From Stents to Lifestyle: A Cardiologist's Journey to Functional Medicine

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa Podcast where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. Well, I have just such an amazing guest today and I am so excited to introduce you to Dr. Sanjay Bage.

Boom.

Cool. Who? He's an interventional cardiologist and we're going to talk about what the heck that means. And one of a small number of cardiologists who are actually certified in functional medicine through the Institute of Functional Medicine. So he spent about two decades in traditional cardiology and he has now shifted into really understanding the root causes of cardiometabolic disease. And he looks at lifestyle, nutrition, advanced diagnostics and precision medicine. And he is the founder of the Well 12 program, which is a 12 week transformational program focused on optimizing your energy, your metabolism, looks at longevity, and he serves as the chief medical officer for many health technology companies. He's a sought after speaker and educator advocate for medicine that helps heal people at scale. So welcome. I'm so excited to have you here.

Great, Great to be here. Boy, it sounds like I've done a lot of things, but I guess I'm just older. That's what happens when you collect candles on your birthday cake, huh?

Well, I think you're a pretty wise, wise soul. So why don't you start with like, what was that moment where you recognized that traditional cardiology wasn't enough and it wasn't serving your patients well enough? And what prompted you to jump into this functional medicine piece?

Yeah, great, great question. And I feel like that one scene in the Matrix where you can take the red pill or the blue pill and you can never go back. So it, you know, fortunately for me, I didn't have my own health crisis. Right. I think a lot of people who get into functional medicine, they experience something and they kind of need to find it on their own. I was sailing along, doing great as a, in my career as an interventional cardiologist. So for those of you who don't know, within the field of cardiology, there's a further subspecialty, even more school that you can go to to be able to do cardiac procedures. So these are the, what are called the stent procedures where we go in and put a metal spring essentially in the artery to kind of hold open the blood vessel walls. I was doing procedures where I was replacing heart valves through the arteries in the legs and putting in plugs and clips and all these great things that we could do for people to help them to avoid surgery and to treat heart attack and avoid cardiovascular symptom. And as I got into that 10 to 15 year point in my career, I was getting repeat business, right? And when you talk about any sort of store or business or whatever it may, you know, you watch Shark Tank, they're always like, what's your customer reorder rate? Or, or what's your, you know, secondary thing? How often is Whole Foods coming back for your snack? You know, what, whatever it is. But in the cardiovascular world, if you have repeat business, that's actually not a good thing, right? Because that means somebody's having a heart attack again or, or they need heart bypass surgery or something is going sideways that they need help with. And so despite optimal control of the things that we can control, meaning blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, I was still seeing people break through and having cardiovascular events, right? Which is kind of unsettling because as a cardiologist, particularly as an interventional cardiologist, we are kind of wired to fix things. And that leads to a very interesting first year of marriage, right? I don't to want, want to hear about the problems, I just want to fix them, right. But, but anyway, so, so it got to that point where I was getting these repeat customers and despite optimal medical therapy, something else was going on. And I remember there's one particular weekend now about maybe five or six years ago, where I was on call. And when you're on call for the weekend in our, in my old practice, you're on from Friday morning at 8am to Monday morning at 7:59am so three straight days, 72 hours of being on call for heart attacks. And one day we had eight back to back to back to back to back heart attacks, right? So luckily none of them were mine. But, but the, the, the hits just kept coming. We would finish with one and another would show up in the er and it was like, you know, one of those, like, you know what, I assume quicksand would be like trying to climb out of quicksand, right? You just can never get, get any traction, move forward. And I'm like, man, something is really broken in the system. Because as I was looking through the charts of these people to figure out what was going on at, you know, most of them, not all of them, but most of them had reasonably well controlled cholesterol, which blood pressure was good. You know, they weren't smokers. And, and I live in Southern California. So people tend to be a bit more active here. I'm like, boy, there is just something weird going on. And, you know, there's this wonderful phrase, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And so I, I kind of think of that way with the algorithms and social media now, because that same weekend, I got a communication from Institute of Functional Medicine ifm that was the functional medicine approach to hypertension. And this is now 10, 12 years ago, probably. So now we, we know what functional medicine is a lot more, you know, it's just a lot more acceptably or a lot more understood and acceptable and heard of in, in the normal parlance, but I didn't know what it was, but I'm like, yeah, you know what? Who knows? Like, it's a, it's an hour. I'll just sit there and have a Coke and a smile and see what happens. And it was remarkable because as I was sitting there for that simple hour, they weren't talking to me about, you know, a calcium blocker or, or a ACE inhibitor or these different classes of medications, but they were going one step, kind of beyond, right? They're piercing that, that third wall, that fourth wall or whatever, and they were now talking about diet and lifestyle and something we never talk about in cardiology is mindset, right? What mindset? How does that affect your blood pressure? But the stories and the, and the data and the teaching was so compelling, I'm like, you know what? I think this is that missing step. So, kind of quite reluctantly, I went to my first functional medicine conference in Chicago, which is my hometown, and I thought, okay, if I get there and people wearing prayer robes and, you know, aligning chakras or whatever, you know, at least I can go hang out with my mom and my high school friends, you know, my buddies. But when I sat and I really kind of listened and understood the paradigm and the mindset and the. And the lens of functional medicine, I realized, wow, this is what's missing, right? Because we're treating numbers all the time, but we're not healing disease. And this is really. Then going that step beyond this was that thing that I was looking for. And then I was in a very conventional medical practice, multi specialty group, 100, I think at the time, we're like 100 docs or 110 docs or something. And so I'm, you know, this interventional cardiology weirdo that now instead of putting people on, you know, statin drugs right out of the gate, I'm talking about diet, lifestyle, and trying citrus Bergamot and berberine and, and herbals. And, and at first, my internal medicine people, you know, my colleagues were shooting me emails like, bro, what is going on here?

