Anshu Bahanda: So, picture this. There are two men, both 75. One wakes up in the morning, goes for a walk, then meets his friends for coffee. Then he plays with his grandchildren in the afternoon. The other one struggles to get out of bed. He takes multiple medications. He struggles to climb a single flight of stairs. Maybe he needs a nurse.
Both have lived the same number of years, but their lives couldn’t be more different. This is the difference between lifespan and healthspan. And here’s a fact: the World Health Organization says that most people are unwell for the last 10 to 12 years of their life. We might be living longer, but are we living well? Are we living with health and vitality? Longevity isn’t just about adding years to your life. You might have heard this: it’s about adding life to your years. This is Anshu Bahanda from Wellness Curated, and today we’re exploring longevity, not as a distant dream of immortality, but as a practical science of living fuller, better and stronger lives.
Welcome to the Wellness Algorithm, the space where we decode wellness not as a fixed formula but as an evolving algorithm that changes as we do. Today, we’re diving into longevity, not just how many years we live, but what kind of lives we live. We know that you can reverse and slow down ageing. People in the Blue Zones have done it. There are a lot of people who are biohacking who’ve done it. But what I want to do today is work with Dr Darshan Shah, who’s fantastic and who’s coming in to have this chat with us on how we can help every single person build a longevity plan.
Dr Darshan Shah is a surgeon, an entrepreneur, a longevity expert and the founder of Next Health. I would suggest you look up Next Health. He’s dedicated his career to helping people take charge of their healthspan, not just lifespan, and he blends deep medical knowledge with the latest research in wellness and ageing. Before we jump in, can I request you to please subscribe? We give you these podcasts absolutely free, and if you don’t want to miss the next episode, please do subscribe. Please leave us a comment. Anshu Bahanda. Wellness Curated. Thank you. Welcome to the chat, Dr Darshan Shah. Thank you for being here with me.
Darshan Shah: Such an honour. Thank you for having me.
AB: You’re welcome. Now, I want to jump right into longevity, so I want to ask you something. There’s this whole paradox of ageing, right? We’ve been taught, or at least I was taught when I was growing up, about ageing gracefully. But then you have longevity, where you’re trying to slow down or even reverse ageing. How do these two work with each other? And does it make you think about ageing being almost like a disease, the way people are treating it today?
DS: Yeah. So, you know, I think you really have to define what you mean by “ageing gracefully” now. I think for me, ageing gracefully means that as you become older and older, you’re still able to have grace. You’re still able to move. You’re still able to see your friends and have coffee with them and maybe even travel. Maybe you like to play golf, maybe you want to play tennis. The problem with what’s happening right now, however, is that people are living much longer, but they’re becoming that little old man or little old lady who needs people to take care of them. Maybe they’re a burden to their family. Maybe they haven’t aged gracefully. They have some level of dementia. Maybe they are in a wheelchair. To me, that’s not ageing gracefully. No one wants to age and become a burden to their friends and family, and not be able to enjoy life anymore. And so, really, longevity is the ability to add health span into those years. I think everyone would agree that you don’t want to add years to your life if you’re going to spend them in a hospital, right?
AB: Absolutely.
DS: Let’s add the healthspan back into our life so that as we add years, we can enjoy our life.
AB: Okay. Now, the other thing that I want to clarify up front about longevity is this whole thing that people talk about, nature versus nurture. So I come from a family where my dad, my granddad, my great-granddad and my great-great-granddad all passed away before they were 50.
DS: Oh no.
AB: And if you look at both sides of the family, there’s every possible illness you could think of. But I’ve had to work very hard to stay healthy, probably harder than your average person. But, you know, with God’s grace, I’m fine. And I’m 56. So, tell me, what is your view on whether you can overcome your genes?
DS: Yes, I think,
AB: Without gene therapy?
DS: Yeah, gene therapy might be coming, right?. So that’s a really good question. Now, what was happening in the past is not the current or the future. Let me explain why. In the past, we had what we called “risk factors”. And one of the big risk factors we thought was our family history. You know, like you said, your family died early, probably of cardiovascular disease. Heart attacks, maybe. You think?
AB: Yes. Mainly a lot of it was heart attacks.
DS: Right. And especially in Asians like ourselves, there’s a very high risk of this. And when you have a risk factor, we don’t really know what’s happening inside your biology, about why everyone is dying early from heart attacks. What is the actual anatomy of what’s going on? Now, however, in 2025, we have the ability to look inside your body: both at a cellular level through blood work, and also directly at your heart with scans. So in 2025, we can scan your heart. We can see if you have cardiovascular disease. We can also check your blood tests to see what are cholesterol factors, inflammation factors and metabolic health factors that are causing heart disease. And then, lastly, we have therapeutics to stop heart disease and reverse it. Okay, so let’s use a car as an example. In the past, you would just drive your car and eventually it would break down. You wouldn’t be able to fix it, and you’d get rid of it and buy a new one. That’s how we were running our biology and our bodies.
