#176 - They Both Walked Away From Traditional Medicine. Here's What They Found

I wanted the most rewarding job ever. What wouldn't be a more rewarding job than being that hero firefighter paramedic? After several years, I found out that I was actually completely wrong. 90% of the 911 calls was me being part of the broken medical system. And when you get that initial 911 call of that acute illness, you get another phone call 6 months later. Then it goes from once every 6 months to once every other month, then once every single month, then once every other week. You're transporting to the hospital almost every single day until the day they die.

We kind of grew up in this evidence-based medicine type system. Honestly, at this point, I could care less because I see my patients every single day. And I'm not anti-medicine, okay? But we overutilize these medications. What's important for us is to educate doctors as well. There is a different way to practice medicine. It is a fun way to practice medicine.

So what did you see? What is the verdict? Welcome back to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. And today I'm super excited because we're here in person with Sam Tejada and then Dr. Christopher Davis, two pioneers and visionaries in the field of holistic medicine. So I'm excited to have both of you here. Thank you for being here.

Oh, thank you, Dr. Khan.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, traveling all the way from Florida. Oh yeah, yeah. So I want to introduce both of you a little bit. So I want to start with Sam. So, um, so Sam Tejada is a widely respected thought leader, an entrepreneur in the health and wellness industry. His journey was from a firefighter and paramedic to a CEO and founder of Liquid Vita Wellness Centers. And he has been prominently featured in media platforms, including print, digital, and television. And he's the author of How to Win in Modern Wellness. And he has partnered with top industry leaders to educate and empower both professionals and consumers on the transformative benefits of preventative health therapies. He has a unique blend of medical expertise and passion for holistic wellness. And that fuels his mission to challenge the status quo and promote proactive health solutions and is the chairman of the leadership advisory board for the American Ivy Association and recently honored as the Visionary of the Year by Best Holistic Life magazine. And he's also a host of his podcast, The Healthy Point of View, which is a very dynamic podcast where he interviews some top experts and thought leaders to inspire, challenge, and empower listeners to take control of their health. So thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Illustrious Sam Tahara. And then Dr. Christopher Davis is a triple board-certified cardiologist and founder of Reveal Vitality and Longevity Institute in Sarasota, Florida. He has a distinguished background in interventional and preventative cardiology and has expanded beyond the traditional cardiovascular care to pioneer a precision-based integrative approach to longevity medicine. He serves as the Chief Medical Officer of Liquivita and Chief Cardiologist of HUMAn, helping to guide science-driven cardiovascular, metabolic, and intravenous therapies within the nutraceutical and longevity space. And Dr. Davis is actively engaged in clinical research as well and physician education and the development of innovative longevity ecosystems that merge luxury wellness experiences with rigorous medical science. And his mission is to redefine cardiovascular prevention by addressing root causes, such as restoring membrane integrity, optimizing mitochondrial health, and reducing environmental toxic burden. And I'm so excited that both of you are here. We're going to have a really interesting discussion on your perspective of health care and then your insights on how we can best improve people's lives. So I know both of you have really interesting story to get to where you are. So maybe, Sam, you can start because you were talking about being a paramedic, feeling like you were really out there in an incredible profession to help people. And then what were some of your revelations?

Yeah, so Dr. Joy, I appreciate that. And yes, I worked at the fire department as a firefighter paramedic, started at a young age, at age 20. And it was, you know, that was a career where I said I wanted the most rewarding job. Ever. And what wouldn't be a more rewarding job than being that hero, right? That quote-unquote hero firefighter paramedic. Show up when people need you, right, at the time of need. And after several years, I found out that I was actually completely wrong. That was only about 10% of the 911 calls where you actually did that heroic thing and extricate someone out of an entrapped vehicle or run into a burning building. 90% of the 911 calls was me being part of the broken medical system. And what do I mean by that? When you work for a municipality, the residents that live there, they get to know you as Firefighter Sam. You know, if I go to the grocery store on duty to go buy some lunch, you know, kids will come, oh, Firefighter Sam, you know, Firefighter Sam. But the same way they get to know us as the firefighters, we get to know them when they're calling 911, right? Because this is a moment where something tragic is happening. Family members are feeling it. You know, they're scared and you get to learn them. You go inside of their house, you see what's inside of their house, the food they're eating, the way they're living. And one thing that I started noticing when you get that initial 911 call of that acute illness, you start to actually map out when's the next 911 call you get, right? And it's not just with one patient, but this happens with hundreds to thousands of patients. What ended up happening, I started noticing, we'd get this 911 call, this acute illness call, and then you get another phone call 6 months later because they have to go back to the hospital. Then it goes from once every 6 months to once every other month, then once every single month, then once every other every week, to eventually you're transporting to the hospital almost every single day until the day they die. You know, some people they pass away after a year, other people 2 years, 3 years. And you just start noticing, you know, when you go to their homes, more medications being prescribed to them, nothing's changing with their lifestyle. They're still eating the same thing. They're not moving their body. None of that's being addressed. So on my days off from the fire department, I actually started working part-time doing specialized lab tests with Dr. Willicks with a company called Senegenics, which, you know, Cenegenics was one of the pioneers in executive physical functional medicine. And Dr. Willicks, on the other side, instead of like me getting that person with the acute illness, he was getting people standing on their last leg. A lot of patients that were, you know, end-stage cancer, uh, patients that had, uh, severe, uh, autoimmune issues. And I started seeing him taking these patients and reversing disease. And that was a huge difference between traditional medicine, and then functional medicine. Where eventually I told myself, I says, you know what? I don't think this is my God-given purpose working at the fire department. I think working at the fire department, God gave me that opportunity to see how I can do things better, how I can actually work with patients to get them to take more of that proactive preventative approach to their health. Or the patients that are sick, allowing them to take a deeper dive to figure out what the root cause is. And that was really the switch there that really got me to switch over to the functional medicine space.

Wow, what an interesting story. I mean, I don't think anyone really have an idea of what you guys experience out there.

Yeah, you see it. And, and listen, I never want to take away from traditional medicine because traditional medicine does do many things, you know, correctly, and there's a lot of science behind it. And, you know, like if someone gets into a car accident and, and amputate their arm, don't go to a functional medicine doctor. Go to the ER. So, you know, it has its time and place. But when it comes to a lot of these typical illnesses that people are experiencing, where you really have to take a deeper dive, you can't just put a Band-Aid on it. That's where functional medicine, that precision medicine goes into play.

So you saw Dr. Willicks was actually reversing people's diseases. So they were actually getting— using less and less medications.

That's right. Yeah, they were getting off the blood pressure pills. They were getting off of all of these medications that they were on. And, you know, Dr. Willick's interesting enough, you know, he was a heart surgeon who left heart surgery because he wanted to prevent patients from actually going on the operating table. And once he got out of heart surgery, he ended up actually going to Peru for a few years and he studied with the natives there and became a shaman.

Really?

Yeah. So he became a shaman.

Colorful cardiologist.

Very much so. And, You know, at that point, Dr. Willicks' biggest thing was he took a very energetic approach to medicine, right? He was very involved in a lot of the energy medicine, but also nutrition. Nutrition was really big with Dr. Willicks. And I think that would, in my opinion, that was pretty much the foundation of where he would start with his patients to get them better.

Amazing. And Dr. Davis, you are a cardiologist as well. And you've worked with Dr. Willicks.