What's going on with you?

What's, what's the deal? Like, did you fall off your bike and hit your head? Like, what's going on with, you know, and then I said, no, just give it a shot. And the cool thing was, over time is that particularly for lower, lower risk patients, you can see a pretty significant improvement with diet and lifestyle. And, oh, by the way, in all of our guideline documents of how to approach blood pressure or high cholesterol or whatever, it may be the highest level of evidence, the first thing that you're supposed to do, level 1A evidence, is to institute three to six months of aggressive diet and lifestyle changes, which is exactly what I was doing. And now instead of putting people on a statin and two blood pressure medications or an insulin resistance medicine, like a metformin or something, and. And blood pressure medicines, just simply teaching them what to eat and how to sleep and how to, you know, think and have mindset and kind of shift into a gratitude mindset and journal, you know, all these kind of seemingly woo woo things. We're seeing hard outcomes change. Like, I was keeping people off of medications, and if you don't take a medicine, you can't have a side effect, right? So. So it was just a remarkably powerful thing. And then the really cool thing was, what then happened was I started seeing the referrals coming into me of patients whose primary care doctors were already putting them on these functional medicine things. Oh, you know what, let's try the berberine up front. Let's try magnesium taurate and see what happens. And so it's just this really cool evolution. And then over time, I just realized, you know, rather than being on call every fourth night worrying which of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's holidays I want off. Right, because you always have to work holidays in, in the conventional world, I thought, you know what? I think this is a natural break. This is like a, this is like a gravity pulling me towards this integrative, functional mindset. Because while there's a thousand interventional cardiologists, there's like five integrative cardiologists, right? Or maybe 10 max, that, that I know of. And so it really just kind of pulled me and completely shifted the course of my career.

So did you leave the practice of 100 plus? Okay. And so you went on your own or did you.

