EP 170: Greater Health and Longevity through Lifestyle | Kien Vuu

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi. Welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Mall. In today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Dr. Ken Bu from the UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Vu has helped thousands of people recover from really challenging chronic illnesses by primarily shifts in lifestyle. He talks about lifestyle as medicine and it's a very holistic and integrative approach to health and wellness and to the practice of medicine and by shifts in diet and exercise and mindset and heartset, really helping all of us deepen our wellness and our well being to enhance our longevity. It's really grounded in cutting edge science, but also in very practical means for steadily improving our wellness and resilience. So listen into this episode with Dr. Ken Wu. Welcome, Dr. Wu.

It's a pleasure to be on. Thanks for having me.

Well, it's a privilege to have you. So thank you very much for joining our summit. So I'm going to share a bit of your bio and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Sounds perfect.

Okay. So Dr. Ken Bu, or Dr. V, exemplifies resilience. Having survived as an infant refugee on a challenging journey to America. Overcoming diabetes and high blood pressure, Dr. V now champions optimal health, happiness and human potential. An Assistant professor at UCLA, Dr. V specialized in interventional and diagnostic radiology before pursuing additional training in performance and longevity medicine. Earning board certification from the American Board of Anti Aging and Regenerative medicine. Founder of BoomV Performance and Longevity, Dr. V advises athletes, executives, celebrities and organizations towards longevity and peak performance. Dr. V is also the number one bestselling author of Thrive State. A media expert, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at prominent events including engagements with Whole Foods, bank of America and JP Morgan. He has also appeared on platforms like ABC News, TEDx, the Doctors and Access Hollywood, empowering others to activate the biology of longevity and human potential within themselves. So this is a fascinating topic area your particular area of expertise. And you know, this summit is focused on.

What we now know, the capacity we have to rewire our brains for both for healing and also for optimizing health and well being, but also optimizing not only longevity or extending longevity, but also the health span. Right? The amount of our life that we're actually able to live with good health and good quality of life. And so this is a really important area that we're exploring on the summit. And I can't think of anyone better to explore this with than you. But maybe we could talk just a little bit about your background, your very interesting background. So what initially drew you to the field of longevity? And, and you know, you came to America in a very unique way and I think it set you up for some struggles and then you found some way to transform all that and become a model of health and well being and high performance and helping others do the same. So maybe just give us the, the nutshell version of that, if you would.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. You know, as you mentioned in my bio, I did have diabetes and I had hypertension, I was overweight, I was on prescription medications. This was after I did training at ucla, National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, had all traditional medical training, but found myself seven years ago, overweight, diabetic, and had high blood pressure. So I wasn't initially looking for longevity. I was just looking for a way to get well. And you mentioned my upbringing, and I think that has a lot to do with how I ended up creating disease within myself. You know, I was a boat refugee from Vietnam, spent three months in a refugee camp, grew up in Chinatown, Los Angeles. And as a kid growing up here, I remember being bused to a more affluent area for school. There I was constantly being teased for the holes in my hand me down clothes, the sticky food my mom sent me to school with. I got a lot of, go back to your home country, Chinky. I would look at TV and, and think, hot. How do I find a place up there? But didn't see anyone who looked like me. So growing up, I had these beliefs that I started to tell myself that who I went, who I am was not enough. That I needed to somehow attain success or notoriety to be beloved. And that was the thing that was driving my programming. So everything was chasing, chasing success. So I went to the top residency, the top medical school, did all this research, became chief of interventional radiology in my hospital until I really just broke down. That same year I got my chronic disease diagnosis. I had a tear in my shoulder and I was told I might not be able to do surgery anymore. I was dating someone that I thought was going to marry and they left me for someone else. Everything in my life, it seemed like there was a cosmic two by four that hit me over the back of my head and said, something's just not right. And that really started to uncover the path in which I stepped forward in, you know, I quickly made changes to my lifestyle habits, did additional training in longevity medicine at the time and started to understand this that how we live our life is actually medicine. When I was a little bit more conscious about how I was living my life, in particular the lifestyle choices I was making, I reversed my conditions in a very short period of time. So, you know, going into longevity medicine was a little bit, you know, not in the original plan. And as I was doing. So here's the beautiful thing. Once we start to realize that how we live our life can be our medicine or poison, as I not not only does living a particular way prevent you from getting disease, but on the other side of that is performance is health and a long life.

Well, you know, and this all started six years ago.

Yeah.

Wow, that's amazing. So this is not a long period of time and I think that's really good news for folks in our audience out there that, you know, if you start really making significant changes in the lifestyle and taking action, you don't have to do it all at once. But you know, over a period of six years, you went from really seriously poor health to becoming someone who's, you know, really a model of well being and fitness today.

