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Pain is the body's cries for help, right? It's a signal. It's not a signal that's meant to be silenced. Our system is so reactive, right? People go to the doctor when there's a problem. They're not going there to get guidance on how to be preventive. What's more anti-aging than protecting your joints, right? And we have tools now that can do that. If you are a 40-plus-year-old woman, you're active, should you get these things done before anything starts to hurt?
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This is going to be kind of controversial, but I 100%... I love controversial. I know. That's why we're here, right? Let's go. But I 100% believe we should be doing that. That's one of the things I do. I believe that there is a place for these biologics in prevention. And we have data to support it. It's just a matter of if people really want to take that extra step and really support their body on that level. Even when you're doing all the right things, your strength training, staying active, prioritizing protein, keeping the muscle you've built over a lifetime gets harder with age.
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And what most people don't realize is that muscle loss isn't only about hormones or workouts, it's about cellular energy. As we age, our mitochondria, those energy engines inside our muscle cells become less efficient. Now, when your muscles can't produce energy well, it's harder to maintain strength,
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So if staying strong is part of your longevity strategy, and I sure hope it is, visit timeline.com forward slash JJ Virgin and get 20% off your order. Hey, JJ here. And if you're over 30, there is something happening right now inside your body that most people have never heard of.
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It's called senescent cells. These are old cells that stop doing their job, but they do not go away. They hang around. They take up space. They drain your resources. And as they build up, you start to feel it. Less energy, slower recovery, more stiffness.
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just not feeling like yourself. Now for a long time, we thought this was just aging, but thankfully now we know better. Scientists discovered that certain plant compounds called senolytics can help your body clear these cells.
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That is a huge breakthrough because this is not about covering up aging. This is about addressing one of the root causes. And that's why I've been using Qualia Synolytic for years. It combines nine of the most researched synolytic ingredients in one formula designed to support your body's natural ability to clear out these zombie cells. And here's what makes it so easy. You only take it two days a month.
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That's it. No daily routine, no complexity, just two days a month to support how you age. And again, I've been using it for years. And it's one of those things that once you understand it, you will never go without it. Now, if you're over 30, this is something you're going to want to start now, right now, not later. So go to qualiolife.com forward slash virgin wellness and use code virgin wellness for an extra 15% off.
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That's Qualia Synalytic at qualialife.com forward slash Virgin Wellness with code Virgin Wellness because it's time right now to start taking control of how you age.
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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four-time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive.
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I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply to you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review.
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Text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together.
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What if the biggest myth about aging is that pain is inevitable and it's something to be managed or covered up? Too many people over 40 accept chronic pain as normal. Aching knees, broken bones that never fully heal, and injuries that limit their ability to be active.
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But what if pain isn't a life sentence, but a signal that something deeper needs to be addressed? Well, today's guest is helping redefine the future of medicine, one that resolves pain rather than simply managing it. Welcome to Well Beyond 40. I'm your host, JJ Virgin, and this is the show for the women who want to age powerfully, so much more.
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stay strong, and optimize your health. And today's guest is my personal physician, Dr. Ashu Goyal, a regenerative and precision pain medicine specialist, notice, not pain management. And he's known as the holistic pain doc, and you'll soon learn why. And I'm especially excited for this conversation because he is currently treating me for a broken foot from 30, 40 years ago and issues with my left knee. His work is transforming how we think about injury, recovery, and aging. Dr. Ash.
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Welcome to the show. Great. Thanks for having me, JJ. Well, first of all, where I'd love to dig in, because this is such a contrarian statement, you came from the world of pain management. I'd love to know your background, because now what you say is pain is not something to be managed. Right. My background is I'm a double board certified anesthesiologist, interventional spine, and pain management specialist. I trained at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, where I spent...
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five years of my life learning to mask pain really, really well. So what we were taught is that pain is a disease and we need to basically shut it off. And so we did that through medication management, cortisone shots, which everyone is familiar with. Some of the more advanced techniques we would use are ablations where we burn nerves, shut off the signals. And then for people that really complex pain syndrome, we'd implant spinal cord stimulators, which block pain signals at the spinal cord level or even morphine pumps.
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What we weren't taught is that pain is the body's cries for help. It's a signal. It's not a signal that's meant to be silence. It's a message. And so through my first 10 years of private practice, I saw that what I was doing was helping manage symptoms. People were getting better temporarily.
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And then they would come back three to six months later with the same issue they had before. And then the cycle would repeat itself. More pills, more cortisone shots, more injections, more ablations, and then eventually surgery. So I really believed I was helping people. And in some ways, I was giving them their quality of life back temporarily. But what really hit me, what happened?
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No one talked about was that the disease was progressing. So we get these follow-up MRI studies four or five years later, and we'd see worsening joints. We'd see worsening spines. And then it really hit me. I'm like, I am not solving the problem. I'm actually, in some ways, part of the system that's allowing the disease to progress.
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So in 2017, I went to a pain conference where they had a day dedicated to regenerative medicine, something that I didn't know much about. I'd heard of PRP stem cells, but I didn't know how to apply them to musculoskeletal and spine medicine. Well, that day changed everything for me. I learned about Kobe Bryant in 2011, going to Germany, getting some special sauce that came from his own blood, put into his body called autologous condition serum or the Regenikine program.
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and it kept him from having surgery. He went on to win world championships, NBA, Olympic gold medals, and had an illustrious career. He actually had a few treatments done, knee again, and also his Achilles. All, he was able to avoid surgery with this serum. That's pretty amazing. And it blew my mind. I'm like, the body can heal itself.
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This is the medicine I want to practice. So I spent the next four years of my life plotting my escape from my corporate medicine job. That must have been so hard though, now that you saw a different way, to have to go back into pain management. Yeah, so I came back after learning this. I'm like, oh my gosh, guys, I've got this new way of helping people manage pain. Not actually manage pain, heal their pain. We're backed by corporate medicine. They're like, no, we're insurance based. We're going to stick to what we know.
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continue doing the cortisone shots, continue doing the stimulators. And then, I mean, I grappled deeply with this, right? Because I was like, I don't believe in this medicine anymore. Like I really want to switch my life into regenerative medicine where I really feel we can truly help people.
