Dr. Will Cole: Insulin Resistance Is Fueling Your Cellular Aging | TUH #308

People born in the '90s, millennials, were aging more rapidly than people born in 1965. So there's people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s that have senior citizen cells and they don't even know it.

I think it's high time that people recognize at scale the importance of cellular health because very often we're just not getting down into microenvironment enough.

We have this accelerated cellular aging and the faster your cells are aging, you have an increased likelihood of a health problem of that specific organ. Living in our modern broken world environmental toxins, eating clean alone isn't going to cut it.

If you're bathing yourselves in a toxic soup and they've gone underdressed, and then you add the stress bucket to it, you know, you're at a breaking point.

Because we know the things— what stress and rage and shame and trauma will do to you on a cellular level. You have to deal with the mental, emotional, spiritual just as much, if not more, than you deal with the physical. But the beautiful blessing, silver lining in all of this, is that when you know what you're dealing with, you can do something about it.

For somebody that's compelled to take cellular health seriously, where does it start?

It could all be 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 actually someone I have a great amount of respect for in the industry, in the space, because he talks about a topic that goes lost, I think, even on a lot of functional medicine practitioners, and that is getting down to the health of your actual cells. And he's here today to not only talk about cellular health, but to talk about his new book that he co-authored with Dr. Josh Axe, another good friend of mine and mentor in the space. So welcome to the podcast, Dr. Will Cole.

Thanks for having me back, my friend. I hear you made me a coffee today.

Not just a coffee, a mold-free coffee. Certified organic.

It's the best coffee I've had. What did you put in it? I mean, people are gonna wanna know what Gary Brecka made.

I'll tell you what goes into this coffee. What goes in this coffee is certified mold-free organic coffee and then raw goat milk. So I foam the raw goat milk and then about a tablespoon of raw maple syrup.

Got it. Your side hustle could be barista. I mean, you could do it easily.

Yeah, yeah, you know, if it ever doesn't work out in the biohacking space, I could go into the barista.

You know, I wanna get into, cellular health. And I want to actually, because I think that you and I are aligned on so many different areas, you know, 12 years ago, um, when I started talking about mold, mycotoxins, viruses, parasites, heavy metals as potential causes for immune disruption, chronic inflammation, immune activation, you know, I was laughed out of a lot of rooms. Um, and it's becoming more accepted and more mainstream. You know, I love the adage that, uh, The saying that, you know, when a fish gets sick, the first thing we do is clean the tank. Yeah, right, because it's so obvious, right? Fish is swimming around dirty water, murky water, and, and usually what we do is we clean up the terrain and the environment and the fish gets healthy again. Um, and by environment, I don't necessarily mean our, our external environment. I mean this environment, the internal, the bioterrain. Yeah, the bioterrain. You've been a pioneer in talking about this. Um, you and I think Dr. Perlmutter were very early on the scene. I had Dr. Perlmutter here this week. He was mentor of mine. Um, in fact, in 2014, I read his book Grain Brain. Um, brilliant, man. And then he wrote another one, Gut-Brain Connection. Yeah, or one of those came first. Yeah, it was Gut-Brain Connection. And then—

Yeah, he has Brain Maker, like a few other different ones. Yeah, and his new one, Brain Defenders.

Like brain— Yeah, Brain Defenders. And he talks about Alzheimer's, dementia, neuroinflammatory conditions. Um, but he gets to the root cause being gut. Cellular health and, uh, toxic exposure. And, you know, he talks very often about how your toxic bucket slowly fills up, and when it overflows, everything goes haywire. And it seems like something just happened to you, but it's been happening over a prolonged period of time.

Yeah.

So someone that's on this biohacking journey, which everyone that's watching this podcast is, is on this longevity, anti-aging, biohacking journey, whatever you want to call it, they're curious But a lot of times they don't know where to start. And the gut is such a nebulous topic, right? Do you just take some probiotics and some colostrum and you're fine? How do you evaluate it? How do you assess it? And then what do you do once you have that information? I would love to start there and then expand into the topics that you cover in the book.

Yeah, improving gut health. Yeah, I mean, man, it's so important, right? 'Cause it's the gatekeeper to everything. Something that we dive into Heal Yourselves is this dysfunction of the cell. And even in functional medicine, we're looking at systems, right? We're looking at how the gut impacts the brain or your hormones or inflammation levels, your nervous system. But ultimately, it's a cellular dysfunction. And the cells that make up that organ, we want to understand what cell dysfunction is going on there. And the gut specifically, I mean, the gut lining is very, like, one cell thin. I mean, it's very thin. So it is very easy to become— those cells of the gut lining to be more permeable.

Mm-hmm.

Things passing through the gut that shouldn't be able to pass through the gut, like undigested food proteins, like bacterial toxins that are high in lipopolysaccharides, these bacterial toxins. That's the seminal event that can cause systemic cellular inflammation, is when the gut is more permeable. So here's what I'm finding, and certainly with your audience, I think it'll resonate with them, because most of our telehealth patients know more than most people do. They're doing more than the average American. So, okay, they're beyond the basic stuff. And that the old sort of clichéd advice of just eat clean or eat real foods isn't gonna cut it because there's a lot of foods that you and I know this, that are not inherently bad. They're under the umbrella of real foods, but because of what we've done to the human microbiome, and of course, what we've done to our soil microbiome and its intimate connection and the larger human gastrointestinal system, there's a lot of quote unquote healthy foods that aren't loving people's body back so far.

Right. So much.

So we have to figure out and meet someone's gut where it's at today and then build resilience from there. So these sort of hard and fast rules that apply to everybody, you have to go down and— how can we create this proverbial cast? If someone has a broken bone, they have to put that cast on. How do we create a proverbial cast in someone's gastrointestinal system and microbiome to almost be able to gain resilience, to gain mending and healing? So it could be soups and stews for some people, right? something easy to digest. So I think that's like a good general—

Bone broth.