Now imagine a car that tells you years before it’s going to break down, “change this part”, “make this adjustment”. We can do that early now, so your car can last many more years. So that’s the analogy: previous risk factors, whether genetic or not, don’t necessarily need to kill you. We don’t need to live with the mindset that because our family died of certain diseases, we will too. That’s not true in this century.
AB: Okay. In that case, what I would love you to do for our audience is later give us a list of tests you think people should do, which we will attach to the podcast, and that will help people a lot.
DS: Can I talk about this a little bit? So, there are a thousand different tests you can do.
AB: And it’s very overwhelming out there. When you go to any conference, they give you so much information that the average person feels, “I don’t want to deal with this.”
DS: Right, exactly. So let me break this down for you. There are about 10 biomarkers that every person should follow themselves. And there are probably a thousand others that give a deeper dive into your biology. Those 10 to 15 biomarkers that you need to follow for yourself. I have a list on my website at drshah.com/biomarkers. It goes over the numbers you can get from simple blood tests and also from other simple devices like wearable devices, a special scale that puts an electrical current through your body. All these things are relatively cheap and easy. Why do I say this? Because certain biomarkers you need to track yourself rather than have your doctor do it, because your doctor is probably only going to track them once every six months to a year. You need to be tracking these much more frequently. And also, you’re motivated to turn these biomarkers in the right direction, to put them in the optimal range before they become a disease and I can give you some examples of that.
And now these other tests, like let’s use cardiovascular disease as an example. They’re tests that you might need to get from a doctor, that are ordered from your doctor, but you need to make sure that you’re aware that they exist. Because a lot of times physicians won’t recommend these tests because either they have kind of an attitude that: “Oh, you know, let’s just let them go; they don’t need this test.” But you will be more motivated to do them because you want to make sure you’re okay. So you have to push for them as well.
AB: Fantastic. And I’m going to attach these lists. For those of you listening, you can get the list from our podcast. Now, I also want to talk about all the factors that go into longevity. Now, most people, if you ask them, would say exercise and food. But of course, we know there’s community, there’s movement, not just exercise, but movement, there’s hormones. So will you very quickly give me the top five to eight things that people should watch out for?
DS: Let’s do it.
AB: And what do you think is highly overrated?
DS: Okay, let me go in order of importance. So imagine a pyramid. You have to get the base of the pyramid solid before you start building on the pyramid. Right? So the base of the pyramid is always going to be your nutrition, your exercise and movement, and your sleep and recovery. Okay. That has to be number one. So, let’s talk about nutrition first. The core principles are: avoid all ultra-processed food, that’s the garbage food in packaging with a giant list of ingredients, get rid of that. Secondly, let’s talk about exercise and movement. You’re right, exercise is great, but movement is more critical than exercise. If you’re not moving around every hour and if you are not getting 8,000 steps a day, I don’t care how much exercise you do, you’re considered sedentary. Okay? And if you’re considered sedentary, that’s a massive risk factor for disease. All right? So make sure you’re moving 8,000 steps a day in every hour. You want to get up and even take a five, six minute quick walk, you know, maybe do some jumping jacks. Right? Don’t stay in one place for more than one hour.
AB: Yeah. And I tell my team to put an alarm.
DS: That’s what I do.
AB: Every 25 minutes. And walk around for five minutes.
DS: I do the same thing. We have it set to 40 minutes, but yeah, 20 minutes is even better. Now let’s talk about sleep and recovery. If you are sleeping well, that’s great, but you don’t really know that you’re sleeping well unless you’re using some sort of wearable to track your sleep. I can’t tell you the number of patients I see in my office. They say I sleep seven, eight hours. I’m fine. And then we put a wearable device on them and we see they’re waking up multiple times in the night from sleep apnea or they’re getting 5 minutes, 10 minutes of deep sleep a night. So I’m a big believer in wearables, especially for sleep.
AB: I’ve been trying to fight that one, by the way. Yeah, I keep fighting it and fighting it, but yeah, go ahead.
DS: You don’t have to wear; you don’t have to wear it forever. Even just a six-week time period is a good amount of time for us to get some data. And you don’t have to look at the data yourself. There are many health coaches, many doctors out there that will look at the data for you and tell you what to do with your sleep. Okay, okay. Okay. Now that’s the base of the pyramid. Let’s go up one level more. So, you mentioned stress and community. I look at all of that as a kind of brain health. All right, so really making sure you’re giving time to have positive interactions with people, staying off of social media as your primary method of having friendships, being out there in nature and making sure that you’re understanding when there’s too much stress that’s piling up and lasting a long time. Just like movement. If you’re stressed for more than 40 to 50 minutes, it becomes very deleterious to your biology because cortisol starts to release. So, if you’re doing anything stressful, say you’re on a stressful phone call, you’re in a stressful meeting, same thing. Have an alarm every 40 minutes, get up and stop and change your mind, you know, and also find time for self-care on a daily basis.
AB: Okay.
DS: Okay?
DS: Now, the next thing that you want to do.
AB: Now before you go on.
DS:Yeah.