Yeah, it was kind of, you know, one of those things where everyone's like, what is happening here? So, yeah, I mean, I was, you know, in, in, in the interventional cardiology world, when you're mid career, that's your, like, peak earning and you're, you know, you've got all your referrals and all these things. And I just realized, you know what? This is not the life that I want to continue to live. I need to serve people in a different way. And so I left that practice and, and started an online program called Well12 that you mentioned that really helps people optimize cardiac and metabolic health and really allows me to heal at scale. I'm turning 50 this year and my, my midlife crisis, I don't need a faster car or anything like that, but I just want to heal at scale and really empower patients to take ownership of their health so they don't have to be patients anymore. They can just be people. Right. Which is nice. And so what I've seen in the program, just after two or three weeks of eating healthy and sleeping better and all these things, is that we have to peel away these medications, particularly blood pressure medicines and these diabetes medicines, because in the conventional world, we're just not given that toolkit. But your body wants to be healthy. Right. Your body wants to heal. And when you give it the nutrition that it needs, when you supplement the way that it needs to overcome micronutrient, macronutrient deficiencies and know all those phytochemicals and minerals and vitamins and all these things, your body is really smart. Right. It can really do a lot of things. We just have to get, as physicians, get out of the way of the body, supplement it, let it restore its own health, and, you know, remarkable things can happen.

Yeah. So what is the most difficult thing when you're working with a new patient? Right. Because, you know, I think that mindset piece, and I want to go a little bit deeper on this is so important because we've become a culture of give me the quick fix. Right. And we are very attached and very habitual, very attached to our lifestyle. Like my coffee every day, like this.

Right.

And so how do you work with your, you know, your clients, your patients to make that shift? So talk a little bit about that and what is challenging about that and what's so rewarding about that?

Yeah, I think that the most challenging part is to get people to realize that diet and lifestyle changes can heal you very quickly. Right. They'll. And the problem is, is people have, you know, they Bought this book or they tried this diet for a week or two, and they just didn't give it enough time to really kind of set in. And so they said, well, I've tried everything and I failed. This is. How is this going to be any different, right? And I'm like, well, you know, I think that saying that you tried everything might not be that great, but if you go in with the mindset that you're going to fail, you're going to fail. Like, I don't know, you know, if it's an SAT test or if it's anything. I remember I used to play soccer in high school, and, you know, at soccer camps, they'd say, when you go in for a challenge, if you go in tentatively, you're going to break a leg. Like, if you go in tentative in a slide tackle, right? You have to go in and really commit. And so the first thing is screening my clients and saying, you know, potential clients or applicants into the program and saying, all right, are you fully committed? Are you coachable? Right? Like, do you believe that this is going to work? Not because, you know, I'm trying to join a cult or anything like that, but, you know, if somebody goes in with the mindset it's not going to work, then, you know, they'll be much less reluctant to stay on program, right? But that being said, I'll tell people, give me two weeks, right? And if it doesn't work in, if you really commit for two weeks and you're not seeing any noticeable change, then we'll have a conversation and see about, you know, what we can do. And almost invariably, those people who really, really fundamentally commit and they're, you know, and we're not talking about, like, run eight miles a day. I'm just saying eat, like, servings of vegetables, right? Eating up vegetables. Like, eat clean protein, sleep correctly, don't drink. Which I think here in Orange county, you know, there's this epidemic of silent drinking and. And, you know, mommy juice and kind of all that stuff with. With so many people just drinking a lot of alcohol. But, you know, just keep that away. Not forever, but just, you know, for, like, even six weeks, and let your body heal and see what can happen. So. So I. I think that the getting back to your original question, I think the biggest hurdle up front is belief, right? And then just as you mentioned, lifestyle, there's so many things that we think that we're physiologically craving, but in fact, they're psychological cravings, right? Like, so when you're watching TV at night, Number one, don't watch TV at night, right? Get up and go for a walk or, or do something. But you know, when you're watching TV at night, boy, that refrigerator just starts talking to you, right? The ice cream starts talking in the commercials, the Ben and Jerry's. Oh my God, yes. I mean, when you see these, these, I mean, obviously advertising and marketing messes with our minds, but yeah, it's when you're watching these late night TVs, everything is like a food ad or an ice cream ad or a snack ad or you know, kind of doubling down on that food is emotional comfort kind of mindset. And so the, the, the signals are just coming from everywhere. But these are more psychological cravings than physiologic cravings, right? They are associations no different than the Pavlov dog. When you ring a bell, your, your mouth salivates. So you know, when you're watching your evening, whatever, American Idol, Law and Order, what television show, right. You, you associate that with eating or with a snack or with an ice cream or whatever it might be. And so disrupting that, right. Realizing that you don't have to eat, right. Part of that is then make making that mental tough, mentally tough decision of, you know, short term gain or short term loss versus long term gain. You know, what happens if I don't have the ice cream? Well, I'm going to get healthier, right? And, and once people kind of push through, that's why that two week mark I think is so important. Because once people have pushed through that they realize, ye know what, I don't need this. Or you give them the insight and say, yeah, this is a weird kind of craving that I don't need. But even more so, particularly when we talk about cravings is when you're giving the body the nutrition that it needs, the micronutrients, the fibers, that craving signal just kind of turns down. You know, we talk so much about food noise and one of the most remarkable things that, that I see consistently in the program is once we've got the veggies going in and the fibers going in and all, and we're, we're replenishing the micronutrients that your body has been starved of with the standard American diet, those craving signals turn off and you're just like, oh, okay, I guess it's time to eat, right? So, so just again, the body wants to seek health, it wants to seek balance. And as long as you're fueling it correctly, you know, I tell, you know, we focus so much on weight, which Is don't like something I don't like talking about. But weight loss is a side effect of optimal health. Right, Right. And so, so, yeah, I think belief and breaking some of those psychological chains that we have are really the most consistently difficult things that we do. But we're well dialed in with the support and all the things that we give our clients to get them through that first hurdle.