I have worked with Dr. Willicks. Dr. Willicks is probably a large part of why I am doing what I'm doing, to be honest with you. I was introduced to Dr. Willicks through Sam some years ago, probably what, 10 years ago now, maybe. And it was really good because 10 years ago, I mean, we have some cardiologists that are doing some integrative medicine stuff and functional medicine stuff now, but 10 years ago it was kind of unheard of. And I was in this space where I felt like same, very similar to Sam, but I'm in the cardiology, interventional cardiology role. Somebody's having a heart attack and you're running in the middle of the night to put a stent in to open the artery. And that is exciting. But when that person comes back 3 months, 6 months, a year later, very similar type thing, you realize that this chronic illness is a problem. And no matter whether we follow all of our guidelines with statins and give them the beta blocker post-MI, they were still coming back. And so, you know, I felt like, okay, there's something missing here. There's definitely more to medicine. There's more to me, you know, truly bringing this person, by giving this person a better quality of life. And, you know, what it boiled down to, you just, I mean, he said it best, right? What it boiled down to is we really weren't teaching our patients about, you know, nutrition. I really wasn't teaching them how to eat a low-fat diet and get some exercise. That's what you hear when you go to the doctor, right?

We have mantras that they taught us in medical school.

Right, you know, low-fat diet.

It's a very short mantra.

And you think about you telling them that with really no guidance. What happened when Ms. Johnson left my office and I told her, eat a low-fat diet and get some exercise. Nothing. Zero. And what ends up happening is in 3, 6 months, a year, they're back again with the same type issues again. And so it really was, you know, trying to find a way. And what it started with me is just nutrition. And when you start to realize that giving somebody vitamin D and telling them to stop eating gluten and giving them some vitamin D and fish oil, that all of a sudden so many things get better, right? Their rashes go away, their headaches go away, they lose weight. And then all of a sudden, I mean, it dawned on me. I'm like, wait a minute.

It's not just cardiology anymore. It's everything.

I was like, this is really too simple. And then the patients are so grateful to you. Like I had, I started this Reveal Vitality as just a 1 day a week thing. And I was doing just nutrition. Cause I didn't know anything about all this stuff that we know now. I didn't know anything about IVs. So I'm just doing this nutrition stuff, but people are getting better and like, oh my God, thank you, doctor. Thank you, doctor. And I'm thinking to myself, man, wait a minute. I went to school for how long? To tell you to take vitamin D and fish oil and stop eating gluten. And so that was a wake-up call for me. That was a wake-up call that we need to do better. And it was time to try to figure out what does that look like? What does that look like? What do I need to do to truly do what I wanted to do in medicine, which is really to save people's lives, to really help them. And so that opened the can of worms. One thing led to the next, trying to find what that next step was. And my first step is when I had the cardiology practice kind of going, I heard about IV nutrient therapy. And I'm a cardiologist, I know nothing about IV nutrient therapy. What is IV nutrient therapy, right? But I mean, I saw some potential. I was like, wait a minute, I mean, it makes some sense when B vitamins are important, all these nutrients are important. I've been doing some of this nutrition stuff, the nutrients are important. So I ended up going down to Fort Lauderdale to meet with Sam. My wife and I went down to Fort Lauderdale and met with Sam and saw— he was— this was probably, what, 3 years into Liquidita? 2 years into it?

Yeah, probably like 2, 3 years.

Kind of funny, it was pretty early. I didn't realize So 2, 3 years into Liquid Vita, we went down and I met with him. At this point, he's this young guy, right? But he was very motivated and they had created something already. I saw a vision that he had and I saw the passion that he had for what he was doing. And my wife, I always say this, but she really is a great judge of character. And we went down and she was like, okay, she was like, I like this guy, I like what they're doing. And so we kind of came on board as an integrated franchise in my cardiology practice. So one of my first steps was to, learn IV therapy. I brought IVs into my office in 2016. And that was kind of my first, you know, you start to see people getting better just by giving IV nutrient therapy, the hydration part, the nutrient part, and they start to feel better. And again, it's rewarding because you realize that, okay, look, my patients, they really are getting better. And so, and then that really opened up the doors. I met Dr. Willix and then started to really do more functional medicine courses. And for me, And since that point, there was no looking back. From that point on, there was no looking back. It was like, okay, this is what we're going to do. And really, when you're passionate about learning, okay, and things just kind of expand, expand, expand, expand. And we really are changing lives right now with Liquid Vida, my practice as well. So it's super exciting. The most exciting time of my career by far. You know, there were tough times. Absolutely. The first 3 years trying to figure this out.

Yeah.

It's tough, rough.

What do you think about your colleagues? I mean, how many cardiologists are there in the country, right? And how many are thinking the way you do?

Well, not a lot, but there are a few that are starting to think this way. And I distinctly remember as I was making this transition, a lot of my colleagues, I mean, they called me crazy. They called me all kinds of things, right? But I, you know, I look back on it and I see what we're doing for patients right now. I was just telling Sam on the way over here, I'm working on some of our latest data from my practice on looking at outcomes, looking at improvement in VO2 max, looking at body composition with, with, uh, with skeletal muscle mass, fat mass, phase angle, which is cellular health, cell membrane health. When you look at that data on where we've come in one year of kind of the type of practice that I have versus the standard kind of cardiology practice, it's, it's, you can't compare it. You cannot compare it. So kind of, we kind of grew up in this, this, um, evidence-based medicine type system and everybody's looking for the evidence where there's no randomized data for this, that, Honestly, at this point, I could care less because I see my patients every single day, right? And you can't tell me that we aren't doing more for our patients with the way we treat them. And I'm not anti-medicine, okay? Don't get it wrong. There are absolutely times when people need medications, but we overutilize these medications. We overutilize statins. I'm not anti-statin. Do I have patients on statins? Absolutely I do, okay? But I make a wise decision on who those people are because we have the technology and techniques to figure out who those people that are higher risk, but nobody really ever uses them. So when I think about all of my cardiology colleagues, I told you earlier outside, what's important for us is to educate doctors as well, right? This is not, I mean, for us, those of us who went into medicine to truly help people, there is a road, right? And now it's about educating people and let me show you the data. You don't have the randomized controlled data because we were never doing it this way, but look at what's happened to our patients, okay? Really, I'm really passionate about not just taking care of patients, it's about letting doctors know that there is a different way to practice medicine. It is a fun way to practice medicine, and you don't have to be told what you need to do from the insurance companies. So I'm going to stop there, but I'm getting kind of heated.

You're getting all worked up.

I'm getting all worked up because it really does. I mean, it really is a shame. I remember when I was still struggling trying to figure out how to practice in a non-insurance-based climate, I was asked to give a talk on how to successfully convert your practice from an insurance-based practice to a cash-based practice. And they asked me at a point where I'm daggone about to be bankrupt, right? So I told them no initially. I said, no, I can't do that because I don't know how to do that. I haven't figured it out yet, right? But they were interested in my story more so than even doing it. They mean you have an interventional cardiologist who's now trying to kind of do this more integrative approach to medicine. And so they said, no, we're just interested in your story. Don't worry about, you know. So I said, okay, well, I'll just tell my story. So I did that talk. I'll never forget in Miami, I did that talk and there were probably about 150 docs in that room. And when I finished my talk telling the story about how, you know, I just walked away from everything and sold my house and had to sell my car and take my kids out of private school. When I was done with that talk, the number of doctors who came out, there were doctors in there crying, okay? And they came up to me at the end of this and they thanked me for giving that talk. From that moment I knew, I said, okay, there's more for me to do. There's more out there for me to do. And it was about, that emotion captured me to the point where I said, okay, This is not just about patients, it's about helping doctors understand that there is a different way. And so it was about, I had to figure out how to get to this point. And now the mission is, okay, let me show other doctors, let me build systems, let me show you what these results, let me show you how you truly change your patients' lives, the trajectory of their lives. And so, yeah, it was, it was rough, but you know, there's a need for it. And that's why, that's why we make these trips. We do these podcasts, we do these news shows because just trying to make a difference.

