61: Medicine Waits Too Long - The Shocking Longevity Data You Should Be Tracking Now with Dr. Darshan Shah

Today on Modern Thyroid and Wellness, we have honestly a fantastic guest. His name is Dr. Darshan Shah. He is a physician, a health and wellness specialist, board certified surgeon, published author, entrepreneur, and the co founder of Next Health, the first, largest and fastest growing health optimization and longevity clinic. We are going to talk about all things how to get and maintain healthspan lifespan, vitality and the contrast of doing that, what that looks like, how to attain it and our approach traditionally in medicine. So very unique and exciting conversation. Let's dig in. Welcome to Modern Thyroid and Wellness, the podcast that explores the intricate dance between health, wellness and thyroid, unraveling the threads that weave our vitality together. I'm your host, McCall McPherson and I'm so thrilled to guide you on this journey to optimal wellness. So I'm very, very excited to have Dr. Darshan Shah on the podcast today talking about something that you all hear me preach very, very often. So this will be a good one. Dr. Shah, thank you so much for taking the time to sharing your wisdom, your knowledge with our community and listeners.

I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

So I want to kind of open up this interview and chat about what led you to where you are today. So I know you are the co founder of Next Health, which is a health optimization longevity program clinic. Tell me about NEXT Health and tell me what kind of led you on your journey in medicine to start such a unique and incredible offering.

Well, yeah, thank you so much for that question. You know, I think it's very similar to many people's journey is you find something that you see yourself struggling with, you solve the problem, you talk about it so much with other people that you're like, I have to get this information other people. And so what happened with me and I've been a physician for 30 years and my first 20 years I spent doing surgery. I'm very busy surgeon. I was operating sometimes five days a week, 12 to 14 hour days. Very stressful job and for a variety of reasons. A small part of it was genetics, but mostly it was my poor habits on a day to day basis that stacked up over time. 20 years to me becoming very sick. I was stressed out every day. I was not sleeping because of that. I ate garbage all day long. That was, you know, the hospital food that they provide you. And I was very sedentary. You know, when you're in surgery, you're standing all day long, but you really don't get a lot of time to exercise. And so that ended up with me developing autoimmune conditions, thyroid problems, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and all of the bad symptoms. Brain fog, joint pains, inability to move. And then when my son was born 11 years ago now, I decided I need to make a major change in my health because I wasn't going to be healthy long enough, or maybe even around long enough to see him grow up. I'm a little bit older. When I had my first child, it was at 42 years old. So it was really out of the necessity to be around longer for this beautiful new human I brought into this planet. And so I decided to go out there and get educated in the science of health, because in Western medicine, I had no idea how to get healthy other than take more pills. Which pills don't make you healthy, they just cover up the symptoms. Right. And so I even saw the best concierge medical doctors I could find, and I just got more pills. And so I said, this is not the way I want to live the rest of my life is, you know, staying at this state, covering up symptoms of 12 different prescription medications. And so I learned how to get healthy. I got a degree in nutrition, got a degree in exercise physiology, got a degree in functional medicine. And that's what completely changed my health. In eight months, I lost 50 pounds, got rid of my autoimmune disease, and went from 12 prescription medications to two. And I was like, this is the kind of medicine I want to practice. And I founded Next Health 10 years ago after, you know, that kind of like two year. Sorry, eight years ago, after a two year journey in my own health, because I just wanted to change what I was doing. And here I am, you know, eight years later, talking to you on this podcast about how we're doing it. And we're doing this in 20 different clinics all across the country by the end of next year. And we have 15 open now all over the United States and one in Dubai as well.

Wow. So you have one in Dubai. I love it. So interesting because I think finally people are coming around to this concept. But for years, I'm sure you had the similar experience. People think medicine equals health, like our medical approach equals health. And I'm like, listen, medicine is amazing. Surgery, absolutely necessary. Acute care 100%. But our medical system isn't really set up to make people healthy. It's set up to fix problems, not create wellness and vitality.

