WEBVTT
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Pick an age that you would like to be for the rest of your life.
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Like it could be 20, it could be 18, it could be 27, it could be 30.
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But it's that age when you physically sort of felt your very, very best.
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Yeah, the most vital.
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The most vital, the most energy, and all of that.
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And claim that age.
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I think we really want to think about how do we have optimal?
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Because that's when you feel your best.
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That's when you can do the most.
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And that's the beauty of this is that when you feel great, you change your entire trajectory in life.
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What you're willing to try, what you're willing to take on.
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When you focus on being youthful, you actually solve the problems of aging and you also solve the problems of chronic disease.
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Because I think longevity itself represents the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had to upscale, upregulate, step into a much higher and fuller expression of what it is to be human.
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Today on the podcast, our guest is Dr.
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Jeffrey Gladden.
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Dr.
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Gladden is a distinguished authority in the field of longevity and preventative medicine.
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He is the founder and medical director of Gladden Longevity and Advanced Performance, an esteemed clinic in Dallas, Texas.
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He is dedicated to optimizing life, energy, longevity, health, and performance.
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Welcome to the Vibrant Wellness Podcast today, Dr.
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Oh, my pleasure, Alex.
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Great to be here.
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I'm so glad that you're here.
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Good to see you.
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I know that you're a friend of Vibrant.
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Yes.
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So you know, I think what what something that that is interesting and stood out to me when I was uh reading your bio is that uh somewhere at some point you asked the question, how good can I be?
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Mm-hmm.
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That's right.
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So how did that kind of spur you into longevity medicine and into just asking those those questions about health span versus you know just a lot of people?
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Yeah, you know, I mean that question really called a long life.
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It came out of my own journey, right?
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When I got sick in my 50s, um putting on weight, you know, getting depressed, anxious, um, brain fog, um, losing muscle and strength and and feeling exhausted all the time.
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And then uh being tested by my colleagues and being told, hey, uh, you're just getting older.
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Why don't you take an antidepressant?
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Yeah.
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Right.
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This is just the way it goes, right?
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This is just, yeah.
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You're you're all your labs are normal for your age, right?
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So anyway, that was uh such an existential moment that I at that point refused to do that.
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I couldn't believe it was still going to be downhill from here.
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And so then I threw myself into the functional integrative medicine space, right?
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And two and a half years later, I mean, we could do it now in probably 12 minutes if we had the labs in front of us, but but it took two and a half years back then with subclinical hypothyroidism, a DiO2 gene that doesn't convert T4 to T3 in my brain efficiently, right?
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A homozygous snip there, then I was testosterone and DHEA depleted.
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Yeah.
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And I don't methylate well.
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I don't make certain neurotransmitters, right?
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So once I got that stuff organized, it's like, oh, well, I feel great again, and I wonder how good I can be.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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So I'd lost, you know, 20 pounds of fat, put on 10 pounds of muscles, my kids couldn't keep up with me again.
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And I'm like, this is great.
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Like, I think there have to be a lot of people out there that would, you know, like to go about aging differently than they're and they're experiencing it.
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Yeah.
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So that was the first question that came to us was how how good can we be?
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I love that.
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And I think to your point, how many patients in their 40s and 50s, when they start feeling off, they're just told by their physicians and even society in general, well, that's just a part of normal aging.
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It's just really a downhill slide from now on.
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Yeah.
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And just accept it.
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It's the most insidious um way to acquiesce to the aging process is to buy into the narrative that you're just getting older.
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This is how it is.
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What do you expect?
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Yeah.
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Everybody else goes through this, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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It's it's really insidious because it works itself into your thought process and your frame of reference, right?
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And if you wake up and you know, you don't feel 20 again or 30 again or 25 again, you still say, yeah, but I'm I'm good for my age.
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Right.
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Right, which is, I think, one of the most insidious ways that you can actually acquiesce to the aging process is to even identify with chronology.
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Right.
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So in our world, we no longer identify with chronology.
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Yeah, I think I heard you say that once, right?
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What do you identify with?
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What age do you identify?
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Well, I think Was it 28?
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Was it something like that?
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Yeah.
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So right now I'm 27.
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Okay.
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I wake up 27 every day.
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That's amazing.
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Um, and and I think what's really important for anyone listening to this, actually, is to pick an age that you would like to be for the rest of your life.
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Like it could be 20, it could be 18, it could be 27, it could be 30.
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You know, the book is 100 is a new 30.
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Right.
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Um, and it could be 35, it could be 42.
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It doesn't really matter.
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But it's that age when you physically sort of felt your very, very best.
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Yeah, the most vital.
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The most vital, the most energy, and all of that.
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And claim that age, right?
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Because that's now your reference point.
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And if you don't feel like that, then it's like, oh, okay, my new reference point is here.
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So what do I need to do to get back to that?
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Right.
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Right.
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And once you start asking that question, in life you only get the answers to the questions that you ask, right?
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That's a good point.
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So um it'll drive you to ask the right questions to actually start to go back.
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Yeah.
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Well, you mentioned something about um we were talking about how common, you know, how common these things are.
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People commonly feel unwell, but just because it's common doesn't mean it's even normal.
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That's right.
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And I think uh, you know, modern conventional medicine hasn't fully caught up with all of the implicating factors like you talked about methylation and different SNPs or even subclinical hypothyroidism.
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I don't know how that's still a topic of debate within the medical community, but it is.
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Uh, but there's so many things that we can do to optimize health.
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Yeah, totally.
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I think I think the idea of normal um is also not helpful.
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That's true.
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I think we really want to think about how do we have optimal.
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Yeah, I love that.
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How do we have optimal?
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Because that's when you feel your best, that's when you can do the most.
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And that's the beauty of this is that um, you know, when you feel great, you change your entire trajectory in life.
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What you're willing to try, what you're willing to take on.
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And the way I see it is that the return on investment of time, attention, or resources it takes to get back to 27 is paid a thousand flow, right?
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The ROI on that is a thousandfold.
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Right.
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And plus you get to feel great, right?
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So it's the best.
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Yeah.
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So, you know, everyone's using the word longevity now.
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It's become very buzzy.
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Yeah.
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Uh, and I I think that it can be confusing to maybe the average patient or even the average clinician who is trying to get into the space, it can feel a little intimidating.
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So some people might think that that means um eternal youth or you know, making it to a hundred, or some people are saying making it to 120.
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But what does longevity really mean?
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And what are kind of the pillars of longevity?
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Yeah, it's a great question.
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You know, I think different people relate to it differently, right?
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You have some people that are immortalists, like we want to live forever.
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Yeah.
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Other people are, I want to make it to 100.
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Other people want to take 85 and be good, 120, crack the hayfuck limit.
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I want to be 180, 370, you know, 700.
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You see all these things, right?
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The problem for me with that is that all of that is very abstract.
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Right.
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Like I can't really relate to what it would be like to be 100 years old.
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Right.
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And every picture I've ever seen of somebody that was 100 or 110 or 120, it's like, it's not exactly what I'm going for, right?
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So that's why I think staying youthful is so important.
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So for me, when you focus on being youthful, you actually solve the problems of aging, yeah, and you also solve the problems of chronic disease.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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So it's the youthfulness that actually protects us.
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Um so to that end, I think there's also some confusion about longevity as to what does it actually mean, right?
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So for me, it's when I'm 100 or 120 or whatever it ends up.
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Um, you know, I want to have that 30-year-old body, yeah, but I also want to develop a 300-year-old mind.
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Right?
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I like that.
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Because I think longevity itself represents the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had to upscale, upregulate, step into a much higher and fuller expression of what it is to be human.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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Imagine if you could um have all the experiences at age 100, plus all the psycho-spiritual wisdom, transcendence, insight, plus healing all the traumas, all the things that we live in reaction to, all those things, right?
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So now you really have so many sort of psycho-spiritual tools at your uh at your disposal, and you've healed so many things in yourself, right, right?
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Not only physically, but psycho-spiritually.
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Oh my gosh, can you imagine?
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I mean, just think about that for a second.
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What does that open up for you?
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It's like, oh, we could change the planet.
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We could we could redirect all kinds of things, right?
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And humanity could step into another level of being.
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So to me, that's super exciting.
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Yeah, I think that in our society we focus so much on youth, right?
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And um for me, I noticed, you know, I used to hear people say, well, just wait till you're you know in your forties.
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You're gonna have a different perspective than when you were in your twenties.
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And you know, I'm in my my mid-40s now, and it's so true.
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It's like I could not have understood some of these things uh until I got to this age.
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So that wisdom is something that I think is uh not focused on very much in our culture.