Wake people up.

Yeah.

So now you've incorporated all kinds of modalities, right, to enhance people's lives. What have you added since the initial nutrition and then IV therapy?

That's the fun part. I mean, the fun part of this was kind of continuing to learn about all this stuff, right? And I think what happens as physicians, I mean, obviously we didn't get to be physicians without being driven and motivated and stuff like that. But once you get into that career and you're, you know, a cardiologist or whatever your specific specialty is, I mean, that's what you do every day, single day, right? Day in and day out. I mean, I'm in the cath lab, I'm doing, you know, procedures. And that's what I knew. But what I realized after I said, okay, I'm done with this kind of, this approach to medicine, let me try to figure out something else. What it did was it launched this whole, okay, well, I gotta figure out, I gotta re, I have to recreate myself. I have to rebrand, recreate my entire who I am. And in doing that, what I learned is I love to learn. I love to learn. And so now it's scary. My office, my director of operations, I mean, because now once you continue to learn, you just see everything that's out there that could potentially help your clients. And then you just go down these rabbit holes and down these rabbit holes. And at the end of the day, when you ask the question, what do I have? So we have hyperbaric chamber and cryo chambers and photobiomodulation bed and molecular hydrogen and PEMF amongst probably a million other things. We have the plasmapheresis, eboo, we have all of it because it all has its role. And we kind of have to figure out about how to use it. I think the longevity space right now, there's so much that we can do. How do we stack these things? How do we, who benefits from what? We still kind of think, you know, everybody says, well, you do this, do this, do this. And I don't think there's any one way to do anything. That's the kind of thing that I've learned in this space. And you have to kind of figure out for each client, okay, what's going to be best. So, I mean, that's the kind of things that I've opened. I have a very unique space. I have a medical practice with a full fitness facility with a lot of AI-driven fitness equipment, things like Allcore and ARX and Vasper. And I don't want to go into too much details, but those are the reasons we are getting the results that we get. We are increasing VO2 maxes in 80-year-olds by 30%. Okay. I have one guy who's 65, increased VO2 max in 6 months of about 40— increased VO2 max by 57%. That's unheard of numbers, right? Unheard of numbers. With VO2 max being the best predictor of mortality and longevity that's out there. So that's the kind of thing that I really want to get out there to show people that, you know, One of the things that I want to do next is I want to create a cardiac rehab program because I see what's possible with what we're doing. It's nowhere near the cardiac rehab that people are typically getting. Okay. So that's a whole nother, my latest thing that I started to think when I started to get all this data on our patients, I'm like, wow, this is incredible. It's incredible. And it just keeps happening over and over and over again. Right. So why isn't that the way we practice medicine?

Right. Make that the standard.

Make that the standard.

Yeah. Amazing. So, Sam, you are doing a lot of physician education as well, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So what has been your experience dealing with the doctors? Do you feel a lot of resistance or were you— are you self-selecting a different group of doctors?

No, I do think that in today's day and age, they're a lot more open to it. You know, there's a huge awakening that's happening and people are seeing it. You know, it's— if you go back, you know, I got into the functional medicine space when I was 19. '39 now, so almost 2 decades actually already. So there's been a huge shift. You know, doctors are hungry for this. They want to learn more. They're looking for it. We're not there completely just yet, but they are looking for that shift as well. What's going to help their patients better? And I think it's not just for the patients, but they're looking for themselves as well too. People want to optimize their health. And if traditional medicine is not doing it, What are the other things that are doing it? You know, so I am seeing that acceptance from physicians when we go out to the conferences, when we speak, you know, we have our own conference, the VIBE conference, the Vitamin Infusion Business Expo, where we get over 2,000 doctors that go there to learn. And they're hungry. They are. They truly are.

Yeah, that's such good news. Medicine is going through a seismic change. And of course, there's a new breakthroughs that could be very transformative to human health.

Absolutely.

Including what Dr. Sinclair is doing, right? If we can reprogram the human body and all of a sudden, you know, it's a whole different landscape. Um, but yeah, but there's so much we can do, like what you've seen in, in clinic. So what did you see with it? Like, what made you so passionate about IV therapy? Like, what did you see?

So, you know, initially when I was working with Dr. Willicks and seeing the Cytogenics patients, which The Cenegenics patients were very affluent individuals from all over the world. And I'd go to their homes, I'd draw their blood, I'd do all the different specialized blood tests for them. We also did the glucagon stimulation test for diagnosing growth hormone deficiency in the patients. So these patients, I got to know them for several years, you know, going to their homes every 3 months. And these patients have homes everywhere, you know, homes here in California, Colorado. And I started getting some of these patients talking about this IV nutrients therapy that they're doing when they go back to their homes in, in like California or Denver, Colorado. And they would always tell me, well, the technician who does it is an off-duty firefighter paramedic. When I had like the 5th person bring that up, I said, well, let me look into this thing. And then that's where I started researching it, and I saw what were supposedly my future competitors— a lot of them are my customers now— I saw what they were doing. I said, you know what, I can do this, but I can I can do it better, you know, give it a different feel. Because a lot of it was being done more in the clinical setting where it's almost like, uh, you're going into almost like a facility that's like a hospital, you know, a regular doctor's office. So I said, what if we made this into something where people feel like they're treating themselves, you know, to, to something that's good for their health, more of a spa feel to it? So I remember when I brought it to Dr. Willicks initially, Dr. Willicks was like, ah, you know, I had my own chelation center. I used to do this back in the day, the glutathione, this, that. Says no one was, you know, biting, you know, they'd call me a quack, this, that. It was too difficult. The board of pharmacy, the medical board was giving me a hard time. Says, Doc, I see it happening in other states and it's going well. So I actually ended up partnering with a local doctor close to my house who had a facility called EastWest Physicians. He was a chiropractor. but he had a medical doctor there as well, and he took Eastern and Western medicine and, and integrated together. So he had everything from acupuncture, hydrocolonic therapy. He did pain management. Um, he had physical therapy, you name it. He offered like everything there. But like any other doctor, they typically have a, a nice size room at their office that's just collecting dust. So I told him, I says, hey, I got a business proposition for you, doc. You supply the medical direction, the staffing, give me that room back there. I'll invest the money to build it out. And I'm going to do this IV therapy, you know, just send me the patients, we'll educate them through it, you know. And we launched it. He agreed to it. For him, it was like winning the lottery. I told myself, give him 20% of whatever I make, you know, I'll work the business myself on my days off from the fire department. He says, okay, you know, he had nothing to risk. And, uh, we started doing it. We weren't doing any kind of marketing, and we were getting people driving an hour and a half to come get these trips.

Wow.

I don't even know how they were finding us, you know. I think he put like one little sentence on his website and people were just finding it. It's like, oh yeah, I get these when I go over here.

This is word of mouth.

This was word of mouth.

So what did people notice that made them want to tell everybody?

So, you know, we were working with a lot of high performers, you know, mental focus, clarity. But then you got the people that were looking for the alternative treatments for their autoimmune issues that they were having, cancer patients that were, you know, going out of the country, going to Europe. But then They'd have to come back here to live with their family in the United States. And they were looking for these treatments, someone who can offer these type of treatments. So we were treating a variety of different type of patients with different issues. So I remember going back home and I told my wife, I said, I think we got something here. I think we should kind of like create a brand and put something together. And we came up with the name Liquivita. We were both— it was a Saturday morning. We were both laying in bed. And she actually came up with the name.