Yeah. If you look at the history of medicine, basically it happened because people were dying of infections, and so we made antibiotics. People were dying of trauma. So we created surgery and anesthesia. You know, all of this was created to save our lives, but it was never built to keep you healthy. That was not the intent of this system. And so thank God we have this system because we're not dying anymore of these ridiculous things that people used to die of, you know, 100 years ago. But I think it's, you know, people get very frustrated with the system because they're paying for health insurance. Right. And it's called health insurance, and it should have never been called that. It should have been called disaster care insurance. Right. Health insurance is what you do every single day to take care of your health. That's what's going to ensure you have a good state of your health. You can't pay money for that. You just got to get into good routines and habits and understand how to take control of your biology.

Absolutely. And it's exciting because I do think there is this shift in society where people are kind of getting a little more open to that, whereas even five years ago, it was like quackery. Anything outside of regular medicine, it's like there's a place for everything. But certainly we have to invest in our own health. We have to be informed, empowered consumers of our health. And I know something you're so passionate about is the idea that people really need to be the CEO of their own health. Right. Tell me what that means to you and what message you want to convey about that.

Thank you. Yeah. I think this is such a critical piece of the puzzle that's missing in most people's lives. So we live in an incredible time right now where we have incredible data about what's going on inside our bodies. This data is important because our bodies are built to be incredibly resilient. We don't feel the symptoms of something going on that's bad until it's almost too late, until our body can't handle it anymore. But the reality is the data that is inside of our body gives us indicators of developing chronic disease 10 to 20 years before you develop the actual disease. We just have to be understanding that we need to, number one, get the data, and number two, know how to read it, and then, number three, know what to do about it. Right. So what is this data? Well, there's blood tests. There's also data that we can get from devices, such as special scales that you step on. A blood pressure cuff is one of my favorite one of these. There's even a really good one that most people have never heard of. It's called a grip dynamometer. And so what I do is I empower my patients to get the data and I tell them where to get it from, what these markers mean and how to change them. And so if you think about it, it's like being the CEO, right? When you own a company, you're looking at how much revenue did you make, how much profit did you make, how many employees do you have? And you look at that data every day, probably, and then you make adjustments to improve that. If you're running a coffee shop and you're paying too much for your coffee, you try to go out there and look for better priced coffee to buy, right? And so the same type of tools we need to have for our body and we need to be looking at them more frequently. And why do we need to do this ourselves? Why can't our doctor just do it for us? Well, number one, no one cares more about your health than you do. It's certainly not a primary care doctor that has 15 minutes once a year with you, Right? It's very hard for him to care, to look at more than just a few pieces of data and understand, like what's been going on over time. The doctor also, they have one tool available to them that's easy for them to implement, and that's the prescription pad, right? They see something going wrong, they write a prescription, they give it to you, because that's all the time they have. And that's the most powerful tool that they have. The reality is, if you look at your data more frequently, you can put into place tools on a day to day basis that move the needle without taking a prescription. And that's where the real magic lies.

So what I'm hearing you say is when people are like, oh, I just went to my primary care doctor last week and he ran so much blood work, I'm sure he captured this day data. Can you talk to me? Because I know you're aware you're a physician yourself. The contrast of, hey, this is what generally people get for their annual exam at a primary care office. And then tell me what you feel like. Some of the most impactful biomarkers are that people can check and how much of that overlaps one another.