Yeah, starting point for many people. Bone broth base. You can do a galangal ginger base if you want plant-based. You could do a seaweed broth, but predominantly bone broth base with good puree, like soft cooked vegetables. Puree them if you don't digest vegetables very well, because these plant fibers and plant nutrients, plant anti-nutrients Can be problematic for some people, but cooking them down almost like predigests the vegetables in some ways. And the meat is soft and it's cooked, it's broken up. So that's easy to digest as well. So do some brothing and souping for, uh, from a few weeks to a month.

Hmm.

Now there's caveats to that because even bone broth can be high in histamine. So if someone has histamine intolerance, that can make a good gut healing food like bone broth Not love some people back. There's so much bio-individuality for that. So, and then for that person, you'd have to do a low histamine protocol. But I would say that's my point of saying you can hear something that's good for the gut for one person, even if it's healthy. What works for one person may not be right for you, right? Which can be kind of maddening. But it— look at it a different way, is that we're all unique, we're all at different stages of our healing. Let's find out what loves your body back. So I think finding some stabilizing, nourishing meal, and then Things that are calming, like calming teas or something else that comes to mind, like ginger tea, peppermint tea, aloe juice, like whole leaf aloe juice, I find loves a lot of people's guts back.

Wow, whole leaf aloe juice.

Those are some things to think about. And then intermittent fasting, like the sort of gut siesta is a good—

I love that term, the gut siesta.

Some sort of, yeah, gut siesta can be helpful because that is a reprieve. Our gut has its own circadian rhythm. Certain bacteria are higher in the morning, some are higher in the evenings, like our hormones are. And then there's this communication between the gut and the hormones, right? So fasting, even just not eating too late at night, just so you're fasting at the very least, fasting through the night so you can rest your gut, that helps to reset and support microbiome balance. So people have to have these bacterial overgrowths, these yeast and fungal overgrowths, and of course inflammation and sort of a frenetic gut. That reprieve That fasting period, whether you just are having a 12:12 and then you can progress from there. People can do 16, 18, OMADs for a time, cyclical OMADs. It's a great time to give the gut time because digesting food requires a lot of energy, a lot of work. So healthy food can be stressing an already stressed-out gut. So giving it just a break to allow your gut to work on repairing and not digesting is a good thing to consider.

I think that's a great idea too. And, you know, we've had a plethora of inquiries about SIBO and H. pylori and actual infections in the stomach or in the gut lately and how to address those without antibiotics. And when you have a patient that has small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and they can't do the standard fermented foods and things like that, that, I mean, I eat a ton of fermented foods. Yeah, me too. And I found that When I started to add sauerkraut, kimchi, and fermented foods and vegetables back to my regular routine. Now, I didn't have dysbiosis to begin with, but my gut was the most regular it had ever been.

Yeah.

In terms of bowel movements, in terms of noise, in terms of, you know, bloating, gas, constipation, irritability, cramping. You know, I haven't had those in a very, very long time, and they're a mainstay of my diet. But like you, I don't think that it is a catch-all, be-all, like everybody's just go get a can of sauerkraut.

Yeah, start off low and slow. I mean, fermented foods are high in histamines too. So again, works great for some people, many people. I mean, I do great with it. You do great with it. But if it doesn't love your body back, check. It doesn't make that food bad. It just, you have to meet your gut where it's at. Start off low and slow because they are powerful modulators of the gut microbiome. So things like sauerkraut, kimchi, Kombuchas, kvasses, yogurts, cheeses, that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

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So, um, let's pivot into, um, uh, Heal Your Cells, uh, because I, I think it's high time that people recognize at scale the importance of cellular health. Because very often we're just not getting down into microenvironment enough, um, and we're not asking the question of what are we bathing ourselves in, you know? Are they, are they just bathing in a toxic soup?

Yeah.

In which case you're not going to lever yourself out of that, um, unless you really address address things at a micro level. And so walk me through the book. I mean, what is Heal Your Cells about? What could the reader expect to learn by parsing through that? It's a dense book.

Yeah, it is a dense book. There's a lot of information. It is a lot in there, but we wanted to make it beyond the basic stuff. People, we didn't want to, Dr. Axe and I didn't want to just write a book for the sake of it. I mean, we see patients full-time. We have podcasts, all that thing. So we really wanted to be meaningful. And it was born in part of something that him and I went through a few years ago. My dad, 63 years old, who, Dr. Pompa, we were at your house actually earlier this year. He was my, Dr. Pompa, if anyone knows him, he was my dad's best friend. I've known Dr. Pompa since I was a little kid.

He actually dissed on some childhood memories of you. I forget what it was because I want to bring it to the podcast so bad right now.

He told some stories. Shout out to her.

Let's just say that.

Yeah, some good inaudition memories on you when you were like 10 years old.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, it was embarrassing. Yeah, a whole room full of people. Um, but anyway, so my dad was in the health space, and on the outside, the picture of health. Um, 63 years old, driving to pick my mom up from the airport, never made it. He lost consciousness, some cardiovascular event that made him pass out, and he went full, full speed Off the road into a tree and died. And this is beyond the basics. He was already doing all that wellness stuff. So what's going on here? And it really that same year there was a study, and hindsight's 20/20. We can't be God. We can't. We don't know everything. But in my mind, I'm a clinician. I see telehealth patients. I'm like wondering what was going on there. Like some things that I wish we would have done. But my dad was like a lot of people, both men and women. Men are the stereotypes here, but women I've seen it with women too. It's like don't. I don't want to run the labs. I just know what to do. I know how to eat clean. I know exercise. So he did what he did in his 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. It just wasn't enough. So what— just, just enough, just what you do, the basic stuff, living in our modern broken world with environmental toxins.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, eating clean alone isn't going to cut it. And that's just— I wish it was different, but it's just not different. Start with the basics. So of course start there, but then test. And then you have to know what you have to lean into. Not everybody has to lean into dealing with forever chemicals and PFAS, but we know the science of these environmental toxins and how they can create an inflammatory response of someone's arteries, creating heart attack and stroke. So for somebody that does eat clean, that does physical activity, and they have a health crisis, we have to look at these areas that are beyond the basics.