And yeah, I would also say it didn't even take that long. Six, it took me six months to reverse my diabetes and I do so for my clients in, in a matter of two to three months now. So it can happen very quickly if people are willing to make the change.

Wow, that's amazing. And it's so sad that for so long our conventional medical system and field is really focused on curative medicine and on allopathic medicine and you know, your doctor would barely talk to you about any lifestyle issues, diet or anything today. They, they might, you know, a little. Are you sleeping well? Or they might, you know, but, but really not very much. And, and you know, this, your focus on longevity medicine and, and preventive medicine and what's often called integrative medicine or used to be called holistic medicine. I mean, this is obviously where we all need to put our efforts. So it's really great to have you here with us today. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about in relation to longevity medicine and anti aging and the things we can do to become healthy right now, extend our longevity, our health span, perhaps ameliorate some of the risks of cognitive decline as we grow older, all these kind of things. How does bioenergetic medicine fit into that? And also the field of epigenetics, which is just fascinating. What we've been learning there in the last decade or even the last few years.

Great question, Fleet. So bioenergetic medicine is really the study of energy flow within living organisms. And the universal law is this. Everything in the entire universe is made of energy. And energy is constantly interacting with each other. We could have things like sound and light that is more wave than particle, and then we have little tiny proteins and who we are that are more particle than wave. But we're composed of energy, and it's always interacting with each other. How does that work in terms of medicine now? Well, we could take energy from light, from the sun, for example. How does that turn into good mood and feelings within us? There's an energetic flow of information there, and that's what bioenergetic medicine is. Take, for example, just the pathway I talked about. Light coming in. It hits a receptor in our eye. All this energy then is turned into a chemical form and starts an action potential that goes through our nerves and then hits the part of our brain that releases serotonin. Now you've got the physical energy of the serotonin that hits its serotonin receptor. All of a sudden, we feel good. So, energy, you could see the energy pathway that's created. Now, how does that work in terms of our biology? Now, who we are, our longevity, our performance, is all determined from our cellular health. Cells make tissues, make organs, make organ systems who make up who we are. If our cells are functioning very well, so are we. So what determines the phenotype of our cellular health? Well, DNA turns to RNA turned to protein, and it's basically a mixture of proteins that determine what makes up the difference between a heart cell and a lung cell. But it also makes the difference in terms of how those cells are functioning. Well, some people say, well, you got your DNA from Mom and dad, and if that's the case, then, you know, you're basically prone to get what mom and dad had. The thing is, that's not true. The DNA is actually millisecond by millisecond, interacting with its cellular environment. The energy, like I was talking to you, the energy around the cell, around that DNA is giving the DNA information about what's going on in the outside world. And based on that energy, the DNA will either turn on some genes or turn off some genes. And that whole dynamic interplay between the DNA and its external environment, that's epigenetics. It tells us that our cellular phenotype is not determined by the DNA, but actually how the DNA interacts with the cellular Environment. That's epigenetics. Well, this is something that's very empowering. This means that if mom or dad had cancer, high blood pressure, was obese, I will not necessarily get that phenotype. Yes, you have the DNA, but what is different? If you happen to get that phenotype, you're probably also inheriting the choices that created that cellular microenvironment that turned on those diseases. We get to control the choices that we make that basically create the cellular microenvironment. In my book Thrive State, I mentioned the seven areas that most determine this energetic environment. We give to ourselves that sleep, nutrition, movement, our thoughts, emotions, our social setting and purpose. Those things of what we learn. The choices that we make in those areas could be the poisons in our life or could be our medicine. So if we give ourselves and we make the right choices, we move into a state of thriving. I call it the thrive state, which leads to optimal health, longevity, and peak performance. When we make choices that diminish that cellular health. That's when you have bad cells leading to bad tissues, leading bad organs, bad organ systems, which will give basically chronic symptoms and chronic disease.

So when you're talking about that.

Bioenergetic environment that each cell operates within and that it could be changing, it's very fluid, could be changing every millisecond. Yet there seems to be some. I think you just referenced it. Some of the studies around epigenetics shows that certain impacts of trauma can be passed on intergenerationally, epigenetically, not just through human.

Absolutely. Let me give you a quick example of that. They did these studies on mice, and what they did was they took male mice and they exposed them to the smell of cherries. What? They also did that at the same time, they would shock them every time they got that smell of cherry. So these male mice would every sudden get shocked with the smell of cherries. Guess what? They started to breed these mice, and two generations down, what they did was the following. They started to study the offspring from those male mice that has never been exposed to a shock.

The male mice that originally got exposed to the shock would quiver every time they smell the scent of cherries, because they used to get shocked. Guess what their grandchildren did as well, without ever being shocked. So this is a way of passing down danger information to our offspring. That's something that gets transmitted down. That's called transgenerational epigenetics. And if we're not aware of that, we are also taking on traumas of our ancestors and I'm pretty sure we'll talk about this later. But with awareness comes new choice, and come with new choice comes the ability to potentially change pathways so that we are no longer the victim of traumas that happened in our past.