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not just mask pain, but actually heal their pain and resolve their underlying issues. So it took four years. I wrote on my contract with that group, and then I started my own practice here in Scottsdale, Arizona, Intrigated Spine Pain and Wellness. And now I focus on regenerative pain medicine, where I use the body's own healing ability to overcome musculoskeletal and spine disease.
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We're gonna talk all about that because there's a lot of different options and there's a lot of confusion out there too. But I wanna go back just a moment because I think it's important for people to understand that masking pain and managing pain actually will create more problems over time. I'll share my own story and then you describe something that happened to a friend of mine. You didn't know you were describing the friend. With my own story of breaking a foot at 21 years old
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And all of a sudden in my late 40s, and it's curious as to why these things all pop up around, you know, menopause, estrogen dropping, you start to become more inflamed. But my foot started to hurt. My buddy Dave Asprey goes, I have a guy that is the foot doctor to the stars. And he helped me with my foot. And you should go see him. And I'm like, great. I go to him and he goes, there's nothing you can do here besides a fusion, which I knew I didn't want to have. All right.
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Not the best management strategy. Right. So it's like, it's either fusion or we manage the pain. So we can manage the pain and we'll do it every four to five months. You'll do a shot with its lidocaine and Kenalog and it won't degrade the joint. And I was in so much pain. I'm like, great. And it was amazing. For three years, it was the most amazing thing ever. You had your life back. I had my life back.
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I had my stilettos back. I bought a sprint treadmill. I'm jumping, which is really scary because by the time I came to you, I was about to tear a ligament. But I'm doing all of these things, and it was really great. And then it wasn't. It just stopped working. And not only did it stop working, the pain was far worse than it had ever been before.
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Because I think I hadn't been doing anything to support the joint. I was just now damaging it because I couldn't feel it. Right. So I was like, let's go. Right. Yeah. And then I think you were describing what happens with an ablation.
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And I'd love you to describe that because one of my friends with a really challenging back issue was having ablations. And then the next thing you know, things have gotten a lot worse. And by the time they got in there to fuse his spine, it was like little particles of spine of his discs all throughout. What happens when someone's having an ablation or having these steroid shots? Yeah, great question. So let's start off with steroid shots because that's the most common
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is a medication. It's powerfully anti-inflammatory. So if you put it in an arthritic joint or anywhere there's inflammation, it can shut off those signals powerfully. It can last anywhere from several weeks to several months, sometimes even longer than that. The unfortunate consequence of that is that
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This cortisone is what we call chondrotoxic. So it's actually toxic to the tissues, and it kills the cells that support healthy collagen formation. So if you're putting this into your ankle or your foot after an injury, you are accelerating disease progression. What that means is the cortisone is not only relieving pain and inflammation, but it's actually breaking down the tissues.
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And so as the tissues break down, the arthritis gets worse, the joint becomes unstable. And that's why after repeated injections, yeah, you have the three years of relief. But during those three years, that joint was becoming severely degenerated. And it would strike me then that it's becoming more degenerative, plus you don't hear the signals. Exactly. And you're actually like, I know what I was doing. I was like, excellent. I can run again. Yeah.
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Now, there's something to be said for that. You know, like I did train in pain management, and there's something about giving people the quality of life back, right? But I think it has to be fully disclosed what the consequences of these modalities are. Lidocaine is toxic to the tissues as well. We've learned a long time ago not to put lidocaine inside joints. But lidocaine and cortisone together, that's like a double whammy right there.
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So it's going to break down the joint. And we do the same thing in the spine. I mean, we were taught to do epidural steroid injections. So if you come in with sciatic pain, that's pain that shoots down the leg. Most people have experienced that at some point in their life. We can carefully deliver those steroid injections, those cortisone shots around the nerve and calm it down.
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But the long-term consequence of that is bone thinning. These steroids can leach calcium and chemicals out of the bone and actually accelerate osteoporosis and lead to vertebral compression fractures. They can cause scarring and epidural fibrosis around the nerve roots too, which can lead to a chronic condition called arachnoiditis. So that's an inflammation of the nerves that surround the spinal cord and just cause a chronic pain condition. Now, ablations. So when people have back pain that doesn't shoot down the leg...
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We can treat that with a procedure called a radiofrequency ablation, where we use radiofrequency energy delivered through a tiny filament directly onto a nerve. In the spine, that's called the medial branch nerve. That medial branch nerve is the nerve that goes into the joint to tell your brain you have arthritic back pain. We can shut that signal off, which is amazing, because it can provide relief anywhere from six months up to two years. Again, consequences. So,
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The consequence of that is that same nerve innervates or goes into the muscles to stabilize the spine, particularly the multifidus muscle. This is one of our big muscles that runs up and down our spine and provides stability. When you shut off those signals, that muscle will atrophy. So we do the ablation. The consequence of that is that the muscles will atrophy over time, it turns into fat, and then you get instability. And the only treatment for that is effusion.
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Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably what's happening to your friend. Yes. Yeah. Which is, so when they went in, they're like, oh, wow, there's a lot of fatty tissue here. There's no muscle, no support. And so they do the fusion. And the problem with that is the fusion is great for stability, but our spines were not meant to be fused.
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They're meant to have mobility, right? So we're creating more dysfunction by doing the fusion. You solve one problem by creating stability. The muscles aren't working, so now we put the hardware in. We have stability here. But then above and below the fusion, you get what's called adjacent segment disease, ASD. And so what happens is the segment above and below become hypermobile, and we accelerate degeneration and ligament laxity in those areas, and the consequence of that is more fusion. So it's a chain reaction.
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So the reality is all of this pain management is accelerating the very problem people came in for in the first place. In most cases. Unfortunately, yeah. In a lot of cases, these modalities that we learn that are the standard of care in America accelerate disease progression.
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And we know that in order for you to be healthy, have great quality of life, have health span, strength span, you've got to be mobile. You've got to be able to move. You've got to be able to build your muscles. And the limiting factor, the biggest constraint that I can see are your joints. So what does one do here? And how common is joint pain at 40 plus, 50 plus? Let's go back 2,000 years to class.
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Claudius of Pergamon. So we're going back 150 AD. So this was a sports medicine physician. He was a Greek physician who took care of gladiators. And so he's considered the father of sports medicine. And he observed gladiators, and he found that athletes developed arthritis, which led to early death due to immobility. So it's fascinating because you think working out and staying active is going to actually prolong your life. But if you overdo it,
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You can do the opposite from the joint pain. You can't move your joints. You can't exercise. Then at least it could potentially lead to an early death. It's interesting because he also found that diet and recovery were incredibly important in preserving joint health. I mean, this is almost 2,000 years ago. So he's way ahead of his time. But those are the key elements. Like I tell everyone in my practice, food is foundation. Gut health.