Yeah.

So heal yourselves. There was a study, the same year that my dad died. It was published in Nature, was out of Stanford. We talk about it in the book, but the researchers found 1 in 5 people over the age of 50, that equals about 22 million Americans, let alone all the people under 50 that I see on labs. So the number is actually a lot higher, have one organ aging more rapidly than other organs.

Mm-hmm.

This sort of uneven aging. So their heart was aging faster, their brain was aging faster. And why this is important is the cells that make up that organ, if the brain was aging faster, the cells of the brain was aging faster, people in the study were at an 80% increased risk of some neurodegenerative problem.

Wow.

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, like you were talking with Dr. Perlmutter. If your heart cells are aging more rapidly, you are at over a 200% increased risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, something like that. They looked at 11 different organs. And then just this past summer, just in June, they did a follow-up study that found even different types of cells within that same organ are aging unevenly.

Wow.

We're aging faster than ever. There's another study that wrote about Real fast, and then I'll quit talking.

No, this is my jam.

All right, I love these. This was published in Nature. Again, different group of researchers that found people— this is the UK Biobank, like, looking at that data and some data in the United States— people born after 1965 are aging more rapidly than people born prior to 1965 at the same age. And more shockingly, which, again, it makes sense when you see patients, but to see it in the journals was really shocking for me, is that people born in the '90s, millennials, were aging more rapidly than people born in 1965. So, it's fair to say people born in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, millennials, Gen Z specifically, are every decade aging more rapidly than the decade prior. So, there's people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s that have senior citizen cells and they don't even know it.

Wow.

So, that's why we wrote Heal Your Cells is because, look, we have this accelerated cellular aging. And the faster your cells are aging, you have an increased likelihood of the— of a health problem of that specific organ. But the beautiful blessing, silver lining in all of this, is that when you know what you're dealing with, you can do something about it.

Right.

These are largely reversible, healable, overcomeable. You can do something about it, but you have to know what you're dealing with and not stick your head in the sand. So the middle ground is like, yeah, don't live in fear because stressing about Healthy things isn't good for your health. Don't become obsessive compulsive or orthorexic or some sort of stress ball around health. But then the other side is like, well, let's put our head in the sand. Let's not even go there. Let's just we're all going to die someday. That sort of many people say that the middle ground is saying let's do the best we can, be empowered, and then give the rest to God. We can't control everything, but we need to do something.

Yeah, yeah. And when you talk about do something, so somebody that's compelled to. Uh, you know, again, they're, they're watching this podcast, they're doing all the right things, just like you said. They're eating a whole food diet. Mobility is non-negotiable. They're somewhat focused on their sleep. Um, they have decent, uh, relationships, you know, familial relationships, um, friendships, what have you, which I think is a really healthy ecosystem. We don't talk that much about community and connection at the level, at least, that I think we should. Um, in fact, I think it was the Harvard study, that longitudinal study, that said that the quality of your relationships is one of the biggest determinants, if not the biggest determinant of your longevity. Yeah. Um, and that isolation is extraordinarily detrimental to, um, human survival.

Yeah.

Um, and we know this because of broken heart syndrome, right? Everybody's had a grandparent or great-grandparent that passed away, um, after being married for 40, 50, 60 years, and you see the consequences. Um, but you know, for somebody that's compelled to take cellular health Seriously. Um, you know, what are, what are the stages that they go through? I would say that probably the vast majority of my listeners have already done some lab work. They're taking some supplements. They have some rationale behind that. They've, uh, likely done some other kind of testing, genetic testing or what have you. Um, but what do these deep dives on cellular health look like? Do they look at toxicity? Do they look at cellular function? How do you measure it? You talk so much about the importance of the mitochondria.

Yeah.

I feel like you're the mitochondrial pioneer. And thank you. Yeah. Which I agree with. Yeah. Where does it start?

Yeah. So, I mean, in the book, we dig into these hallmarks of aging. And every year, every few years, right, they're lumping in new ones. But we have to understand what's going on with the cell. If you want, if you're saying, okay, look, if I have brain fog, fatigue, if I have some inflammatory problem, if I'm dealing with something and I am doing all the things, if you're better off than you were if you're better off because you are doing the things, okay, great. But if you know, I'm stuck at this plateau, I'm not where I want to be, I'm speaking to you, is that why are you dealing with that? There's still cellular confusion. I mean, if you look at Sinclair's work, right, at Harvard, right?

Harvard.

Yeah, Harvard.

Yeah.

The information model or theory of aging and chronic disease, like the understanding that our cells are confused, that our genetics haven't changed. The genes inside your nucleus of your cell, they haven't changed in thousands and thousands of years. But what has changed dramatically in such a finite period of time, and you're putting that in context with the totality of human history, it's what researchers call a genetic epigenetic mismatch. This, this chasm between our cells and the world around us. Our cells are living in a brave new world, and this mismatch is why our cells are, are confused. That's how the researchers define it, is that there's this proverbial scratching happening in the cell. It's kind of a scratched CD or scratched record.

