Run Your Health Like Your Business: Longevity Lessons with Regan Archibald

Happy Friday and welcome to The Human Side of AI. I'm Flora, your host, and today's conversation might change the number you have in your head of how long you plan to live. You heard that right. My guest is Reagan Archibald, a longevity expert who went from growing up on an Idaho cattle ranch and battling his own autoimmune conditions to serving over 70,000 clients and reviewing more than 10,000 blood panels. He built an entire operating system for human health, and yes, he holds a patent for it. Reagan works with entrepreneurs and business owners who are ready to treat their health with the same strategy and metrics they bring to their companies. We talk about why the biggest predictors of a long life have less to do with your body than you'd think, how his team uses an AI copilot to analyze lab data, and why he believes practicing medicine without AI will, will one day be considered malpractice. He was so much fun and walked me through an exercise that genuinely shifted how I think about my own future.

Stick around.

All right.

Reagan from Utah, how you doing today?

Yeah, it's a great day here. It's beautiful.

That's wonderful. Thank you so much for being here.

You got happy to be here, Flora.

Yeah. So, so when I did my research on you, you, you have lots of titles. You have, you know, you have. So, so how do you introduce yourself to people and explain what you, what you do?

Oh, I, I just help healthy people get healthier. You know, I'm a longevity expert. We do a lot of medicine that's around like proactivity and predictability. So really we do targeted labs and biological audits and we find out where, where people are leaving energy on the table and where future threats might be. And then we do our best to circumvent those through more innovative therapies.

So you said you help healthy people become healthier. Does that mean you don't typically work with someone with like an ongoing diagnosis, or who is kind of that ideal customer for you?

Yeah, I mean, the first 10 years of my career, I grew up on a cattle ranch in Idaho, and so I had an autoimmunity myself from all the chemicals I was exposed to. I had psoriasis and Hashimoto's, and so my health was just really rough when I was in my pre-medical medical work at the University of Utah. And, um, I, I realized, like, after going to 5 doctors and being misdiagnosed, um, I, I realized, like, there— that Western medicine is just pretty short-sighted, um, with anything chronic. You know, if there's an acute condition, certain types of cancers, um, they have phenomenal breakthroughs. But for the most part, um, it's a crisis care model. And most humans in affluent countries like the United States, um, certainly have more of these chronic diseases. And so, um, so the first 10 years of my career, I went to Hawaii and I ended up leaving conventional medicine. That's where I studied more Eastern medicine and, and integrated medicine. I did an internship at the Northern Hawaii Community Hospital, and, and I was able to see kind of the, the way you could merge the medicines. And so, um, when I started my practice in 2004 back in Utah, I realized there's a lot of people who were in my shoes that needed help. And so, I worked with autoimmunity, all kinds of gut issues for the first 10 years of my practice. All the patients that doctors couldn't help, we were able to help them. And then, about 12 years ago, I was like, "You know what? I just want to work with people who are already focused on their health and have a foundation. And I want to focus on healthspan and increasing lifespan." And so, we shifted our model. It's not that we don't work with people who have significant issues, Usually by the time they see us, they've done all the foundational work. They've met with all the naturopathic doctors and functional medicine doctors, and, and then we put a strategy in place that actually starts moving the needle. And so we're, we're very big on predictable outcomes, just like your listeners, you know, they're entrepreneurs and they want to see, um, are, are the new strategies working? You know, are we heading towards that vision, that bigger goal? Same thing in health. We just, we run your health like, uh, most people run their business. A lot, you know, there's metrics that guide us. There's, you know, very innovative medical interventions with peptides and stem cells that we find can absolutely move the needle.

No, I love that. And there were so many tidbits of that that really caught my attention. You know, I find it— I always find it so interesting. It's like I always come back to this question, how do people know they need to work with you? Right. And you already answered that. You said, you know, these are people that have, have kind of already gone through other steps, and they just maybe haven't found what, you know, the, the, the resolve. And I love that you, you know, at the end of the day, our bodies, they are, I mean, it's science, right? So it's, it's not this like complete mystery. There is, you know, a reason, rhyme and reason to it. And, and I love that you, you, you kind of find that similarity between working with these bodies and, and business owners and, and that, that there is kind of this equation. What, what made you get there?