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It's priceless, though.
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Yeah, it's priceless.
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I think it's a good thing.
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And I think with each decade you get more.
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Yeah, every decade you get more.
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And what I've discovered is that if you live your life from the perspective of what I call a growth mindset, where you're married to the questions, you know, and our questions are how good can you be?
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How do you make 100 to new 30?
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How do you live well beyond 120?
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Yeah, how do you live young for a lifetime?
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And how do you develop a 300-year-old mind?
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Yeah.
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So we could wake up every day to those questions, even though we have thousands of answers.
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Right.
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And so I think that what happens for a lot of people, and this is true for clinicians as well, um, as well as their patients, is people feel like they go through life and their task, one of their tasks in life is to find their answers.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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The problem with finding your answer is that then you've got to appear to it.
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Right.
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You've and now you've got to defend it when something else comes up.
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And it puts you in a posture of a non-growing mindset.
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When you when you fuel yourself with the questions, right, then it's like a new thing comes along.
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It's like, oh, well, I'm curious about that.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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Eternal curiosity is a piece of this.
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It's almost like taking a child's mindset of playfulness and curiosity, and instead of locking it into a set of answers, it's allowing it to flourish into these questions with acquired wisdom.
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You see the power of that.
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It becomes so powerful.
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So incredibly powerful, right?
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So you, as you go through life, you get to keep all the wisdom that you've developed in your 40s.
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You get to add to it as you go forward, and you have your youthful body.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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That's that's that's the that's the future I'm going for.
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That is really, really brilliant.
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So I guess, practically speaking, how do you approach that with your patients?
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Yeah, I think that's a great question too.
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I think the way that we do it is we first would share with them uh our concept of longevity, right?
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And so the way that we've broken that down is it's really uh involves five different areas, five circles we call them.
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And the first one is life energy, which is really the psycho-spiritual space.
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And that's really this circle that binds all the other ones together.
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Right.
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And then there's the longevity circle.
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And, you know, when we were talking about my own journey of not feeling well and getting well, the way I was able to solve the problem was going to the root cause and fixing that.
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Very important.
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The longevity circle, however, is looking at the hallmarks of aging, right, which are both phenotypic expressions of aging and also drivers of aging.
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Right.
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Right.
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And so what happens in most medicine is that people are focusing on the phenotypic expressions of disease or aging, but not going to the root cause of the root cause, right?
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So we have those certain that circle, the longevity circle, where we're going at the root cause of the root cause.
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What are your telomere links?
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How are your mitochondria doing?
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What's your senescent cell burden, right?
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How able are you to repair your DNA?
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Things like that.
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So when you go to the root cause of the root cause, that becomes very powerful.
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Yeah.
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And then the next circle for us is health, which is everything we know, right?
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It's like your liver, your brain, your organs, right?
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You take care of all that.
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And we leverage many, many cutting-edge things.
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And Vibrant has continued to develop tests that we really love because they help us to do that more efficiently with all the zoomers and now the cardiology zoomer.
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I'm super excited about, and things like this, right?
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And the oxidative stress panel.
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You had to just order so many panels and disparate labs, and it yeah, it's really kind of and I found the oxidative stress panel to be super useful.
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Is that one you use a lot?
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Oh, yeah.
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Well, you know, it just came to us not uh not that far back.
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But so anyway, that's that's great.
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So we go through and we leverage those for the health piece of it, and they also spill over into the longevity circle as well.
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Um and then the next circle for us is performance, right?
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So a lot of people think about living a long time, but really I want to perform at a very high level physically as I age, right?
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So I want to be fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, right?
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Great cardiovascular capacity, reserve.
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Recovery and your body.
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Exactly.
00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:51.039
And flexibility.
00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:55.200
So if I'm gonna be that when I'm a hundred, I better be that now.
00:13:55.279 --> 00:13:55.679
Yeah, right.
00:13:55.919 --> 00:13:56.720
You've got to develop it.
00:13:57.039 --> 00:13:57.440
That's right.
00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:03.200
And the thing that most people don't realize is that you know, when you're 18, if you want to get in shape, what do you do?
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:04.960
You go for a run and lift some weights, right?
00:14:05.039 --> 00:14:05.840
Go for a swim, whatever.
00:14:06.159 --> 00:14:07.120
Do that for three weeks and then you're fine.
00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:08.720
Yeah, and then you're there, right?
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:14.159
But every decade of your life, maybe every half decade of your life, it's a different scenario.
00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:14.480
Right.
00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:20.320
And I think the thing that most people don't understand about training, everybody focuses on the muscle.
00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:20.559
Right.
00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:21.039
Right?
00:14:21.279 --> 00:14:24.799
It's really not about the muscle, it's really about the nervous system.
00:14:25.519 --> 00:14:28.000
So you really want to be training your nervous system.
00:14:28.159 --> 00:14:29.679
The muscles come along for the ride.
00:14:29.759 --> 00:14:29.919
Right.
00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:33.440
If you had a stroke, that muscle's not moving, right?
00:14:33.519 --> 00:14:33.679
Right.
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:35.360
So it's all about the nervous system.
00:14:35.519 --> 00:14:35.759
Right.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.639
And when you the nerves are strong and healthy, they keep the muscle strong and healthy, right?
00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:45.039
It's when you get sarcopenia because the nerve that innervates the muscle dies.
00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:45.279
Right.
00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:45.600
Right.
00:14:45.759 --> 00:14:47.039
That's what causes sarcopenia.
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:48.399
It's not eating more protein.
00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:48.720
Right.
00:14:48.879 --> 00:14:49.519
It's not firing.
00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:51.519
It's important to have the right diet.
00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:53.840
But the point is it's all about the nervous system.
00:14:54.159 --> 00:15:08.000
And if you want to be balanced and quick and agile and not fall and feel like you can run down the stairs and do whatever you want in life and play with your great grandkids or whatever you want to do, go snowboarding or mountain biking or whatever you want to do, you can do it if your nervous system is dialed in.
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:08.320
Yeah.
00:15:08.480 --> 00:15:11.360
And so we focus on that in the performance piece.
00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:16.639
And then the last circle, just to fill it out for you, is really the environments we reside in.
00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:24.399
So, you know, uh, we all live in four predominantly home, work, business travel, and vacation travel.
00:15:24.559 --> 00:15:24.960
Yeah.
00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:33.039
And the problem is that if we don't intentionally architect each of those environments, it's really easy to kind of go off track with what you're trying to accomplish, right?
00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:38.799
We're here at a conference, you know, they're doing a good job with the food and things like that, but what's happening with sleep and supplements?
00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:39.840
And are you on track?
00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:40.720
Did you exercise?
00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:42.080
You know, these kinds of things, right?
00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:47.039
So um making sure that you actually have a plan to be able to stay on course.
00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:47.279
Yeah.
00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:49.039
So those are the five things we look at.
00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:53.279
So then we we show that to the client, say, look, here's what how we're thinking about longevity.
00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:54.399
Does this resonate with you?
00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:56.159
It's like, yeah, that resonates with me.
00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:56.799
Okay, great.
00:15:56.879 --> 00:15:58.720
What age do you want to be for the rest of your life?
00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:00.480
Oh, well, I'd like to be 32.
00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:02.080
Okay, well, tell me about 32.
00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:02.399
Right.
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:05.200
Because I want to know what was going on at 32.
00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:05.440
Yeah.
00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:07.039
And then what's it like now?
00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:11.039
And then from there, it's like, okay, well, let's build a program to get you back to 32.
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:12.879
Let's take you to a 300-year-old mind.
00:16:13.200 --> 00:16:13.600
So, Dr.
00:16:13.679 --> 00:16:18.320
Gladden, when you talk about nervous system, yeah, what does that mean exactly to you?
00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:23.519
Because you know, most people talk a lot about sympathetic and parasympathetic activation.
00:16:23.840 --> 00:16:29.200
Is that what you mean as far as um the health of your nervous system, or does it go beyond that?
00:16:29.360 --> 00:16:30.080
Tell me more about that.
00:16:30.559 --> 00:16:30.799
Yeah.
00:16:31.039 --> 00:16:32.639
So that's a great question.
00:16:32.799 --> 00:16:40.879
I think um when I think of the nervous system, it does include the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, if you will.
00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:44.720
And that's a crucial, uh crucial piece of it, right?
00:16:44.879 --> 00:16:50.960
We have ways to measure that in our office so we we can see how much stress somebody's carrying in their system.
00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:52.799
Uh, even if they don't feel stressed.
00:16:52.879 --> 00:16:52.960
Yeah.