Yeah, I love this question. And very few people ask this question. So I'm so glad that you hit the nail on the head with this question because what your doctor is checking is completely different than what you should be checking on a more frequent basis that indicates health or disease. Okay, so let me explain. First of all, this whole notion like, they took so much blood work, right? The blood work that they take looks like it's a lot because the way these labs function is that for every marker, you have to send the blood to, like, a different place in the country to get it done. And that's a huge problem, right? Because what happens is you end up taking a lot more blood than what you actually should be taking to get the markers. So don't be fooled by the number of vials of blood. You're really not getting a lot checked. Secondly, what the doctor is checking is very commonly known as a CBC and a chemistry profile. These are two markers that we check because we want to diagnose a major problem that's going to lead to death in the next few months or years, right? And so by the time things go wrong on your chemistry profile or your cbc, your complete blood count, things have been bad for a long time. So that's what they need to check. I totally get it. But they're not going to check the markers that you need to check until you tell them you have a symptom. So say you're having a symptom. Like, you know, you talk a lot about thyroid disease and you're like, man, my hair is falling out jittery all the time. I feel my heart palpitating, like, oh, maybe I should check a thyroid panel. And that's when it gets checked finally. And really, by then, it's like I said earlier, it's a little bit too late, right? Things have been going bad for a while. So what I would tell people is that there are markers that you can check that are very valuable way before a disease or symptoms develop. I actually have a guide on my website. It's@drshaw.com biomarkers and you can put a link on that, if you don't mind, to get to people. It's a free guide, and it lists the top 15 biomarkers I would recommend for patients to ask their doctor for. Okay. And the reason I say ask your doctor is because your insurance will pay for these. You just got to ask. And if your doctor says, okay, fine, I'll get them for you. Good battle one. If your doctor says there's no reason for me to get them for you, I'm not going to get them. You should insist. And if they don't get them for you, still, you can either find a new doctor that will get them for you, because I really believe patients should have much more control and leverage over what they get out of their insurance. But also, you can go now to labs all over the country and get them just by walking into the lab. So a few years ago, a new law was approved that for lab work, patients don't need a doctor's order anymore. They can get it themselves by just requesting it at the lab. And they can do that. Now.

I love that. And I think there's so many parallels here between thyroid and people's experience and that and the longevity sector. And I find that if someone goes into the doctor and they're like, hey, I want. Because in the world of thyroid, it's a full thyroid panel as opposed to just tsh. And a lot of the time, the vast majority of the time, they'll get shot down. Right? And I always tell people, look, instead of trying to convince your physician, clinician to change the way they're practicing medicine, go somewhere else, find someone else. Find a practice like yours, someone that actually wants to partner with you on your health, that can interpret the data even that you're requesting. Because even if you get it ordered and they don't know what to do with that data, they have no idea what it means. Again, you're a little bit stalled and you really need a partner for your health journey, not just someone under insurance who can solve quick problems. So I love that. I'll absolutely include that in the show notes where people can find it. If you could only get one biomarker, one lab test sequentially over a few years, what would be your most favorite, most important one that you feel like people should be getting?

That's a hard one to answer because, you know, there's a lot of things. Right, okay, but what I will say based on statistics is that the number one problem our country is facing right now is poor metabolic health. We know that over 85% of people have poor metabolic health. That means that they are unable to regulate their glucose levels in their bloodstream to a place where it doesn't lead to long term consequences such as Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, et cetera. And so probably to answer that question, I would say hemoglobin A1C is probably my top one there. That's a three month average of your blood glucose. And when it's over 6.5, you get diagnosed with diabetes. When it's over 5.7, you get diagnosed with pre diabetes. But by then it's kind of like, you know, you've done a lot of damage. By the time it gets to 5.7, you want to get it down to the optimal range. Optimal means, where is your biology really managing your glucose levels well, and that's right around 5:2 in my opinion, 5.2 or below. And so it takes sometimes a decade to go from 5.2 to 5.7 and above. So the sooner you catch it as a slowly eking up 545556, you can place into your life certain habits that can turn that back around and then you learn what those habits are and then you can keep those habits like in your day to day. Then you can manage your blood glucose levels. And it could be simple as, you know, doing 10 air squats after a meal. It could be as simple as instead of eating, you know, cereal and oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast, you change to eggs and some vegetables for breakfast and water. It could be also, you know, staying away from carbohydrate snacks and instead trying not to snack and just eating full meals that keep you not hungry in between so you don't need to snack. There's so many different little tips and techniques like that you can put into place once, you know.