AB: The stress is a big thing, right? There’s so much stress in the world today.That’s very hard. That’s probably the hardest thing not to have in your life. And I know that kills a lot of people and causes a lot of diseases, but do you have a little solution for that? I know what you’re saying.
DS: Yeah.
AB: Change your mind, but it’s harder than.
DS: So, you know, first of all, I think we have to be realistic that we’re not going to live in a stress-free world. I think if you poll 5,000 people, maybe one person will say they have a no stress life, you know. It’s very difficult to have a life of no stress. You have to accept that there will be stresses in your life and they might be good stresses. Like maybe you’re getting married in a year in a few months, that’s still stressful. Right. But, they’re obviously very much negative stresses as well. I think the solution to stress is really just time limiting the stress. Okay. So, on a consistent basis, 40 minutes, taking a break after 40 minutes from a stressful situation, making sure that you have some time every day, that you have time for self-care. That might be a morning routine, maybe it’s even a nap or meditation session. Having some time every day is a really good way to mitigate the negative effects of stress. And actually, there’s a biomarker for this called HRV.
AB: Oh wow.
DS: Do you know what HRV is?
AB: The HRV, of course, of course, yes.
DS: So that’s another reason to get a wearable because then you can see how stressed you are. You.
AB: I want that. But anyway. Yeah.
DS: Lastly, what I would say is there are long term stresses that occur in people’s life that need to be managed over greater time periods that might be toxic individuals in your life. Right. A bad marriage. Right. And you know, there’s ways to eliminate those stresses, like get rid of the toxic people in your life, get, maybe get some therapy, counselling. Those things also need to be done on a longer-term basis. The problem with all three things I mentioned is most people don’t do any of them at all for years and years and years. And then 10 years later, 20 years later, they then see the negative health consequences of not managing their stress.
AB: And it becomes huge trauma and it becomes disease and cellular memory and all that.
DS: Exactly. So there’s no perfect solution. There’s no immediate solution, but there are ways to help it over the long term. Yeah?
AB: What I love is that you’ve made, you’ve said keep it consistent, keep going with it. Don’t just let it pile up. Exactly. You know, make it a routine.
DS: Exactly.
AB: To try and deal with it. Sorry, go ahead.
DS: No, no, that’s excellent. I’m glad you mentioned that. Now. Okay, let’s take it to the next level. The next level of the pyramid is functional medicine. So functional medicine are pieces of medicine that have been ignored over time, okay? Those pieces are hormonal health, gut health, and detoxification, all right? Now if you go to any traditional doctor, they’ll be like, don’t talk to me about those things, right? But we know from a massive amount of research that having some level of focus on those three aspects of your health can dramatically accelerate your avoidance of chronic disease and also reverse chronic disease. So, if you’re, you know, if you’re over 30, you should get your hormones checked and see what’s happening. If you’re perimenopausal, if you are a man that’s going through andropause or just your testosterone is going down, find someone who’s skilled, who can help you with hormone replacement therapy. I think it is very important. Yeah?
AB: Okay.
DS: Now let’s talk about gut health. Would you like to?
AB: Yes yes.
DS: Okay, so gut health also, you know, we, we, know that our gut is our biggest barrier to the outside environment. If you take our gut and you lay it out, just flatten it out, the tube of our gut from our mouth all the way to the other end, it’s a football size amount of tissue, okay? And it’s one cell layer thick. The gut is only one cell layer thick. What that means is it’s very easy to damage the gut with ultra processed food, with alcohol, with antibiotics, with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. And unfortunately, a lot of us have damaged our gut. And when we have a damaged gut, we get what’s called a leaky gut because those cells separate from each other and all the toxins leak through. So, you have to fix your leaky gut by avoiding, number one, avoiding all those types of insults to your gut, the ultra-processed food, the alcohol, the, you know, the antibiotics, etc. But secondly, there’s ways to heal your gut tissue with probiotics, prebiotics, fibres, collagen, etc. Getting some advice around healing your gut is also a good idea.
AB: I’m a big gut person. The other longevity podcast that we’ve done is with an Ayurvedic doctor on gut and longevity. So, thank you for pointing that very important fact out.
DS: Yeah. Ayurveda has a lot of great tools for gut healing as well and I think, you know, it’s often ignored in traditional medicine. So, I want to say one more thing about the gut. Just because your gut feels fine doesn’t mean it is fine, okay? So there’s also tests that you can run for your gut health food sensitivity test, leaky gut test. I will let you know just to check.
AB: Okay. Okay. Which is on your list? On your website?
DS: Yes yes.
AB: So we’re going to get that and put it
DS: Okay. Then we talked about detoxification, right? Now, I think it’s really important to realize that we live in one of the most toxic environments that humans have lived in 100 years. At last count, there were 155,000 plus man-made chemical toxins in our environment that have never been there prior to 80 years ago.
AB: Wow. wow.