00:16:53.120 --> 00:16:54.799
It's like, okay, great, well, let's measure you.
00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:59.600
And it's like, well, a little bit to the contrary, there's lots of stress here, right?
00:16:59.840 --> 00:17:04.880
Um and other times people uh will come in and it'll be very zen, uh, which is great.
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:06.480
And we can map all that too.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:28.160
So the sympathetic comparison pathetic nervous system is super important because of the impact that the signals coming from the organs up to the brain have a salutary effect on the brain if all this stuff down here is working well, if your gut biome is working, and you're not, you know, you don't have leaky gut, and you know, you're not talk de, you know, intoxicating your liver with things, right?
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:28.799
All these things.
00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:38.880
So and then the reverse is true that on the on the uh efferent, uh, where the basically the signals are coming out of the brain, 20% of that goes down to the organs.
00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:44.319
If that's full of stress and anxiety and whatever else, that puts a major stress on everything down here, too.
00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:46.720
It breaks down the gut gut brain barrier, right?
00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:50.799
It accelerates hypertension, it accelerates kidney disease and heart disease.
00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:55.440
So it's really critical in health to learn to balance that.
00:17:55.839 --> 00:18:00.559
And what we found is that a lot of it boils down to the strength of the vagus nerve.
00:18:01.039 --> 00:18:02.160
So we measure that also.
00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:02.640
Okay.
00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:03.920
How do you do that?
00:18:04.240 --> 00:18:05.440
Well, that's a good question.
00:18:05.599 --> 00:18:08.000
We put a couple clips on your wrist and you sit there for five minutes.
00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:09.119
Oh, that's interesting.
00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:12.000
And then we can we get a report that reports it out to us.
00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:12.480
Wow.
00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:15.599
And you can build the strength of the vagus nerve several different ways.
00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:20.240
Cardiovascular exercise builds it, you know, a marathon runner will have a strong vagal tone.
00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:25.599
Um, you can also do it with things like, you know, gargling and humming and things like that.
00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:27.519
There are vagus nerve stimulators.
00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:41.039
But what we found is really super helpful um because you're getting not only parasympathetic nervous system activation, but you're also building your mind is to do something called brain tap.
00:18:41.599 --> 00:18:43.680
Uh and brain tap is basically a headset.
00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:56.160
I have no financial connection to them, but it's a it's a headset with um binaural beats that come through the earphones and a visor that comes down, and there are lights, so it's photobiomodulation through the visor with your eyes closed.
00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:56.400
Yeah.
00:18:56.559 --> 00:18:56.799
Right.
00:18:56.880 --> 00:19:04.319
And you listen to something for 11 minutes or 22 minutes or whatever you choose, and you can put yourself into the brainwave state that you want.
00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:04.640
Wow.
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:12.480
So delta would be sleep, theta would be deep, profound meditation, alpha would be regular meditation, beta is what we're doing here, and gamma is a flow state.
00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:12.799
Right.
00:19:13.039 --> 00:19:19.119
So you can actually dial yourself in and train your brain to go to that state.
00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:20.319
Wow, that's interesting.
00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:23.200
And it's also teaching you what it's like to be in that state.
00:19:23.599 --> 00:19:25.359
So it works as a biofeedback tool in some way.
00:19:25.759 --> 00:19:26.880
Sort of as a biofeedback tool.
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:27.519
That's right.
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:31.759
And so what we find is that when people will do that, their scores go up dramatically.
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:32.240
Wow.
00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:32.559
Yeah.
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:36.559
Which is really, really fun to see because we know it's having a big salutary effect on everything else.
00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:36.960
Right.
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:37.279
Yeah.
00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:38.480
That's wonderful.
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:41.039
Um, you mentioned about environment.
00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:43.039
Oh, just say this about the nervous system.
00:19:43.519 --> 00:19:47.200
So the sympathetic, parasympathetic, autonomic, that's just a piece of it, right?
00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:47.440
Right.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:49.519
It's also how you think, what you believe.
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:52.240
And then it's also about the health of your neurons, right?
00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:53.839
How you know, how connected are they?
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:55.200
What's your acetylcholine levels?
00:19:55.279 --> 00:19:57.359
What are your plasmologen levels?
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.400
Where are you, you know, getting your acetylcholine from and things like this, right?
00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:01.359
Neurotransmitter levels.
00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:02.799
Yes.
00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:03.279
Yeah.
00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:04.640
I love, I love that.
00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:06.160
I use it a lot in my practice as well.
00:20:06.559 --> 00:20:06.720
Yeah.
00:20:06.799 --> 00:20:06.880
Yeah.
00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:07.599
That's good stuff.
00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:09.279
It does move the needle.
00:20:09.519 --> 00:20:09.759
Yeah.
00:20:09.839 --> 00:20:12.000
And then there's a peripheral nervous system, right?
00:20:12.160 --> 00:20:12.559
Balance.
00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:13.279
How do you move?
00:20:13.359 --> 00:20:16.319
Uh can you do figure eights backwards with your eyes closed, right?
00:20:16.559 --> 00:20:17.119
Oh wow, yeah.
00:20:17.279 --> 00:20:17.599
So, right?
00:20:17.759 --> 00:20:18.319
I don't know.
00:20:18.799 --> 00:20:28.000
Well, we train this because when you do it, when you challenge your nervous system, you know, the body only gets stronger when you challenge it, whether you jump for a sauna, a cold plunge, or do exercise.
00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:31.119
Exercise is just a challenge that your body's going to respond to.
00:20:31.359 --> 00:20:40.160
So if you challenge your nervous system, let me try this, let me try that, you will find that all of a sudden you feel like you're fret of stare.
00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:41.599
I mean, you could dance across the group.
00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:42.240
Yeah.
00:20:42.400 --> 00:20:42.960
That's right.
00:20:43.039 --> 00:20:43.680
It's really fun.
00:20:44.079 --> 00:20:45.279
It's really fun and fascinating.
00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:47.839
So training the entire nervous system is a point.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:48.480
Yeah.
00:20:48.880 --> 00:21:00.640
Well, you had talked about environment, and it's interesting because I'm sure in the patients that you serve, um, I do have a lot of patients in my 50s and 60s that are kids have gone off to college and now they're having all their grand adventures.
00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:01.039
Yeah.
00:21:01.279 --> 00:21:05.599
And so they live really healthy lives at home and then they go and have kids wonderful advantages.
00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:12.720
We're gonna go on vacation, you know, and they're consistently traveling for months in the year, and then they drop the ball.
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:13.599
Totally.
00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:18.240
Um and and I think that more than anything, I see a lot of alcohol consumption on those trips.
00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:19.039
What do you do?
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:25.039
Yeah, I think um, you know, there's some data that a bit of alcohol is actually helpful, right?
00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:31.759
A little alcohol dehydrogenase, and the liver is actually good for processing endogenous alcohols, and there's a longevity benefit to that.
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.880
I tend to get my alcohol from kombucha.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:36.799
I drank a little kombucha, you know.
00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:37.920
I actually have some in the room.
00:21:38.079 --> 00:21:41.920
I went to Whole Foods yesterday to get some, along with some greens and some other stuff.
00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:46.240
Um but I think for the most part, there's not much good to be said for alcohol.
00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:48.640
Yeah uh it really disrupts sleep patterns.
00:21:48.799 --> 00:21:53.680
Everybody who wears a whoop or an aura ring or a garmin wash, they all see their sleep destroyed, right?
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:59.759
And and I think it has an impact on you know, it's a disinhibition, so people eat more, slows down metabolism.
00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:06.079
There's not much good to be said about alcohol, particularly in social quantities, right?
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:06.799
So yeah.
00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:07.440
Yeah.
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:09.279
So that's one of the things that I've seen.
00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:24.400
Um and then I think if you were talking to a clinician audience that was just starting out in the longevity space, what are a few things that that are low-hanging fruit that they could start doing for their patients to serve the their population as they learn more?
00:22:24.559 --> 00:22:30.079
Because I think you're gonna have in this audience a lot of uh clinicians that are eager to do more in the space, but it might feel daunting.
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:32.799
It's a really good question.
00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:36.640
I mean um sometimes you just feel like you're just you know figuring things out of the way.
00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:37.920
Trying to feel your way, right?
00:22:38.079 --> 00:22:38.799
I understand.
00:22:39.039 --> 00:22:44.640
Um You know, when I was leaving cardiology, which I practiced for 25 years, right?
00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:47.839
So I had I went through the health journey I mentioned to you.
00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.240
Then I got to a point where it's like, oh, I've been practicing sick care, I want to leave that, I want to go practice health care.