So from what you're saying, it sounds like, you know, we may not only.

Inherit DNA from our parents, but we may inherit a kind of propensity or a certain momentum of a bioenergetic environment, epigenetic factors that if we don't do anything proactively to change that or adjust that, that. That can have an impact. Right. It may have some st until we start doing things that might change it. But you're saying that this bioenergetic environment surrounding ourselves and infecting every cell in the body is very sensitive to lifestyle changes like diet and sleep and.

How we think, how we regulate our emotions and all these other things you mentioned.

Absolutely.

So there's kind of good news, bad news here. I mean, the bad news is we can all be dealing with quite a human inheritance that can be setting us up for really struggle. But the good news is it doesn't have to stay that way. There's lots of different ways we can impact that and change that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Wow. So I wonder if you could talk a bit about the role of the default mode network. We hear about that a lot these days. I do a lot of things in the world of mindfulness and also a lot in the emerging field of psychiatric assisted psychotherapy. And. And there's a lot of different modalities that help people help the mind quiet down, that help them access.

Expanded states of consciousness, from very profound states to just a sense of openness. And it seems that part of our mind quieting down and being able to access other states of being, states of consciousness has to do with kind of a suppression of the default network, or it's starting to go offline a little bit.

Yeah.

I wonder if you could talk about that in terms of longevity, medicine and bioenergetics and all the things you're talking about in terms of well, being.

Oh, great. Well, one, I'm so happy I shared my story because it gives an example of how if we're not aware of our default mode network and we're in this old programming that actually leads the disease. And I'll unpack that a little bit. Well, default mode network is this. You know, scientists are beginning to learn more about this complex part of the brain, which is a very primitive system that starts to develop in utero all the way up until about the ages 10. And basically it forms what we call the autopilot or the survival mode of the brain. So at a very early age, it's just downloading information. Doesn't matter where it's coming from, your mom, your parents, tv, it's just downloading information. You don't have the conscious sense to know whether the information that that's coming in is right or wrong is good or bad. You're just taking it in and accepting it for what it is. Now, the brain does this so that you can get a sense of the world. It gives you the models of the world. What's good, what's bad, where do I fit in the world? And it's constantly. Because it's the survival mode of the brain. It's constantly looking for what could potentially hurt us. Limiting beliefs live here. Disempowering stories of I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy of love lives in this place. This becomes basically the seat of the ego. And the thing that people need to know the most is this default mode network is really there to keep us safe. So it's looking for the things that could hurt us. They are the enemy. I'm not. But it's also looking for the things that we need, which is love. And we don't feel like we're getting love. We're going to try to change up who we are to get the love. So becomes basically our personality and our ego. And it lives basically in our subconscious in this default mode. Now, how does it turn out that this thing can potentially give us disease while giving you my backstory? And when I was constantly chasing for success, thinking I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy of love, and making decisions to just strive in life, when the default mode is on, it means that it thinks it's not safe, so it's constantly running. And the choices that I was making, you know, in my life was always, I got to get the promotion, I got to get that next job. I wasn't eating well, I wasn't sleeping well. I wasn't doing those things that were going to be good for me. And the Dalai Lama has this quote which he said he found most interesting about humanity is man, because he would sacrifice his health in order to make money and then sacrifice his money to recuperate his health. So I was making choices. The choices in my life created this bioenergetic state. But it was a stress state because the default mode was leading it. Those were unconscious choices. For many people, if the default mode is very Heavy. What we've seen in studies is hyperactive default mode network can lead people to diseases like depression, like anxiety. So how does it stop us from being our very best self? Well, some of the things is constant renumination and worry, self critical thoughts, procrastination and lack of focus. So when this program is running, it can potentially sabotage the person we want to be. It's the reason why people make New Year's resolutions and often fail six to eight weeks later.

Yeah. And this is generally for most modern humans, the vulval network is overactive, if not hyperactive. And it's a very noisy part of our brain. If anybody's ever tried to meditate or something like that, it's the part that kind of gets in your way to begin with. And it is really the source of a lot of our stress, self created stress. And for some of us it's almost like a form of self torture. Right. And, and it also keeps us living very disembodied lives because it kind of keeps us up in our distracted, up in our head with this internal conversation. And I would think in terms of what you're talking about, of changing that bioenergetic environment, at least part of that is returning to a more embodied way of living. Yes. With awareness rather than this, you know, being very externally oriented and constantly self referencing with all this noise in the head, you know, we're leading this disembodied lives, that can't be very good for us.