Mm-hmm.

Where if you put the record or CD on, It will play, but it's going to be jumping around. The message is there, but it's not going to be clear. That's what happens. The code that that cell needs is—

it's hard to— You're dating yourself, by the way, by using a record as an example.

I know. It's like you can't really say it, right?

10% of our audience is like, record? What? I've never heard of that.

CD. I know, but you can't even say anything because like analog is like dead. But I mean, let's bring it back.

Let's bring it back.

Let's bring back analog.

I remember records, man.

But you know what I'm talking about? Something physical, something— the software, right, is damaged, but the hardware is, is there and pristine. So there's a cellular communication issue, um, where the cell— when the cell loses recognition of self, and that could be molecular mimicry with autoimmunity, when the cell is behaving kind of disorganized, it's what the researchers call ex-differentiation, is that the brain cell forgets to be a brain cell, the heart cell forgets to be a heart cell, the ovarian cell forgets to be an ovarian cell. And that's where chronic health problems reside. So what do we need to do to reprogram our cell or to— the researchers talk about methyladaptogens, like what are ways to regulate methylation to sort of buff and clean that scratched CD or record? And there's lots of ways to do that, but you have to find out what are the pain points for your specific case, what that— what's creating cellular confusion for you. So I say the big areas are going to be the foods that we're eating, and that's granular depending on what loves your body back. Um, not just what you eat, but when you eat. And you look at the research of people Talking about a lot of chronic health problems being chronobiological in nature, meaning we're back to the fasting piece. We're always eating foods that don't love us back, and we're not giving us our body a break from that.

Right.

So that cellular siesta, that fasting that we talked about earlier, we need that because that helps to shift your cells to more of a healing state. It's our relationship to light, the dirty light, and that's throwing off our cellular clocks. And our cells have lost track of time because we're in front of our blue light with our phones all day long, and it's throwing off that sleep-wake cycle. And then the other things, real quick, and we can dive into any one of these, but I would say environmental toxins, obviously herbicides, pesticides, microplastics, forever chemicals, heavy metals. And then I would put biotoxins on there like mold. But I would like to get your take on this, because I think the mold conversation is at least exacerbated because of EMFs. Because mold has always been toxic. I mean, the Bible talks about mold. Leviticus says to burn the house down. Right. Thank the Lord we have remediators now. We don't have to do that. But I do think that mold spores are so— mycotoxins are so more irritated from the constant electricity, man-made EMFs that we are exposed to, where it's making a bad problem worse.

Yes.

And then I would say this, like you said, it's stress and trauma. It's some sort of mental, emotional, spiritual thing. Chronic stress, unresolved trauma, spiritual disconnection from God. and with other humans. That in a nutshell. So to answer the question is, what are the areas that I just said that are creating dysregulation for your cells? For some people, it's going to be more food. For some people, when you run labs, it's more environmental toxins. For some people, it's their relationships or unresolved trauma in their life or their relationship with God, spiritual disconnection. For a lot of us, it's going to be the entourage effect of a lot of different things.

Right.

That it's like, yeah, you don't have to all have it all figured out, but you need to start having a hard conversation with itself of what's causing cellular dysregulation in your body.

Yeah, and I love that you actually point out, um, everything that you're talking about is the environment, the terrain within us. And, uh, you know, stress that comes from our outside environment. But you see people that have extraordinarily level— extraordinary levels of, um, stress from the outside looking in, they're calm as a cucumber. I mean, they're just managing and handling it. Um, some of the Uh, you know, most prominent Type A, burn the candle at both ends, uh, entrepreneur-minded, uh, clients that I've had.

Yeah.

Have been some of the most centered and calm. If you look at their life from the outside, seems very chaotic, um, and it seems overtly demanding, um, but they have a handle on it and inflammatory markers are low, cellular health is in good shape. Um, they're also doing all the things and, and they manage it. Other people Um, you know, stress becomes a breaking point. And I, I love that you also pointed out how multifactorial it is. You know, if you're, if you're bathing yourselves in a toxic soup and it's all of these environmental toxins and they've gone unaddressed, and then you add the stress bucket to it, you know, now you're at a breaking point.

Yeah.

And, and it's hard to say. And I know people, when they watch a podcast, want, want you to give them the one thing, the thing, it's this. And if you fix this, Everything gets better. Yeah, but the truth is, you know, it's it's too multifactorial when you talk about human beings, and I think it's probably why this book is going to end up being such an appropriate. The timing of the book is going to be so appropriate because how first would we evaluate cellular health? Like, what do you when you say a cell is healthy? What do you mean?

Yeah, you mentioned mitochondria. I mean, that is. It would be hard to find someone not impacted by mitochondrial dysfunction that's struggling with some sort of chronic health problem or even just suboptimal health. Like, there's going to be a component to why they feel the way that they do is going to be mitochondrial dysfunction. But, I mean, the mitochondria are— I mean, just the genesis of it, the idea that mitochondria have their own DNA, it's wild to me.

Yeah.

Right. I mean, depending on how you look at it from more of a secular or a spiritual standpoint or both, really, it should be one and the same, is that the idea that at creation, at the dawn of time, that these sort of Bacteria, these soil-based organisms, were engulfed in human cells, and now they're living in every cell of our body, communicating to our microbiome. Mitochondria are descendants of ancient bacteria.

Mm.