Oh, really?

And I said, beautiful name. I want something that has liquid, the IV in the middle of it, talk about life. So we came up with Liquivita. And, um, you know, on a fireman's salary, I said, well, how the heck am I going to do this? And that's where I decided, I says, well, how about this? We got to launch the brand and stuff. We got to borrow money. So my in-laws gave us a $10,000 loan, and that, that helped us develop the brand, start doing some initial marketing, do the build-out of the little facility that we had. So we did that. I paid them back in about 3 months. I gave them an extra $2,000 on top of it. And then I still started scratching my head. It's like, there's so much potential here. How am I going to take it to the next level? You know, there's a lot of legal work that has to be done if we want to have multi-locations. There's, you know, marketing. I'm not a marketing expert. Uh, medical direction. And then that's where her, her and I decided, what if we pitch it to these different individuals and see if they want to come on board as equity partners. And that's what we did. We pitched it to the attorneys, we pitched it to the chief medical officer, which at that point was Dr. Willicks. We pitched it to the chief marketing officer that we had. My wife, she's a CFO, so she has the accounting and financial background. And then myself as the guy doing the operations and moving around doing the relationship stuff. And everybody agreed. Everyone saw the vision. That we put out on the table. And from there, we all worked through sweat equity. Everyone still maintained their full-time jobs for many years. And we just worked, worked, worked. And it just started scaling to where we're at today.

Yeah. I think the first time I heard about you guys was at A4M conference. And somebody was working for you. And you guys already had these ready-made IV bags, right? That's one of the brilliant ideas that you— you came up with that people can just get everything ready. Ready? Yeah.

So, so yes, so our IV kits and packets, the reasoning behind that is when, when I first got into the industry, the way we would make these IV concoctions, it was like you're playing the role of a mad scientist. You have about 20 to 30 multi-dose vials. You're taking 1 mL out of this, 2 mL out of this. You're creating the osmolarity. And in the fire department, we have something that we always say, everything has to be fireman-proof. Fancy word for idiot-proof. So when you have someone in a cardiac dysrhythmia or in cardiac arrest, we try to avoid having to do drug calculations and stuff. It's more giving the medication as an IV bolus, right? So everything's prepackaged, predosed. So I told myself, I said, if we start growing this business, God forbid your nurse had a long night out or something like that and gives a patient a solution that's a hypotonic solution. That'll cause hemolysis of the cells. It could kill the patient. But I says, we got to protect this industry if we really want to build it into something. So I says, I'm going to make things fireman-proof. So I sat down with a few chemists, pharmacists, and we were able to actually create pre-measured, pre-dosed IV kits and packets where we made it easy for physicians to implement them in their practice. It got even better than that. Us doing that gave us the ability to not use multi-dose vials. Which multi-dose vials have a preservative in it called benzoyl alcohol, which we all know benzoyl alcohol is a known toxin. Right. So our kits and packets are the only IV infusions nationwide that are preservative-free. You know, especially when you're talking about reducing oxidative stress, reducing inflammation. Well, how do you do that? You can't do that if you're going to introduce more toxins into the body. That's going to increase oxidative stress. It's going to increase inflammation. So we— our goal was to create the best quality IV infusion product on the market. And that's what we did. So now we have over 5,000 doctors throughout the nation that purchase our product. We educate them, you know, we hold their hands throughout the process. And it's, it's been a beautiful thing, you know, because my ultimate goal has always been, how am I going to be able to help as many people with their health and wellness as possible throughout the world, throughout the nation? And this is one of the ways that we're doing it.

Wow, that's amazing. After you created this and you decided to create a structure to educate doctors, and were you bringing different aspects besides the IV nutrition into the education?

Yeah, so all the basics, right? Implementing the different standardizations and things for compliance within your clinic, how to build out your actual lab area where you're starting the IV, putting the IVs together, you know, under a hood system. All of those protocols were important, right? An emergency action plan. God forbid someone has a reaction to glutathione or anything else that you're giving them, you know, do you have a little crash cart there available with a defibrillator, you know, some Benadryl, some epinephrine, etc.? So establishing all of that, because most of the doctors that were getting into this straight out of traditional medicine, they just They don't know. So having the appropriate consent form, the lifestyle assessment questionnaires, understanding what you're looking for before you're giving the IV. And then we also created, which, you know, Dr. Davis is a big part of that, is we created the nutritional recommendation guide, right? Where what we've done is we've created a guide depending on what type of signs and symptoms they're having. For example, let's say they have adrenal fatigue. We actually break down what type of nutrients— vitamins, minerals, and amino acids— help combat adrenal fatigue. But then we also explain scientifically how it helps combat that. So then we will actually list, besides the nutrients, which IV infusions, which formulas are going to be able to accomplish that. So, and then the protocol of how many you should actually establish in the patient protocol to be able to succeed in combating that adrenal fatigue. So, and then a lot of other things that are important for IV nutrients infusions. I'm all about utilizing diagnostic tools, not just telling people, hey, you need to do this, right? So doing things like a full comprehensive wellness panel, blood panel, looking at micronutrient deficiencies. You know, these are things that Dr. Davis has worked very closely to develop. What are the best protocols and diagnostic tools to be able to utilize to then treat patients with IV vitamin therapy?

So are these covered by insurance companies at all?

Unfortunately not. I've heard people dabble into trying to do things with insurance companies, but I stay away from the insurance companies, you know, as much as possible.

Has there been any resistance from the regulatory perspective?

Oh, a lot, a lot. And the unique part about that is every state is different, right? Because this is not regulated at the federal level. It's regulated state by state when you talk about the practice of medicine. So this is one of the reasons why the industry came together and we created the American IV Association. So the American IV Association was actually put together, founded by, by Jeff Cohen, leading healthcare attorney in our space, and then his CEO for his law firm, Autumn. She's also a co-founder of the American IV Association, and they launched it for like about a year or so initially. And they didn't, they weren't really getting the traction that they were looking for. And I remember having, being at a conference, an IV therapy conference, and a bunch of us CEOs of the larger companies, we sat down for lunch and we said, you know, the industry really needs something, a platform where we all can come together, create a scientific advisory board, you know, where we can actually put some science to show the regulators of what we're doing, that it's clinically appropriate and safe for us to do it. And we reached out to Jeff Cohen because he was actually at that conference as well. And we said, hey, we want to go ahead and come together and be part of the American Association and help you lead this as the platform for the industry. So we've sat at different legislative hearings. We've been involved in different issues where people have passed away from getting IVs, malpractice issues. We've worked with a lot of regulatory bodies. And one of the things that we always say at the American Association It's very important for us to govern ourselves now before we are governed. Right. We don't want someone to tell us what we need to do, especially someone who has no idea of what we're doing. So this is where what we've been doing is really creating the standardization and compliance through the American IV Association. And we even just recently published a whole guide, a book that all the physicians worked on to put together. What are the standards that we need to have for the industry? And that's our goal. We're going to consistently keep on working very hard. What's difficult is getting the states to recognize what other states are doing that are a little bit more progressive in the right direction that we're trying to go into. But as you already know, some states have, for example, naturopathic doctors. You say naturopathic doctor in Florida, you'll end up in jail. You know, so it's This is crazy. Very different state by state. But the regulatory thing is, uh, something that we've been dealing with, which, you know, there, there has to be regulations on what we're doing because there's some bad actors out there just like any other industry. And some people are treating this like the Wild Wild West and just injecting whatever they want and people are getting hurt. So, um, I'm not against, uh, having regulatory, uh, oversight on everything that we're doing, but we just wanna be able to, to actually collaborate and work with the regulators to make sure that we're doing everything the right way.