Yeah. When we're up in our head, you could just think about it. When we're up in our head, our nervous system thinks that we're not safe, or when we're constantly solving for problems, we are not safe. And that being the case, there is basically a stress signal in our body or the cell danger response. When that stress response is on, cortisol goes up, inflammation goes up, your immune system goes down. And that basically sets the stage for chronic symptoms and chronic disease. So I think how do we move past that one? We need to know and be aware of that. We need to be aware that there is this default mode that's going around and it's not real. It's basically a compilation of our past experiences that are going on. And unless we are the fish in water, knowing that we are actually in water, it's difficult for us to make new choices beyond that.

So for those of our audience, I'm sure many of us are going, yeah, that's me. Or at least to one degree or another, you're talking about me. How do we begin to rewire the brain or create, you know, stable neural networks that can kind of prevent the default mode network from taking over or allow it to be, you know, in a more normal mode or more suppressed? Because we have other neural networks that allow us to live our lives and kind of from a different place with a different mindset. So what are some practical strategies for beginning that process of rewiring the brain?

That's a very great question. So the default mode network is on. When you're not paying attention, we're not focused on anything, and you just let autopilot go. The default mode network is on. So as long as you remember that key step, these exercises will make more sense. Number one is really training yourself to have awareness. Because if you're not aware, if you're not able to grab attention of yourself, you're not going to be able to see that it's on. So mindfulness meditation is something that's great. And really training the muscle of awareness. You can be doing things like what I like to do is maybe five or ten minutes of picking a task like watering the flowers, but really being attentive to the sound of the water going, going into your cup, maybe the, the feel of the wind touching your skin, the different colors that are there. Each moment is different. Can you notice that? And as you start to practice that, you can start to practice. Oh, the thoughts in your brain potentially are coming from that place and not you. So that's really important. The other thing is flow activities, the activities that bring you joy, that gets you fully engaged.

And people like Steven Kotler would say that pushes you on the edge of your limits. All these thrill type of activities. You tend to turn off the default mode network. Physical exercise is something that you can do to turn off the default mode network.

And then later down the line, you have things like breath work. Breath work, we know particularly the longer breath work sessions where you do very deep cyclical breathings for extended periods of time with breath holds. What that does is the following. As you hyperventilate, you blow off CO2, you increase the alkalinity of your blood, and you also constrict blood flow to the brain, which tends to actually quiet down the default mode network during that time. Some people also say if you add in some breath holds there, you cause intermittent hypoxia, which further potentially decreases the activity of the default mode. So those are some activities that people can start to really kind of quiet down that, that mental chatter.

Well, you know, just to make this accessible to People, anyone in our audience, you know, if you had the experience of like trying to thread a needle or something, it may just be for a few moments, but your mind gets really quiet. You may not be able to sustain it. But we've all had that experience of focusing on something. Yes, and the mind naturally quiets down. So that's really important for meditators because some people think, oh my influence meditate, I'm supposed to stop my thoughts. And people end up struggling with their thoughts, which is counterproductive. If we instead synchronize body and mind and develop some kind of focus, the mind will naturally quiet itself down. And, and so this default mode network is, you don't have to demonize it. It has its evolutionary purpose. It has its purpose in the brain even sometimes we can allow ourselves a kind of just let the mind flow. And a kind of free association can be a creative process at times. But doing that consciously, not, not the, just the rumination that goes on unconsciously, but this kind of unconscious form, habitual form of the vault mode network is where our self sensing happens. It's kind of the seed of what we call the ego, the small conditioned self. That's the source of a lot of our, our struggle and our sense of separateness in life and fear. And so you know, in terms of, of shifting how we're leading our lives and making new choices and you know, having our orientation instead of being one of living from old stories, especially negative stories of unworthiness and, and, and living from fear that we begin to, you know, get in touch with, you know, what some people call, may call their soul, the higher self. Innate wisdom. Ideas like this. How can we tell when we're kind of operating or making choices from that old ego conditioning versus when we're kind of in touch with something else and we're making choices or responding in a different way.

That's a great question. And when I earlier mentioned why the default mode exists, it exists to keep us safe. And one of the things that we fear most, particularly as children is whether or not we are loved. So think about those two things. So how do you differentiate between ego and our heart space? Well, one is the emotional state. You know, the ego driven choices tend to be, you know, made from fear, anger, envy, jealousy. So the emotional state you're, that you're in versus the choices that you make in the heart space tend to be accompanied with motions of gratitude, of love, of compassion, of joy, of peace. Then you can look at the motivation. The ego based decisions are motivated by personal Gain recognition or validation. Whereas the choices made from the heart are a genuine desire to contribute to yourself, to others and the world around you. Ego choices, again are rooted in fear of failure, of rejection. The heart based choices are rooted in love and trust. Here's a quick hack. When you're trying to differentiate between the choices from the ego or the choices from the heart. The choices or the voice that's coming from your ego is constantly trying to seek safety or love. So you can start to examine the beliefs that are there. Am I doing this because I think I'm going to get love from that or I'm losing love from that? Right. The voice that's coming from your higher self or your heart already know that it is safe and that it is love. And that's the, the perfect and easiest hack for somebody to, to determine whether or not they're making choices in their heart space or from their ego space.