DS: Yeah. Now the problem with this is, none of these have been tested to make sure they’re safe. And in fact, we learn over time that they’re not safe. So, for example, there are plastics that line every container that we have, whether it’s a tin can or a bottle, a plastic bottle, or even a paper cup. These plastics, they’re called BPA and phthalates, they’re endocrine disrupting. Which means that they mess up your gut. They’re immune-disrupting as well. So, they damage your microbiome in your gut, and then they turn off the healthy immune cells, and people get autoimmune disease. They get inflamed. So, you know, the key here is avoidance, making sure that you are actively avoiding your exposure to toxins. To me, detox is not like a protocol you do. It’s avoiding the toxins.
AB: That’s interesting. Because a lot of us, a lot of people my age now go once a year to do a detox. But what you’re saying is don’t just do it for a week or two weeks or three weeks in a year. Do this as a lifestyle.
DS: Fifty-two weeks of detox. That’s what you need.
AB: Wow. Okay.
DS: So, either you move, you know, to a beautiful resort in Kerala for 52 weeks, or you figure out how to do this in your life, okay? And the way to do this in your life is actually very simple. I’ll make it easy for your audience. Do you know what the Pareto principle is?
AB: No, tell me.
DS: The Pareto principle, economists back in the 1800s made a principle. His name was Pareto, Italian guy. He said, look, if you look at everything humans do, there’s 20% of the actions that move the needle 80% of the way, right?
AB: Right, right, right.
DS: So, there’s a few simple things that you can do that have a much outsized benefit. And then you can start doing the more complex things, but you’re only going to get less value from those. So I’m going to give you the Pareto principle of how to detoxify your life. And I’m going to break it up into four categories.
AB: Okay.
DS: Air, water, food, skin. Air pollution in the inside environment is much worse in most places than the outside environment.
AB: Right. Right.
DS: So, if your air quality outside your home is good, and you can check this by using the weather app on your phone, it gives you an air quality index, open your windows.
AB: I grew up in Delhi, so.
DS: If you live in Delhi, then you may have a different type of problem. And you have to make sure your indoor air is clean. Right. How do you do that? You buy a high-quality air purifier. Where do you spend the most time? Your office and your bedroom at night, where you sleep. Those two rooms need an air purifier. Now, you’ve spent 16 hours a day in better air. Right. Okay. Which is better than 99% of the people out there. Okay. Water. Where do you get the most water from? Unfortunately, right now, most people get their water from plastic water bottles.
AB: Yes.
DS: That is the worst place to get your water. There are millions and millions of microplastics in water bottles. Unfortunately, in the glass bottles that they sell you, the cap has plastic.
AB: Yes.
DS: And it drips those plastics into the bottle too. So it’s a problem, right? So how do we purify the water? You get a water filter or a reverse osmosis water filter.
AB: Water filter. Yes.
DS: Either one of those is really good. And you drink it out of a glass bottle that you carry with yourself everywhere, okay? So only water out of a glass bottle from reverse osmosis or a filter.
AB: Okay. Okay.
DS: Food. That’s pretty simple. You don’t want to eat packaged, ultra-processed food. If you’re buying produce, make sure it’s organic, or wash it really well in baking soda. That’ll remove all the toxins that build up on top of food when it’s being grown. Things like glyphosate and other toxins like that.
AB: Wash it in baking salt. A very important point.
DS: Very important point.
AB: Because, you know, I go to VivaMayr about once a year, and they give you the equivalent, something like baking soda, to drink every day with water to alkalise your body. So that’s a very important point you’ve just made.
DS: Yes, yes. And washing produce with baking soda and even a little bit of vinegar or apple cider vinegar is very effective at taking off the pesticides that are on produce.
AB: Okay.
DS: And lastly, let’s talk about skin. So, you know, many of us women have an average of 14 different skincare products in their bathroom. Men also have an average of nine skincare products they’re using.
AB: Oh, wow.
DS: It’s soap, it’s shaving cream, it’s hair products, it’s gel for your hair, makeup for women, all of those things. Ninety-five percent of those products that we use have toxic ingredients in them that have been untested, okay? And these are really bad because you are lathering these on your body every single day, sometimes twice a day, right? And so how do you know if your product is toxic or non-toxic? Because there are many non-toxic companies now.
AB: Yes.
DS: There are really good apps that you can use to scan the barcode of your products. One is called Yuka. Another one is called Think Dirty. Those are the two apps.
AB: Yuka and Think Dirty. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
DS: And you can scan your product barcode. It’ll give you a level, red, yellow, green, how toxic it is. But more importantly, it’ll suggest an alternative product that is non-toxic. And I don’t know about you, but once I find something I like, I just keep buying the same thing over and over again, right? So do this one time. You change your products one time. And guess what? Your skincare products are now non-toxic. You’re not putting all of these chemicals on you as well.
AB: And they do it for all global products? Like, you know, a lot of people I know today are using Korean skincare and things like that where you have no idea what it says at the back. So they do it for all global products, right?
DS: I know they do it globally, but I don’t know if you can get all the products, because I feel like there’s an infinite number of products now.
AB: Yeah, yeah.
DS: The critical element is if you can scan it and it’s not in there, you have to either do your research and contact the company and ask them what chemicals they’re using, etc., go on the website, or you just buy another product.
AB: Buy another product. Okay. So again, very useful information. Thank you.