Got it. So what are some of the most detrimental foods to our health? I know you mentioned alcohol, but what else is really having an impact, right? Because if you go back to the 1970s, everybody, you know, you see pictures, everybody is slim and trim.

And so there's that meme that went around of the beach, right? And, and there's like. Yeah. And like everybody's in bathing suits looking great. I mean, weird haircuts, right. And, and whatnot. So. And weird lamb chops. And they really love that mustache kind of sideburn look back in the day, right. But, but yeah, I mean, our, our

bodies, what's changed in our food supply? And then what are some of the best foods today that we can start to shift to?

Yeah, I mean, I think that. And, and I was born in the 70s, although don't remember them very well. Right. But, but you know, there, there's so many different ways to talk about it. Number one, let's talk about packaging of food, right? Because back in the once upon a time days, it was in glass or cans, right? There weren't plastic. And so, you know, a lot of the, the chemicals in the plastics or obesogens and endocrine disruptors and I mean, it's almost ubiquitous now. Like, you can't not get plastic anywhere. Like, I, I remember I went to, oh, I was at my favorite sushi restaurant, right? We can talk about parasites and all that stuff, but I still love sushi, right. We went to our, our, our neighborhood sushi joint that we love, and they're preparing the sushi. And what do they do? And the final thing, they take the roll, they put it in plastic, right? Saran Wrap, and then they're cutting it through the plastic, right? And then they unravel it and they, they plate it. And that's something I would never have realized, right? Like, you think if they have the bamboo little thing that they normally do, but, you know, these guys had realized that, that the plastics were working better for them. We. I didn't realize that there were microplastics being introduced right into my food. When you buy anything in a store, you know, like, you buy vegetables, you put Them in a plastic bag unless you bring your own silicone bags or whatever, right? So, you know, I think that the, the stuff that our food is coming in is, is certainly number one. Number two is the use of preservatives. I mean, if you buy bakery bread, right? Versus like, you know, whatever bread that comes in a bag in the bread aisle. I mean, we are sprinting to eat that bakery bread, right? My daughters love it, the Italian bread or whatever because it spoils so fast. Whereas, uh, the sandwich loaf, you know, that thing can be there for like a month and it doesn't look any different, right? That's not natural, Right. Like one of the things I talk about in our program in, in Hinduism we have this concept of prana, the life force, right? The life breath. And any food that you eat has to have life to give you life. Because if it doesn't have life, it's going to take away, right? It's kind of one of the geeky things that I think about. So like for instance, I talk about Cheetos versus carrots. They both look the same. But if you leave a Cheeto outside or a carrot outside, how are they going to look in 10 days, right? The carrots can be all shriveled up and grows. The life is left, right? Whereas the Cheeto is going to look exactly the same, right? Because they had, there was no life there to begin with. So it sucks life out of you as opposed to, it's like a dry sponge as opposed to a wet sponge, if that makes sense. So, so I think that a lot of the, the preservatives and have kind of sucked the soul out of our food, right? And they're not, they're not helping us. And then even at an agricultural level with, with a big ag and, and, and whatnot, we're seeing a lot of soil depletion. So the Orange of 1970 that they were eating at that beach is very different than the orange of 2026 that we're eating at our beach, right? The vitamin C content is lower. The micronutrients, the minerals, the trace minerals that you need, like metals like selenium and molybdenum and all these things that we need and lithium, right. That we need to get from our soil are not happening. And so you can even try to eat healthy, but it's still not going to be as healthy as the once upon a time days, right? So there's so many different affronts now. One thing I will say is stress is probably not that much different now than it was before. And I point to the most amazing advertising campaign of all time, which is in my mind, the Calgon Take Me Away Mom. Do you remember her? Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah, of course.