I know in California, like in our clinic, like we were having trouble getting vitamin C, which is like, you would think that's a basic nutrient, right, that should be part of the human rights, right? People should be able to have vitamin C. Why are we having trouble getting vitamin C, right? What do you think is going on?

Well, you know, uh, California is a whole other monster of regulations. It's not the easiest thing for franchising, it's not the easiest thing for the compounding world as well. You know, when you look at the 503(b) outsourcing facilities that have the ability to sell compounded products for office use, there's only like 1 or 2 in the entire nation that can even sell into California. So fortunately, we're one of them, you know, through Annecy Health. Annecy Health is our manufacturer of our product. You know, so it's been tough to meet the standards of California. California has very high standards. That's one thing that I will give California. Their standards when it comes to manufacturing any kind of compounding products, even on the outsourcing side, their standards are higher than the FDA standards. Oh, so, you know, that, that's every, every 503(b) has been, you know, approved as a 503(b) pharmacy by the FDA. But that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that you meet California standards. So, um, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it, it makes it harder for providers, uh, here in California to be able to these medications for the patients.

Yeah. Hello, my loyal listeners. I want to interrupt this podcast for just a second because I want to let you know that if you're looking to help solve a major health issue, or you're looking for health optimization and just for longevity purposes, you can find us at Chara Health. We are considered the leader in the regenerative medicine and longevity space, and we utilize modalities like stem cell therapy, peptide therapy, plasmapheresis, ozone treatments, laser therapy, all to create a beautiful symphony to get you to where you want to be. You can find us at www.chara-health.com. That's C-H-A-R-A. There are a lot of, um, I mean, you guys are both super— I'm sure you're biohackers for yourself as well, right?

Absolutely.

And there are all kinds of trends that's going around, um, I don't know how many of them you actually implement for your patients. Like one thing is NAD. What is the verdict? Because first of all, my feeling is, what I hear is that some people, it's probably not appropriate for them to get NAD infusion. And then the NAD levels are, when you test for NAD levels, some people have high NAD levels, but they're actually in poor health. So it's not really a really good correlation.

Actually, I'm going to let you go into that because that's something that we've been talking a lot about is the difference between intracellular NAD levels versus extracellular NAD levels. And there's other products and precursors which Dr. Davis, I'll let you chime in on that one.

So there's a lot of— I think there's a lot of— I listened to a scientist give a lecture just just a couple of days ago I was listening to him, and it was, it was starting with a lot of mouse data on NAD and this whole concept of being intracellular and extracellular. And because IV NAD does not get intracellular, he's saying there's, there's this, this, this scientist was saying there's never a reason to give IV NAD. So, and actually it was kind of, and I knew this debate was kind of out there, and I was just trying figure out, you know, well, what's the science say? What's the reality? I think here's the issue. When a patient clinically is getting better when you use NAD, when you can see neurocognitive— and they are, yeah, people swear by it. Right, right. People, they have these neurocognitive— is it a placebo effect? Well, we got a lot of placebos then if that's the case, right? But definitely from a neurocognitive perspective that my patients who have Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease. I mean, these people who have, you know, those type of neurocognitive issues are clearly getting better. I mean, clearly getting better. And I do some testing. I use some neurocognitive testing called ViewMind, which is using ocular movements to assess neurocognitive function. And clearly NAD helps these patients clinically feel better. There's an NADH NAD ratio, which is really important, right? That kind of tells us where our redox status is, whether we are more— are we causing more oxidative stress or not. And that's some of the concern. If you have an NADH to NAD imbalance ratio, then that can be problematic. And so you can have too much NAD, and when the mitochondria can't necessarily convert that NAD back to NADH, all right, So, you know, but there's not a test that, or at least not a test that I know of, that's just a simple test that we can just do NADH to NAD ratio and say, well, do you need NAD or not, right? So that's where I think it becomes problematic. And so we end up in this place where we kind of just have to kind of think about this from a clinical perspective. Okay, is the patient getting better or not getting better? So I don't have a clear answer as to, okay, is it good or not? But I can tell you from my perspective, we've seen enough people get better that I certainly use NAD+. Do I use it all? I mean, I don't— I mean, I'm not somebody who uses it. I don't use it as much as probably other doctors do. I use it in the neurocognitive people, people who I know have some mitochondrial issues that I think the NAD+ may, in combination with some other peptides, should I say. And we haven't talked about that at all, but maybe I'll use NAD+ with some SS31. But I think that there is benefit just based on clinical outcomes and what we see. Now, the bigger, I guess the other issue is, is it just as good to use things like the precursors NMN and NR? And do they give us the same type of results? I'll be honest with you, I don't see the same results. And do I use it? Absolutely, yes. Do I see the same results as I get when we use NAD? I don't.

Okay.

And then we can talk about, you know, the, the Niagen product, right? The new NAD product, right?

Yeah.

The NR, intravenous NR.

Yeah, intravenous, right? That sounds promising. I've not used it yet. I don't know. Have you guys used it?

We're actively using it. We're actually helping them distribute it as well too. But the data that they're providing on it is that the NR, the intravenous NR, is it— the, the NAD, the intracellular NAD levels are higher than if you were to give actual NAD. Yeah.

Okay. I know a lot of people, including myself, feel very miserable when you're getting NAD. Are there people who actually don't feel bad at all when they get NAD?

You know, I've heard of them. I just haven't met them.

But I think it really is— and even if you do slow, you still feel terrible. I mean, even if you really slow down.

Right. And I would like to know why something feels so terrible could be good for me. Like, I'm having a little cognitive— like, I'm having a glitching. I'm trying to understand, like, why does it— why would it make me feel so bad?

I mean, I guess— I don't know if I have a true physiologic answer for why that— I mean, I think that obviously it may be— if I had to think through this physiologically, If that NAD is not getting— if it's not getting intracellular, could we be causing an acute kind of burst of oxidative stress when that's happening? So I don't really know the answer to that, to be honest.

So I had the pleasure to interview Eric from the TruNigen company on my podcast. And actually, that's kind of what he said. He said it's exactly what you just said right now. And he said it's an immune response that's happening at that point in time where you're getting that flush. And this is why they're pushing that NR product so much, because the NR product, you don't have to sit for 4 hours and do the drip. You do it over 30 minutes. You don't get the flush. And people are feeling and seeing the equal to or better results than NAD itself. So I think it does have to be further research. Like, I also sat down with Dr. Haolin Chen, who, you know, is an NAD expert. He runs a lot of the studies out of University of Miami. He's doing some studies. But he comments on it as well too. He's working with the NR company, TruNigen. And every time I talk to him, he says, hey, things are looking good. They're looking promising, but it has to be further studied.

One of the other things I think may be playing a role in this is because there are a lot of people, and I've seen this in my practice too, that if you give trimethylglycine, TMG, a lot of times that you can mitigate a lot of the side effects of the NAD, which then raises the question, what does TMG do? Trimethylglycine is one of the pathways by which we kind of improve methylation, right? So it can actually help with methyl groups recycling. So I'm wondering whether there is some component of giving the IV NAD that has to do with methylation that's causing some of these symptoms as well. Dr. Pureta, always, that's who I learned this from about using the TMG, trimethylglycine, in the NAD patients and they swear by the fact that most of those patients now don't have any more of these NAD reactions when you use the tea.