Yeah, and I mean, I hear what I hear you saying is, look, the goal is to intervene early, make these tweaks change the trajectory of your health long before a condition ever develops. And the flip side of that experience is what the traditional kind of medical model offers, which is we actually won't even tell you that there's a problem even as you're approaching pre diabetes. Often I find patients move through pre diabetes still no one's ever told them there's a problem and Bam, their hemoglobin A1C gets to above the diagnostic level of, you know, diabetes, that sort of thing. And then they're told and then it's treated and approached. Would you say that's accurate?

It's very accurate, sadly. And, you know, the problem is, you know, we have indications for prescription medications and the indication for treating diabetes is 6.5 hemoglobin A1C or above. But what about the indications for getting your, you know, movement up? What about the indications for minimizing your carbohydrate intake? All those should be instituted much, much earlier. It's just sadly, you know, the medical system, the way it's built, doesn't give doctors a time to talk about those things. It doesn't give doctors the tools they need to make those things happen. And it's just is once again, you know, we've said this so many times already, it's not built for that. So people need to educate by listening to your podcast and by checking their data.

And this kind of bleeds into Another conversation almost of one. I mean, one thought I had is, look, whenever I went through my medical training as a PA, the diagnostic criteria for diabetes then was like 6.0 and above, and now it's pushed even farther, probably because that's the population average is now sicker. So we've expanded what's normal and allowed people to get even worse before they can access treatment. You know, 6.5 is diabetes, and I hear you say you want levels at 5.2 or below of hemoglobin A1C. And I think that's part of the larger conversation of what does medicine say is normal and what is optimal. And is there a difference between those two things in your opinion?

Yeah, it's absolutely a critical element of all of the biomarkers that we test because there's an optimal range for everything, where we know that 90 plus percent of humans will have a much lower risk of chronic disease and they'll also feel the best that they've ever felt. So I always say the opposite of having a chronic disease is feeling incredible. Right. And so everyone wants to feel incredible, not just avoid chronic disease. And so the optimal range is going to be very different between those two extremes. Right. And so for each biomarker, another great one is hcrp, a measurement of inflammation. Right. Optimal is obviously going to be as close to zero as you can get it. You don't want chronic inflammation. And so the lower your inflammation is, the better. And the medical world says we really don't need to address anything until it gets above 5 to 8. Well, by then you've been living with a lot of inflammation for a long time. And it could be as simple as maybe you have gingivitis, maybe you're have a gut issue. You know, these are things that you can easily treat lower information inflammation in your body, and then you don't lead to more chronic disease, because we know inflammation is another one of those root causes of chronic diseases. So very different, very different numbers for optimal versus disease.

It's the same in thyroid, right? I mean, pretty much everyone that comes to modern thyroid clinic has been told by multiple clinicians, oh, no, your labs are normal. And they're literally debilitated, like desperate. I was that same person myself, right. So, I mean, I get it. What in your mind, why do you think as disease is progressing, as people are getting more close to what would be like a diagnostic marker for a fill in the blank condition, why do you think doctors or clinicians don't tell us that something's going on that Something seems to be going wrong until it's so manifested.

I think a lot of it has to do with, there's a few different reasons. One is maybe they just don't know that the data is indicating that there's a problem and that there we don't have to wait for the number to show us that there's a problem. Right. So this is a philosophical, educational kind of topic that I went to medical school. You know, no one taught me that. No one taught me that between these numbers, people can still experience symptoms. We only get taught the numbers where you can intervene. Right. So I think that's one big reason. The second reason is, is that if there's not an indication that a pharmaceutical is going to be prescribed for your insurance is not going to pay for the pharmaceutical, and then that creates friction between the doctor and the insurance company and it's just too much work. I mean, doctors don't have the time that they need to really, really take care of their patients and fight the insurance company for what they need to be doing. And so, you know, you probably experience this a lot where like the insurance is like, you know, I need a pre authorization because that's not where we approve this particular treatment. And then it's like a whole mountain of paperwork you have to go through again, you know, just, it's a game of chicken.