Wondering if this resonates with you as well. You know, we just did a summit around expanded states of consciousness and that can vary. I mean, it can be about profound experiences people have and plant medicines and things, but it can just be moving from a constricted state of fear to a state of openness or relationality or receptivity or empathy or compassion. Right. So in our life we're kind of constantly moving from constriction to open, from constriction to opening. So I think wouldn't that also be a marker of where we're coming from and making choices from that? Just that sense of constriction versus just kind of a more quality of just openness?

Yes, yes, yes. Beautiful.

And, and what, what would be the biology of that then? If you go back to talking about, you know, what's the biology of openness, empathy, compassion versus the biology of constriction?

Oh yes. So good. Well, I tell you, there's basically two main states. This is why my book is called Thrive State. There's basically two main pathways that, you know, certainly a lot of gray in the middle, but the two main pathways in which our body functions, either our body knows that it's safe or the body thinks that there's some danger. When the body thinks it's in danger, it basically cascades the cell danger response. There's a gene complex called the conserved transcriptional response to adversity that basically senses stress in our body, senses stress in the environment. When it senses stress. And when that thing turns on, basically it turns on inflammatory genes. So inflammation goes up, our immune system goes down, and that makes Sense, Right. Because you want to turn. Why waste resources on, you know, fighting against infection and cancer when you're about to be a sable to tiger's lunch, right? So inflammation goes up to protect you against a potential, you know, flesh wound. Your immune system drops. Guess what? That state is the state that basically causes cellular dysfunction that allows you to get symptoms like, you know, ibd, like cancer like infections, brain fog, things like that. And that's, that eventually leads to disease. So, and what we were mentioning was the default mode network that's constantly trying to keep you safe is basically the thing. Therefore when it's on, it thinks that it's in danger. So when you're not paying attention, it's always looking for danger. And because of that you, you have chronic stress in your body that enters that pathway. Well, the opposite then is also true. The thrive state, when you're in that heart space, when you're able to quiet down that default mode, when you know you are safe and you are loved, then you basically create this anti aging environment in your body where you preserve your telomeres, where you lower inflammation, where your immune system goes up. And basically that's the state. The thrive state is really the state of health, happiness and human performance.

I wonder if you could talk about how.

You talked before about these narratives we have that can be counterproductive. We've just inherited from childhood stuff or even potentially ancestral stuff. And, and you've been talking about how our emotional states can impact that bioenergetic environment that's really affecting us at a cellular level.

Yes.

And so I wonder if you could talk about the connection between thoughts and emotions. And then maybe it's a two part question. The other part is, you know, in a thrive state because it's natural. I mean we're not going to be happy all the time and you know, sadness is part of life. There's going to be times when things will make us angry appropriately. You know, is it possible to experience what people might call negative or challenging emotions, but experiencing them within a thrive state where we can embrace them, learn from them and not get stuck in them as opposed to when we do get kind of hijacked by them and then we're not in a thrive state. So I guess two part question one, the connection between thoughts and emotions and then how to work with the normal challenging emotions that come up, but still kind of in the context of being in a thrive state.

Okay, well, great questions. I think I might answer the second question first.

Okay.

I think it's a part of the human experience to be able to feel all these things. Emotions are signals in the body and we will have a roller coaster of emotions. And it is appropriate to feel grief when you lose someone you love. You know, it's appropriate to feel angry over something.

I think all those things are the body signal to you, giving you information, and they're all useful. So I, I don't think it's actually healthy for anyone to be, you know, happy all the time. If someone just passed away and you're like, well, hey, you know, that's, that's, that's fine. I don't think that's, that's normal. I. What's normal is feeling the range of human emotions appropriately. Things get sour if you spend.

Your emotional home in these negative emotional states. So as it pertains to biology, what we understand is this, the state emotional states of anger, of fear, of anxiety, of worry, of resentment, of judgment, all those things. If experience, if that is your emotional home.

Then that leads to basically a chronic elevation of cortisol, which then what I mentioned before is chronic increases in inflammation, a lower immune system as a whole, and your telomeres are also shortened because of that constant emotional state. So that's the difference is where is your emotional home? So if your emotional home is in those negative states, it basically drives inflammation and disease. Whereas if your emotional home is that of love, of joy, of peace, of creation, of being inspired those positive emotions. We know that the emotion of gratitude actually has been shown scientifically to lower inflammatory markers such as TNF Alpha, Illinois 1, Illinois 6, Illinois 12.