DS: ChatGPT is excellent at this too. You can find your product on the Internet, send the link on ChatGPT and say, “Is this toxic for me or not?” There you go.
AB: Fabulous. Yes.
DS: And these are, you know, like, it might sound like a lot of work initially, but the reality is you only have to put in the work one time. And then it’s done.
AB: Yes. And if you’re putting it in your body, it’s like eating toxic essence. It’s the same thing. The skin is the biggest organ.
DS: Right, right, right, exactly. If you would not eat your skincare product, you shouldn’t be putting it on your skin as well, right? The other point I want to make is, once you do it, whoever’s listening to this podcast, once you do it for you, you also have benefits for your family because your family live in the same environment that you do. They’ll have the air purifiers, the glass bottles, the filtered water, all of it. So, yeah.
AB: Okay, fantastic. So, we’ve almost at the top of the pyramid.
DS: Yeah, we’re getting to the top of the pyramid. Okay. The next thing you want to do in your life is once you have those basics covered, then you can start getting more in depth. And when I talk about the next level of the pyramid, it is preventative medicine, okay? So preventative medicine is using our current western medical system in a much better way to not just treat disease, but to prevent it in the first place. So let me explain. We talked about cardiovascular disease, right? Most people go to the hospital when they’re having a heart attack.
AB: Yes.
DS: Fifty per cent of those heart attacks are fatal, right? But we have the technology to know how to treat heart attacks. We have the technology to diagnose why you had a heart attack. The problem is it’s too much, too late, right? So instead, use that same technology early, even though you might think it’s too early, and understand where you stand. So for the heart, there’s a scan, a CT angiogram. This is being done in many metropolitan cities throughout the world.
AB: All over the world.
DS: All over the world. If you have high cholesterol, you have an early heart attack risk in your family, get the scan done, see if you have blockages. If you have blockages, you know you need to do something. You need to, of course, change your lifestyle, but you also should probably get on some advanced medication to stop and reverse the process, okay?
AB: Okay. Okay. Okay.
DS: Let’s talk about Alzheimer’s disease. That’s the number three cause of death in the world right now. Alzheimer’s disease we think that “I might end up with Alzheimer’s disease one day. I hope not. But if I do, my family will have to take care of me.” Well, hope is not a strategy to avoid Alzheimer’s disease, right? So how do you avoid Alzheimer’s? Number one: you want to reduce inflammation, you want to keep your brain active, you want to reduce stress, all of those things. But we also have blood biomarkers now that can check if you’re developing Alzheimer’s disease. These are brand new. They just came out about a year ago, but they are available to everybody in many countries now. And you’re going to see more and more people using these blood biomarkers to check early if they’re getting cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease.
AB: Which we’re going to put in our notes from your website. And please visit his website as well to get more information.
DS: Yeah, DrShah.com. So those blood biomarkers, we’ll give people the names and they can ask their doctor about them, are p-tau 217 and amyloid ratio.
AB: Okay.
DS: Okay?
AB: Okay.
DS: And lastly, many people are scared of cancer, right? Cancer is a major problem, number two cause of death. And I think people think that as long as they get their colonoscopy and their mammograms, they’re safe from cancer, right? Well, you’re only safe from those two types of cancers from those two screening methods. There are 50 very common cancers out there. We have advanced testing now that you can use to avoid cancer, you know, or at least diagnose it early. You know, I always say cancer’s biggest enemy is being diagnosed at stage one when it’s treatable.
AB: Right?
DS: Stage three or four cancer is not treatable. Stage three or four cancer, you have to do chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and now you’re talking five-year survival rates. You know, no one wants to live only five years, right? So you have to diagnose cancer very, very early. So in addition to doing your colonoscopies, your mammograms, men should get their PSA level to check their prostate. Women should be visiting their gynaecologists every year to make sure they’re not having uterine cancer. But in addition to that, you can get what’s called a full-body MRI test.
AB: Yes.
DS: Right?
AB: Yes.
DS: Now, if Steve Jobs had this available to him before he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he’d probably still be alive today. Right? So, you know, these are cancers that the full-body MRI, which is a radiology scan of your body, it takes about 45 minutes, and there’s no radiation involved, can diagnose. We can find solid tumours that are less than a centimetre. So very small solid tumours, including in your pancreas, your liver, your brain. Most of these tumours you would not know unless you became symptomatic and you had a smart doctor who listened to you and said, “Oh, that sounds like something bad is going on. Let’s get an MRI.” Right?
AB: And most people miss it, right? Most doctors miss it as well.
DS: Exactly. It gets missed way too often. So those are some advanced tools that are available now that, if the listeners of this podcast can start making happen in their life, they will automatically avoid heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. Now, look, this is not available to everybody, of course.
AB: I know, and this is all very expensive. And I’m thinking for the listeners of the podcast, not everyone can do all these things.
DS: Exactly. So here, let me tell you what my answer is. Yes, you’re right. It is very expensive, but it’s become a lot cheaper in the last decade. An MRI used to cost 20,000 US dollars. Now you can get a full-body MRI for 1,000–1,500 dollars.