00:22:53.039 --> 00:23:00.400
And with that, the initial thing was to try to work in some of the what I had learned into my practice.
00:23:01.119 --> 00:23:17.279
It becomes very cumbersome, however, because when you're trying to mix things that are cash pay with insurance pay, yeah, and you're working with a s a set of clients or patients that uh have a insurance, my insurance should cover everything mindset, it becomes very difficult.
00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:17.920
It does.
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:25.119
Um and so what I ended up doing uh was basically kind of base jumping out of that and just saying, I'm just gonna go cash only.
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:33.119
Now I had other sources of revenue coming in from other business ventures that I'd created as a cardiologist, so I could do that.
00:23:33.279 --> 00:23:36.160
I could go without a paycheck for four and a half years to figure it out.
00:23:36.319 --> 00:23:36.559
Right.
00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:38.240
Now, not everybody can do that.
00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:40.000
This was back in 2012, right?
00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:41.599
So not everybody can do that.
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:49.359
So I think the thing to do, if I was trying to recommend it to somebody, first off, get as much education as you can.
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:56.400
Um there's no downside, you know, go to A4M or you know, one of the one of the courses and get certified.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:23:56.640
Yeah.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:57.920
IFM.
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:01.839
And just in the learning, you're gonna it's gonna change your perspective.
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:07.599
Don't start to do, don't say, well, I want to get into longevity, so I'm gonna put a sauna in the office and a red light.
00:24:07.839 --> 00:24:07.920
Right.
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:11.039
That's like that's like the really the wrong approach, right?
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:12.319
That's right.
00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:15.519
That's like that's like the sliver off the icing, right?
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:19.839
I think if you want to do it well, you really want to understand what's happening.
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:21.519
So I would do the education, right?
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.079
Keep your practice going while you're doing the education.
00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:26.079
Even that will inform what you're doing.
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:26.319
Yeah.
00:24:26.559 --> 00:24:37.359
And then you'll say to yourself, oh, well, I still really love my patients and I want to keep working in the insurance model, but I'm gonna bring in some extras in an office next door where we can do some stuff.
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:40.319
And at that point, you'll start to get an idea of what those things could be.
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:40.559
Right.
00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.160
And maybe it's hormone optimization, maybe it's peptides, maybe it's red light, sauna, whatever you want to do.
00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:54.079
Yeah, but it it stands in a standalone space because if people walk into your space, they're an insurance, everything should be paid for by insurance.
00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:54.319
Yeah.
00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:56.160
So you got to go to a different space.
00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:56.400
Right.
00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:03.759
Then what you probably will do is realize that it's much more fun working over here than it is over here, and you can sort of transition over.
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:05.519
But that would be my my recommendation.
00:25:05.839 --> 00:25:07.119
And what would you tell residents?
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:14.720
Because I think a lot of the young docs that are coming up are more interested in this kind of medicine, in precision medicine, longevity medicine, functional medicine.
00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:15.039
Yep.
00:25:15.279 --> 00:25:18.319
Even if they're in specialties, um, what would you tell them?
00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:23.519
Would you tell them just start your practice, don't even go into the traditional model?
00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.480
Or do you think that experience is also very valuable?
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:38.640
Well, I think there's um you know, the things that we learn in medical school and uh residency and fellowship um inform me every day.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:39.359
Yeah, right.
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:40.880
I'm sure the same is true for you.
00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:49.599
Yeah, even though I don't work in that space, yeah, I can access those thought processes and you learn so much um that I would never give that up.
00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:49.839
Yeah.
00:25:50.079 --> 00:25:59.839
And if I was coming out of residency and I'd committed myself to, you know, pick whatever field, um, I would actually go through the training for that field.
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:05.119
And I might even go into practice for a year or two to sort of feel what that's like.
00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:05.519
Yeah.
00:26:05.759 --> 00:26:15.039
And then you could be, you could also be doing the education at that point in parallel to get to the point where it's like, well, I'm gonna jump to a practice that's doing this and I'll join them and do that.
00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:17.519
Not everybody has to start their own practice, right?
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:23.839
So you could do it that way, and you would have the the reference point of seeing the contrast.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:26.000
And they're super valuable to be able to see that.
00:26:26.079 --> 00:26:27.119
I'm sure that's true for you too.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.079
Absolutely, right?
00:26:28.319 --> 00:26:28.720
Absolutely.
00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:32.480
Absolutely to know what you're doing and what you're not doing and what you're able to do that you couldn't do.
00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:33.680
And to know what you don't know.
00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.480
Because I think that's the value of our our training as well.
00:26:36.799 --> 00:26:37.200
That's right.
00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:37.519
That's right.
00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:45.599
Because a lot of people that are practicing medicine might not know, you know, that aren't actually MDs or clinicians or DOs.
00:26:45.759 --> 00:26:48.400
I think they might think they they don't know what they don't know.
00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:48.960
That's right.
00:26:49.119 --> 00:26:52.240
And that gets dangerous too in the space, especially because there's a lot of gray.
00:26:52.640 --> 00:26:53.039
That's right.
00:26:53.279 --> 00:27:05.440
I think if you're gonna make this transition, one thing that can happen is doctors in general, I will say this, professionals in general, whether there's a dentist, a CPA, an attorney, we all kind of get shot out of a gun, right?
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:11.200
We're all smart people, all went to good schools, we all got trained, and what we really got was indoctrinated, right?
00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:15.519
And then we kind of wear that indoctrination as that this is the holy grail.
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:15.759
Yeah.
00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:24.640
Some people, when they make the transition from uh it's called traditional medicine into the longevity functional medicine space, they can bring that same mindset.
00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:27.519
Yeah, I want to be reindoctrinated with another way.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:28.000
Right.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:30.480
And quite honestly, that's missing the point.
00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:38.799
What you want to do is learn as much as you can in the new paradigm, but switch your mindset away from being indoctrinated into being eternally curious.
00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:39.359
Exactly.
00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:41.839
Because things are changing so fast.
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:43.200
Much more rapidly than more.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:44.319
Much more rapidly.
00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:46.559
I'm gonna talk about that tomorrow when I speak.
00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:49.119
And oh my gosh, it's unbelievable.
00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:51.519
Like it's almost gonna be unrecognizable 18 months from now.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:54.880
That's what I was thinking about earlier when I was speaking to another doc.
00:27:55.039 --> 00:27:56.480
It's it's like it's coming so quick.
00:27:56.559 --> 00:27:59.680
And I was talking about, uh and I wanted to ask you this too.
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:08.720
Do you think that the translational gap, you know, between bench research and standardization is gonna change because of how quickly tech is changing?
00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:09.119
Yes.
00:28:09.359 --> 00:28:09.680
You do?
00:28:09.839 --> 00:28:09.920
Yeah.
00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:12.480
I think it's gonna really change so quickly.
00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:18.480
I think we're gonna have um, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the quantum computing space at all.
00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:19.119
Right.
00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:20.400
It's so fascinating.
00:28:21.359 --> 00:28:22.400
It's so wild, right?
00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:24.160
And what do quantum computers do?
00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:32.559
Well, they can find the signal in the middle of a lot of noise and they can parallel process millions of possible solutions simultaneously instead of sequentially.
00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:32.880
Right.
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:46.000
So when you start to do that in an in silico model, right, when you basically have a digital twin of an individual, yeah, and you do that, we're gonna be able to get to bespoke answers for an individual much, much quicker than we can today.
00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:46.319
Yeah.
00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:53.279
And a lot of the research that's been done, population-based and everything else, it's so flawed in the way it's set up, right?
00:28:53.519 --> 00:29:00.240
All the people that were excluded, right, you know, all the slicing and dicing of the statistics to find a subgroup that was you know responded.
00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:06.559
I mean, there's so much sort of BS, quite honestly, in the research, which people call double blinders.
00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:08.400
They're like, it's the science, trust the science.
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:10.960
And it's like, well, that can also be manipulated.
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:11.680
That's right.
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:14.880
And so what you really want is what's the right answer for this individual?
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:16.000
Yeah, the N of one.
00:29:16.240 --> 00:29:17.440
The N of one, exactly.
00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:20.079
And I think the computing power is going to help us get there.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:21.359
That's really interesting.
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:23.279
I'm excited to hear more about that.
00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:23.759
Yeah.
00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.880
Now let me ask you uh a final question.
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:34.160
Um for the audience that is not a physician, not physician, not clinician, and they want to really start working on their longevity.
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:39.680
They they want to have a healthy and long health span, they want to live a vibrant life.