You know, I mean, what an. Like, it speaks to me now, even 40 years later, is that, you know, this woman is just exasperated. You know, she's got kids that are yelling and a husband that's a jerk, and the dog is barking and she just wants a few minutes in a bathtub to just chill, right? Like that's all she wants in the world, right? Calon. Take me away. Well, you know, the stresses might look a little bit different. She didn't have social media and she didn't have Real Housewives of Orange county to watch or whatever, but stress has always been a part of the adulting equation, right? So. So it's just, you know, what is that downtime? What is that time that we allow ourselves to relax? That's one of the things that's a big affront. And we don't realize how much stress contributes to poor health. Right. Because it affects our sleep. If you've got high cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that tells our body that you need to be calorie avid. So you start. You start to crave salty sweet foods. And now you're watching, you know, the Bachelor or whatever. I don't even know what. I don't. I don't watch much. My reality TV show, Antiques Road show, right. Like, that's my. I love Antiques Road Show. I'll watch that for hours. But, but, you know, you're watching whatever your reality show is because you're so addicted to stress that if your life is calm, you need to get a bump from somebody else to get that cortisol level that you need. Right. That is now affecting your sleep. So you're not sleeping as much. It also gives you cravings for salty and sweet foods. And so now you're snacking and the whole world kind of unwinds, Right. Like, everything kind of takes a tumble. So. So, you know, breaking that cycle. Why are we fatter than we were in the 1970s? I mean, our entire environments are. Are against us. Right. Even light, like incandescent versus LED light, affects our sleep and all these things. Right. So, in essence, I love what you're saying, you know, is I will often preach about the 1826 diet, which is just eat things that existed 200 years ago and you're probably going to be fine. Right.

Like our ancestors did.

Yeah. And. And you know, you don't have to go way back and in time. But, you know, before, for whatever reason, the. The. The benchmark for me is before ketchup. Right. Heinz 60, like, 1867 is, I think, when ketchup was invented or that's where they branded it or whatever. So everything before ketchup was probably okay. Right. Everything after ketchup has some degree of ultra processed component to it. Right, Right.

Yeah. And I, you know.

Yeah.

Everything that you've said is just so spot on. And I will say, like, it's interesting what you said about stress, Dr. Sanjay, that, you know, I think, like, this thing here, like, I. I read a statistic, we pick up our phone, it's like 230 times a day.

I mean, imagine if you got that to weigh 10 pounds. Everyone's biceps would be huge.

Right, Right. Well, you know, and imagine if this was food, if we were eating 230 times. Right. And so we're addicted, as you said, to this stress level that I don't, you know, yes, we've always had stress, but I think we are in just this constant, always on mode. And like you said, when you don't have it, then you're seeking it and trying to pull it in.