AB: Oh, wow. Yes. Wow.
DS: Yeah. There are great companies doing these for much, much less. In fact, there’s one company even doing it for 500 dollars for full-body.
AB: Yeah, what are they called?
DS: So, there’s Function Health and there’s.
AB: Prenuvo’s doing it for 500 dollars?
DS: No, Prenuvo is doing it for like a thousand or more. But, you know, there are different qualities of MRI as well. So you want to pick the one that is going to fit your budget the best. People think that a full-body MRI is 20,000. It’s not 20,000. It’s 500 to 1500 dollars now. So, you know, if you start prioritising your health, like, you know, that’s the cost of a nice purse, right?
AB: You’ve obviously been buying handbags.
DS: 500, 1500 dollars, you can buy a purse, you can buy a wallet, whatever. Reprioritise your spending so that you can focus.
AB: Focus on your health, on yourself.
DS: Yes, exactly. So it’s not impossible for people to afford this. Even if you are middle-class, you can afford it. You can get a full blood test of every biomarker in your blood for 500 US dollars as well, once a year. So, you know, I think for an extra two to four thousand dollars a year, you can really avoid chronic disease, which is incredibly expensive to manage.
AB: Okay, so you’re saying focus on the diagnostics, which we’re going to put in the notes, but you’re saying focus on the diagnostics. It’s imperative that you don’t ignore them.
DS: Exactly, exactly.
AB: Okay.
DS: And then as far as the things that you can do for your health, they’re cheap. They’re all the things we talked about. Go work out. Walk around. Eat good food.
AB: So we did the whole pyramid?
DS: Well, the tip of the pyramid. Yeah, the tip of the pyramid is all of the fancy stuff you’re hearing about in longevity, peptides, stem cells, exosomes, plasma exchange. These are all fancy things that you can do once the rest of the pyramid is built. All right? And these are expensive because they’re new.
AB: And the community.
DS: Yes.
AB: That’s also.
DS: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Community is very important. But that’s at the base of the pyramid. That’s when we were talking about stress. And community is a way to avoid stress. When you have community, you’re replacing negative stress with positive social interactions.
AB: Okay, so now tell me, is there anything that people are talking about a lot, which is highly overrated in longevity, which, you know, you’d say to people, “Don’t waste your time or don’t waste your money. Don’t do that.”
DS: Yes. Oh, there are so many things right now. You know, one of them is, if you just look at any of the biohackers, their Instagram pages, they’re doing all these things. Now Biohackers are at the tip of the pyramid place. They’ve got the basics down, hopefully. They’ve got the middle of the pyramid down, hopefully. And now they’re trying all this crazy stuff. For example, full-body stem cell injections, whether or not you have pain. People getting stem cells injected and they don’t have any pain. And I’m like, what are you going after?
AB: They’re trying to look younger and feel younger and, yeah, that biological age and all that.
DS: Right, exactly. And you know, you can try those things if you have a lot of money to spend, you’ve got the entire pyramid built, and you have an immense amount of time, and you’re willing to take on some risk. Okay. Because these are not without risk, okay? I think all those things, in my mind, are overrated because most people don’t have the basics down. So they’re doing all these things without getting the basics down. And that’s the issue.
AB: Yeah, yeah. You ask the yogis from the Himalayas who are over 100 years old, what they do. They don’t do any of this, right? They just meditate and connect. Yeah. So, the thing I want to ask you about: every month there’s a new longevity diet. And almost every season, if you don’t do this, you’re cutting short your life. So, what, according to you, is a good longevity diet to stick to? And what, according to you, would you say: “Just stay away from that, that’s danger”?
DS: If someone gives you a named longevity diet, it’s because they’re trying to sell you a book or a product that you have to buy to understand that diet. Optimal diet for anyone has four components. It is: No ultra-processed food. Stay away, swear off ultra-processed food as much as possible. Second is eating a high quantity of fibre vegetables. Vegetables with more fibre in them, not starchy vegetables. And hopefully your vegetables are organic, well sourced, and contain many colours so you’re getting different phytonutrients. Thirdly we need an adequate amount of protein, whether it’s animal protein or plant protein, most people will need somewhere around a gram per pound of body weight of protein a day, divided into three separate doses. Fourth you need some essential high-quality body fats. Number one, to keep you full, but number two, because they’re essential, meaning your body can’t make them. These are found in nuts, olive oil, for example, and in fatty fishlike salmon as well, to maintain health. And that’s it. You know, sometimes this type of dietary combination is found in the Mediterranean.
AB: Mediterranean, which wins every year, apparently. Yeah. Eight years in a row.
DS: But, you know, the Mediterranean diet is really just a pattern of eating. Like, it’s not that everyone in the world needs to eat Greek food.
AB: Yeah, yeah.
DS: It’s because it has the things you talked about.
DS: Yeah.
AB: Because they eat seafood and they eat their fish, they eat their veggies, they eat beans.
