see Dr. Rafael Gonzalez.

Yeah, shout out to Dr. Gonzalez. Yeah, I think the absolute world of him. And got those stem cells there.

And I will tell you, I mean, what an amazing part of my healing. You know what else I got turned on to? I started reading, well, how do I create more angiogenesis and getting more blood to the area? Well, peptide combinations. Yes. Right. BPC-157, TB-500, GHQCU, doing this combination. Increase VEGF. And so what I did was, is I went in and I said, okay, I'm going to just do all these things simultaneously and I'm going to follow a protocol. I'm not going to try and heal tomorrow. I'm going to try and heal over the next 3 years, get back to 100%. And I'm back to 100%. I have zero pain. In fact, I have less pain right now than I did 4 years ago before all this happened.

And the tissue that was, um, uh, necrotic, did it come back? Necrotic is dead, right?

Well, here's the thing, we never did a test for necrotic tissue. You could just see on the MRI, and when I did it with contrast, you could see the, the fluid, the infection. I mean, you could see all of that there. It was just lit. And so, but honestly, I just didn't focus on that. You know, the other thing is like, I got more discouraged the more I read online. And then I have a friend I know who went and had the same thing done and he had to have his spine fused. So, you know, I could have fixed my eyes on, well, he didn't heal and a lot of these other people didn't heal. But I just said, you know what, I'm gonna trust God and I'm gonna do everything I can in my power to flood these tissues with blood flow and oxygen. And I did, and my body was able to, completely heal and regenerate.

So this was the genesis of Heal Yourself. It was.

And so I said, I said to myself, okay, I want to write a book about cellular healing and about how to reverse irreversible conditions. So people that have gone to the doctor and said, you have MS or you have cancer or you have, you know, autoimmune disease, even today, most doctors will say you can't reverse that. Yeah. And whether it's reversing it or improving it by 90%, the focus is how do we heal your cells? And, you know, your cells essentially are almost like little bodies. They have— or they have organs. We call them organelles. And I started doing research on how to heal the cell membrane, which, of course, fatty acids like omega-3s and phospholipids and preventing oxidative stress, high-dose glutathione. I mean, these things are amazing for the cell membrane.

I've seen people go through these PK protocols and have life-changing—

I mean, and to your point, hydrogen. Yeah. I mean, that's also incredibly protective against oxidative stress. And then doing things for the mitochondria. So I just broke down and looked at the cell and said, okay, You know what, hypothyroidism, that's primarily a mitochondrial issue. So I started focusing on healing the mitochondria. Oh, a lot of these heart issues, this is more of a cell membrane issue. Let's focus on healing the cell membrane, digging into all that research there. So I think that almost any condition somebody's struggling with, whether it be hypothyroidism, infertility, low testosterone, if you can focus on going to furthest upstream or that main area where dysfunction starts, and if we can fix things there, yeah, you have your greatest chance of healing. And so that's what you know, I put in the book Heal Yourselves is all about how do you completely fix and heal your cells. And then that, you know, as a byproduct, fixes and heals your organs.

And what do you find is just a general practice or lifestyle choices somebody could implement tomorrow? Yeah. To have a healthy cellular environment?

Yeah, I think first and foremost is you, you want to do a— there's 3 things I want to touch on in particular. One you really hit on when I had you on my podcast, and that was we want to detoxify the cell. Yes. Now, if you think about it like this, your body is continually repairing and healing. That's what's amazing. That's one of the things that was most inspiring to me, is knowing my body is, is continually regenerating. But your house is like a home being remodeled, right? You have, you have certain tissues that are very unhealthy. It's like termite damage or water damage. We need to go and take that and remove that. That's the detoxification. We got to detox the cell. The second thing is we need to have the right building blocks and materials. You need the right amino acids, you need the right fatty acids, you need the right micronutrients. That's gonna help rebuild healthy tissue. But the third thing, and this was maybe the most important, you need to have enough energy. Yeah. Most people do not have enough cellular energy. Mm. So think about hypothyroidism. You don't even have enough, you know, energy for your body to heat itself or create thicker hair or, or support your own metabolism. Mm-hmm. And so one of the greatest things you can do, and that's just tied to the mitochondria, boost up that cellular energy. And that's related to just sleep better. Wear your blue blockers at night. Get your room black, dark, get it cold. Stop looking at, you know, listen to an audiobook rather than watch something before bed, you know, but do everything you can to one, sleep better, reduce stress. Part of that is having more fun. You know, schedule things you love to do, schedule more downtime, connect more with family. Yeah. Walk. In nature, you know, movement is— in fact, oh gosh, I totally agree. The number one thing somebody can do to boost mitochondria outside of sleep is build muscle. I mean, muscle is where your— your muscle and your heart and your brain are where by far the most mitochondria are. So the fastest way to build mitochondria is boosting your muscle mass. Yeah, so, so weight training. So, so, you know, get some bands at home or some dumbbells, do that sort of thing. And from a dietary standpoint meat and vegetables and low glycemic fruit.

Oh my God, I am so glad you said that. Can you say that again?