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:42.480
What are low-hanging fruits that they can start out with?
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:45.359
Because I think for the patient, it can also be daunting.
00:29:45.920 --> 00:29:48.000
It can be incredibly because it feels like a long checklist.
00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:49.119
It can be incredibly daunting.
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:53.680
That's right.
00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:12.640
You know, the the easiest way to start, uh, you know, if you're if you're not working with somebody or and you're not a professional yourself, and even if you are a professional, is really to look at your life and look at the lifestyle choices that you're making and figure out what you would change, right?
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:16.079
Okay, so I'm gonna not eat these foods over here anymore.
00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:16.240
Yeah.
00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:20.079
I'm gonna start eating these foods over here because I've seen that this is this is good.
00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:22.559
I'm gonna go to bed earlier, I'm gonna quit the alcohol.
00:30:22.720 --> 00:30:29.039
It's as much about when you're starting off, it's as much about identifying what you don't want to do as identifying what you do want to do.
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:29.359
Yeah.
00:30:29.519 --> 00:30:35.440
And even if you were to start by saying, I'm just gonna focus on things I don't want to do, that's a massive step forward.
00:30:35.519 --> 00:30:35.759
Yeah.
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:42.240
And the other thing I would say is to pick that age that you want to be for the rest of your life and let that be your guide.
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:43.839
Um, that is so powerful.
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:45.839
I have to tell you, it's incredibly powerful.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:50.720
And then as you take the things out that you don't want to do, you start putting in the things that you do want to do.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:30:51.920
I want to exercise.
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:54.480
Okay, well, let's start by walking around the block.
00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:59.519
Because what's more important than the exercise initially is the habit of exercising.
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:03.519
So if every day you get up and put on your sneakers, yeah, do something.
00:31:03.680 --> 00:31:03.839
Right?
00:31:04.079 --> 00:31:07.039
Even if you don't feel well, put on your sneakers and do something.
00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:11.680
And if you get into that habit, then the habit actually becomes ultimately a ritual.
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:15.519
And you stand, and a ritual is basically something that is part of your identity.
00:31:15.599 --> 00:31:15.680
Right.
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:18.319
That's the point at which you know you're really making progress.
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:20.240
I am a healthy, youthful person.
00:31:20.319 --> 00:31:21.039
I exercise.
00:31:21.119 --> 00:31:28.319
You know, when these things start to become your identity, as to, you know, saying I'm an older, overweight, drinking, you know, that's your identity.
00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:30.799
You've changed that identity, that's going to be so powerful.
00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:32.160
Then you'll fill in all the other stuff.
00:31:32.319 --> 00:31:34.079
I need hormones, I need this, I need that, right?
00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:34.319
Right.
00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:35.920
Continue and optimize.
00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:37.519
Start with what you can control.
00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:38.480
I love that.
00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.319
You know, just a quick anecdote.
00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:48.079
When I was 40, my daughter had a birthday party at a roller skating rink, and I never became a very good roller skater as a kid, but I had so much fun when I went.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:48.480
Yeah.
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.319
And I actually had to use a stroller.
00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:51.039
Oh, okay.
00:31:51.519 --> 00:31:52.000
You mean a walker?
00:31:53.039 --> 00:31:55.039
One of these little walkers with wheels.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:55.519
Okay.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:59.599
And I thought, but but then I got better and then I kind of got my confidence.
00:31:59.759 --> 00:32:01.039
And I loved it so much.
00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:02.000
And I thought, you know what?
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:03.519
I want to learn how to roller skate.
00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:04.079
100%.
00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:04.960
I love that.
00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:06.480
I went and took lessons.
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:06.640
Yes.
00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:10.960
And then I started roller skating with my daughter and her best in our in our driveway.
00:32:11.359 --> 00:32:12.160
And it was so much fun.
00:32:12.559 --> 00:32:13.200
It's so much fun.
00:32:13.359 --> 00:32:16.799
And then we'd go to the roller skating rink, and there's people in their 70s roller skating.
00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:17.200
100%.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:20.640
And I think we just we forget to have fun, we forget to live.
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:24.000
Um a lot of my family is of Cuban heritage.
00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:24.319
Okay.
00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:26.079
And they tend to be a very joyful people.
00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:33.680
And so it's interesting to see them now all in their 80s and 70s, and you know, they don't accept that age for themselves.
00:32:33.920 --> 00:32:34.160
That's right.
00:32:34.319 --> 00:32:34.559
At all.
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:35.039
That's right.
00:32:35.359 --> 00:32:37.519
They dress young, they think young.
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:38.000
That's right.
00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:40.880
They laugh, they dance, they dance, they listen to music.
00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:41.279
Yeah.
00:32:41.519 --> 00:32:41.839
Exactly.
00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:43.359
No, it's fantastic.
00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.480
I think, I think it's really fantastic that you started roller skating with your daughter.
00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:48.799
Yeah.
00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:49.920
And I'll tell you why.
00:32:50.079 --> 00:32:56.720
It's because I think as we go through life and we go through school, we're graded basically on how competent we are.
00:32:56.799 --> 00:32:56.960
Yeah.
00:32:57.200 --> 00:32:58.240
Did we get the right answer?
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:00.480
This is the other problem about finding answers.
00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:02.400
We're graded on how we got the answers, right?
00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:04.559
But it's not about the answers, it's about the questions.
00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:06.559
So we basically get trained up.
00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:09.599
Then we become professionals or young professionals and become parents.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:12.720
And it's all of our identity is based on how competent we are.
00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:18.720
So when you're put in front of a situation like there's a skateboard or there's a pair of roller skates, right?
00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:20.559
I'm not competent at that.
00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:21.839
So I'm not going to do it.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:24.720
I'm not going to try it because my identity is competence.
00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:24.960
Right.
00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:28.720
What I found so powerful is to go back and be five years old.
00:33:28.880 --> 00:33:29.039
Yeah.
00:33:29.119 --> 00:33:29.279
Right.
00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:32.880
When I was five years old, if a scooter went by, it's like, oh, I want to try that.
00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:33.119
Right.
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:38.640
And so when you saw those roller skates, God bless you, you went back to being five years old and said, you know what, I want to roller skate.
00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:39.599
It was so much fun.
00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:40.799
And it's so much fun.
00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:44.240
And this is part of the this is part of living young for a lifetime.
00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:47.039
It's having that eternally youthful perspective.
00:33:47.279 --> 00:33:47.680
I love that.
00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:48.160
Yeah.
00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:52.079
And I think for professionals, because we tend to be achievers.
00:33:52.319 --> 00:33:52.480
Right.
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:58.640
Then you throw in the achievement on top of the competence, and it's like, well, if I'm going to be terrible at this, I'm not going to do it.
00:33:58.880 --> 00:33:59.119
That's right.
00:33:59.279 --> 00:33:59.839
Because I'll fail.
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:01.680
Or if I do it, I've got to be really good at it.
00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:04.240
And I don't have the time to be really good at it.
00:34:04.400 --> 00:34:04.559
Right.
00:34:05.119 --> 00:34:05.920
It's not about that.
00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:06.960
It's really about joy.
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:07.279
Right.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:08.719
It's really about having fun.
00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:09.119
Yeah.
00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:09.440
Yeah.
00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:09.840
That's it.
00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:10.559
That's wonderful.
00:34:10.800 --> 00:34:11.199
That's awesome.
00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:13.119
Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on today.
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:13.840
Oh, my pleasure.
00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:14.079
Yeah.
00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:15.199
It's a wonderful conversation.
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:16.079
Great to chat.
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:16.559
Dr.
00:34:16.639 --> 00:34:18.880
Gladden, thank you so much for being here today.
00:34:19.039 --> 00:34:25.199
Make sure that you guys follow him on Instagram at GladdenLongevity and visit his website, gladdenlongevity.com.
00:34:25.360 --> 00:34:36.400
Whether you're a provider looking for patient solutions or patients looking for a root cause, go to vibrantwellness.com and see how tests like the Hormone Zoomer, Gut Zoomer, and more can get you the answers you've been searching for.
00:34:36.639 --> 00:34:43.440
Be sure to like and subscribe for more great content and follow at VibrantLongevity on Instagram to see what we're up to next.
00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:44.559
See you next time.
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:02.640
Pick an age that you would like to be for the rest of your life.
00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:06.480
Like it could be 20, it could be 18, it could be 27, it could be 30.
00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:09.439
But it's that age when you physically sort of felt your very, very best.
00:00:09.679 --> 00:00:10.560
Yeah, the most vital.
00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:13.119
The most vital, the most energy, and all of that.