Right, right. And we've all experienced that. Right. Like, you know, we've all had that day where everything is going your way. Right. Like, and. And then all of a sudden, this kind of thought creeps in. You're like, oh, this is. This is too good. Something bad is bound to happen. Right. Like. Like. Like there's another shoe that's going to drop here. Right. I mean, we are just so uncomfortable with being happy because we're always so stressed that it affects us. And, you know, I've had, in my clinical practice, you know, there'll be a patient who, you know, survived a heart attack or, you know, we got them through whatever choppy seas that they needed to get through, and the first visit, they're feeling okay afterwards. And the second visit, they're like, oh, my gosh, my anxiety level is so high because I'm always worried that the shoe is going to drop. Right. And. And. And that's, I think, you know, part of that stress addiction that we have. And, you know, it's okay to be happy. You know, it's okay to feel at peace. It's okay to give yourself time to disconnect from your phone. Like, I mean, do you remember how glorious it was growing up and not having, like, Life360, where your parents knew that where you were at all times.

My mom would be yelling and I would be down around the block, around the corner. Sorry I missed dinner.

Your world was as big as your legs could take you on your bike. Right. That's how it was for me. And there's just something wonderful and empowering about being disconnected. But when you're constantly plugged into the matrix, you just can't feel like you can go very far. I mean, think about the panic that happens when you go to the grocery store. This happened me, like last week, I went to the grocery store without my phone, right? And I'm like, oh my God, what if, what if the Pope calls? You know what's going to happen? You. Right. I mean, and, and I got back, and the first thing I did, of course, is look at my phone. And, and my phone was like, bro, where you been? Like, I got no calls. Right. Like, what's the difference? Right. Like it doesn't realize. And so, you know, we, you know, 200 seems to be, I would suggest that that's probably an underestimate of how many times I check my phone in a day. Right. But, but, you know, it's okay to be unplugged, you know, and it's okay to, and it's important for us to be unplugged, right. It's important for our brains to recover. It's important for us to get downtime. I, I, I speak about this with exercise all the time is, you know, the, the rest portion of your exercise is just as important, if not more so, than the active part of your exercise. So when you're lifting weights, you need to rest between sets, right? So that your body can recover, but also so that your body can grow. Because if you're just constantly in a grow, grow, grow, go, go, go state, right? You don't have the time to recover, you don't have the time to heal. You don't have the time to get the benefits of what it is you're trying to get. Right?

Yeah, you're, you fatigue the body.

Right.

And the, and the soul.

Exactly. The body and the soul. And I don't think that those are two completely separate things. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's not body or soul. It's body and soul. And we just have to realize the an soul part is almost more important than the body part.

Yeah. So you talk about giving patients agency. So what does true patient empowerment really look like?