That's interesting. I take it myself. I actually put it in water. I do subcutaneous injections of NAD. And I take that before, like about 30 minutes or 45 minutes beforehand.

So that may be something you can try.

So if you do NAD, try it and see. I'm going to give it a try.

Interesting. I actually never thought about the feeling, but when I started taking it, yeah, the feeling, that little flush feeling has always gone away. I've been searching for it because I'm like, I know it's in my system when I get that flush, you know. But since I started taking the powder, I don't have the flush.

Yeah, interesting. I know there's so many biohacks going on now, right? And the most popular, it's caught the most attention, is peptides right now, right?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. What are some of your favorite peptides?

No, my latest, latest, my latest, it really is, I just mentioned it, um, SS31 is probably one of my favorite peptides. And I say that personally, to be honest with you, because when we talk about just feeling great, and there's not, I mean, there's, and I've done a lot of peptides, a lot of the growth hormone-related peptides and things like that. But, you know, I don't necessarily feel a lot. And, but I can tell you what I see with my, again, neurocognitive patients in SS31. I mean, I have an ALS patient that was not doing too well. And finally, what I told them, I said, okay, I'm just gonna go very high level, right? Most chronic diseases, if not all chronic diseases, are mitochondrial in origin, right? We are— the mitochondria are inefficient. They are producing more of these reactive oxygen species than they are producing ATP. And so, and when he was going downhill very quickly, I said, okay, the one thing that I know right now is SS31 is going to stabilize the mitochondrial membrane with the cardiolipin there. And so let's just try SS31 here because I don't have any— ALS is a condition where there's no magic bullet, right? And this, and this is somebody who's doing everything else right. I mean, their diet's right, we've gotten toxins out, but they're just not doing well for some reason all of a sudden. So we started SS31, and within a week, totally turned them around. Totally turned them around. That, I mean, again, and just mechanistically, you know, again, it's a, it's a band-aid because the mitochondria are not working. We still got to figure out, well, why is the mitochondrial mitochondria not working? I mean, there are many, many factors that likely are contributing. But if I can go high level and okay, I'm going to put this Band-Aid on as much as I can right now. And it actually worked. And so he's still on it right now and he's doing much better. And we're doing some fatty acid phospholipid stuff with him now as well. And so that's one of my— that's— and personally, like I said, it's the peptide where I started taking SS31 and I'm like, whoa, okay, I feel great. I feel amazing. My brain was clear. I feel like you're— so it's one of those things you just— it's almost like you would expect, and I hear people talk about NAD like this, but NAD does not— didn't make me feel like that. This SS31 just made me feel fantastic. And that's kind of what I've been seeing in some of the clients that I've been using it with.

Would you pulse this SS31?

Yes, yes, absolutely.

What's the appropriate way of taking it?

Well, you know, I typically will do— it depends on the patient. And it depends on where they are from a mitochondrial standpoint. I always start very, very conservatively, like with this, with this guy, with this ALS patient. I actually just started twice a week with him, but they were tolerating it fine. And so I went up to 3 times a week and he was still getting better and better. So I think we're at kind of like 4 days a week on that. And I'll typically do— it really just depends. I don't have a magic, am I going to do 1 month, 3 months? It really just depends on the patient. So I will typically do 2 months and then kind of take a break. But it depends on what else I'm stacking it with and what else we're doing. What other procedures? Like, again, if we're doing phosphatidylcholine therapy with other therapies. So it really just depends on each individual.

Yeah, yeah. And I want to just kind of point out that what you just did with that patient is how we advance medicine. So people always say, you know, it's FDA approved. I mean, you're so backwards, right? How did you get— how did medicine even get here without doctors actually taking a risk and scratching their head and trying something new.

Right. And thinking through, exactly, thinking through what's going on, right? And if we had to wait, you know, I always say this, I always say that medicine, longevity science is 25 years ahead of the medicine that we practice. So if we have to continue to practice with everything having, you know, I mean, as long as something has been deemed safe and SS31 is now an approved, I mean, it is an approved FDA-approved drug at this point for Bartzell's Syndrome conditionally approved, should I say, right?

Right, someone is trying to capitalize on preventing others from using it.

Exactly, right? And so anyways, you know, I think that, you know, it takes, if the doctor is able to think through processes and what's going on, we should be able to, again, our job is to first do no harm, absolutely, right? But if we understand, and the problem is doctors don't think at that cellular level, doctors don't think at that biochemical level, that we all went to medical school. In the first 2 years of medical school, what did we learn? We learned about the Krebs cycle. We learned about the electron transport chain. But have you— how many doctors are right now thinking about electron transport chain? Nobody but you and me, right? So that's how when you start to think about, okay, well, what's going on with this guy? I mean, he's going downhill. He can't swallow. He's super weak. We know that, you know, a lot of these neurocognitive diseases are mitochondrial diseases. What do I have in my armamentarium that's going to help the mitochondria right now the most? Okay, that's what I'm gonna try, right? And lo and behold, guess what? He gets better, right? So, you know, for us to wait for those studies to be done, where would that patient be right now? He wouldn't be here.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. So for your cardiac patients, enhanced cardiovascular health, what are some of the things that you think are the biggest bang for the buck for people?

Yeah, so, you know, when we talked about earlier about VO2 max, that's really the best the best assessment. There are— I call them gadgets. There are a lot of gadgets and gimmicks out there looking at chronological age versus biologic age, right? And people love to see that. You're like, what's my biologic age versus my chronological age?

That's a whole other conversation. I'm gonna get back to that.

And so where I want to go with that is, in my opinion, the number one tool for truly assessing a biologic age is VO2 max testing. It's a physiologic measure, right? It is looking at how well my heart, my lungs, and at the cellular level, how about— well, my body works. All right, and there's a lot of data. The American Heart Association has a couple of position papers on VO2 max testing being the number one test for looking at mortality and longevity. And so they have come out to say that, but in a traditional cardiology practice, I can tell you in my regular cardiology practice 10 years ago, was I doing VO2 max testing? No. How many traditional cardiologists are truly doing VO2 max testing? Probably not many because it was cumbersome when you had to have the whole metabolic cart, but things have changed with a lot of the devices that are out there now. We can do metabolic testing, we can do cardiopulmonary exercise testing, not like we had to do, you know, 20 years ago. And so that data is incredibly important because we can tell whether the lungs are the problem, is the heart the problem, or is it something that's going on with the mitochondria, the cellular level, that there's a problem. And so when you use the VO2 max testing, if I were to tell you what I think, what's making the difference, hyperbaric oxygen makes a huge difference and the type of training. Like I'm able to now gauge what I recommend from a training perspective. So again, I have a fitness facility. I'm kind of a unique ability to do different things, right? Vasper training is using blood flow restriction, high-intensity interval training, and cold therapy at the same time. Those are therapies. And then I use Carobike. These are both technologies that are basically designed using AI to actually help with VO2 max. And that's exactly— that's how we're getting 25% to 40% increases in VO2 max utilizing these devices. Now we do VO2 max, the testing first, and it gives me an idea of what type of exercise prescription does this patient need, right? More resistance training, more high-intensity interval training, or more of this kind of zone 2 training for fat burning. And so that's how I kind of make my, again, I individualize my recommendations based on testing. Like really, the test, no guess. You know, I don't need to, if you test, you don't have to guess about what you're gonna do for each of these patients.

That's interesting. So basically you're saying proper exercise to enhance VO2 max is gonna enhance a person's cardiovascular health the most.

Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things I have, I have a patient that has, severe coronary disease, a calcium score of 6,000 in his arteries. He's 82 years old, okay, and this is when I was just making a slide I was telling you about earlier. He's 82 years old, he came to me with severe heart disease, inoperable, okay, can't stent it because of the calcium, you can't bypass it, and what we did with him is exactly what I just told you. We used some hyperbaric chamber, using light therapy, all the right, you know, from a vascular perspective, using glycocalyx-promoting agents and nitric oxide-promoting agents, and then using the carobike and Vasper, okay? This patient who has severe 90% blockages in all of his arteries, his VO2 max has gone up 30% at 82 years old. It's unheard of. When I talk about creating a card— I mean, a cardiac rehab program, now you see what I'm talking about, right? When you address all of the issues, right? You address the mitochondrial function, you address cell membrane function, You address redox balance, you address inflammation, right? We're addressing all these components that are contributing to that heart disease. You don't necessarily— when you expand the capillary vasculature to the heart, then even if the epicardial arteries, the arteries that feed them, have 90% blockages, we're still improving blood supply to the heart. So again, it's thinking through what's truly going on with each of your patients at the physiologic level. We don't really do that. Oh, it's a blockage, let's put a stent. Oh, we can't put a stent, we're done.

Yeah. But did it do anything to the blockage itself?

No, the blockages are still there in him. Now, I do have cases where we've reversed plaque, absolutely. Okay, we can talk about that too. But this is all calcium, okay?

Yeah.

I don't know, and people can say that you can do this, that, and the other, use chelation to reverse calcium. I don't really see that.

I recommend you try stem cells because there has been research showing reduction of plaque from stem cells.

I would love to talk to you more about that. We can certainly talk more about that. I wanted to, that's one of the things that I want to talk about, and people who have cardiomyopathies, looking at some of the stem cells for that in combination with some of the peptides we just talked about.

Yeah, I definitely seen without exercise equipment, we were able to just give one stem cell infusion and improving ejection fraction pretty significantly. So it's, yeah, combining all of them together is going to—

And this is just an IV stem cell infusion? Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. Exciting. That's super exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

And those are the type of things, again, do we have to wait until randomized trials are done for that? How long would that take?

Right, right. How much do you want to live?

Right. Yeah.

And any of your favorite biohacks that made a big difference for your health?

Yeah, for my health. So, you know, when it comes to the peptides, one of my favorite ones is a tesamorlin. Personally use testomarlin growth hormone.

What did it do for you?

Strength, put on lean mass. For some reason, my visceral fat, after I did my Dexa, was a little bit higher than what I wanted it to be, and I was able to bring it down a few points, which was good. But overall, when it comes to my energy, stamina, and putting on lean mass, you know, especially when I'm going hard at the gym, helps tremendously.

We're all so lucky that we have all these tools.

Oh yeah, I love them all. And you know, Liquid Vita, it's, you know, we put people through the Vita journey. So we have every, every division you can think of. We have medical aesthetics, which, you know, stem cells, the different peptides are great for medical aesthetics, you know, for, for skincare. Then we have our wellness division, our hormonal optimization division, which there's a lot of peptides and stuff that are great for that. And then we have one division, which is our sexual health health division, which, you know, there's great peptides like the PT-141. We get really good responses off of that for both males and females. Um, even, you know, stem cells when we're doing the P-Shots, fantastic responses for that. So the results that we're seeing with the patients are, I mean, they're, they're promising. You know, we're seeing it. And again, how Dr. Davis said, it's like, do we have to wait for, uh, all this data to come out? You know, the different studies and everything else. I tell people, for us, it's about N of 1 data, right? You're following that patient very closely. You're looking at their data throughout time, and you have that N of 1 data that shows the results and it's working for the patient.

I know. You know, sometimes doctors are just so closed off. Even I remember meeting this doctor who works at the Cleveland Clinic, right? They're supposed to be more advanced when it comes to brain health and incorporating different holistic modalities. So I had a very visual clock of a demented patient having previously drawn a clock that's unrecognizable to just a few, 2 months, within 2 months after stem cell infusion. The clock now has got all the numbers, got the needles are, you know, really close to where they should be. And it's complete transformation. So I showed it to him. I said, you are in brain health, right? All these patients are coming to you guys. You have so many patients. This can really help them. And then he looked at my graph and said, well, but that's n of 1.

Right.

Right. So the number treated is 1. And I was thinking, can you give me your n of 1 of anything you do that can create this result? And it's just so sad that they use the n of 1 right, to shut down potential healing. Yeah.

Well, you know what, the whole thing with the NFL players, you know, which, which the whole stem cell stuff is a big part of it. Yeah. But it seems like they're not doing it themselves. They're coming to clinics like us to send those patients.

I think, um, one of the things I've noticed in this space is that there are a lot of people who are stuck to their thing, right? And what does that mean? Okay. They do the SPECT scan and they have their vitamin and nutraceuticals that they recommend and they kind of do their— and this is not just the Amen Clinic group. It's a lot of people who have their thing. And at the end of the day, there's no one thing. I said before, there's no one thing that is going to be all-encompassing for any patient. And so you have to step outside of that and realize that, okay, there are a lot of different opportunities and how we use each of these opportunities and how we stack these things and the timing of it all. That is what we all in this space need to figure out. And don't be so married to do just your, your thing. Right. And I think that that's where the problem comes in. You know, I don't have a one thing. It's just about, you know, I mean, I'm the chief medical officer of Liquivita. But am I gonna sit and just do IV nutrient therapy and that's the thing that's gonna cure everybody? Absolutely not, right?

Exactly.

So it's about figuring out, and we need more kind of, we need more of us working together to kind of really, one of the things I think that's still missing in the industry because if we talk about biohacking, I don't like that word by the way, I don't really like to use biohacking at all because I think it's just health optimization. When we in this space, us working all together to figure out how to use a red light with the stem cells, and can we actually use red light wavelengths and pulse frequencies that can help the stem cells work better, right? So it's kind of, we're in a space where we need to all kind of work together to start to put, look at, this is what I did, and we have 10 patients, and this is what happened. Let's think about kind of what about we do this, you know, let's all work together to do those type things. That's how we're going to start making a bigger difference and not have to work for, wait for some huge studies, which will never happen, right? This industry will never have the large, you know, 20,000 patient studies that a lot of the other drug studies have. The funding is not there to do that. So we're going to have to work together as an educated group of practitioners and start putting our minds together and say, hey, look, this is what's been happening. What do you think about the mechanism here? And really start to kind of work together and not work in this scarcity model and kind of start to work together to grow the whole industry.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Any wise words you want to share with the audience of where you think things are going and how they can optimize their own health?

Yeah, so the one thing I always like to tell people that's extremely important is you can't improve what you don't measure. You can't improve what you don't measure. So a lot of the things we talked about here today are the different tools that we utilize to measure, right? VO2 max, a DEXA scan for body composition analysis, doing the blood work, epigenetic testing, looking at environmental toxins. What is the toxic load inside of your body? So, and then even some of the basic things we use on a day-to-day, an Oura Ring, an Apple Watch, Fitbit, you know, the Whoop. All of this information, this is what is called your wellness data, right? Your wellness data allows you to trend and see how you're making a positive movement in your health and wellness or easily you could be going backwards. And it happens to all of us, even us health and wellness enthusiasts that are out there. We start traveling, traveling a lot, holidays come, you start seeing your numbers kind of just like shift and adjust a little bit. It gives you the opportunity to actually be conscientious of what's happening and then make the shift that's needed. Maybe include a new supplement, peptides, start working out differently, you know, sleep better. Sleep is very important. So tapping into your wellness data is extremely important for you to take control of your health.