We're from the dust of the earth, the Bible says. So whether you believe in God or not, I mean, there's something to be said through the creation process that we have bacteria in every cell of our body, and it's— they're stressed out. So, as people can have leaky gut syndrome, which we talked about, and then people can have increased blood-brain barrier permeability, what does that mean? That means the gut cells are more permeable or the blood-brain barrier cells are more permeable. But ultimately, what's really happening? All those systems and organs are made up of cells. The cells are actually leaky. The mitochondria are leaky. They're supposed to create ATP or cellular energy, but they're starting to leak these reactive oxygen species. They're these pro-inflammatory cells. So, it's like the hermetic phrase, as above, so below. above, so below. As within, so without. Our cells are defensive. Our cells feel really at all the things that I just mentioned of what's stressing ourselves out. Our cells feel unsafe. Because when really it could all be boiled down to this. When mankind pretends to be God, there's unintended consequences and sometimes intended consequences. And that's what we're paying for, the price. That's why there's human discord in our life. And that's why there's physiological climate change, if you will, in the form of chronic inflammation and cellular confusion. So I mean, how you figure out— to answer your question more pointedly, specific biomarkers you would want to run. You could look at clinical biomarkers. If I would say the average easy-to-get labs that could show how quickly or how slowly your cells are aging from a global standpoint, it's looking at insulin resistance. Because we know that's gasoline on cellular aging.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, upwards of 93% of the United States is insulin resistant, that is gasoline on cellular aging fire.

Mm-hmm.

So, to look at your glucose, fasting blood sugar, we want it under 90 in functional medicine. Your A1C under 5.5, triglycerides under 100, that's your circulating fat, HDL or good cholesterol, we want it above 59. And those inflammation markers, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, hs-CRP, we want under 1, homocysteine, we want under 7. And then if you have access to it, still a conventional lab running a nuclear magnetic resonance, like looking at the small, dense LDL particles, understanding your metabolic health is important. Is that understanding every cellular— the uneven aging that Stanford was looking at? No. There's a test called Symphony Age. It's from True Diagnostics. We run it for telehealth patients. It was in partnership with Yale. So it's not apples to apples. Stanford was looking at these specific proteins, which I think they're working on a direct-to-consumer lab.

The glycan age, like the—

Yeah, probably similar to— I don't know what— yeah, it's a certain protein. So they're able to look at specific tissues of that organ, the Stanford study that I talked about early. So they're working on that. But as close to apples to apples as you can get, it's this DNA methylation test from True Diagnostics called Symphony Age, which I have no connection to them, but they just are something that we utilize clinically. They look at 11 organs, just like Stanford looked at 11 organs, looking at DNA methylation. They look at over 100,000 different DNA methylation sites and correspond that to clinical biomarkers and morbidity case studies. So, and to understand where the different organs are aging. So we do have access to that now is what I'm trying to say. It's a blood spot test.

Right.

So I would look at the blood spot DNA methylation, and you can look and see, okay, maybe your, this person's heart is aging faster. This next person, their brain is aging faster. And you can give specific therapeutics, recommendations, foods to focus on, whatever it is. to be a little bit more organ-specific to that person.

Yeah.

Because the cells of that organ are aging more rapidly. And that's where I think, like, getting precision, getting precise on the rapidity of someone's organ aging faster will be more effective. Because maybe, like, globally, globally they're pretty much fine, but that organ is a problem for them. And that, I think someone like my dad could have benefited from being more organ-specific. And beyond sort of the general advice.

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Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

So you get this, um, uh, methylated gene test and you get this basic panel with some of the classic, uh, inflammatory markers— hs-CRP, insulin resistance. When you get that data back, then what do you do? Talk about maybe some journeys that you've walked on with some patients that came in with what You found what and treated it how?

Yeah.

Because I think really landing this for the audience is important. Number one, extends hope. And number two, someone is going to identify with the story you're about to tell.

Yeah. There's so many people that come to mind. We talk a lot about case— we talk about a lot of case studies in Heal Yourselves because I agree with you. Like, hearing other people's story helps you to know that you're not alone.

Yeah.

And it helps to metabolize your own stress to know that you're not alone. Like, we were talking about community before we started recording, that even just reading about other people's story to know how to get to the other side of what seems impossible is profoundly— it sparks hope. It sparks like, I'm not alone, I'm not crazy, right? I knew, I knew what was going on. Because you start to doubt your intuition whenever you're gaslit in a system that doesn't listen to you, right? So I, I hear There was one person that comes to mind. Her name's Lindsay. We talk about her in the book, and she's still a telehealth patient with me now. I just saw her on a group call last week. She's doing amazing. But when she met me, man, she was bedridden. This is someone that was on TV, in the public space, doing different things in that world of sort of anchoring shows and hosts and things like that. And she could eat 5 foods. She— and when I say 5 foods, it was a handful. I don't know the exact number, but it was under 10 foods where every food just didn't love her body back.

Just histamine.

Yeah, histamine response. Exactly, histamine response. She was reacting to everything— FODMAPs, histamines, oxalates, all of it. And it wasn't the food's fault. It was stressing an already stressed-out— she had no resilience. The food was stressing out an already stressed-out immune system. So we ran— and she'd seen lots of doctors, lots of conventional doctors, a lot of people in the functional medicine space. It wasn't a lack of brilliance, erudition from the doctors. I mean, they all know all the best studies out there, but it was putting all the pieces together, acting sort of like a clinical quarterback for her to see, okay, what is— what were the missing pieces there? So she had— it was mold, It was EMF sensitivity that was exacerbating the mold. So yeah, we're always going to be exposed to EMFs, guys. So don't, unless you're going to go off the grid and live in Montana in a yurt somewhere.

Right.