Yeah, meat, vegetables, low glycemic fruit. I mean, if you're wondering what to do, you know, the person I'm counseling right now, and we're going through his natural cancer protocol, it's— I'm having him eat salmon predominantly. And, you know, and other people would have them do chicken and fish and eggs, you know, so get a lot of protein. And then it's pomegranate, it's berries, it's apples, it's kiwi, you know, it's—

it's— so he is getting some sugars.

But it's so low. Yeah. Oh, I'm saying, well, no, with him, uh, I told him, he said, he said, well, what do I eat ideally if I could just eat one meal? I'm like, salmon and cabbage. I mean, cabbage has vitamin U, sulfur. It's so, it's so incredible for, for, for the colon.

In fact, salmon and cabbage. Salmon and cabbage. Yeah.

Yes. Now I have them doing a little more cabbage, like sauerkraut, or just— that's in the evening. Yeah. And I have them do bok choy. I mean, he does other things, but generally his diet is pretty much salmon and steamed vegetables. And I have them do one piece of fruit a day, and it's typically just— it's an apple or blueberries. And that's, that, that's primarily that. But for most people, generally, I think if you want to know what to do: meat, vegetables, low glycemic fruit.

I would wholly agree with that. And then address the stress and address sleep, address the sleep, and address the environment. Because, you know, like we talked about before, all cancer regardless of its former origin, was at one time a healthy cell. That's right. And that metabolism shifted for a reason. We have believed for centuries that healthy cells can become sick. For whatever reason, we don't believe that sick cells can become healthy. I would totally disagree with that. Yeah, agree. And I think you would too. What are— I want to wind the podcast down by saying, what are some of the things that have surprised you or shocked you the most about Um, uh, traditional Chinese medicine. Like, where have you seen it be effective over and over and over again? And even you're like, wow, this worked again? Like, really? Um, I've had that experience with hydrogen. You know, people think that I always have an angle with hydrogen. I think that the role of hydrogen gas in the human body is one of the greatest discoveries of our millennia. I am that fascinated by But what is it about Chinese medicine, traditional Eastern medicine, that has continued to surprise you?

Well, one, I would say it's the combination of the accuracy and the effectiveness. Chinese medicine is really built over— it's millions of individual case studies. There were practitioners that just kept finding patterns and patterns and patterns and saying, hey, you know what, this works for this condition, this works for this. And they found it to be repeatable. But I, you know, I've really found that, like, if I look at somebody's tongue and I can see what's going on there and put together a dietary plan for them, the outcomes will be better than any other sort of testing I could do. Wow. Better than anything.

Ayurveda would tell you the same thing, right? The oldest form of medicine, I think, in the world.

This very same thing. And so, like, I can look at somebody's tongue and say, okay, you should not— you should not eat any raw vegetables, you know, for instance, as an example. Wow. You know, like if somebody's tongue is really pale and it's like a pale pink rather than a bright, vibrant pink, no raw vegetables, lots of red meat, do beets. I mean, I can tell from somebody's tongue, it's just incredibly, incredibly accurate. So I'm blown away by that. And just the level of personalization, think about it. We are just now in main— even functional medicine stepping into a level of personalization. One of the challenges today, and I wanna say downfalls of even some types of functional medicine is I still see doctors doing this no matter what the patient has going on. Some certain practitioners will put all of them on a ketogenic diet, or all of them on low carb, or all of them on vegan, or all of them on carnivore. Everybody is different. I totally agree. So when you go to Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, they've been doing personalized medicine for over 3,000 years and fine-tuning the exact herbs and diet, even lifestyle changes that need to be done for that individual.

Yeah. Wow, that's so fascinating. So you know that I, I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question, um, and I asked it to you before.

Are you ready? It was okay. Well, you know, I better get ready.

Yeah, it's coming. There's no right or wrong answer to this. You got a great answer last time. So, um, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

To be an ultimate human is to be like Jesus Christ. And I think it's this, ultimately. It's you're taking, you're honoring God with your temple, you're seeing your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, and you're doing everything you can to have your maximum impact here on earth. And so it reminds me of, you know, just, I was meeting with Michael W. Smith. He's a famous musician. He was on my show recently, and I was talking to him, and he has a mentor and a friend, a friend of both of us. The guy's 96 years old, and he just did a mission trip to Africa, Iraq at 96 years old. Wow. Doing, I mean, just incredibly healthy, incredibly well. But he's, everything he does is to glorify God. He's eating to glorify God. He's exercising to glorify God. He's learning to glorify God. So he, he has just such an amazing mind with this. But I would say in order for people to reach their highest human potential, they need to grow in their skill and their character. Take your character to the highest level possible. Take your skill to the highest level possible. And you can only do those things and be most effective with your life if you are eating and moving and thinking and doing all these things to glorify God with your body. Reminds me of a Bible verse, one of my favorites. It's 1 Corinthians 10:31. Whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So I really think to be the ultimate human is to use your gifts for, you know, to help the maximum amount of people. Wow, incredible, man.

Uh, I always love having you on the podcast. Heal Yourselves— you're writing books faster than I can read them. Congratulations. I'll put a link to the, uh, I'll put a link in the show notes for the books and also, um, uh, to those biomarkers that, that you talked about, because there was one or two in there that I'm not used to, to dealing with. So I'm going to start going down the rabbit hole on those. But Dr. Josh Axe, thank you for coming on The Ultimate Human. I hope you'll come back again. And until next time, guys, that's just science.