Who's gonna quit first? You know.

Exactly. It's exactly. It's a game of chicken. And you know, unfortunately all physicians, especially in the primary care world, they have very little time because they have way too many patients to deal with. And so I think it's multifactorial.

Yeah. And I think I, I mean, I'm not sure how. Your training was obviously very different than mine as a surgeon, but I was trained to see people in eight minutes. Right. Like eight minute medicine. If we can't fit it into eight minutes, we can't really do it. And we can't talk a whole lot about lifestyle and dietary strategies and stress management and exercise and your labs in eight minutes. Right. It's kind of get in, get out, move on. And I'm sure clinicians, I know clinicians hate it just as much as patients do, but it is a infrastructure wide problem that would have to, that would require an entire paradigm shift to change.

Yeah, well, the way I think about it now is very, is a little bit different. So I think we have this western care model. It's fantastic. Thank God we built it. If we get hit by a bus, you know, get diagnosed with stage four Cancer, it's there. Okay. I think every single person needs to find clinics like yours that are outside of that model. And we develop a new healthcare system that is focused on maintaining absolute health for as long as possible and early detection of chronic diseases way before you need pharmaceutical intervention. And the third job of this new system is if you are under prescription medication for chronic disease is chronic disease reversal with the aim of trying to get you off the prescription medication at some point. Right. It might not happen for all, all the pharmaceuticals because they are very powerful, but we can at least lower the dose or find something different in the supplement space that might be better for you with less side effects. So I think it once, if we think about the system, I used to be in the system, I used to try to fix the system. I realized it's not going to get fixed and is there for a reason. That's why I created NextHealth, was to create a new system, a new system of clinics that's focused on those three goals.

I love it. And yeah, I mean, I see it the same way. I even. I get so frustrated in the world of thyroid because there's so many studies advocating to wait longer and longer to treat people, to classify more people into subclinical hypothyroidism. But even subclinical hypothyroidism is related to obesity, dementia, infertility, depression, osteoporosis, cancer, like all of these things, heart disease, obviously all of these things that if we could just intervene earlier in the thyroid process, we could prevent all these chronic health burdens, conditions that plague people secondarily to their thyroid issue. It drives me bananas, but I'm so thankful that there are clinics like yours. I'm curious, do you know offhand where your clinics are throughout the states? Like, can you rattle them off?

Yeah, yeah, I can rattle most of them off. So we're. We have many clinics in the Los Angeles area. And also in Newport beach we have a clinic. We have Nashville, Tennessee, Chicago. We have Montecito, California as well. We have clinics in Miami and Dubai, I mentioned. And then we're opening in Boulder pretty soon in Colorado, also in Texas, we're going to be opening very soon. And yeah, if you just go to our website, next-health.com you can find a full listing of our clinics that are open and where they're coming soon.

I love it. And is the one in Texas? Do you know if it's Dallas or Austin?

Selfishly, we're going to do Dallas first. Okay, Dallas first. Sorry, but we Are looking very heavily for a good spot in Austin.

I love it. Okay. I'll keep you posted if I see anything.

Great, thank you.

Absolutely. Talk with me a little bit. Okay, so we're thinking about biomarkers and these keys, things that we can check in on to get a picture of our long term health. Tell us how often and of course we'll put the link in the show notes where people can find that on your website. But tell us how often people should be getting these biomarkers. Is it every few months? Every five years.