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Gut health is incredibly important because if you have what's called dysbiosis, we produce chemicals that are pro-inflammatory. Interferin gamma, TNF alpha, these are important pro-inflammatory chemicals that get into our bloodstream from our gut when we don't have a healthy gut system. And they increase inflammation throughout the body. And what that does is it accelerates degeneration of our joints and our tissues. Gut health is where it starts, so diet number one. Then number two, sleep hygiene.
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Most of our repair occurs while we're sleeping. It's when we get our deep REM sleep, we get our deep delta sleep. That's when stem cells get released. Body's in a parasympathetic state, which is rest, healing, and the body can repair itself. It's incredibly important.
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Now, someone in their 40s wants to stay active. They've got knee pain. Well, I used to be able to run two miles. Now I can only run half a mile before my knees bother me. That's where someone like me comes into play. Because what I can do and what specialists in the field of orthobiologics can do is we can take your blood.
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We can harness platelets, we can harness growth factors, anti-inflammatory proteins. We can take your stem cells and we can combine these and put these back into joints, not only to relieve pain and inflammation, but also to give the joint and the spine the substrates it needs to stay healthy.
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And that's incredibly important because as we age, as we become, you know, we try to stay active, the catabolic forces, which are the forces that break down tissue, overcome the anabolic forces, which are the ones that build tissue. So by doing these biologic therapies, we tilt the scales from catabolic to anabolic.
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There have been a number of studies that have shown that even something as simple as PRP from mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis not only relieves pain and inflammation, but is what we call chondroprotective. So they've done studies where they've done an MRI before the procedure, then followed them over two years. An MRI two years later showed no change in cartilage volume. What that means is the cartilage was preserved. So we believe that these therapies can potentially be preventive as well. I tell people, what's more important?
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anti-aging than protecting your joints, right? And we have tools now that can do that because you gotta move. If you can't move, you're gonna have an accelerated aging process. But yet that's not standard of care at this moment. Not standard of care. Well, our system is so reactive, right? People go to the doctor when there's a problem. They're not going there to get guidance on how to be preventive. Well, should you? If you are a 40-plus year old woman, you're active, should you get these things done before anything starts to hurt?
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This is going to be kind of controversial, but I 100%... I love controversial. I know. That's why we're here, right? Let's go. But I 100% believe we should be doing that. That's one of the things I do. So I have a bad left knee. So I started wrestling when I was 13. And we're talking like, you know, 1987, 51 now, 50, LB 52. And I got really hardcore into lifting weights. I love lifting heavy weights, but no one taught me how to do it appropriately.
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Right. So I'm going to the gym. I'm watching other dudes lift weights and I'm like, all right, cool. That's I'm going to be big like that wrestler. So I started building armor. And then fast forward, I got into racquetball, tennis, hiking, mountain biking, running. In 2008, 2009, I started to develop knee pain.
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I moved to Scottsdale in 2008, worked out with a phenomenal personal trainer who's still one of my best friends today. I still work out with him when I can. And one of our first sessions, he said, hey, man, I'm going to balance you out here. And he moved me over to the right, and I felt like I was going to fall over. I'm like, whoa, dude, that's not balanced. This is balanced. He's like, no, you're leaning on to the left, like, a lot. He's like, your body mechanics are really off here. And so in my head...
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After working with him for a few weeks, I was like, oh, you know what? No one taught me how to work out. I was probably compensating and overcompensated and ground down the cartilage in my left knee. I'm right side dominant, which is unusual. So the cartilage in my left knee is worn out. So I started doing PRP in 2021, and it's worked tremendously well. But I've also put it in my healthy knee to prevent it from breaking down. And this knee has stayed healthy.
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And so I believe that there is a place for these biologics in prevention, and we have data to support it. It's just a matter of if people really want to take that extra step and really support their body on that level. Anyone who's had any kind of knee pain would say, yes, I do. Because you don't want to have it on the other side. Exactly. Yeah. My history of blowing out my right knee and then breaking my left foot and then messing up my left hip because of my right knee and now having a left knee problem because of my left foot, it's like, oh.
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So it can really change your life. Absolutely. And I'm just wondering, too, I have a son. I remember when he had his car accident, he had a crushed heel. And they literally were hanging his heel. They were hanging his leg because he had 13 fractures. And this crushed heel, they said, this is the life-changing injury. Right.
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We're just trying to get him to walk. I go, no, no, no, treat him like Kobe Bryant. Like he's gonna be an athlete. And they had like a pin sticking out of his heel. And now I'm thinking, cause it all healed and he's able to run and do all these things, but he's 30 and I'm starting to worry about 50 and like what we need to do. And I think for-
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Yes, a lot of us, it's like the time is ahead of time. Exactly. So I'd love to know the different options out there because it feels like everyone's kind of getting into this now, like everyone being a lot of the different doctors. And I wonder at the different levels what we should be looking for. When I first started getting some of these things done, I think I had prolotherapy and I had prolozone and I had PRP. What are all the different things that can be done so we kind of know the hierarchy of
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Like I said, again, food is foundation, right? Food, sleep, balancing your nervous system, all that stuff is foundation. But if you want to get into interventional modalities, then prolotherapy would be the entry level. So that's where we use like sugar water, if you will, just to make it simple. And what that does is we inject into ligaments around tendons. You can even put it inside the joint and it creates a mild inflammatory response. And see, inflammation is needed.
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for your body to repair and heal. So we create a mild inflammatory response so those tissues get this signal that there's some damage there. So now we need to divide and create healthy tissue. And when would someone use Prolo versus some of these others? Is that when you said that was entry level? Yeah.
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Would you start there or would you just jump into some of the other things? I like the big guns myself personally. So, yeah. So I'm starting to see a lot of people aged 35 to 55 who are coming to see me preventively. They're like, listen, we've done our research. We're familiar with some of these biologic therapies and we just want to be proactive. I'm like, great. That's fantastic. So something as simple as PRP.