DS: Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, the Paleo diet is very similar to the Mediterranean diet. In fact, the Japanese diet is very similar as well. So, I think you can create a Mediterranean diet in any country of the world, you know?
AB: So would you say that there are some diets that are dangerous, and don’t go near them? Because I know I have had friends who’ve done crazy, crazy diets where they only eat one kind of food, or they’ll only eat cabbage soup, or they do crazy diets. I’ve also had friends who’ve done days and days and days on water.
DS: Yeah, yeah. Here are the diets I think, in general, people should stay away from. The number one diet everyone should stay away from is the SAD diet, which is the Standard American Diet.
AB: Oh, okay.
DS: This is a diet where all day long you’re snacking, eating processed food, lots of carbohydrates, refined grains, bread and cakes. We used to have this thing called a food pyramid, did you ever see this?
AB: Yes
DS: Yeah. The bottom of the pyramid, the base, was 6 to 11 servings of refined grains a day. It’s ridiculous. Right? So that’s number one. Number two, what you’re talking about, is extreme elimination diets. These are diets where you can eat only five foods, three foods, two foods. They are beneficial actually for short periods of time, because when you eliminate everything else, you’re eliminating ultra-processed food. You might be eliminating foods you’re sensitive to, etc. They’re absolutely not sustainable. Obviously. Like who’s going to eat just cabbage for the rest of their life? Right? It doesn’t work.
But also, the problem is you’re not getting all your essential nutrients from the variety of foods you’re supposed to be eating, right? So eventually, if you have a cabbage diet, you’re going to become iron deficient, you’re going to become B12 deficient. Those are problems. So these are good temporarily, maybe for a week, maybe for a couple of weeks, to eliminate inflammation in your gut, to eliminate the ultra-processed foods, etc. And lastly, water fasts. Actually, I think they are beneficial if you use them maybe once a quarter at the most. The most benefit that you’ll see from a water fast is between three to five days. Going any longer, I think you’re getting diminishing returns.
DS: Now, why do people do these diets? The number one reason people do these diets is to lose weight. Right? So, we can dive into weight a little bit if you like, just for two minutes.
AB: Okay. Okay. Because this is probably a huge topic.
DS: It’s a huge topic. I’m going to break it down for everybody very simply. Tracking your weight is a nonsense number.
AB: My husband’s going to love you, because he complains every time I stand on those scales.
DS: Yes, yes. There is nothing on the scale that tells you your weight that is helpful at all. You should throw away your scale. The reason is: You need to know your weight broken down into two major categories: Your skeletal muscle mass and your fat mass Now, there is a special scale that you can get, it’s called a bioimpedance scale, that puts a very weak electrical current through your body. And it’ll give you these two numbers and send them by Bluetooth to your phone. And then what you need to do is track these two numbers over time.
AB: So, every day?
DS: I do it every day. But at least once a week you should do this, so you have multiple data points over time. Now, if you’re increasing your skeletal muscle mass, by definition, you are going to be increasing your weight, right? Because you’re getting more skeletal muscle. So, you’re increasing your weight, but you’re building more muscle. But here’s what your body does: As you build more muscle, your metabolic health gets better. You start eating up your fat, and then you start reducing your fat. So, if you’re trying to lose weight, what you should instead be trying to do is build up skeletal muscle. And you do that by, number 1, weight training, number 2, getting adequate protein. And that’s what’s going to lead to not just weight loss, fat loss, but it’s going to lead to better metabolic health, to you being more mobile, more active, all of it.
AB: And better longevity.
DS: And better longevity. Exactly.
AB: Now, as you’re talking about that, you talked about strength training, which is the other thing I want to ask you about. When we talk about movement, of course, for women we hear all the time that strength training is very important as you get older. But even for men, you see lots of men not being able to move, not being able to lift things. So, is that one of the most important things? If you were to leave people with one, I mean, you talked about walking, you were saying it’s very important to do at least 8,000 steps, but the second most important thing in terms of exercise, is it weight training?
DS: I think so, yeah. Absolutely. Because if you’re weight training, you’re automatically going to improve your cardiovascular health as well. So, if you only have time in the gym to do one type of exercise, I would do weight training for sure. You want to lift heavy weights, and it’s very important to do it correctly as well. The correct way of doing this is to lift heavy weights. And by that, I mean if you’re doing a set of 10 reps, the last two reps should be pretty hard, like you can barely do it. You might even have to stop at eight or nine reps. That’s the critical element of strength training, lifting as heavy as you possibly can.
AB: Okay. And the other thing is tech. Now, I know that you believe in good tech and tech that helps you. So, tell me one thing which you feel is very helpful for people, for longevity, and something that could again be dangerous, because there’s so much out there and it’s very confusing.