So what I recommend, and this might sound like a lot to people, but I really think that there's about 10 or 15 biomarkers that we should be checking every 33 to six months. And sorry, four to six months. Every quarter you want to check a certain set. Okay. This is a set that's very cheap and easy to do. And when I say very cheap, I mean like less than a hundred dollars. You should be able to pay for these and get these. And these are indicators that you can change within a quarter. So the sooner you find it, the quicker you can make an intervention and then you could track them over time. All data is much more valuable when it's tracked over time to find trends. And so we recommend quarterly and our membership program at Next Health, which we have, it's called the Medicine 4.0. Membership is $99 a month. And we check this stuff quarterly for you. And then you have access to a physician, a nutritionist, and we give you access to all of our treatment modalities at our location as well. And so I think that's a really good cadence for blood tests. However, there are other biomarkers that people can get very cheaply at home on themselves, such as their blood pressure, which I think everyone should take at home every quarter on their own. The next one is they should get a special scale called a bioimpedance scale. This scale gives you your skeletal muscle mass and fat mass. I don't care what your weight is. I think that measurement is useless. It's really your skeletal muscle mass you should be following and secondly your fat mass. And then the next one that I really like is getting this thing called a grip dynamometer I told you about. This is especially if you're over 40. This is a 14 device that you can buy at the on Amazon or whatever online shop you prefer. And it tells you how strong you are. And how strong you are is very correlated to how long that you will live without chronic disease. And so I like to test this every quarter on myself, My wife and I actually do this. We do this entire protocol where every quarter we check all these things and we log them and we follow them over the course. We've been doing this now for five, six years together.

Oh, I love that. I love it. Couples that biohack together stay together. Right, exactly. And grip strength is really correlated with almost every long term health outcome.

Right, Exactly. It's such an important measurement. Now we live in an incredible time as well where we have these wearable devices too. And so you can get really great measurements of like HRV, your activity levels, your sleep score, your VO2 max, even with the Apple Watch. And those are also great metrics to track as well. And a lot of these I put in my biomarker guide that I told you about a little bit earlier. But the more you start doing this biohacking, the more you get into it because you see it actually does make a big difference. And so we're probably tracking like 20, 25 biomarkers now. And I try not to make it overwhelming and I try to track the big picture ones. And then I think also once a year it's important to do like a deeper evaluation. Full hormone panels, full thyroid panels, those kind of things. I think those yearly, under provider guidance, like a provider like yourself can obtain those and give you a full review.

I talk with my patients all the time about the power of data and understanding and tracking trends. Like, if people just check things once a year, once every couple years, it doesn't tell them how their life is impacting their health. It's not able to be correlated enough. But when you do, when you break it up almost into quarters. Hey, well, what is the last three to four months looked like for you? Oh, gosh. Okay, well, let's see how your labs look and how they're interrelated. And that is really how meaningful change and you become empowered and have agency over your health is by having the data. Without it, you're kind of shooting darts blindfolded, hoping to hit a bullseye kind of a thing.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think the worst time period is checking once a year, because so much happens in a year. And if you don't even think about it until it's like January, we all know, we all know why there's so many New Year's resolutions in January. Right. It's because you've let problems pile up from February to December. Right.

And like, it's the worst time because you've eaten horrible over the holidays, you stressed you drank More it's like. And even antibodies every year, January at an all time high. So like I believe that real picture.

Right, Right, exactly. Yeah. Your worst blood markers are going to be in January. Right. Don't you want to see some good ones?

Right, Absolutely. Tell me, at what age do you think people should start harnessing the tools that you're offering the biomarkers, the things that people should have access to for information. When do you think people need to start paying attention?

We reach our pinnacle of health somewhere between the ages of 25, 21 to 27. 27 is where traditionally people, if you're living, I would say a good lifestyle, which is now very difficult to do, 27 is probably the pinnacle. And the 30 is when you start going through like these reproductive years and challenges in health. And what I would say is you want to start as early as possible, but probably you don't need to be as frequent in your 20s, but definitely in your beginning to mid-30s is when you should really start getting in on this mentality of quarterly checking. I would say if there's anyone listening to this or if you have someone in your life that's in their 20s, young 20s, go get a full panel because you want that data so you can plot like where you are in your 30 based in 20. Because those hormone levels, if you're healthy, are going to be the best that they can possibly be. Now, all that being said, and you and I both know this, we see adolescents that have metabolic disease, thyroid problems, inflammation now, and it's really sad. And so unfortunately, you know, we got to start checking earlier, even in pediatric age groups. And metabolic disease is developing, you know, unfortunately now, for the moment you're born, right, for the moment you get start getting fed waffles and orange juice for breakfast, you know, and so it's unfortunate, but we have to start checking early.