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Most people are familiar with PRP. PRP is platelet-rich plasma. It's processed by taking whole blood. So we just do a blood draw. It goes into a centrifuge. It spins at a specific RPM for a certain amount of time. And what that does is it concentrates red blood cells and white blood cells in the bottom layer. The top layer is gonna be platelet-rich plasma and platelet-poor plasma, which means it has lower concentrations of platelets. Now the platelet-rich plasma and the platelet-poor plasma are full of really important ingredients, I like to call them.
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Growth factors. What are growth factors? Growth factors are these signaling proteins that tell your cells in that area to do something positive, right? Whether it's to replicate, divide, or just to become healthier tissue. Number two, there are growth factors that serve as homing signals for stem cells. Platelet-derived growth factor, BB, is a specific one whose sole purpose, when you put it into the body in specific strategic locations, it recruits stem cells to the area.
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The problem with the joint is we don't have a rich blood supply there. So cartilage does not have a blood supply. So as it breaks down, it's really hard to repair it. When we introduce PRP to that area, we're giving it the nutrients it needs. We're putting the growth factors there and then the stem cells can get recruited and you can create healthier tissue. So PRP is where I would start for anyone with mild to moderate disease, even
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basically asymptomatic, like, hey, look, I play golf, and then I'm sore for a couple of days, but I'm fine. I can get back to the golf course. But that soreness kind of sets me back a couple of days. It's like it's uncomfortable. That would be someone who I'd say, listen, I think PRP would be a great option for you.
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Now, PRP, I had it done in my elbow. I was not ready for this. Oh, yeah. I did not. I was not told. And I'm so used to having things done. I didn't think anything about it. I had it. I was going in to do it, drove myself, and was then going home to do a podcast.
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shockingly painful like shocking like i'm seeing you're trying to do a podcast i have my elbow on a pillow i'm like crying yeah doing this but i would assume with prp that a big part of its success would be the value of the prp from the person a hundred percent hundred percent but that's not like my doctor is
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said nothing about that. Yeah, so that's how you separate a dabbler, is what I like to call them, from a specialist. Those of us who specialize in this field know the importance of something called metabolic optimization before orthobiologic therapy, okay? So what this means is basically I tell patients, you're the pharmacy that's making the stuff I'm gonna be putting back into you, so make it good.
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And so we give them a whole pre-procedure protocol. And that can take anywhere from two weeks for someone relatively healthy to three to six months for someone who really needs a whole metabolic reset. Well, how would you know if someone needed to take three to six months to upgrade their plasma?
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Great question. I'll give you an example. So I saw someone, well, smokers, number one, not a question. I mean, not an option. If you're a smoker, then you're making bad cells. You're constantly in the state of inflammation. I will not do a biologic procedure for a smoker. That's vaping included. And would they be able to stop smoking for three to six months and reverse that? Or it's like, I don't know. And I know has been able to do that. It's like they can't stop. So
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Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, we'll do the consult. Oh, you're a smoker. Sorry, you're not a candidate for this. Unless you quit smoking for a minimum of three months. And so those people don't come back. I mean, I can think of three people that I've seen within the last four years, all three of them. Do mace people still smoke? I know, me too. All right, let's be ready for a speed round. Okay. Biggest myth about pain after 40.
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You have to live with it. Most overlooked cause of chronic pain. Diet. One daily habit to prevent joint degeneration. Stretching. Best therapy for accelerating healing. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The surgery you believe is overused. Joint replacement. And non-negotiable for maintaining mobility. Strength training.
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Your definition of aging powerfully. Aging knowledgeably. Those were the most thoughtful speed round answers I've ever heard. All right on, yeah. Yes. Those are great questions. You made me think. I was like, oh, I need to think here for a minute. Okay.
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Now, for someone who would love to learn more about what you're doing, I'm going to put everything at jjvirgin.com forward slash Dr. Goyle, G-O-Y-L-E. What are we going to send home with them? Yeah, we have a free e-pain book. Kind of gives you a guide as to how you can optimize pain relief naturally.
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Excellent. Okay. And again, one of the things that someone could do right away, and I think this is really important, is fix your diet. And you've talked about anti-inflammatory diet. I'm like, we should just always be like, who wants to be in an inflammatory state? Exactly. Like being in an anti-inflammatory state through diet is one of the most important things. Absolutely. And I just have to do a shout out to your most awesome wife. You know, I judge men by their wives.
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So when I met you, I'm like, he's a good guy. I'm a rock star. Yeah, he's awesome. I'm so lucky. Because your wife is really the guiding force with the anti-inflammatory diet and making everything delicious. I'm really excited about the things coming up with her and cookbooks and products and everything else. It's such an incredible exponential impact. Yes, stay tuned because we're going to have her on the show.
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and sharing all because everybody needs that piece of it. Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, AJ. This was great.
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Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review.
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And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ app.
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It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day, and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
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Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional and ask you to do it.
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Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk. You know, when we talk about menopause, the focus is almost always on hormones. But what I've learned is
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That's only part of the picture because this phase of life doesn't just affect your hormones. It affects how your brain works, your energy, how you feel day to day. And a big part of that comes down to your cells. Your cells rely on something called phospholipids. These are the building blocks of your cell membranes and they're essential for how your brain functions, how your cells communicate,
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and how your body operates overall. As estrogen declines, your body's natural production of key phospholipids can shift, which can impact things like mental clarity and overall resilience. That's why I started focusing on supporting this more foundational layer.
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One of the things I added into my routine is BodyBio PC. It's a phospholipid complex that helps support cell membrane health, brain function, and liver function. Basically, helping your body get building blocks it needs to function well.
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And what I like about this is that it's not just about chasing symptoms. It's about supporting how your body works at a deeper level. So you're supporting things like clearer thinking, better focus, and feeling more like yourself again. And of course, BodyBio is known for really high-quality, practitioner-trusted formulations.
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So if you're in perimenopause or menopause and feel like something is still missing, this is definitely worth looking into. You can head to bodybio.com and use code JJVirgin20 for a discount.
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Pain is the body's cries for help, right? It's a signal. It's not a signal that's meant to be silenced. Our system is so reactive, right? People go to the doctor when there's a problem. They're not going there to get guidance on how to be preventive. What's more anti-aging than protecting your joints, right? And we have tools now that can do that. If you are a 40-plus-year-old woman, you're active, should you get these things done before anything starts to hurt?