And so the idea is not to be in that state all the time. However, how can we train ourselves to look at all our emotions and then be able to say, okay, this is appropriate that I'm feeling this for this particular period of time, you might need somebody to, you know, to let you know, hey, you know what? You've been in a cranky place for a very long time, you know, and this is not normal. But I think everybody intuitively knows and understands emotional states and it's okay to feel the negative emotions. It's getting your, it's your body's giving you signals. And I recommend for people not to, you know, repress negative emotions. Oh, I'm not going to be angry. I'm not going to be sad. That's not actually good for our body. You know, it's, it's important to feel them, to process them, and then get yourself back into a state where you're, you're in a balanced emotional state. Of calm and joy.

So I would assume that if you're, you know, doing all the different lifestyle things we can do and the health regimens we can do and various forms of mind training, mindful and so on that are giving us more and more access to the thrive state, that we're spending more time in a thrive state that is in fact rewiring our brain?

Absolutely.

My understanding is that in terms of negative or challenging emotions, that we have neural networks in the prefrontal lobes. I can't remember if it's the left or right. Primarily they kind of function as brakes. So we may get angry over something, but at a certain point those breaks, when it's no longer, there's no longer a need or it's no longer appropriate to be anger, you know, they kind of turn that off, they shift that emotion, they regulate that emotion. But when those breaks get weak, we tend to start being chronically upset, chronically mad, more prone to upset. And so there's research that shows one of the things like mindfulness does. It kind of strengthens those neural networks. So I would. Is it fair to say that the more time we spend in a thrive state, we're going to have a very different brain over time and a brain that has neural networks that will still allow us to experience challenging emotions, but tend to help us not get stuck there and be able to appropriately return to a greater state of equanimity and non fear and relationality and so forth.

Yeah, the five state is really the key for resilience. You know, you're. When you, when you are in the thrive state, basically what we mentioned earlier was everything is energetically connected. And those seven things I brought up really kind of encompass the five energetically connected areas which are basically physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. They're all energetically connected. You asked me earlier about the relations of emotions and thought. Right. We talked about emotions and what it does with our biology. Well, what does our thoughts do? Well, our thoughts, basically.

We feel what we think. And so we can't control the 80,000 thoughts that we experience every single day. A lot of it's going to be coming from our past. But we can control this. We can't control where we put the flashlight, how much attention we give to a thought. And you'll notice that if you are more focused on things that you can't control or things that you don't have, you tend to feel worse than if you focus on the things that you can control. Be grateful for the things, things you, you can have the Next thing in terms of thoughts is our mindsets and our beliefs. You know, can we look at those beliefs and go, okay, this belief makes me feel this way because you don't have to, you don't have to be married to that belief. The story that we tell ourselves actually change the way we feel. And if we write a empowering story about why we are where we are in our life right now, if it empowers us, inspire us, we put ourselves in the biology of the thrive state where we said, oh my God, this happened to me, that happened to me. All these bad things start happening to me. And you tell yourself a victim story, you become the victim. You're also telling yourself that the world is not safe. Guess what? The Default Mode network is basically active. Guess what? The stress signals in your body go up, which leads to chronic symptoms and chronic disease. This is why you find that people who are, who aren't working on the choices to get themselves in the thrive state tend to dial out earlier for.

Our audience and a lot of our presenters in this summit are going to be referencing energy and bioenergetics and things like that. But for anyone, that energy kind of feels like maybe it's a little bit woo woo or sounds metaphysical. I've interviewed our colleague, Dr. Dan Siegel many times, who's a colleague at UCLA as well. And you know, he says energy is not a woo woo concept, it's, it's hardcore science. We are bioelectrical, energetic, chemical, spiritual beings. There's no question about that. And he said, you know, science hasn't really established a good definition of mind. But the one he proposes is mind as a flow of energy and information within and between. He focuses on the interpersonal energetic fields a lot with it within the discipline of interpersonal neurobiology. So we're not talking about a woo woo concept here. We, we live and ex in an energetic matrix. And so I think that's really important. And if you think about thoughts, people may have wondered like well what are thoughts and where are they? And you know, well, they're flows of energy. Right. Thoughts are just energy flows. Right. So we're, it's like everything we're talking about here, you know, in terms of the thrive state. And then when we find ourselves not in a thrive state, it's really, we're, we're in flow to a degree or we're not in flow.

Yeah.

And also Dr. Dan Siegel often talks about, you know, even in terms of what have been identified as diagnostic categories of various, you know, mental disorders and Things, basically, those are either kind of. They're symptomatically, they're. They're kind of chaos or rigidity and disorders of chaos or rigidity. And where we want to be is in that nice flow between those. Between those shores. So all the things you're talking about, how do we spend more of our time in flow and less of our time in this dysregulated state where we're letting the, the, you know, the, the fight or flight thing take over, the default mode network take over. So I love that you reference it that way.