Yeah. So number one, I think, is, is giving them meaning, patients or clients, the tools to read Their body. That's why I love the wearables so much. So, so I wear basically every wearable there is. But you know, you would never drive a car with your dashboard cover up with post it notes, right? Because you're not getting the feedback of speed and this, that the other. And that's kind of what we do with our bodies is we don't get feedback. We go to the mechanic, meaning the doctor, once every six months and he or she'll tell us too much of this, not enough of that, blah, blah, blah. But then we just basically, you know, we pay attention for like a few days and then you stop until like, you know, I remember when I was a kid, I would brush my teeth 12 times before I'd go to the dentist the next morning, right? Or whatever. And my gums would be all bleeding and my mouth would be raw and the dentist would be like, dude, like what's going on here? You know, so, so number one is, is having people realize that, that they are the center of the healthcare team, not the doctor, right? That's the most important part. And giving people an understanding, not just numbers, but an understanding of why these things are important, right? So in a wearable device, for instance, you know, why is it important that you're not just looking at how many hours of sleep you got, but what was the quality of sleep that you're getting, right? Like, like I love the dashboard of the, of the wearables because they'll give you something, a metric called heart rate variability, right? Which is a metric of how amped up you are versus how chill you are, you know, at a very 10,000 foot view, right? So if your heart rate variability is low, that means that you're amped up, you know, what's going on, Are you stressed? Are you not sleeping? Are you eating the wrong foods? Are you, you know, drinking alcohol, you're taking caffeine in too late, are you overtraining? You know, what are these things that you don't realize are happening? And, and, and once you realize, once you get that feedback of how your body is responding to certain exposures. Thank you. Exposures or stimuli, you can say, oh, you know what? I realized like this happened to me that every time I eat peanuts, my heart rate variability goes down. I used to be addicted to peanuts and you know, have a handful. That was my late night kind of snack. And then I realized, you know what? My body is inflaming against peanuts. My body can't tell the difference between running away from a saber tooth tiger or inflammation and biochemical warfare, which is what inflammation is, right? Internal biochemical warfare. This internal biochemical response to something I'm eating. And it thinks that we are at risk, right? It thinks that something is going down and, you know, all these defense mechanisms, mechanisms kind of flare up, right? And so that was something I learned. I said, okay, let me take peanuts away and see what happens. And instantly I. My sleep got better. That inflammation weight that I was carrying kind of melted away. I mean, I dropped like two or three pounds over the. Over a few days. And it's not because of fat loss. It was just that loss of that inflammation blood to benefit. Right? So. So the first part of it is getting people to understand their bodies. I think, number two, then, is giving them the tools to really make these changes, pull these levers, right? You. You are at the helm, right? Not me. And number three, the mindset of being more of a Sherpa. That's why I love your Wellness Sherpa podcast. I'm kind of jelly about your title by the. But I love that is. Is being more of a Sherpa than the hero, right?

Like, be.

Be the support person to say, look, you're the hero here. I'm just your guide, right? Like, I need you to. To buy into this, because too many times I've had patients that. That come to my clinic, and I'd say, you know, do you have questions? I'll do whatever you say, Doc. And that's, like, the most unsettling thing for me because they've already outsourced that part of their brain. They don't think that they're responsible. They don't think that they have control. They think that I'm in control. And I'm like, no. Like, okay, these are the questions that you should be asking me right now, right? Like, so I would. I would kind of reframe the discussion, but. But I think that. That conventional medicine has done such a great job. I don't want to say gaslighting, because I think that's a bit strong, but such a great branding job of saying that we are the only way that people don't realize how much control they have over their health. Right? And.

Yeah, and. And that they're. They're responsible. They're in the driver's seat. You know, I. I use the phrase, we are the caregivers of this vehicle that we are walking in every day. And, you know, I think over. You know, I was born in the 60s. I think going over a time frame, I can see in my own life, where I started outsourcing my health, it was like, oh, no, whatever you tell me to do, you're the expert. Right. And a big part of my healing, and I think it's a big part of what you teach is know thyself, right. Know what's happening in your own body, because you're the only one that can really change it.

Yeah. And really.

And heal it.

Yeah. Well. And not to get super geeky, but, you know, I'm going to drop a little geekiness here is, you know, you can't use population based statistics to apply to an individual. Right? So what do I mean by that is that when you look at these huge clinical trials, right, 100,000 people in this arm and a hundred thousand people in that arm, and we look at whatever intervention, you know, in between, and we say, oh yeah, this medication is great for this, this condition in aggregate. And so if your thyroid is low or your sugar is high or whatever the condition might be, this medication is, is going to be the trick, right. Is going to do the trick for you. But that's like saying, well, the average height in the United States is five nine. So everybody is five nine. No, no. Anybody that knows stats, you know, half, if you have an average, that means half the people are above, half the people are below, right? So everyone's a little bit different. So for me to say, you know, go, like, imagine going to a store and saying, oh, we have pants for everyone who's 5 9. And you know, if you're short like me, you're going to have to roll them up. If you're tall, like, you know your husband, right. Then, you know you're gonna wear floods, right? Like, no, that would never make sense, right? Like in our, in our personal tailoring, right? You, you have size matrices, right? And so we kind of need to realize that medicine is not a one size fits all. And that as a patient, as a client, whatever it may be, you are the one who is the most intimately aware of how your body is responding. And you know, if a medication, if an intervention, if a diet plan, if a supplement, whatever it may be, isn't working, you know the difference, right? Like, you're not gonna go to the store, right? I mean, would you go to the store and tolerate, oh, I bought a pair of pants and it doesn't fit, I'll just keep them forever. No, like, right, you want, you're gonna go and exchange it for the proper size, right? So if you know that something isn't working, you know, you are more Aware of how your body is responding in terms of your personal biochemistry, your personal exposures, your personal sleep patterns, your personal whatever. So, yeah, take ownership of that. Don't be afraid to talk to your doctor about it. And if your doctor, if he or she responds in a kind of a dismissive way, then it's time to find a new doc, right? Like it's time to find someone who is again, that Sherpa mindset, say, oh, okay, well, that trail didn't work. Let's try this trail as opposed to. No, all of my, all of my hikers go down this one trail and you have to keep going. I don't care if it fits or not, or it's too steep for you or blah, blah, blah. That would, we would never tolerate that in that sort of a setting. So, you know, with something as intimate and as sacred as healthcare, why are we just accepting of that? Right.