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This is going to be kind of controversial, but I 100%... I love controversial. I know. That's why we're here, right? Let's go. But I 100% believe we should be doing that. That's one of the things I do. I believe that there is a place for these biologics in prevention. And we have data to support it. It's just a matter of if people really want to take that extra step and really support their body on that level. Even when you're doing all the right things, your strength training, staying active, prioritizing protein, keeping the muscle you've built over a lifetime gets harder with age.
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Now, our parents were told to accept that it's just getting older. I don't buy that. And that's why I use Timeline, powered by Magnipure. Here's the real story. Muscle isn't just about strength or looking good. Muscle runs your metabolism, protects your balance, preserves your independence, and determines how powerfully you age.
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And what most people don't realize is that muscle loss isn't only about hormones or workouts, it's about cellular energy. As we age, our mitochondria, those energy engines inside our muscle cells become less efficient. Now, when your muscles can't produce energy well, it's harder to maintain strength,
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function, and resilience. That's where Mitopure comes in. It's the only clinically studied form of urolithin A, a postbiotic shown in human clinical trials to support muscle strength and function by helping renew mitochondrial health at the cellular level.
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I love this because it works with your training, not instead of it. Now, strength training is the signal. Protein is the building block and Mitopur supports the cellular energy that allows your muscles to actually respond and adapt. Mitopur gummies make it simple. Two a day. Sugar-free, vegan, non-GMO, and independently certified for quality. And let's not forget, absolutely delicious.
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So if staying strong is part of your longevity strategy, and I sure hope it is, visit timeline.com forward slash JJ Virgin and get 20% off your order. Hey, JJ here. And if you're over 30, there is something happening right now inside your body that most people have never heard of.
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It's called senescent cells. These are old cells that stop doing their job, but they do not go away. They hang around. They take up space. They drain your resources. And as they build up, you start to feel it. Less energy, slower recovery, more stiffness.
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just not feeling like yourself. Now for a long time, we thought this was just aging, but thankfully now we know better. Scientists discovered that certain plant compounds called senolytics can help your body clear these cells.
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That is a huge breakthrough because this is not about covering up aging. This is about addressing one of the root causes. And that's why I've been using Qualia Synolytic for years. It combines nine of the most researched synolytic ingredients in one formula designed to support your body's natural ability to clear out these zombie cells. And here's what makes it so easy. You only take it two days a month.
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That's it. No daily routine, no complexity, just two days a month to support how you age. And again, I've been using it for years. And it's one of those things that once you understand it, you will never go without it. Now, if you're over 30, this is something you're going to want to start now, right now, not later. So go to qualiolife.com forward slash virgin wellness and use code virgin wellness for an extra 15% off.
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That's Qualia Synalytic at qualialife.com forward slash Virgin Wellness with code Virgin Wellness because it's time right now to start taking control of how you age.
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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four-time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive.
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I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply to you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review.
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00:05:04.844 --> 00:05:29.347
Text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together.
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What if the biggest myth about aging is that pain is inevitable and it's something to be managed or covered up? Too many people over 40 accept chronic pain as normal. Aching knees, broken bones that never fully heal, and injuries that limit their ability to be active.
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But what if pain isn't a life sentence, but a signal that something deeper needs to be addressed? Well, today's guest is helping redefine the future of medicine, one that resolves pain rather than simply managing it. Welcome to Well Beyond 40. I'm your host, JJ Virgin, and this is the show for the women who want to age powerfully, so much more.
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stay strong, and optimize your health. And today's guest is my personal physician, Dr. Ashu Goyal, a regenerative and precision pain medicine specialist, notice, not pain management. And he's known as the holistic pain doc, and you'll soon learn why. And I'm especially excited for this conversation because he is currently treating me for a broken foot from 30, 40 years ago and issues with my left knee. His work is transforming how we think about injury, recovery, and aging. Dr. Ash.
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Welcome to the show. Great. Thanks for having me, JJ. Well, first of all, where I'd love to dig in, because this is such a contrarian statement, you came from the world of pain management. I'd love to know your background, because now what you say is pain is not something to be managed. Right. My background is I'm a double board certified anesthesiologist, interventional spine, and pain management specialist. I trained at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, where I spent...
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five years of my life learning to mask pain really, really well. So what we were taught is that pain is a disease and we need to basically shut it off. And so we did that through medication management, cortisone shots, which everyone is familiar with. Some of the more advanced techniques we would use are ablations where we burn nerves, shut off the signals. And then for people that really complex pain syndrome, we'd implant spinal cord stimulators, which block pain signals at the spinal cord level or even morphine pumps.
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What we weren't taught is that pain is the body's cries for help. It's a signal. It's not a signal that's meant to be silence. It's a message. And so through my first 10 years of private practice, I saw that what I was doing was helping manage symptoms. People were getting better temporarily.
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And then they would come back three to six months later with the same issue they had before. And then the cycle would repeat itself. More pills, more cortisone shots, more injections, more ablations, and then eventually surgery. So I really believed I was helping people. And in some ways, I was giving them their quality of life back temporarily. But what really hit me, what happened?
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No one talked about was that the disease was progressing. So we get these follow-up MRI studies four or five years later, and we'd see worsening joints. We'd see worsening spines. And then it really hit me. I'm like, I am not solving the problem. I'm actually, in some ways, part of the system that's allowing the disease to progress.
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So in 2017, I went to a pain conference where they had a day dedicated to regenerative medicine, something that I didn't know much about. I'd heard of PRP stem cells, but I didn't know how to apply them to musculoskeletal and spine medicine. Well, that day changed everything for me. I learned about Kobe Bryant in 2011, going to Germany, getting some special sauce that came from his own blood, put into his body called autologous condition serum or the Regenikine program.
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and it kept him from having surgery. He went on to win world championships, NBA, Olympic gold medals, and had an illustrious career. He actually had a few treatments done, knee again, and also his Achilles. All, he was able to avoid surgery with this serum. That's pretty amazing. And it blew my mind. I'm like, the body can heal itself.
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This is the medicine I want to practice. So I spent the next four years of my life plotting my escape from my corporate medicine job. That must have been so hard though, now that you saw a different way, to have to go back into pain management. Yeah, so I came back after learning this. I'm like, oh my gosh, guys, I've got this new way of helping people manage pain. Not actually manage pain, heal their pain. We're backed by corporate medicine. They're like, no, we're insurance based. We're going to stick to what we know.