Yeah, thank you.

You know, I want to.

Just. Yeah. I know you specialize in longevity medicine, so I'd like to invite you to kind of maybe think about the future here a little bit, as well as the cutting edge science that's going on right now. I've heard it said that the generation being born right now may be the first generation to have an average lifespan of over 100. Maybe. That's very speculative, but I think there's some science behind it. And also we're starting to understand really the real mechanics of aging. And even there may be a shift to see aging not as a normal natural process, which we consider to be now, but that it's almost like a disease process, and that we have knowledge about the epigenetic factors that can tell the mitochondria to keep producing healthy energy that keeps cells alive, environment, or to not be producing at the same level. And so there's science going on of using pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals.

To communicate those epigenetic factors. So I know there's been studies with lab mice, lab rats, where they've actually, to one degree or another, kind of reverse the aging process in certain ways. So I'm curious about what you think about that level. I mean, you're talking a lot about the lifestyle, things we can do that will impact that epigenetic environment, that bioenergetic environment. And there's also research going on on what could be done pharmacologically, what could be done through nutraceuticals. And I'm curious about your take on that, because obviously you're in this field, so.

Yeah, I think it's. I think it's is a very exciting time to be in longevity medicine. We have early diagnostics where we can use MRI machines to look at the entire body, to look at tumors that are less than a centimeter tall. We've got liquid biopsies that we could take basically a sample of blood to detect tiny cancer DNA that's In your blood. Early detection. We certainly have all these wearables that could track different biologics in our body to allow us to make. Make better informed choices. We've got things like stem cells that people are using or exosomes that contain stem cell information that basically, you know, allow our body to remember how to heal itself and to call in healing factors. In regenerative medicine, all this is really, you know, cutting edge stuff. We've got drugs like rapamycin demonstrating to, to extend aging. Right. We've got supplements, you know, and nutraceuticals like you were talking about. All these things I put in a bucket. That's super exciting. That I think will extend the human lifespan further than we ever thought possible. I put it in the bucket of the science of longevity. But if we look at the book the blue zones, if we study Dan Boitner's work, the blue zones in Okinawa, Japan, Loma Linda, California, Icaria, Greece.

Sardinia and Italy. I'm missing one, but that's okay. We look at those populations.

And we looked at that initial data set. Did any of them have access to any of that technology? In the science of longevity I talked about, no.

This is why I want to bring or I want to be a champion of the piece of the art of living. And the art of living is not, you know, it's probably as powerful as the science of longevity. We can't forget that, that the lifestyle choices that we make create medicine also. It's how we treat our bodies and how we treat each other in this entire collective. I almost look, I work with organizations too, but I always look that we, our body, we are made of single cells that make tissues, that make organs, that make up who we are. But we are actually part of this entire organism of the human collective.

And are we a cell that's going to serve other people around that? Are we going to be a cancer cell that just serves ourselves? So I think it's very exciting, the science of longevity. But let's not forget about living a beautiful life that we're meant to live. You know, I have a. You know, I've just found out about somebody, his name is Brian Johnson, and he does labs every. I don't know, every couple of days or something. He's basically plugged in and he's. He says, I'm going to remove myself from the equation. I'm going to eat whatever the data tells me to eat. I'm going to move as, you know, exactly what the data tells me to move. I'm not going to use how I feel. I'm just going to trust myself on the, you know, on the data. And I said, and he's doing great. He's actually reversed his biological age by quite a bit.

But I don't know, being plugged in like that is how we human beings are meant to live and meant to thrive. And so, you know, I think we're in a fascinating time. But rather than rely on the technology to help us keep alive, let's just remember who we are as human beings. Because living a beautiful life is also medicine.

Yeah, I love that. I'm so glad you brought us back to that. And I think all that science is fascinating and has a bit of a brave new world quality, especially with AI and all those developments. But yeah, you know, the research around those folks living in the blue zones around the planet, you know, there is commonality to their lifestyles and why they have such a high number of centenarians in those areas. And it has to do with exercise and diet and lifestyle and sociality and networks and families and being really connected with each other and lots of factors that we can all focus on. I love that you said before that lifestyle is medicine. Yeah, I guess lifestyle can also be toxic. But lifestyle lived in the way that we're talking about and the things that we all know, we all know we function better with more rest. We all function better when we're eating well. We all function better when our social networks are alive and well connected and when we're spending more time in kind of positive emotions and a little less time in chronic negative emotions. We all know we function better. I mean a lot of this is just intuitive and common sense. But you know, if we, if we work on this, you know, there's so much we can do even without this cutting edge science to, to really live quality lives and expend extend our lifespan. So if, if for our audience, if, if you, you know, I mean, maybe there isn't one thing, but if, you know, people are sitting out there and I, I do want to, I want to start making some changes in my life and.