00:00:13.519 --> 00:00:15.119
And claim that age.
00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:18.320
I think we really want to think about how do we have optimal?
00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:20.000
Because that's when you feel your best.
00:00:20.079 --> 00:00:21.199
That's when you can do the most.
00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:26.559
And that's the beauty of this is that when you feel great, you change your entire trajectory in life.
00:00:26.879 --> 00:00:29.280
What you're willing to try, what you're willing to take on.
00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:36.799
When you focus on being youthful, you actually solve the problems of aging and you also solve the problems of chronic disease.
00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:52.560
Because I think longevity itself represents the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had to upscale, upregulate, step into a much higher and fuller expression of what it is to be human.
00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:13.840
Today on the podcast, our guest is Dr.
00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:15.040
Jeffrey Gladden.
00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:15.439
Dr.
00:01:15.519 --> 00:01:19.760
Gladden is a distinguished authority in the field of longevity and preventative medicine.
00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:26.079
He is the founder and medical director of Gladden Longevity and Advanced Performance, an esteemed clinic in Dallas, Texas.
00:01:26.159 --> 00:01:29.840
He is dedicated to optimizing life, energy, longevity, health, and performance.
00:01:30.079 --> 00:01:32.000
Welcome to the Vibrant Wellness Podcast today, Dr.
00:01:32.319 --> 00:01:33.040
Oh, my pleasure, Alex.
00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:33.599
Great to be here.
00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:34.719
I'm so glad that you're here.
00:01:34.959 --> 00:01:35.359
Good to see you.
00:01:35.599 --> 00:01:37.200
I know that you're a friend of Vibrant.
00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:37.760
Yes.
00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:49.359
So you know, I think what what something that that is interesting and stood out to me when I was uh reading your bio is that uh somewhere at some point you asked the question, how good can I be?
00:01:49.599 --> 00:01:50.000
Mm-hmm.
00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:50.560
That's right.
00:01:50.879 --> 00:02:00.319
So how did that kind of spur you into longevity medicine and into just asking those those questions about health span versus you know just a lot of people?
00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:02.799
Yeah, you know, I mean that question really called a long life.
00:02:03.120 --> 00:02:04.640
It came out of my own journey, right?
00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:17.520
When I got sick in my 50s, um putting on weight, you know, getting depressed, anxious, um, brain fog, um, losing muscle and strength and and feeling exhausted all the time.
00:02:17.919 --> 00:02:23.280
And then uh being tested by my colleagues and being told, hey, uh, you're just getting older.
00:02:23.439 --> 00:02:25.120
Why don't you take an antidepressant?
00:02:25.199 --> 00:02:25.280
Yeah.
00:02:25.439 --> 00:02:25.599
Right.
00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:26.800
This is just the way it goes, right?
00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:27.840
This is just, yeah.
00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:30.479
You're you're all your labs are normal for your age, right?
00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:37.680
So anyway, that was uh such an existential moment that I at that point refused to do that.
00:02:37.919 --> 00:02:40.879
I couldn't believe it was still going to be downhill from here.
00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:45.439
And so then I threw myself into the functional integrative medicine space, right?
00:02:45.680 --> 00:03:01.439
And two and a half years later, I mean, we could do it now in probably 12 minutes if we had the labs in front of us, but but it took two and a half years back then with subclinical hypothyroidism, a DiO2 gene that doesn't convert T4 to T3 in my brain efficiently, right?
00:03:01.599 --> 00:03:05.199
A homozygous snip there, then I was testosterone and DHEA depleted.
00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:05.360
Yeah.
00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:06.879
And I don't methylate well.
00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:08.639
I don't make certain neurotransmitters, right?
00:03:08.719 --> 00:03:14.319
So once I got that stuff organized, it's like, oh, well, I feel great again, and I wonder how good I can be.
00:03:14.479 --> 00:03:14.639
Yeah.
00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:15.039
Right.
00:03:15.120 --> 00:03:19.919
So I'd lost, you know, 20 pounds of fat, put on 10 pounds of muscles, my kids couldn't keep up with me again.
00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:21.199
And I'm like, this is great.
00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:29.120
Like, I think there have to be a lot of people out there that would, you know, like to go about aging differently than they're and they're experiencing it.
00:03:29.199 --> 00:03:29.360
Yeah.
00:03:29.439 --> 00:03:32.560
So that was the first question that came to us was how how good can we be?
00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:33.360
I love that.
00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:44.800
And I think to your point, how many patients in their 40s and 50s, when they start feeling off, they're just told by their physicians and even society in general, well, that's just a part of normal aging.
00:03:45.199 --> 00:03:47.439
It's just really a downhill slide from now on.
00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:47.599
Yeah.
00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:48.560
And just accept it.
00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:58.080
It's the most insidious um way to acquiesce to the aging process is to buy into the narrative that you're just getting older.
00:03:58.240 --> 00:03:59.039
This is how it is.
00:03:59.199 --> 00:04:00.080
What do you expect?
00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:00.400
Yeah.
00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:03.919
Everybody else goes through this, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:10.800
It's it's really insidious because it works itself into your thought process and your frame of reference, right?
00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:20.959
And if you wake up and you know, you don't feel 20 again or 30 again or 25 again, you still say, yeah, but I'm I'm good for my age.
00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:21.439
Right.
00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:28.319
Right, which is, I think, one of the most insidious ways that you can actually acquiesce to the aging process is to even identify with chronology.
00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:28.639
Right.
00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:31.040
So in our world, we no longer identify with chronology.
00:04:31.439 --> 00:04:32.959
Yeah, I think I heard you say that once, right?
00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:34.000
What do you identify with?
00:04:34.079 --> 00:04:34.800
What age do you identify?
00:04:35.120 --> 00:04:36.240
Well, I think Was it 28?
00:04:36.319 --> 00:04:36.959
Was it something like that?
00:04:37.279 --> 00:04:37.439
Yeah.
00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:38.480
So right now I'm 27.
00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:38.959
Okay.
00:04:39.199 --> 00:04:40.319
I wake up 27 every day.
00:04:40.639 --> 00:04:41.120
That's amazing.
00:04:41.279 --> 00:04:50.000
Um, and and I think what's really important for anyone listening to this, actually, is to pick an age that you would like to be for the rest of your life.
00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:53.920
Like it could be 20, it could be 18, it could be 27, it could be 30.
00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:55.920
You know, the book is 100 is a new 30.
00:04:56.079 --> 00:04:56.399
Right.
00:04:56.639 --> 00:05:00.079
Um, and it could be 35, it could be 42.
00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:01.279
It doesn't really matter.
00:05:01.439 --> 00:05:04.480
But it's that age when you physically sort of felt your very, very best.
00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:05.519
Yeah, the most vital.
00:05:05.839 --> 00:05:08.160
The most vital, the most energy, and all of that.
00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:10.800
And claim that age, right?
00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:13.439
Because that's now your reference point.
00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:18.879
And if you don't feel like that, then it's like, oh, okay, my new reference point is here.
00:05:18.959 --> 00:05:20.720
So what do I need to do to get back to that?
00:05:20.879 --> 00:05:21.040
Right.
00:05:21.279 --> 00:05:21.439
Right.
00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:27.199
And once you start asking that question, in life you only get the answers to the questions that you ask, right?
00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:27.920
That's a good point.
00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:32.079
So um it'll drive you to ask the right questions to actually start to go back.
00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:32.800
Yeah.
00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:38.720
Well, you mentioned something about um we were talking about how common, you know, how common these things are.
00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:43.279
People commonly feel unwell, but just because it's common doesn't mean it's even normal.
00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:44.079
That's right.
00:05:44.319 --> 00:05:54.399
And I think uh, you know, modern conventional medicine hasn't fully caught up with all of the implicating factors like you talked about methylation and different SNPs or even subclinical hypothyroidism.
00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:58.079
I don't know how that's still a topic of debate within the medical community, but it is.
00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:01.600
Uh, but there's so many things that we can do to optimize health.
00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:02.639
Yeah, totally.
00:06:02.800 --> 00:06:08.639
I think I think the idea of normal um is also not helpful.
00:06:08.959 --> 00:06:09.519
That's true.
00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:12.639
I think we really want to think about how do we have optimal.
00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:13.600
Yeah, I love that.
00:06:13.839 --> 00:06:15.120
How do we have optimal?
00:06:15.439 --> 00:06:18.240
Because that's when you feel your best, that's when you can do the most.
00:06:18.319 --> 00:06:25.040
And that's the beauty of this is that um, you know, when you feel great, you change your entire trajectory in life.