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continue doing the cortisone shots, continue doing the stimulators. And then, I mean, I grappled deeply with this, right? Because I was like, I don't believe in this medicine anymore. Like I really want to switch my life into regenerative medicine where I really feel we can truly help people.
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not just mask pain, but actually heal their pain and resolve their underlying issues. So it took four years. I wrote on my contract with that group, and then I started my own practice here in Scottsdale, Arizona, Intrigated Spine Pain and Wellness. And now I focus on regenerative pain medicine, where I use the body's own healing ability to overcome musculoskeletal and spine disease.
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We're gonna talk all about that because there's a lot of different options and there's a lot of confusion out there too. But I wanna go back just a moment because I think it's important for people to understand that masking pain and managing pain actually will create more problems over time. I'll share my own story and then you describe something that happened to a friend of mine. You didn't know you were describing the friend. With my own story of breaking a foot at 21 years old
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And all of a sudden in my late 40s, and it's curious as to why these things all pop up around, you know, menopause, estrogen dropping, you start to become more inflamed. But my foot started to hurt. My buddy Dave Asprey goes, I have a guy that is the foot doctor to the stars. And he helped me with my foot. And you should go see him. And I'm like, great. I go to him and he goes, there's nothing you can do here besides a fusion, which I knew I didn't want to have. All right.
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Not the best management strategy. Right. So it's like, it's either fusion or we manage the pain. So we can manage the pain and we'll do it every four to five months. You'll do a shot with its lidocaine and Kenalog and it won't degrade the joint. And I was in so much pain. I'm like, great. And it was amazing. For three years, it was the most amazing thing ever. You had your life back. I had my life back.
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I had my stilettos back. I bought a sprint treadmill. I'm jumping, which is really scary because by the time I came to you, I was about to tear a ligament. But I'm doing all of these things, and it was really great. And then it wasn't. It just stopped working. And not only did it stop working, the pain was far worse than it had ever been before.
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Because I think I hadn't been doing anything to support the joint. I was just now damaging it because I couldn't feel it. Right. So I was like, let's go. Right. Yeah. And then I think you were describing what happens with an ablation.
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And I'd love you to describe that because one of my friends with a really challenging back issue was having ablations. And then the next thing you know, things have gotten a lot worse. And by the time they got in there to fuse his spine, it was like little particles of spine of his discs all throughout. What happens when someone's having an ablation or having these steroid shots? Yeah, great question. So let's start off with steroid shots because that's the most common
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is a medication. It's powerfully anti-inflammatory. So if you put it in an arthritic joint or anywhere there's inflammation, it can shut off those signals powerfully. It can last anywhere from several weeks to several months, sometimes even longer than that. The unfortunate consequence of that is that
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This cortisone is what we call chondrotoxic. So it's actually toxic to the tissues, and it kills the cells that support healthy collagen formation. So if you're putting this into your ankle or your foot after an injury, you are accelerating disease progression. What that means is the cortisone is not only relieving pain and inflammation, but it's actually breaking down the tissues.
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And so as the tissues break down, the arthritis gets worse, the joint becomes unstable. And that's why after repeated injections, yeah, you have the three years of relief. But during those three years, that joint was becoming severely degenerated. And it would strike me then that it's becoming more degenerative, plus you don't hear the signals. Exactly. And you're actually like, I know what I was doing. I was like, excellent. I can run again. Yeah.
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Now, there's something to be said for that. You know, like I did train in pain management, and there's something about giving people the quality of life back, right? But I think it has to be fully disclosed what the consequences of these modalities are. Lidocaine is toxic to the tissues as well. We've learned a long time ago not to put lidocaine inside joints. But lidocaine and cortisone together, that's like a double whammy right there.
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So it's going to break down the joint. And we do the same thing in the spine. I mean, we were taught to do epidural steroid injections. So if you come in with sciatic pain, that's pain that shoots down the leg. Most people have experienced that at some point in their life. We can carefully deliver those steroid injections, those cortisone shots around the nerve and calm it down.
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But the long-term consequence of that is bone thinning. These steroids can leach calcium and chemicals out of the bone and actually accelerate osteoporosis and lead to vertebral compression fractures. They can cause scarring and epidural fibrosis around the nerve roots too, which can lead to a chronic condition called arachnoiditis. So that's an inflammation of the nerves that surround the spinal cord and just cause a chronic pain condition. Now, ablations. So when people have back pain that doesn't shoot down the leg...
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We can treat that with a procedure called a radiofrequency ablation, where we use radiofrequency energy delivered through a tiny filament directly onto a nerve. In the spine, that's called the medial branch nerve. That medial branch nerve is the nerve that goes into the joint to tell your brain you have arthritic back pain. We can shut that signal off, which is amazing, because it can provide relief anywhere from six months up to two years. Again, consequences. So,
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The consequence of that is that same nerve innervates or goes into the muscles to stabilize the spine, particularly the multifidus muscle. This is one of our big muscles that runs up and down our spine and provides stability. When you shut off those signals, that muscle will atrophy. So we do the ablation. The consequence of that is that the muscles will atrophy over time, it turns into fat, and then you get instability. And the only treatment for that is effusion.
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Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably what's happening to your friend. Yes. Yeah. Which is, so when they went in, they're like, oh, wow, there's a lot of fatty tissue here. There's no muscle, no support. And so they do the fusion. And the problem with that is the fusion is great for stability, but our spines were not meant to be fused.
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They're meant to have mobility, right? So we're creating more dysfunction by doing the fusion. You solve one problem by creating stability. The muscles aren't working, so now we put the hardware in. We have stability here. But then above and below the fusion, you get what's called adjacent segment disease, ASD. And so what happens is the segment above and below become hypermobile, and we accelerate degeneration and ligament laxity in those areas, and the consequence of that is more fusion. So it's a chain reaction.
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So the reality is all of this pain management is accelerating the very problem people came in for in the first place. In most cases. Unfortunately, yeah. In a lot of cases, these modalities that we learn that are the standard of care in America accelerate disease progression.
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And we know that in order for you to be healthy, have great quality of life, have health span, strength span, you've got to be mobile. You've got to be able to move. You've got to be able to build your muscles. And the limiting factor, the biggest constraint that I can see are your joints. So what does one do here? And how common is joint pain at 40 plus, 50 plus? Let's go back 2,000 years to class.