Well, I don't know, outside of the fact that I, I really had a lot of clients that came to me and they, you know, from Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan has a model that's called the Lifetime Extender. And so he has his clients, these are entrepreneurs, an entrepreneur group, and his clients just look at how old they're going to live to be. And so have you ever thought about how old you're going to live to be, Flora? Have you ever put a number to that?

I've kind of averaged my grandparents' life expectancy, and they all— they're kind of— they were old, so I have hope.

How old are— how old did they live to be?

Uh, my, my last grandmother just passed, and she was, um, 2 months away from her 98th birthday.

Oh, that's awesome. So you're like, well, I'll make it to 98.

I'm thinking 90, you know, the average of them. Yeah. What are you seeing? What is the average?

Well, I'm just sharing with you the exercise. So if you go back, the reason people die according to Dan is that they run out of money so they don't have their financial future. And that's actually— it's well documented. If you look at the country where people have the highest life expectancy, it's Monaco. And Monaco is— I've, you know, I've got several friends and clients there. I've done longevity retreats there. And it is insanely wealthy. And the average person lives to be like 86. You know, it's a small country, don't get me wrong, it's tiny. But, but, you know, there's, there's a direct correlation of longevity and wealth. The, the other thing we run out of are relationships. You know, all the friends die. I can't tell you how many clients in their 80s, 90s, they're ready to go because their husband died. Typically it's a husband, sometimes it's a wife. Their, their friends have all passed and they don't really have a future worth living towards because they've ran out of those relationships. The other thing they run out of is purpose. And so they don't, you know, they're not really pushing themselves. And I think, you know, my mentors like Dr. Maikawa, she's in her 90s. And I mean, the wisdom that I gleaned from her, Dan Sullivan, he's been a mentor of mine for 12 years. He's 82 and he's more ambitious. He writes a book every quarter. I mean, you just, you start looking like, yeah, we, really need a purpose. And, and so, you know, if you get to the, uh, the age of 90 and imagine that you still have, uh, these great relationships, you have a deep sense of purpose, um, and you also have this financial freedom, how, how much longer do you think you would want to live?

And I don't know, I'm just kind of shocked that those three things you mentioned have nothing to do with the physical body. I mean, it's— I mean, of course they do, right? You're saying you're making that correlation here. I just— nothing you just said is like weight or diet or, you know, and it's not what you typically go to. Okay, so, so I'm 90 years old, I've got money, I've got friends, and I've got value. It's— I still have, you know, passion and I'm adding value, I feel, to the world. Um, let's, let's say, you know, let's give it another 20 years. That feels good.

There you go.

Okay. Yeah.

So the, yeah, that's it then. What, what would you do with those extra 20 years?

Well, keep spending my money and my time with my loved ones and, uh, keeping out, you know, keep adding value to the world, being a contributing member to society, I hope.

Yeah, man. Do you think that would be good for society?

Yeah, of course. Anyone doing good in the world is good for society, in my belief.

Yeah. Yeah. And the fourth element that Dan talks about is time. You know, it's like if you're constrained, like with a, you know, job you don't like or, you know, you— a lot of entrepreneurs, they build their own personal prison and they're, they're, they're, they're a slave to their— they're basically a worker. They're the main worker within their company. And so, so yeah, it's all about, you know, creating freedom for your, your life and your future. And then, that's where health comes in because the, the big limiting factor is like, those things all sound nice. And to your point, you're like, they didn't even address the physical body. But the physical body is, it has to be the primary mechanism. You've gotta have a lever where your health becomes your number one priority in longevity medicine. But it's, it's actually what you do with your health is more valuable than just achieving health. There's no, it's, it's not like there's a, a big celebration where I'm, I'm like, Flora, you're healthy now. Congratulations. It's not like, okay, your, your disease is in remission. That's kind of the old school kind of Western medicine where, okay, you can relax now. We've got you covered. We've got drugs to handle the symptoms and the disease when they come up. It's like, no, your, your health is, you know, I, I say aging is a gravity-fed sport. Like there's always going to be barriers and constraints that need to be removed in health in order for people to progress to the next level. And so, So all longevity is, and the reason I wanted to work through this mindset with people, is because if they have something more exciting that they look towards in the future, it's, it's a lot easier to help them generate the momentum necessary to really have a health transformation versus somebody who just wants to get, you know, their knee pain gone, or they just want to get rid of those migraine headaches, and then they just go back to the same life. Like, it's just, it— the, the reward at the end of that— I did not want to spend my life just just chasing symptoms and being a problem solver at a really small level. I said, I want to fix the whole machinery. And so we just got our patent awarded in building operating systems. So it's called the Ageless Future Operating System. And so we can take blood lab values and we can predict where the big interferences are, where the deficiencies are, and then we can stack peptide protocols that are very specific in their cycles. So you're not on something the rest of your life, you're just on certain peptides for 30 to 60 days and then you cycle off of them and then we work on new pathways. But that's really what we look at is building a, a, a health operating system that is something that perpetuates over time and you just get healthier and healthier and more and more motivated and, and ambitious. But if you don't have a future to look forward to, it's really hard for me to help a person like really dive into their health and make the commitment necessary to, to, you know, live to your, your age would be 110, right? If you're 90 and you just added 20 years, it's like, okay, well, Flora, she's gonna do her best work between the ages of 100 and 110. And then my goal is to live a really long life, like 222 years.