I couldn't agree more. Tell me, kind of in closing a couple more things. What are your three non negotiables that for you have really impacted your health? Energy, longevity, like what are three things that you're fully committed to that have positively impacted your life?

Yep. Number one is my morning routine. My mornings are like sacred to me because it's the only time I get that's still under my control. So every morning I do 45 minutes, a combination of some movement, something for spiritual wellness and something for mental wellness. And so that morning routine, I've locked it like probably 10 years ago and I built upon it, made a few tweaks, but it's Been pretty stable for a long time. So I think that's an incredibly powerful tool for your health because everything that you do on a day to day basis, even if it's only for a few minutes, stacks up and that's what leads to long term change. The second thing I would say that's a non negotiable for me is strength training. I think I went from cardio to strength a few years ago and I've never looked back and I still do cardio. It's not like I don't do cardio. But if I ever have just 20 minutes, I get my strength workout in and I do leave cardio for another day. Third is I started charging my cell phone. Not at my bedside anymore. I put it the phone charger is now the coffee machine which in my home is like the farthest thing away from my bedroom. And the reason I did that is because create some distance between me and my cell phone at nighttime before I go to bed and that reduces the stress level and has dramatically made my sleep better. And secondly, I have to walk the same distance to my cell phone in the morning from the time I wake up to the time I get my coffee in the morning. And in between that time period, I go to the restroom, do my morning routine there, I go outside, I do a quick workout. So I don't grab my cell phone until it's time to get a cup of coffee and that's about 20, 30 minutes after I wake up. And that's a good amount of distance to place between the time you see your first text message in the morning or your first email in the morning. And that just sets off a much better day for me.

That's inspiring. I like that. I'm absorbing that in. So do you have like an old school alarm clock?

I don't even wake up with an alarm clock anymore. I just naturally wake up at 5, 5, 30 and I know if I'm not going to wake up at 5 o' clock in the morning, my body probably needed the additional rest.

I love that for you. Heck yes.

I know it's not possible for everybody and I've always been a morning person, but it works for me. Yeah, but you know, for my patients I always tell them like, I'd much rather you have like an old school alarm clock than use your cell phone. I mean there's actually been research that shows that just having your cell phone next to you, even off, like powered off, increases your cortisol levels in the morning.

I believe that. I mean, I feel My stress has been a little higher than normal lately. And the number one thing I can do when I'm experiencing that like anxiety heightened state is literally just put my phone down, not even touch it, not be near it. And cortisol just drops so much. And I think we lose sight of that because we've been so adapted to having this thing around that we're dependent on all day, every day and we don't realize how it impacts our nervous system and our cortisol and our stress and everything. So thanks for that. I might try that myself. We'll see.

It's an easy thing to do. Just move your charger right.

Easy and so hard at the same time. Tell me a little bit. And us where you like to hang out online, like where can we follow your adventures? Where can we follow Next Health? What's the best place to find out about what is going on in your world and to learn more?

Yeah, so I actually love the podcasting world and I can't wait to have you on my podcast, which we're doing pretty soon as well. And so if you want to hear more like this, I actually do solo soads on my podcast and guest interviews and they are available at the Extend Podcast. The podcast is all about extending your health span and so please follow me there. And then I'm also on YouTube and all the podcast platforms and my social media is at Darshan Shah, MD. And then my website is Dr.shah.com Next Health is next-health.com. that's my clinical practice that we have all over the country.

I love it. Well, thank you so much for just sharing your knowledge, little inspiration for your health hacks along the way and for creating a safe place where people can go and actually work on getting healthy, thriving and not just band aiding problems. I so appreciate your work and taking the time to chat with us today.

I really appreciate being here and thank you so much for having me and I look forward to seeing you again.