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Claudius of Pergamon. So we're going back 150 AD. So this was a sports medicine physician. He was a Greek physician who took care of gladiators. And so he's considered the father of sports medicine. And he observed gladiators, and he found that athletes developed arthritis, which led to early death due to immobility. So it's fascinating because you think working out and staying active is going to actually prolong your life. But if you overdo it,
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You can do the opposite from the joint pain. You can't move your joints. You can't exercise. Then at least it could potentially lead to an early death. It's interesting because he also found that diet and recovery were incredibly important in preserving joint health. I mean, this is almost 2,000 years ago. So he's way ahead of his time. But those are the key elements. Like I tell everyone in my practice, food is foundation. Gut health.
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Gut health is incredibly important because if you have what's called dysbiosis, we produce chemicals that are pro-inflammatory. Interferin gamma, TNF alpha, these are important pro-inflammatory chemicals that get into our bloodstream from our gut when we don't have a healthy gut system. And they increase inflammation throughout the body. And what that does is it accelerates degeneration of our joints and our tissues. Gut health is where it starts, so diet number one. Then number two, sleep hygiene.
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Most of our repair occurs while we're sleeping. It's when we get our deep REM sleep, we get our deep delta sleep. That's when stem cells get released. Body's in a parasympathetic state, which is rest, healing, and the body can repair itself. It's incredibly important.
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Now, someone in their 40s wants to stay active. They've got knee pain. Well, I used to be able to run two miles. Now I can only run half a mile before my knees bother me. That's where someone like me comes into play. Because what I can do and what specialists in the field of orthobiologics can do is we can take your blood.
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We can harness platelets, we can harness growth factors, anti-inflammatory proteins. We can take your stem cells and we can combine these and put these back into joints, not only to relieve pain and inflammation, but also to give the joint and the spine the substrates it needs to stay healthy.
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And that's incredibly important because as we age, as we become, you know, we try to stay active, the catabolic forces, which are the forces that break down tissue, overcome the anabolic forces, which are the ones that build tissue. So by doing these biologic therapies, we tilt the scales from catabolic to anabolic.
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There have been a number of studies that have shown that even something as simple as PRP from mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis not only relieves pain and inflammation, but is what we call chondroprotective. So they've done studies where they've done an MRI before the procedure, then followed them over two years. An MRI two years later showed no change in cartilage volume. What that means is the cartilage was preserved. So we believe that these therapies can potentially be preventive as well. I tell people, what's more important?
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anti-aging than protecting your joints, right? And we have tools now that can do that because you gotta move. If you can't move, you're gonna have an accelerated aging process. But yet that's not standard of care at this moment. Not standard of care. Well, our system is so reactive, right? People go to the doctor when there's a problem. They're not going there to get guidance on how to be preventive. Well, should you? If you are a 40-plus year old woman, you're active, should you get these things done before anything starts to hurt?
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This is going to be kind of controversial, but I 100%... I love controversial. I know. That's why we're here, right? Let's go. But I 100% believe we should be doing that. That's one of the things I do. So I have a bad left knee. So I started wrestling when I was 13. And we're talking like, you know, 1987, 51 now, 50, LB 52. And I got really hardcore into lifting weights. I love lifting heavy weights, but no one taught me how to do it appropriately.
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Right. So I'm going to the gym. I'm watching other dudes lift weights and I'm like, all right, cool. That's I'm going to be big like that wrestler. So I started building armor. And then fast forward, I got into racquetball, tennis, hiking, mountain biking, running. In 2008, 2009, I started to develop knee pain.
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I moved to Scottsdale in 2008, worked out with a phenomenal personal trainer who's still one of my best friends today. I still work out with him when I can. And one of our first sessions, he said, hey, man, I'm going to balance you out here. And he moved me over to the right, and I felt like I was going to fall over. I'm like, whoa, dude, that's not balanced. This is balanced. He's like, no, you're leaning on to the left, like, a lot. He's like, your body mechanics are really off here. And so in my head...
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After working with him for a few weeks, I was like, oh, you know what? No one taught me how to work out. I was probably compensating and overcompensated and ground down the cartilage in my left knee. I'm right side dominant, which is unusual. So the cartilage in my left knee is worn out. So I started doing PRP in 2021, and it's worked tremendously well. But I've also put it in my healthy knee to prevent it from breaking down. And this knee has stayed healthy.
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And so I believe that there is a place for these biologics in prevention, and we have data to support it. It's just a matter of if people really want to take that extra step and really support their body on that level. Anyone who's had any kind of knee pain would say, yes, I do. Because you don't want to have it on the other side. Exactly. Yeah. My history of blowing out my right knee and then breaking my left foot and then messing up my left hip because of my right knee and now having a left knee problem because of my left foot, it's like, oh.
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So it can really change your life. Absolutely. And I'm just wondering, too, I have a son. I remember when he had his car accident, he had a crushed heel. And they literally were hanging his heel. They were hanging his leg because he had 13 fractures. And this crushed heel, they said, this is the life-changing injury. Right.
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We're just trying to get him to walk. I go, no, no, no, treat him like Kobe Bryant. Like he's gonna be an athlete. And they had like a pin sticking out of his heel. And now I'm thinking, cause it all healed and he's able to run and do all these things, but he's 30 and I'm starting to worry about 50 and like what we need to do. And I think for-
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Yes, a lot of us, it's like the time is ahead of time. Exactly. So I'd love to know the different options out there because it feels like everyone's kind of getting into this now, like everyone being a lot of the different doctors. And I wonder at the different levels what we should be looking for. When I first started getting some of these things done, I think I had prolotherapy and I had prolozone and I had PRP. What are all the different things that can be done so we kind of know the hierarchy of
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Like I said, again, food is foundation, right? Food, sleep, balancing your nervous system, all that stuff is foundation. But if you want to get into interventional modalities, then prolotherapy would be the entry level. So that's where we use like sugar water, if you will, just to make it simple. And what that does is we inject into ligaments around tendons. You can even put it inside the joint and it creates a mild inflammatory response. And see, inflammation is needed.
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for your body to repair and heal. So we create a mild inflammatory response so those tissues get this signal that there's some damage there. So now we need to divide and create healthy tissue. And when would someone use Prolo versus some of these others? Is that when you said that was entry level? Yeah.