But it's about building resilience, living in a modern world, doing the best you can. Doesn't have to be perfect. But we started emptying that proverbial bucket. Your bucket is, I mean, to even use the cell analogy, some people, if your cells are a bucket, Some people have a capacity to handle more than others. That's your methylation gene variants, your HLA, your detoxification gene variants. The more single and double gene variants you have, these SNPs, that's going to shrink that proverbial cellular bucket. You can't change the bucket size, but you can change what you put in it. So that's going to be the mold, the stress. The stress and trauma was a massive piece for her, too. And it still is something she's working on. Actually, she just was telling me last week. So it It's dealing with the physiological and the mental, emotional, spiritual, all those things that I talked about earlier that kind of cause cellular— the cells to be unsafe. What makes the cells feel unsafe? So the things that were causing her cells to feel unsafe was the mold piece, the over-EMF exposure that was exacerbating the mold toxins. The mold was releasing more mycotoxins because the mold was irritated by the EMFs, and then it causes her cells to be more permeable to receive more of the mold toxins.

Yeah.

And I would say building gut resilience is, of course, part of that. But how can you do that when your nervous system feels completely fight or flight all the time? So nervous system regulation was a massive piece dealing with the stress and trauma.

And I want to come back and peel that back because I think you're hitting on a really, really strong point. And I don't want to interrupt your thought thread. No, no, interrupt all you want. But when we talk about stress management, and I think That's sort of such a great catch-all term, but people are like, yeah, but how do I manage stress? First of all, what do you want me to get rid of my spouse, get rid of my kids and quit my job? Because that's where my stress comes from. It's my kids, my spouse, and my job. And so living in a modern world, we have to become, in some cases, we have no choice but to adapt. And what are some of the practices, like practical practices people could use to adapt? I know what I do, but.

Well, I would say, The author Eckhart Tolle, I think, gives a lot of helpful, practical advice here. He talks about what's your relationship with the present moment? Are you making friends with the present moment? Do you see it as a means to an end, or do you see it as an enemy? Because when you talk about current chronic stress and then unresolved past trauma is another thing. But if we're just talking about current stress, what's your relationship with life itself? What's your relationship with the present moment?

Wow. That's a really good one.

I like that framing. And boil it— every situation that's stressing you out a bit. And I tell telehealth patients this all the time. Maybe it's this stressful thing at work, right? Or maybe it's a relationship. Can you change it, leave it, or accept it? Pick one of those 3 things. Because if you're not picking one of those 3 things, you're creating dysregulation for yourself, cellular unsafety for yourself and everyone around you. Because a frenetic, stressed, dysregulated person is going to impact— it's going to sabotage your relationships. So change, leave, or accept it. So maybe it's a stressful thing at work. Maybe, can you quit your job? I see some telehealth patients quit their job because it's really toxic for them. But maybe they can't. That's not practical for a lot of people. Maybe they can change it. Maybe they could go and speak up for themselves and advocate for themselves and have the tough conversations. Job or relationship, right? Or Maybe it's accept. Maybe you can't change or leave it. So that's the analogy that you said, like, for your kids, right? You can't— hopefully you're not going to leave your kids, right? But can you find what the Bible calls the peace that passes all understanding? Can you do radical acceptance? It's called radical for a reason, because it's this deep spiritual work of saying, you know what, God, I can't change or leave it right now, but can you give me peace despite my circumstances right now? They need to have that come-to-Jesus moment for themselves in any situation that's causing them stress. That's deep work.

Leave it or accept it.

Pick one of the 3.

Yeah.

And journaling is another thing that I have people, every telehealth patient, do 20 minutes a day. It's called Journal Speak. It is metabolizing stored stress and trauma in the body, because that stress and trauma, your inner resistance to the present moment or what's happening from the past that's living in your body, it's creating a lot of cellular unsafety. So putting pen to paper, pencil to paper, and writing out 20 minutes a day, A good prompt can be, what does it feel like to be me today? Which is kind of a heavy question for someone that doesn't feel good.

Right.

Or is stressed out in their life.

Right.

Writing things you never would say to anybody out loud and purging that from your body. It's like a sort of a somatic detox that can happen when you release that. Because we know the things that— what stress and rage and shame and trauma will do to you on a cellular level. It will make your cell— it's the cell defense response, the cell danger response. Your cells cannot differentiate a physiological threat and the mental, emotional, spiritual threat.

I agree.

What can you do to make your cells feel safe? And for some people, it's their relationship with light, with the present moment. For some people, it's their things that in their past they have to deal with. But you have to deal with the mental, emotional, spiritual just as much, if not more, than you deal with the physical. Because even when you talk about food, like, how many people are in self-sabotage with food because of the mental, emotional, spiritual? They can't even stick to a protocol or some sort of way of eating because of these past programming they have from their stress or trauma.

I love that. You know, journaling is a way to— there's an old business book called Put the Moose on the Table, and, um, I use it all the time in my company. And it's basically take the biggest problem, put it under the brightest light, and They give a lot of historical context around this, but how the best relationships, the best companies, the best governments were all— one of the central themes was they took the hardest thing and they put it under the brightest light. And sometimes I think people have a lot of shame around reaching out, but journaling can be very interpersonal. You don't have to share it with your spouse. You don't even have to share it with your family. But it can be a way for you to, as you say, metabolize that stress. But if you pretend like there's no moose on the table, then it just sort of eats you from the inside.

It totally does. Yeah, it creates a cascade of dysfunction on the inside and the outside.

Yeah. And I found in clients of mine that when we frame sleep, I remind them sleep is not about being tired. It's about your body feeling safe to shut off. When you look at broad categories of disease, there's what, 82% of all autoimmune disease found in women? women. Um, that doesn't mean autoimmune disease is selected by sex. It's selected by weakness. And what makes them weak is like internalizing a lot of emotion. Um, and, uh, and, and, and then that becomes like the termites that just nibble away at cellular health. Um, you know, I want to get back down, uh, to the cell too, because what, what are, you know, so first you, you, you're framing the mental-emotional spiritual impact on cellular health. Let's move over to toxicity because I think now finally we are starting to accept in mainstream allopathic medicine that, yeah, maybe metals, mold, mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, glyphosate.