Really?

That's your goal?

That's my goal. And to, so I, I'll die old in a very young body, but I want to die really fast because a lot of people, that last decade of their life is the worst decade. I mean, they're, they're, you know, drooling on themselves or on 13 medications in these nursing homes, you know, and nobody wants to go out like that. And so I think that's where if you protect your health now, um, I've seen clients, you know, Eldon, one of my clients who's 103, and he had like 132 like kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids, and he, he was independent until 103. 90 days before he passed, he didn't show up for one of his appointments, and so his son called me and said, hey, My dad's on hospice and looks like he's going to pass pretty quick here. His heart's failing and he passed very peacefully with his family around. Like, that's the way to go.

So, so why, why blood? Why is your focus blood when I mean, you know, I've done like Dutch hormone tests and thyroid, like there's so many parts of your body. Why is your main focus on blood? How did you land there?

Well, that's just the starting place. I mean, we do Dutch testing, we do gut tests, genetics, we do full body imaging, we do brain scans, uh, electroencephalograms, we do carotid artery. I mean, um, we call it the ageless axis. So your, your muscle, your heart, your brain, those are the 3 core, um, pieces to your longevity future. And, and the blood labs just give us a really good foundation because if you think of what blood is, it's the byproduct of everything you eat. Your food becomes your blood, the stress levels become your blood. You know, the, the way that you interact in your relationships become your blood. Like, you can hug somebody and you're going to have more oxytocin, you're going to have better nitric oxide, you're going to have lower cholesterol. So, I mean, that blood is just really— it's a nice reflection of what's going on outside of all of the other kind of confounding factors. But the urine, from a, you know, like a Dutch perspective, for those of you don't know what Dutch is, is it's basically you collect your urine throughout course of a day and we can look at cortisol rhythms, we can look at pregnenolone, progesterone, estradiol. We can look at all the hormones, but these are metabolites of the hormones. So, you can actually see what your body's utilizing. And, there's really interesting assessments there. The gut is probably the area of exploration that we have the least knowledge of. I mean, if anyone claims that we've figured out the gut biome or just scratched the surface, but the gut biome, very important.

I heard recently, and you touched on this earlier with the immune, I heard recently that the gut is, is 80%, holds 80% of our immune system. Or did I make, did I make part of that up?

It's— I love the Instagram world where my patients would be like, did you know that you could increase your growth hormone with this peptide by 440%? I'm like, That's just somebody spitting off data that they have no idea what they're talking about. But you're close.

I didn't know. I didn't know what I'm talking about. I didn't hear it from Instagram. I heard it from a practitioner, but I don't think I heard it right.

No.

Well, I don't know. I mean, 70% is usually the number thrown around. It doesn't matter. But your, your gut biome, like you have this, this system called your gut that is where your white blood cells are informed by the intestinal tract because your food, all the nutrients passing through your intestinal tract. This is like an external object. Like, think of a protein as a signaling messenger. And so that protein comes into your digestive system, and you— your immune system is designed to detect when there's threats. Like, if there's, uh, you know, if you get food poisoning, it's, it's not the, the pathogen that's making you throw up. That's your immune system that's saying, uh-oh, Flora ate some bad food, we gotta, we gotta get rid of it. And so a lot of your immune immune system is informed by the gut. And so when you're eating foods that are chemically laden, or they have mold in them, or mycotoxins, glyphosate, which is a big one, those things start to like mute the intelligence of your immune system.