00:06:25.439 --> 00:06:28.000
What you're willing to try, what you're willing to take on.
00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:36.800
And the way I see it is that the return on investment of time, attention, or resources it takes to get back to 27 is paid a thousand flow, right?
00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:38.959
The ROI on that is a thousandfold.
00:06:39.199 --> 00:06:39.279
Right.
00:06:39.519 --> 00:06:41.279
And plus you get to feel great, right?
00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:42.639
So it's the best.
00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:43.040
Yeah.
00:06:43.439 --> 00:06:46.000
So, you know, everyone's using the word longevity now.
00:06:46.079 --> 00:06:47.360
It's become very buzzy.
00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:47.839
Yeah.
00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:56.480
Uh, and I I think that it can be confusing to maybe the average patient or even the average clinician who is trying to get into the space, it can feel a little intimidating.
00:06:56.720 --> 00:07:04.240
So some people might think that that means um eternal youth or you know, making it to a hundred, or some people are saying making it to 120.
00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:05.759
But what does longevity really mean?
00:07:05.839 --> 00:07:07.920
And what are kind of the pillars of longevity?
00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:09.360
Yeah, it's a great question.
00:07:09.519 --> 00:07:12.319
You know, I think different people relate to it differently, right?
00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:15.199
You have some people that are immortalists, like we want to live forever.
00:07:15.279 --> 00:07:15.439
Yeah.
00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:17.680
Other people are, I want to make it to 100.
00:07:17.839 --> 00:07:22.079
Other people want to take 85 and be good, 120, crack the hayfuck limit.
00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:24.160
I want to be 180, 370, you know, 700.
00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:25.839
You see all these things, right?
00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:29.199
The problem for me with that is that all of that is very abstract.
00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:29.519
Right.
00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:33.120
Like I can't really relate to what it would be like to be 100 years old.
00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:33.279
Right.
00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:40.959
And every picture I've ever seen of somebody that was 100 or 110 or 120, it's like, it's not exactly what I'm going for, right?
00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:45.519
So that's why I think staying youthful is so important.
00:07:45.759 --> 00:07:54.240
So for me, when you focus on being youthful, you actually solve the problems of aging, yeah, and you also solve the problems of chronic disease.
00:07:54.319 --> 00:07:54.480
Yeah.
00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:54.959
Right.
00:07:55.199 --> 00:07:57.680
So it's the youthfulness that actually protects us.
00:07:57.920 --> 00:08:06.000
Um so to that end, I think there's also some confusion about longevity as to what does it actually mean, right?
00:08:06.639 --> 00:08:11.360
So for me, it's when I'm 100 or 120 or whatever it ends up.
00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:17.279
Um, you know, I want to have that 30-year-old body, yeah, but I also want to develop a 300-year-old mind.
00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:18.160
Right?
00:08:18.399 --> 00:08:18.879
I like that.
00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:34.159
Because I think longevity itself represents the greatest opportunity humanity has ever had to upscale, upregulate, step into a much higher and fuller expression of what it is to be human.
00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:34.559
Yeah.
00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:35.120
Right.
00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:48.960
Imagine if you could um have all the experiences at age 100, plus all the psycho-spiritual wisdom, transcendence, insight, plus healing all the traumas, all the things that we live in reaction to, all those things, right?
00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:58.159
So now you really have so many sort of psycho-spiritual tools at your uh at your disposal, and you've healed so many things in yourself, right, right?
00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:00.960
Not only physically, but psycho-spiritually.
00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:02.720
Oh my gosh, can you imagine?
00:09:02.799 --> 00:09:04.159
I mean, just think about that for a second.
00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:05.440
What does that open up for you?
00:09:05.519 --> 00:09:07.919
It's like, oh, we could change the planet.
00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:11.039
We could we could redirect all kinds of things, right?
00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:13.519
And humanity could step into another level of being.
00:09:13.679 --> 00:09:14.960
So to me, that's super exciting.
00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:19.759
Yeah, I think that in our society we focus so much on youth, right?
00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:27.519
And um for me, I noticed, you know, I used to hear people say, well, just wait till you're you know in your forties.
00:09:27.679 --> 00:09:30.480
You're gonna have a different perspective than when you were in your twenties.
00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:33.840
And you know, I'm in my my mid-40s now, and it's so true.
00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:38.480
It's like I could not have understood some of these things uh until I got to this age.
00:09:38.559 --> 00:09:43.840
So that wisdom is something that I think is uh not focused on very much in our culture.
00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:44.960
It's priceless, though.
00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:45.679
Yeah, it's priceless.
00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:46.320
I think it's a good thing.
00:09:46.399 --> 00:09:47.919
And I think with each decade you get more.
00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:49.840
Yeah, every decade you get more.
00:09:50.080 --> 00:10:02.879
And what I've discovered is that if you live your life from the perspective of what I call a growth mindset, where you're married to the questions, you know, and our questions are how good can you be?
00:10:03.039 --> 00:10:04.559
How do you make 100 to new 30?
00:10:04.639 --> 00:10:06.159
How do you live well beyond 120?
00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:08.240
Yeah, how do you live young for a lifetime?
00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:10.559
And how do you develop a 300-year-old mind?
00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:10.879
Yeah.
00:10:11.039 --> 00:10:15.679
So we could wake up every day to those questions, even though we have thousands of answers.
00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:16.159
Right.
00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:28.399
And so I think that what happens for a lot of people, and this is true for clinicians as well, um, as well as their patients, is people feel like they go through life and their task, one of their tasks in life is to find their answers.
00:10:28.960 --> 00:10:29.279
Right.
00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:29.519
Yeah.
00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:35.200
The problem with finding your answer is that then you've got to appear to it.
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:35.600
Right.
00:10:35.679 --> 00:10:38.240
You've and now you've got to defend it when something else comes up.
00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:42.399
And it puts you in a posture of a non-growing mindset.
00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:48.559
When you when you fuel yourself with the questions, right, then it's like a new thing comes along.
00:10:48.639 --> 00:10:50.480
It's like, oh, well, I'm curious about that.
00:10:50.559 --> 00:10:50.720
Yeah.
00:10:50.879 --> 00:10:50.960
Right?
00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:53.200
Eternal curiosity is a piece of this.
00:10:53.519 --> 00:11:05.120
It's almost like taking a child's mindset of playfulness and curiosity, and instead of locking it into a set of answers, it's allowing it to flourish into these questions with acquired wisdom.
00:11:05.279 --> 00:11:06.399
You see the power of that.
00:11:06.559 --> 00:11:07.600
It becomes so powerful.
00:11:07.759 --> 00:11:09.039
So incredibly powerful, right?
00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:13.600
So you, as you go through life, you get to keep all the wisdom that you've developed in your 40s.
00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:16.960
You get to add to it as you go forward, and you have your youthful body.
00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:17.360
Yeah.
00:11:17.519 --> 00:11:17.759
Right?
00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.399
That's that's that's the that's the future I'm going for.
00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:22.399
That is really, really brilliant.
00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:27.919
So I guess, practically speaking, how do you approach that with your patients?
00:11:28.399 --> 00:11:30.639
Yeah, I think that's a great question too.
00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:38.159
I think the way that we do it is we first would share with them uh our concept of longevity, right?
00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:44.240
And so the way that we've broken that down is it's really uh involves five different areas, five circles we call them.
00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:48.320
And the first one is life energy, which is really the psycho-spiritual space.
00:11:48.559 --> 00:11:51.840
And that's really this circle that binds all the other ones together.
00:11:52.159 --> 00:11:52.320
Right.
00:11:52.639 --> 00:11:54.799
And then there's the longevity circle.
00:11:55.120 --> 00:12:03.919
And, you know, when we were talking about my own journey of not feeling well and getting well, the way I was able to solve the problem was going to the root cause and fixing that.
00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:04.720
Very important.
00:12:05.279 --> 00:12:14.080
The longevity circle, however, is looking at the hallmarks of aging, right, which are both phenotypic expressions of aging and also drivers of aging.
00:12:14.159 --> 00:12:14.240
Right.
00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:14.799
Right.
00:12:15.200 --> 00:12:25.919
And so what happens in most medicine is that people are focusing on the phenotypic expressions of disease or aging, but not going to the root cause of the root cause, right?
00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:30.879
So we have those certain that circle, the longevity circle, where we're going at the root cause of the root cause.
00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:32.080
What are your telomere links?
00:12:32.159 --> 00:12:33.200
How are your mitochondria doing?
00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:35.039
What's your senescent cell burden, right?
00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:37.440
How able are you to repair your DNA?