DS: I mean, I think the best tech you can use is the one that’s giving you your data for your body. Because, you know, we live in this world where we didn’t have a lot of tech for our bodies before. All we had was a scale that would tell us our weight. And we assumed that as long as we’re not overweight, we’re healthy. And that’s not true. Right. So, the best tech, I think, that’s available in longevity is the tech that gives you your own data. So, we mentioned wearables, like Oura Ring or Whoop Band, Ultrahuman Ring, there are all these companies that make these wearable tags. And secondly, the bioimpedance scale I already mentioned is a really good piece of tech. Third is a blood pressure cuff, very easy. These electronic blood pressure cuffs, you can get them for, you know, $10 or $20. It’ll measure your blood pressure. You should do this at home. Don’t measure your blood pressure only once a year at your doctor, that’s a problem. Okay. And then that’s it. I mean, I think those are the tech devices.
AB: Those are the important ones. You wouldn’t say,I mean, there’s lights, there’s hyperbaric oxygen, it’s all tech at the end of the day, right? There are all kinds of those. What would you say about that? And, you know, I talked a little bit about Next Health and what you do in the introduction.
DS: So, yeah. So what I would say is a lot of that technology is also available to you for free. Like if you just go outside in the sunlight, you’re getting great light therapy, right? However, some of the tech that we have at Next Health, for example, we call it the longevity circuit, is to get that last little edge. Okay? So we have LED light, we have hot–cold contrast therapy, sauna, cryo, and then we have hyperbaric oxygen therapy as well. So this gives you that edge once you get the entire pyramid built up. And so we have people who come once a week who use all of that because it gets them more. A lot of people, when they come to our clinics, we build up that pyramid over the course of, like, six months. We get them to a good place and then they’re like, “What’s next, Dr Shah?” And that’s when we put them through our longevity circuit training, the hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryo, and the LED light.
AB: But tell me, you meet a lot of people, right? In a day? You advise a lot of people. Is there something that you find really hard to stick to? What is your personal tough longevity hack?
DS: Yeah, I mean, I think the hardest thing that you can stick to is having a morning routine in your life. So I’m a big believer in having 30 minutes to an hour every single day, preferably in the morning, for yourself.
AB: I do 3 hours.
DS: You’re amazing. And it’s hard to stick to, right?
AB: It’s very hard. Very hard.
DS: Because there are a lot of times where you just don’t have those three hours. So then hopefully you have like an hour routine as well, like a compressed routine. So I only have 50 minutes to an hour every morning, but I also have like a 15-minute compressed routine.
AB: Yeah, but also a lot of it is just a slow morning. I like a slow start. So it’s not necessarily doing something, it’s just being in the morning, which I find very important. But in terms of your personal longevity mantra, so you said morning routine, is there any principle that you want to leave people with as the last answer you want people to go away with?
DS: Yeah, I mean, there are so many things. But I’ll just tell you: my morning routine comprises three aspects. One is physical activity, two is mental activity, and three is a spiritual activity. And if you can get those three checked off first thing in the morning, you’ve already won the day for the most part.
AB: Fabulous. Thank you.
AB: Now we’re going to do a very quick rapid-fire round. So, tell me, myth or truth, and why. One quick sentence as to why.
AB: Fasting extends lifespan.
DS: Myth. And that’s because most people are not fasting the correct way to extend their lifespan. And there’s also not a lot of studies around that.
AB: Thank you. Red wine is the secret to longevity.
DS: It’s a total myth. That’s a total myth. And the reason is there’s not enough phytonutrients in a bottle of red wine to really move the needle.
AB: Apparently you need, what, 12,000 bottles or something crazy to get enough?
DS: Someone said 18,000 the other day.
AB: Longevity is mostly genetic.
DS: That’s also a myth. 10% percent of what happens to us is genetic. And we can turn on and off genes depending on our routines and habits.
AB: Cold plunges slow down ageing.
DS: I also think that’s a myth. I think cold plunges do have a lot of benefits. But as far as their benefit for ageing goes, it’s very unknown for sure right now.
AB: You can reverse ageing.
DS: I think there is some truth in that. And to me, reversing ageing means reversing chronic disease. I personally reversed five different chronic diseases in my own body, so I feel like I reversed ageing there.
AB: Absolutely. I even feel like I have every disease you can imagine between my parents and grandparents. But yeah, so that’s good on us, right? And I’m sure lots of the audience have done that.
AB: Supplements can replace a healthy lifestyle.
DS: False. Completely false. The reason is supplements give you that extra edge. A healthy lifestyle is really the entire pyramid that we talked about building. You can’t replace that with supplements.
AB: More years always mean more health.
DS: Definitely a myth. Because if you are not extending your health span, then you’re going to be frail for more years.
AB: Thank you. Thank you so much. And that was such a fascinating conversation with Dr Darshan Shah. As you saw, he has, he has built up your longevity pyramid. And that’s something you can work with. He’s given it. He’s broken down every single thing you need to work with over the next few years. And no wonder you’re so good at what you do. So, thank you for that. And it’s not just about chasing the next fad. It’s about building this into your routine and slowly, slowly working on it and getting it better. If you took away even one thing from today, share this episode with a friend, with a parent, with someone who needs it, with someone who wants a better future with their health. This is Anshu Bahanda at Wellness Curated. And remember, your wellness algorithm is something you create. It’s not standard, it’s not the destination. It’s evolving. So, as you grow, your wellness grows with you. Thank you. See you next time.