That's incredible. So, so you mentioned you personally dealt with immune, immune deficiencies, and, and I think you said psoriasis and Hashimoto's. Do I get those Yeah.

Okay.

And, and where are you with that? How did you get rid of those?

Well, I ended up finding a naturopathic doctor who ran the right labs, and he asked me, he's like, Reagan, were you exposed to a lot of chemicals as a kid? And I was like, no, I grew up on a cattle ranch in Idaho, is very clean living, you know, had access to great food, you know, whatever. I said, just a little bit of Roundup. And he is like, well, Roundup's a chemical. And I was like, you know, the time in the '90s, Roundup was like touted as like the Holy Grail. I mean, our, our crop yields were up and everybody was using it, and the, the rep told us, you know, this is safe enough where you could drink it, this is your only ease. And so, um, yeah, I would get crop dusted with planes spraying Roundup. I'd be in the pastures spraying Roundup, and then we dip our fence posts in formaldehyde. And it was when I was in the anatomy lab spraying the cadavers with formaldehyde, that's when everything flared up. I like, I reached my toxic threshold. And it was weird because I was like, the only way I could get out of farm work as a kid is to make the track team or the basketball team or football team. And so I was always very athletic, and I just went from being very athletic to barely being able to get out of bed. I couldn't like sleep at night. I was tired and wired. I'd be on the day, I had brain fog. I mean, I couldn't remember anything. So I'd bring these little tape recorders to class because it seemed like in the evening it's when my brain worked. It was, it was miserable. But I got on like a pretty strict, like, gluten-free diet and cleaned up my liver and my gut and got better. But it wasn't until I started using like stem cell therapy and peptides that remodulated my immune system before I got in like where we're now in technically what you'd say remission, because my antibodies tend to be below 20.

And what's the range typically?

We— anything that's over about a 35 in thyroid peroxidase antibodies is where you're considered to have Hashimoto's. Mine started at 680.

So fascinating. So how, how do you not just get, you know, so, so with Jam AI, Jam AI, you know, I work alongside Jam, right? And, and Jam is Jam Anderson. She stays up to speed with all things AI. I really focus on the human side of it, right? So how people are using AI to give themselves more time back, right? And, you know, I tell you that because I'm on the sidelines of hearing everything that's happening in the AI world and no one can keep up. Somehow Jam does it because it's all she does, you know? But with the body, I mean, how do you— there's so much and science is always evolving and you're always—

there's something new out all the time.

How do you, how do you keep it all? How do you not get overwhelmed by everything?

Well, it's just once you have an operating system and you have a core vision, um, and then we just run it through filters, you know, because there's, um, you know, 1,500 new scientific breakthroughs every day, like new papers being written. Most of them are garbage. And so, um, but it doesn't matter because the human physiology, um, you know, it's humans, you know, we're, we have these intelligent, um, factories like built right into our DNA. Like, we are designed to heal. So it's not like everything's changing. It's just, it's just these little, these little leverage points. And, um, it's very easy to test them. I mean, I test everything out myself, and I, I'm a metric junkie, so I know exactly how my physiology is changing, where it doesn't. And then, um, we, we know how to apply the scientific method. I mean, we just, we observe, we adjust, we adapt, and we We say no to a lot more breakthroughs than we say yes to.

So, so you, you have your practice. You just recently have this, this patent. You recently— I don't know. I don't mean recently. You also have a product. I mean, how do you, how do you keep your business together and running? What's your day-to-day running your business?

Yeah, well, we have pharmacies as well. And then I have a like an academic group that I've ran for 10 years called Go Wellness. So, um, it really— it's just the same way your physiology works, you know. You have operating systems and you have, you know, the very first thing is if, if you're aligned with the vision, you know where you want to go, um, then it's pretty easy to, to discern what does not fit within that vision. And if you can say no to the distractions, that's become really important. And then hiring the right people around me. So I'm, I'm very tightly managed, and, um, and that has allowed me to stay focused on the things that are most important and help, help us move forward as a company or as, you know, groups of companies.

Wow.

And are you, are you using AI in any of your, your business now?