Yeah, beautifully said. Yeah, Dr. Davis.

I'm going to say Sam just reminded me, we really hadn't touched on this topic. And it's kind of one of my passions right now too. When we talk about chronic illnesses, and chronic illness is driven by inflammation and oxidative stress, period, and mitochondrial dysfunction, right? What we haven't talked about, and one of my passions, is really dealing with the environmental toxins that we are exposed to, meaning heavy metals, plastics, pesticides, herbicides, VOCs, mold. You know, a lot of my work, a lot, a lot of my work these days in my clinic, and a lot of the people we help come to us because they're at the end of the rope. Like, all of these symptoms that people have called them crazy. And what we— every single patient, new patient that comes through my door gets environmental toxin testing. Everyone. And now they get environmental toxin toxin testing plus oxidative and nitrosative stress markers. And I, it is, I can't unsee what I've seen, okay. I can't unsee all the autoimmune diseases that, I mean, I had a patient last week come in and say, well, I just want to know what autoimmune, they keep telling me I have this and that, and what autoimmune disease do I have? And when I walked into the room, my first thing is I said to him, I said, I'm not going to tell you what autoimmune disease you have, but I'm going to tell you what has caused your immune system to go haywire, right? And so we can come up with all these names of these conditions because they have an autoimmune and an ANA that's positive and specific antibodies that are elevated. But at the end of the day, why is my immune system attacking my own body, right? And it's not just I just happen to get that, right? There are things that are making my immune system not function appropriately and be overactive. And what is that typically? There are toxins, the gut health is not intact, And so environmental toxins are a driver of chronic disease, period. And one thing that I would tell any and everybody listening, if you have not had an environmental toxin test, I would promise you, you should get one. Because if you're looking at longevity and even all the longevity biohackers, nobody's really talking about this. We're being careful about the plexus that we, that we're in and the water that we drink. But have you had that environmental toxin test? Because if you do, okay, I will promise you, 90% of people will have incredibly elevated something or others. And probably another 70% will have extremely high 10 or 11 different toxins.

Are we good at removing them though?

Well, I think we are. We are, yes. I think we are. I mean, I think within my practice, I mean, I see a lot of these toxins come down. And I'm not as aggressive, you know, I'm a sauna salesman now. I'm joking. I don't sell saunas. I will say that there's no question that sauna, an infrared sauna, and sauna has, we know of the benefits and that has been clinically documented. And there are studies that show the benefits of saunas. But a lot of the benefit of saunas, yes, is getting rid of toxins. There are lots of other benefits, right? Nitric oxide and stem cell mobilization, mitochondrial biogenesis. But a big part of it is how it helps to mobilize the toxins. And so everybody that comes through my office, again, I make the recommendation about sauna. I use some binders— charcoal, bentonite, zeolite, and some other chlorella, things like that. I don't go overboard. I do have plasmapheresis in my office, and people who are incredibly sick or we're not able to mobilize the toxins as well as I thought we could have, we can tell those people too. I do genetic testing on all of my patients as well, looking at glutathione variants, methylation variants, acetylation variants, and you can tell the people who are not going to be able to detoxify detoxify, you know, as well as we think they should. And then those people, we typically will do other things, whether it's, you know, eboo therapy or plasmapheresis, or put those— use those as well. But 80% of the time, 85% of the time, it's sauna plus a charcoal binder.

Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, sauna is my favorite detox as well. But so you are doing the binder, are you doing it right before the person is —take them in the sauna or did they not correlate?

—I actually, you know, I don't know that there's a right way. I actually tell my patients to take it after the sauna. So if they do sauna in the morning, I tell them to take the binders on the evening of after that. And my thought on that is you've mobilized the toxins with the sauna and now we're capturing with that, or we're kind of helping to get it out of the system, if you will, capturing it as it comes through. The bile into the gut with the charcoal after you've been in the sauna. That's kind of my thought on that.

What do you think of coffee enema?

I mean, I love it. I mean, I think— I don't do it in my office, but there's a lot of science behind coffee enemas and increasing glutathione through NRF2 activation. I think it's definitely a real entity. I just, I have some patients that do it and I will mention it, but it's not a routine of mine. But I definitely think that it's a great way to boost glutathione levels. To help the body detoxify.

Yeah. Yeah, amazing. I said I wanted to go back to the biological age testing and I almost forgot. How much do you guys trust in the precision and the information delivered through these biological age tests? And when a person gets very proud saying, "I'm 65, but biological age is 40." But then tomorrow it's different.

A lot better. I will tell you that I think the bio— I think the 5 years ago, 5 years ago, COVID time, I remember I started using one of the, one of the biologic age testing and really it really didn't— it provided, okay, this essentially this is your bio— this is your chronological age, this is your biologic age. And that was kind of it. I mean, it had some immune markers and that was kind of it. It was really not patient-friendly nor doctor-friendly. That same company has advanced tremendously now, I think. I think that there is some insight that can be garnered with a lot of the metabolites that they're measuring as well now. So I think it does have more information now. The actual number itself, I don't use them to be honest with you, because again, I stick with what my physiologic VO2, cardiopulmonary exercise testing tells me. So I don't routinely use the, the biologic age testing. I have used it intermittently. I mean, suggesting some kidney issues here or liver, and it helps me focus a little bit more, but I don't routinely use it anymore. So the answer to your question is I don't place a lot of value in it personally.

The VO2 max has a biological— the Pinoy, they give you a biological age too, right?

Yeah, and that's a very malleable one, which is really nice that you can actually—

Yeah, you can actually change it. You can change it if you do the right things. It's not malleable by what most people are doing, okay. The numbers that I'm telling you, while people are changing this VO2 max— VO2 max doesn't change easily, but we've gotten it to change because we're using very advanced technologies to do it, right. And again, I can't say this enough, I'm also doing— I mean, as a cardiologist, I'm looking at vascular health, and what's the most important molecule from a vascular health perspective? Nitric oxide. And what's the most important part of that nitric oxide production is that the endothelium is intact and the glycocalyx is intact. So every patient in my office that has vascular disease is on a glycocalyx supplement. They're on a nitric oxide-producing supplement. And so a part of that benefit, I think, is because you're really looking at the root of kind of from a vascular perspective, what is most important in vascular health? Those are the two most important things from a vascular health perspective.

So you're a proponent of taking nitric oxide supplement consistently? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for this incredible conversation and for the wonderful work that both of you are bringing to human health and longevity. Yeah. So how can people keep following you guys and connect with you?

Yeah, so mine's pretty easy. I'm very active online. I try to share as much information as possible. So on Instagram, Sammy_Tahara. If you want to find anything about me, you can just Google Sam Tahara or go to samtahara.com or liquivita.com.

Okay, thank you, Sam. And Dr. Davis?

Yeah, I mean, you can find a lot about myself and my practice at www.revealvitally.com. Revelvitality.com. The name of our practice in Sarasota, Florida is Reveal Vitality. You can find me on Instagram at CJ Davis MD, okay? And I also have some stuff on Liquid Vita as well as the Liquid Vita website as well.

Yeah, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure, and I thoroughly enjoyed all your insights and your, your just the story that brought you to this point. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us here too.

Thank you. Thank you for watching and listening. If you enjoyed this kind of content, please subscribe and turn on your notification bell so you don't miss any of my future content. And if you want to learn more about regenerative medicine or other modalities in anti-aging medicine, please go to my YouTube channel, Joy Kong, MD, and there are all kinds of videos to help you keep learning.