What, what might be a good place though, what would be one really significant change anybody could start doing today or tomorrow that would get them going in the right direction?

Well, it is a shameless plug. But I say pick up my, my book because it really talks about, you know, the seven things that are most important and the one what's going to be easy for one person is going to be different from, for another person. So I, I don't want to say, you know, it's going to be sleep. Because you know, for some that might be one of the things that's really hard to do. But that's the thing is the one thing I want people to know most is within those seven categories. Sleep, nutrition, movement, our thoughts, our mindset, our emotions, our social.

Community, and that sense of purpose. Whatever is going to be the easiest thing for you to do, do it. Because as you do that, if you make that choice and you take that action, which is going to probably be a little uncomfortable because you're habitualized not to do that, when you make that new action, you start to change up the bioenergetic state. All of a sudden you're leaning into the thrive state a little bit more. Guess what, you'll start to feel different, you start to think different. Then it'd be easier to make that next choice. That might be the next easiest step. So whatever it is for you, if you look into seven categories, ask the easiest thing for you to be able to do and commit to that will change your state. That's going to make it easier for you to do the next thing. You're going to create energetic momentum that make living in a thrive, say become easier as you start to make changes.

Well, I really love, and for my own personal well being and I love using the kind of life wheel design, a lot of coaches use it where, you know, you basically take a pie chart. Well, those seven that you just mentioned would be great pieces of the pie to do and we can just kind of look where am I at in terms of these things and start to make incremental improvements. But there's one I intended to ask you about, that was the last one you mentioned, the importance of purpose. So could you just say a little bit about what you mean by purpose and how impactful that can be for our health and longevity?

Yeah, very good. You know, my colleague Stephen Cole over at UCLA did a lot of epigenetic studies on purpose. And he basically studied the purpose. You know, well, Barbara Fredericksman, who won the Nobel prize for her work in telomeres, says that purpose actually, you know, maintains or extend your telomeres. And Stephen Cole says purpose actually decreases that gene complex that turns on the stress response in our body. And so we know that people with a deep sense of purpose actually spends fewer days in the hospital. If they're hospitalized, they live on average seven years longer. So what is purpose? You know, Pablo Picasso said the meaning of life is to find or give. And the purpose of life is to Give it away. I only think he's half right. You know, the giving away part is something I do agree with, but I don't think it's finding our gift. I think it's really remembering. You know, every. If I look at my 2 year old child right now, she's just there, she's exploring, she's usually very happy unless you know, you're not giving her the thing that she wants or whatever she hasn't learned. These things that make us sad necessarily right away.

If you remember the things that put you in those positive emotional states, in the thrive state, you know, that makes you inspired, that make you feel good, that light you up, those things are encoded in your DNA to feel that way. And if you move towards those things, that's authentically who you are as a person.

And if you just share you who you authentically are. It doesn't have to be some grandiose thing. If you just share you with the world. That's your purpose. Your purpose is you. Which is why you are your best medicine. And there's a reason for that. If we look at every single cell in our body, it has a purpose. The heart cell will contract to pump blood in the body. The lung cell extracts oxygen. The kidney cell, you know, filters out toxins. We are that in the body of the entire universe as well. Guess what? When we are on purpose, when we say we can give and we're there to help people, guess what you're telling yourself. You're telling yourself you're safe, you're telling yourself you're loved and I'm just now going to give. Guess what you turn off when you start to give freely in that manner. You turn off the default mode ramp work. Guess what? You, you stop the inflammatory process, the process that brings down your immune system.

So when you just give your authentic self to the world, when you share your joy, that is purpose. And it's one of the best medicines we have.

Wow. Wow, thank you. That is so such an empowering message and I'm so glad you reminded us that we already have the DNA for thriving. We already have the neural networks. They may be inactive or kind of being overridden by, you know, the human condition of fear and survival. But it's all there. Everything we need is there. The neural networks for altruism, compassion and empathy and living in flow and thriving. It's all there. It's just a matter of activating it. Yeah, beautiful. Well, I do really encourage people to check out your book the Thrive State and how I'm first of all, thank you so much for everything you've shared with us today, Dr. V. It's. It's been really enlightening. And how can people find out more about your work?

Well, you can find me on social media on all channels at Dr. VMD that's spelled out D O c T O R V M D. Or my website, hienvoo.com k I e n v u u dot com.

Well, I really encourage people to check out your work, and thank you so much for everything you've shared with us today. And wishing you all the best. Thank you.

Appreciate you having me. Thanks.

Be well.

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