Oh yeah, we use— AI has been awesome. I mean, it was, it was really rough, um, in '22 and '23 and even 24, like the hallucinations and the, the shit that AI would make up. I would just be like, where did you even get that? Like, you're just trying to make me feel good. And, and now it's so much better. Like, if people aren't using AI, they're, they're, they are doing themselves a big disservice. I think AI, without using AI in medicine in the future, it will be malpractice if you're not, you know, applying AI to data that's coming in from lab work. The human brain, I mean, no matter how good you are, there's things that you miss. And AI is really good on the logical side. And then we can use our intuition to really move the needle in the right direction for our clients.

So what's it look like in practice for you? How are you actually using it in your day to day?

We have an AI copilot. We built our own EHR, and so we have an AI copilot that's there. Tracking all the data coming in. And it's actually— we've trained it. We started training a Reagan bot like in 2022. So it's got, it's got years of analysis and data and then we've got the same aggregation with our other providers. And so it's just having basically a digital twin for everybody in the company and in the future it will be for all of our clients. We, we're not there yet to have full digital twin access, but that's where we're moving towards.

That's, that's amazing. So, so if you, you know, you're speaking to the stressful business owner and I, and I think that's something to acknowledge, right? Because there's this, this narrative that if you're this business owner, it's like, oh, you don't have the— you're not tied to the computer and, you know, you've got your own schedule. But like, we all know that's not the case. If you're a business owner, you're often working more ours. And, you know, I, I love that practice that you did with us, right, in the beginning, and that, that reminder of how much more it is than just our body, right? It's, it's our financials, it's our, um, our relationships, it's our, it's our, our passions and, and the values. So if you're talking to that stressed-out business owner right now who's feeling so overwhelmed, um, with their day-to-day, what are, what are some things that you would want to share with Um, I just—

that I understand it's stressful. Um, sometimes it's going to be hard, and you just got to be really, uh, good at going through the hard times, but then get just as skilled at having free days. Like, I just got back from Banff, Canada with my family, and so, um, I try to do a trip every month, and then I, I'd go to Europe, but we travel a lot. Um, we just— my wife and I went to Japan last month, spent 10 days there and stopped in Hawaii on both ways. So it's just making sure you, you play as hard as you work. And, um, as long as you stay healthy, like, uh, you can, you can, you can go hard and have fun, build something great.

So if someone, you know, listening to you and it resonates and they think, you know, this is really the time for me to take action of, of my body, of my health, um, you know, because I'm making these other changes, I'm progressing in my business, I'm, you know, seeing these financial gains, and I'm, I'm educating myself, and now it's really time, you know, full picture to work on my health. You know, what are things that they could ask themselves, or what are things that could bring them, you know, to you, to talk to you? What are, what are things that you would talk to them about that? Sorry, that was kind of—

I would just say, um, go to agelessfuture.com, get your labs ran, talk to my team. But, um, don't let a health crisis force you into thinking about your health. Like, just be proactive about it. It's the most important thing. I see entrepreneurs, once they focus on their health, their everything in their life improves. So like when health improves, everything improves. And it's the one thing that people take for granted the easiest is their health, and especially entrepreneurs.

I, I love that. Like, be proactive. Don't, don't get here because of an emergency, of a crisis, right? Well, so Chelsea shared a promo code with us. Talk to us a little bit about that before we wrap.

Yeah. So one thing we created for founders and entrepreneurs is called Founders Fuel, and it's just this— it's a simple drink that you can use in the morning or midday whenever you need just that mental clarity. And it's a relax focus blend of kava, fermented kratom, it's got lion's mane and L-theanine. And so people can access that. Any, any founder, entrepreneur, I think you'll find it very rewarding.

Why do you call it Founder's Fuel?

Oh, because it's, um, most of my founders, uh, and clients are ADHD, and, and so the ADHD is the fuel, but the ADHD is also the burnout mechanism, and that's where they create the most fires and devastation around them. And so Founders Fuel just puts that ADHD and directs the energy in the right mode while they're relaxed. And so I just, you know, relaxed focus is the I love that.

I love that. Reagan, I could pick your brain all day. Thank you so much for jumping on here. I will be following up and sharing some resources and, you know, you're definitely making the world a better place. So thank you for your time today and thank you for sharing a little bit of your knowledge with us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Flora.

Talk soon.

Ciao.

Bye-bye.