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Would you start there or would you just jump into some of the other things? I like the big guns myself personally. So, yeah. So I'm starting to see a lot of people aged 35 to 55 who are coming to see me preventively. They're like, listen, we've done our research. We're familiar with some of these biologic therapies and we just want to be proactive. I'm like, great. That's fantastic. So something as simple as PRP.
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Most people are familiar with PRP. PRP is platelet-rich plasma. It's processed by taking whole blood. So we just do a blood draw. It goes into a centrifuge. It spins at a specific RPM for a certain amount of time. And what that does is it concentrates red blood cells and white blood cells in the bottom layer. The top layer is gonna be platelet-rich plasma and platelet-poor plasma, which means it has lower concentrations of platelets. Now the platelet-rich plasma and the platelet-poor plasma are full of really important ingredients, I like to call them.
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Growth factors. What are growth factors? Growth factors are these signaling proteins that tell your cells in that area to do something positive, right? Whether it's to replicate, divide, or just to become healthier tissue. Number two, there are growth factors that serve as homing signals for stem cells. Platelet-derived growth factor, BB, is a specific one whose sole purpose, when you put it into the body in specific strategic locations, it recruits stem cells to the area.
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The problem with the joint is we don't have a rich blood supply there. So cartilage does not have a blood supply. So as it breaks down, it's really hard to repair it. When we introduce PRP to that area, we're giving it the nutrients it needs. We're putting the growth factors there and then the stem cells can get recruited and you can create healthier tissue. So PRP is where I would start for anyone with mild to moderate disease, even
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basically asymptomatic, like, hey, look, I play golf, and then I'm sore for a couple of days, but I'm fine. I can get back to the golf course. But that soreness kind of sets me back a couple of days. It's like it's uncomfortable. That would be someone who I'd say, listen, I think PRP would be a great option for you.
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Now, PRP, I had it done in my elbow. I was not ready for this. Oh, yeah. I did not. I was not told. And I'm so used to having things done. I didn't think anything about it. I had it. I was going in to do it, drove myself, and was then going home to do a podcast.
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shockingly painful like shocking like i'm seeing you're trying to do a podcast i have my elbow on a pillow i'm like crying yeah doing this but i would assume with prp that a big part of its success would be the value of the prp from the person a hundred percent hundred percent but that's not like my doctor is
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said nothing about that. Yeah, so that's how you separate a dabbler, is what I like to call them, from a specialist. Those of us who specialize in this field know the importance of something called metabolic optimization before orthobiologic therapy, okay? So what this means is basically I tell patients, you're the pharmacy that's making the stuff I'm gonna be putting back into you, so make it good.
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And so we give them a whole pre-procedure protocol. And that can take anywhere from two weeks for someone relatively healthy to three to six months for someone who really needs a whole metabolic reset. Well, how would you know if someone needed to take three to six months to upgrade their plasma?
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Great question. I'll give you an example. So I saw someone, well, smokers, number one, not a question. I mean, not an option. If you're a smoker, then you're making bad cells. You're constantly in the state of inflammation. I will not do a biologic procedure for a smoker. That's vaping included. And would they be able to stop smoking for three to six months and reverse that? Or it's like, I don't know. And I know has been able to do that. It's like they can't stop. So
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Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, we'll do the consult. Oh, you're a smoker. Sorry, you're not a candidate for this. Unless you quit smoking for a minimum of three months. And so those people don't come back. I mean, I can think of three people that I've seen within the last four years, all three of them. Do mace people still smoke? I know, me too. All right, let's be ready for a speed round. Okay. Biggest myth about pain after 40.
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You have to live with it. Most overlooked cause of chronic pain. Diet. One daily habit to prevent joint degeneration. Stretching. Best therapy for accelerating healing. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The surgery you believe is overused. Joint replacement. And non-negotiable for maintaining mobility. Strength training.
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Your definition of aging powerfully. Aging knowledgeably. Those were the most thoughtful speed round answers I've ever heard. All right on, yeah. Yes. Those are great questions. You made me think. I was like, oh, I need to think here for a minute. Okay.
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Now, for someone who would love to learn more about what you're doing, I'm going to put everything at jjvirgin.com forward slash Dr. Goyle, G-O-Y-L-E. What are we going to send home with them? Yeah, we have a free e-pain book. Kind of gives you a guide as to how you can optimize pain relief naturally.
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Excellent. Okay. And again, one of the things that someone could do right away, and I think this is really important, is fix your diet. And you've talked about anti-inflammatory diet. I'm like, we should just always be like, who wants to be in an inflammatory state? Exactly. Like being in an anti-inflammatory state through diet is one of the most important things. Absolutely. And I just have to do a shout out to your most awesome wife. You know, I judge men by their wives.
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So when I met you, I'm like, he's a good guy. I'm a rock star. Yeah, he's awesome. I'm so lucky. Because your wife is really the guiding force with the anti-inflammatory diet and making everything delicious. I'm really excited about the things coming up with her and cookbooks and products and everything else. It's such an incredible exponential impact. Yes, stay tuned because we're going to have her on the show.
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and sharing all because everybody needs that piece of it. Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, AJ. This was great.
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Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review.
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And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ app.
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It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day, and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
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Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional and ask you to do it.
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Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk. You know, when we talk about menopause, the focus is almost always on hormones. But what I've learned is
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That's only part of the picture because this phase of life doesn't just affect your hormones. It affects how your brain works, your energy, how you feel day to day. And a big part of that comes down to your cells. Your cells rely on something called phospholipids. These are the building blocks of your cell membranes and they're essential for how your brain functions, how your cells communicate,
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and how your body operates overall. As estrogen declines, your body's natural production of key phospholipids can shift, which can impact things like mental clarity and overall resilience. That's why I started focusing on supporting this more foundational layer.
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One of the things I added into my routine is BodyBio PC. It's a phospholipid complex that helps support cell membrane health, brain function, and liver function. Basically, helping your body get building blocks it needs to function well.
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And what I like about this is that it's not just about chasing symptoms. It's about supporting how your body works at a deeper level. So you're supporting things like clearer thinking, better focus, and feeling more like yourself again. And of course, BodyBio is known for really high-quality, practitioner-trusted formulations.
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So if you're in perimenopause or menopause and feel like something is still missing, this is definitely worth looking into. You can head to bodybio.com and use code JJVirgin20 for a discount.