Forever chemicals.

Forever chemicals can create these events that don't show up on normal labs, right? We always talk about the patient is fine on the lab, but it's a disaster sitting in your office. And so someone that wants to go on that detox journey, where does that framing start?

Yeah, I would say it can start with— it starts with food and targeted ways to support. Something that we talk about in the book that's in all of this research in the scientific literature looking at cellular rejuvenation for a lack of better words, is xenohormesis is one thing that comes to mind. Like, we know hormetic effects are one way to make— to buff that scratched CD or record so your cell can recognize what it's supposed to do. So it is like a cell boot camp, a cell— cellular somatic baptism, if you will, is different ways to do it. So fasting is one way to do it. That's a hormetic effect. ketogenic diet, fasting mimic— actually fasting or fasting-mimicking diets like the ketogenic diet. It's, it's lowering these pro-growth pathways like mTOR and increasing things like autophagy, which is cellular recycling.

Repair.

Increasing mitophagy, mitochondrial autophagy. Your cell, your body knows what to do. You just need to give it a chance to do so. So you need to lower pathways like mTOR, which is needed to build muscle, but you don't want to always be high. Your cell thinks, okay, I'm in pro-growth mode, but we need to be in repair mode more than ever before.

Yeah.

And finding that balance of growth but also repair. Um, but the specific food that comes to mind of focusing on are these xenohormetic compounds, which is just like fasting or cold plunging or sauna or all of these different ways.

Red light.

Red light. They're all xenohormetic, but xenohormesis comes from plant compounds that have gone through stressful things in their life. So think of it as like a Plants that went through hard times where it's like maybe it's the soil was drought, it was the heat of the sun, it was bugs biting it. Think of the deep-colored rich pigments in things like berries and the pomegranates, or the bitterness of extra virgin olive oil, or the bitterness of rosemary, thyme, basil herb, or the bright-colored aspects of turmeric. The bitterness and the bright colors Focusing on those things, as long as they love your digestion back to tolerance, teach our cells, like, the stress that the life that that plant went through, the cells of that plant teach our cells to be stronger, to be more resilient, to repair. A lot of these compounds are senolytics. Like, they break down these senescent pro-zombie cells that are pro-inflammatory. These zombie cells will, just like if you're Dysregulated. If our cells dysregulate, it creates dysregulation in the whole organ that's there. So those plant compounds that I talked about there, whether it be extra virgin olive oil, like a bitter tea, oolong pu-erh tea, green tea, herbs and spices, berries, pomegranates, the bitterness, the bright colors are a way to help with cellular repair mechanisms. I think it's a profound, profound tool because it helps with cell repair.

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And then when you find yourself in the presence of, uh, some of these— let's say that you've done one of the classic tests for toxicity, like environment wellness, um, or total toxicity tests, or any number of tests, and, and you find the presence of these metals, um, metals and molds, I think big ones, um, then how do we start to incorporate specific detox into our lives? Because, you know, like we said, these people are the ones that have already that are doing all the things. Um, I love that the practice of journaling— I love the framing of either, um, um, accept it, get rid of it, or what was it? Change, leave, and change, leave, and accept. You know?

Yeah, sorry, I forgot to answer the question about detoxing.

Yeah, I want to get into that.

Yeah, so the food is first, but then supplements like glutathione, obviously, like these tripeptide— tripeptide of glutathione. But the bitterness— that's where I lost my train of thought, sorry— is that the bitterness like things like sulforaphane, like broccoli sprouts. These are— these flavonoids, these polyphenols, these anthocyanins, these sulfur compounds, all of these foods that I just mentioned help with cellular detox. So this combination of it helps to upregulate these cellular repair mechanisms and detox.

There we go.

And then from there, the supplements can be glutathione. I love activated charcoal, zeolite, diatomaceous earth, these binders that can be good. And what else? Like sweating is another one. Like just—

Huge.

Sweat. And if you don't have access to a sauna, like do an Epsom salt bath, you know, get— do hot yoga and just work out, get out, get in the sun. I mean, even your relationship with light and like actually a God-made light, not our fake dirty light that humans make, but like getting outside, getting your feet in the Earth, that changes actually the electrical frequency of the Earth, shifts our own cellular electrical system to allow our cells to feel safe so it can do what it was supposed to, what it was created to do, which is to protect you and to clear these environmental toxins.

Yeah.

And then the light therapy helps to reset that cell clock. But also, if you're sweating, then you've kind of got multiple benefits from some healthy amounts of sunlight. And then from there, you can get nitty-gritty. Like, I think you just did therapeutic plasma.

Did you do that? Yeah, like, inospheresis.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so somebody like— But I've done TPE too.

Yeah, therapeutic plasma exchange has an amazing place for someone that's done all the things I just said. I think TPE and things like TPE can be a wonderful tool to— okay, you've done all the core stuff, but these numbers aren't moving where I want them to be, these glyphosate levels or whatever environmental toxin you're talking about. And I think that's where these more advanced Therapeutics can be helpful.

I'm actually really excited for, you know, TPE you can do here in the US. In use for Rhesus, not yet, but it's coming. And I know there's a lot of states that are expanding right to try. For example, I want to say it's Montana and Montana and New Jersey or New Hampshire that have already expanded their state right to try, meaning if you have a debilitating I mean, if you have a terminal or debilitating illness, you know, it used to be just terminal when the medical system had given up on you and you were terminally ill. But what if the medical system's given up on you and you're just chronically ill? And so I'm excited about the horizon that I see there. Me too.