I love that. I'm going to ask you one final question here and then if there's anything else you want to add, feel free. But what is one piece of advice around health that you would give to your younger self?

My younger self. So, you know, I would say start early, right? Like, one of the lines that I use is, you know, cardiovascular disease starts when we're born, right? When, that's when the clock, shot clock starts. So it's really important to, to get the right habits and stuff early on. Now, that being said, it's never too late, right? So, you know, if you're 50 or 70 or 90, right. You'll still see benefits from optimizing your diet, optimizing your lifestyle. But the one thing that is consistent whether you're 10 years old or 100 years old is you have to change, right? You have to, have to be open and willing to make those changes. So I would speak to, let's talk, let's maybe talk about first day of medical school. Sanjay is. Tell him that, you know, it's great that you're going to learn about all these amazing medications. And, you know, I'm not like a conventional medicine is crap kind of person because in the right setting, I think it works. But don't underestimate the importance of your living, your mindset, your, your habits and try to do what you can to shape those correctly because that's really where health is going to happen. Not with being on 12 medications. Right? Those are just treatments. But true root cause health is really going to come from lifestyle changes, from diet changes, from diet changes, from mindset changes, and from getting enough sleep Sleep

is at the top.

Sleep is at the top. Yep. It's the five letter S word. Yeah.

There you go. Well, thank you so much. You've been so informative. I appreciate your wisdom and all of your knowledge and the changes you've made in your life to land where you are. How can people find you absolutely.

So on socials? Probably Instagram is my, my biggest social platform. So I am Dr. Sanjay MD. So D O C T O R S A N, J A Y, M D. Because nobody can spell or pronounce my last name. And in the beginning, yeah, you absolutely crushed it, Jen. So thank you for that. And if you're interested in one of the programs that I run so well, 12 is my signature program where it's a 12 week program where I really aim to optimize cardiometabolic health. And the shifts I see over just, you know that that brief 84 day period with me are pretty remarkable. So we do a great job of getting people off of medications and you know, on average losing about 20, 25 pounds depending on male or female. So the, the committing to something over a 90 day period or 84 day period can be so powerful. So you can find information there. We are about to launch what's called a GLP rescue program. So for people who are on these GLP1 meds that I am kind of a mixed emotion about. But, but what I do know is that people aren't getting the proper diet and lifestyle training. So we are launching a program to help with that so that you can get the right nutrients and, and all those things in while you're on those medications. So that's about to launch. So information about all these programs is available on my website, lagunamedicine.com all right, awesome.

Well, thank you again. You're amazing and I look forward to having you back on because I think GLP could be a whole nother, whole nother show.

It's an important discussion and it's a nuanced discussion. But you know, I, I'm again just, I'm with like any medications in the right, in the right setting. I think they're very powerful and they're definitely people who need them. I think there are a lot of people who don't. So yeah, I'll be happy to come back and we can, we can talk about that anytime.

All right, thank you so much.

Bye.