It's same with stem cells you mentioned, like state rights. Like, we have it, you have it here in Florida, right?

Florida's great state.

Yeah, but the mechanism how those work is that they— we talk about mitochondria. One of the mechanisms is that there are these tunneling microtubules. The stem cell therapy, the stem cells actually donate their own mitochondria to your cells to say, you've got this. I'll give you my own mitochondria so you can actually heal and repair itself.

Wow.

So I think stem cells and the sort of cellular communication that they can improve to, again, allow your cell to recognize what it was meant to do all along and reprogram, if you will, I think these emerging therapies, really, the way that they work in part, if not exclusively, is because they're improving cellular communication so the cell can actually function the way God created it.

Yeah, you know, cells communicate, stem cells communicate by these things, secretomes, and yeah, or what we call exosomes.

Yeah.

Um, and we can even isolate those and use those to provide additional growth factors and high molecular weight hyaluronic acid. And I can tell you But in tissue and wound repair specifically, as well as other areas, neurocognitive decline, I've seen with my own eyes some of the benefits of these. And I'm also encouraged by that. Just to back up for a second, the people that don't know what therapeutic plasma exchange is, can you just give us a broad description of it?

So it's taking a certain portion of blood and get put— and there's different ways, I think different clinics and different protocols do it differently, but are replacing your plasma with a synthesized albumin. Is that how most people do it?

Like a sterile albumin. Yeah.

So it's a way to do a deep cleaning in the blood, which is ultimately the cells, right? For somebody that I've seen, okay, we can get mold toxins or environmental toxins down 80% without it. And then that's filling in the gap for these areas where the body's just not letting go. It's holding it on. So it's a way to do some deep cellular cleansing.

Yeah. I noticed when I did it, I had, um, I did the first treatment and then I puffed up like a puffer fish. So did my wife.

Interesting.

Like puffy eyes. Um, my joints felt very stiff. My hands were, um, swollen. I was talking to, uh, the physician at the clinic and he said that's perfectly normal if you reduce the concentration in the blood plasma. you're gonna have migration from the tissues. So your body's behaving exactly as it should. And now I just got my last toxic tumor back and it was all in the green.

Wow.

For the first time. And I'm one of those people who's doing all the things, right? So it was like, you know, some of those words I couldn't even pronounce. I'm like, what the hell is jet fuel in my body?

Yeah, where's the jet fuel coming from?

Where's the jet fuel?

From a Raid can, you know?

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. These sort of gnarly things that are like, okay, where is this person even getting it? He's not a pilot. Where is the jet fuel coming? But that's how broken and messed up our world is. It's like you have to do a deep cellular cleansing sometime. Now, you don't have to start there. It's like if you've never done something healthy, don't go to say like, okay, let's do TPE. But it's there for people who need it and want it. And yeah, I want these things to become more accessible for people because I think it'll save lives.

Yeah.

When you look at the mechanism of action, of why someone can do all the things and die from a heart attack or stroke or get cancer or have an autoimmune condition. It's these type of things that are just a product of, again, mankind's brokenness.

Well, Dr. Cole, Heal Your Cells, I think, right place, right time. And I think instead of being ahead of its time, it's at the right time because I think the world is ready and longing for a book I think that we have sufficiently woken up post-pandemic, whatever you want to credit for doing this, on a global scale and the level of curiosity out there right now and the thirst for information. So I appreciate the timing of this book. And I know you and Dr. Axe both put your heart and soul into it. I'll put a link to the book in my show notes. I want to take you into my VIP community because they have a lot of questions for you. Yeah. And, But before we go in there, I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Yeah, let me think of how I would answer this. I would say, look, we talk a lot about in the book today, we talked a lot about today, about adding life, adding years to your life. And I love the latest longevity science as much as anybody else, right? This is what we do. I have a passion for it. But a lot— we can lose the plot sometimes, and just this— it becomes a sort of fear-based thing of the fear of death or the promise for the future. But okay, I don't want to operate like that. How can we add life to your years in the here and now? And I see so many people, they've so in our space, the sort of the biohacker space, I think you and I have talked about this before offline, is that they are so kind of looking for the future and not enjoying their life now.

So true.

It's like, oh, we're just, we're doing this protocol and that protocol, and we're just like, it's all-consuming, all the health stuff. I think the ultimate human is remembering your place in this, and remember the human part of that. And like, what's your relationships like? What's your relationship with God like? Like, are you enjoying your life? Like, why are you doing all this wellness stuff? It should be to be someone that has the fruits of the Spirit in your life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control. Like, that's the product. That's the manifestation of someone that I think is why you should be doing the wellness stuff, all the wellness stuff. I guess another way of saying it is just remembering your why. And letting your why be something noble.

Yeah, love that, man. That is a great explanation. Guys, I will put a link to, um, the book in the show notes. If my audience wants to find out more about you, where can they find you?

Thanks, man. Uh, everything's at drwillcole.com. D-R-W-I-L-L-C-O-L-E. The links to Heal Your Cells, the telehealth, my podcast, which you've been on, The Art of Being Well. Um, and let me just say before we wrap up, like, thank you so, so, so much for just being like the same, the person that everybody sees. You're like this in real life.

Thank you.

You're just like, you are a blessing to so many people, whether the world sees it or not. And most of the time they actually don't see it. And not everybody's like that. Some people, there's like an on-camera version of them and then there's, they're different. You are who you are, which is a blessing to people. And that is, that is the ultimate human, actually. And you, you practice what you preach truly. And the unseen. And I just wanted to say that, Bubble Tea.

Yeah, that really means a lot to me. I really do appreciate that. And especially coming from someone like you, that means quite a bit to me. And until next time, guys, that's just science.