00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:38.320
Things like that.
00:12:38.559 --> 00:12:43.120
So when you go to the root cause of the root cause, that becomes very powerful.
00:12:43.279 --> 00:12:43.440
Yeah.
00:12:43.759 --> 00:12:47.360
And then the next circle for us is health, which is everything we know, right?
00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:49.600
It's like your liver, your brain, your organs, right?
00:12:49.679 --> 00:12:50.799
You take care of all that.
00:12:51.039 --> 00:12:53.120
And we leverage many, many cutting-edge things.
00:12:53.200 --> 00:13:01.840
And Vibrant has continued to develop tests that we really love because they help us to do that more efficiently with all the zoomers and now the cardiology zoomer.
00:13:01.919 --> 00:13:03.759
I'm super excited about, and things like this, right?
00:13:03.919 --> 00:13:05.519
And the oxidative stress panel.
00:13:05.919 --> 00:13:13.200
You had to just order so many panels and disparate labs, and it yeah, it's really kind of and I found the oxidative stress panel to be super useful.
00:13:13.679 --> 00:13:14.480
Is that one you use a lot?
00:13:14.799 --> 00:13:15.039
Oh, yeah.
00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:18.240
Well, you know, it just came to us not uh not that far back.
00:13:18.799 --> 00:13:20.879
But so anyway, that's that's great.
00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:27.200
So we go through and we leverage those for the health piece of it, and they also spill over into the longevity circle as well.
00:13:27.519 --> 00:13:30.399
Um and then the next circle for us is performance, right?
00:13:30.720 --> 00:13:39.679
So a lot of people think about living a long time, but really I want to perform at a very high level physically as I age, right?
00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:44.399
So I want to be fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, right?
00:13:44.559 --> 00:13:46.480
Great cardiovascular capacity, reserve.
00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:48.879
Recovery and your body.
00:13:49.360 --> 00:13:49.919
Exactly.
00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:51.039
And flexibility.
00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:55.200
So if I'm gonna be that when I'm a hundred, I better be that now.
00:13:55.279 --> 00:13:55.679
Yeah, right.
00:13:55.919 --> 00:13:56.720
You've got to develop it.
00:13:57.039 --> 00:13:57.440
That's right.
00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:03.200
And the thing that most people don't realize is that you know, when you're 18, if you want to get in shape, what do you do?
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:04.960
You go for a run and lift some weights, right?
00:14:05.039 --> 00:14:05.840
Go for a swim, whatever.
00:14:06.159 --> 00:14:07.120
Do that for three weeks and then you're fine.
00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:08.720
Yeah, and then you're there, right?
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:14.159
But every decade of your life, maybe every half decade of your life, it's a different scenario.
00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:14.480
Right.
00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:20.320
And I think the thing that most people don't understand about training, everybody focuses on the muscle.
00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:20.559
Right.
00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:21.039
Right?
00:14:21.279 --> 00:14:24.799
It's really not about the muscle, it's really about the nervous system.
00:14:25.519 --> 00:14:28.000
So you really want to be training your nervous system.
00:14:28.159 --> 00:14:29.679
The muscles come along for the ride.
00:14:29.759 --> 00:14:29.919
Right.
00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:33.440
If you had a stroke, that muscle's not moving, right?
00:14:33.519 --> 00:14:33.679
Right.
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:35.360
So it's all about the nervous system.
00:14:35.519 --> 00:14:35.759
Right.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.639
And when you the nerves are strong and healthy, they keep the muscle strong and healthy, right?
00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:45.039
It's when you get sarcopenia because the nerve that innervates the muscle dies.
00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:45.279
Right.
00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:45.600
Right.
00:14:45.759 --> 00:14:47.039
That's what causes sarcopenia.
00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:48.399
It's not eating more protein.
00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:48.720
Right.
00:14:48.879 --> 00:14:49.519
It's not firing.
00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:51.519
It's important to have the right diet.
00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:53.840
But the point is it's all about the nervous system.
00:14:54.159 --> 00:15:08.000
And if you want to be balanced and quick and agile and not fall and feel like you can run down the stairs and do whatever you want in life and play with your great grandkids or whatever you want to do, go snowboarding or mountain biking or whatever you want to do, you can do it if your nervous system is dialed in.
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:08.320
Yeah.
00:15:08.480 --> 00:15:11.360
And so we focus on that in the performance piece.
00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:16.639
And then the last circle, just to fill it out for you, is really the environments we reside in.
00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:24.399
So, you know, uh, we all live in four predominantly home, work, business travel, and vacation travel.
00:15:24.559 --> 00:15:24.960
Yeah.
00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:33.039
And the problem is that if we don't intentionally architect each of those environments, it's really easy to kind of go off track with what you're trying to accomplish, right?
00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:38.799
We're here at a conference, you know, they're doing a good job with the food and things like that, but what's happening with sleep and supplements?
00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:39.840
And are you on track?
00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:40.720
Did you exercise?
00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:42.080
You know, these kinds of things, right?
00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:47.039
So um making sure that you actually have a plan to be able to stay on course.
00:15:47.120 --> 00:15:47.279
Yeah.
00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:49.039
So those are the five things we look at.
00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:53.279
So then we we show that to the client, say, look, here's what how we're thinking about longevity.
00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:54.399
Does this resonate with you?
00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:56.159
It's like, yeah, that resonates with me.
00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:56.799
Okay, great.
00:15:56.879 --> 00:15:58.720
What age do you want to be for the rest of your life?
00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:00.480
Oh, well, I'd like to be 32.
00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:02.080
Okay, well, tell me about 32.
00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:02.399
Right.
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:05.200
Because I want to know what was going on at 32.
00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:05.440
Yeah.
00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:07.039
And then what's it like now?
00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:11.039
And then from there, it's like, okay, well, let's build a program to get you back to 32.
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:12.879
Let's take you to a 300-year-old mind.
00:16:13.200 --> 00:16:13.600
So, Dr.
00:16:13.679 --> 00:16:18.320
Gladden, when you talk about nervous system, yeah, what does that mean exactly to you?
00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:23.519
Because you know, most people talk a lot about sympathetic and parasympathetic activation.
00:16:23.840 --> 00:16:29.200
Is that what you mean as far as um the health of your nervous system, or does it go beyond that?
00:16:29.360 --> 00:16:30.080
Tell me more about that.
00:16:30.559 --> 00:16:30.799
Yeah.
00:16:31.039 --> 00:16:32.639
So that's a great question.
00:16:32.799 --> 00:16:40.879
I think um when I think of the nervous system, it does include the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, if you will.
00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:44.720
And that's a crucial, uh crucial piece of it, right?
00:16:44.879 --> 00:16:50.960
We have ways to measure that in our office so we we can see how much stress somebody's carrying in their system.
00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:52.799
Uh, even if they don't feel stressed.
00:16:52.879 --> 00:16:52.960
Yeah.
00:16:53.120 --> 00:16:54.799
It's like, okay, great, well, let's measure you.
00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:59.600
And it's like, well, a little bit to the contrary, there's lots of stress here, right?
00:16:59.840 --> 00:17:04.880
Um and other times people uh will come in and it'll be very zen, uh, which is great.
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:06.480
And we can map all that too.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:28.160
So the sympathetic comparison pathetic nervous system is super important because of the impact that the signals coming from the organs up to the brain have a salutary effect on the brain if all this stuff down here is working well, if your gut biome is working, and you're not, you know, you don't have leaky gut, and you know, you're not talk de, you know, intoxicating your liver with things, right?
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:28.799
All these things.
00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:38.880
So and then the reverse is true that on the on the uh efferent, uh, where the basically the signals are coming out of the brain, 20% of that goes down to the organs.
00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:44.319
If that's full of stress and anxiety and whatever else, that puts a major stress on everything down here, too.
00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:46.720
It breaks down the gut gut brain barrier, right?
00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:50.799
It accelerates hypertension, it accelerates kidney disease and heart disease.
00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:55.440
So it's really critical in health to learn to balance that.
00:17:55.839 --> 00:18:00.559
And what we found is that a lot of it boils down to the strength of the vagus nerve.
00:18:01.039 --> 00:18:02.160
So we measure that also.
00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:02.640
Okay.
00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:03.920
How do you do that?
00:18:04.240 --> 00:18:05.440
Well, that's a good question.
00:18:05.599 --> 00:18:08.000
We put a couple clips on your wrist and you sit there for five minutes.
00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:09.119
Oh, that's interesting.
00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:12.000
And then we can we get a report that reports it out to us.
00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:12.480
Wow.
00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:15.599
And you can build the strength of the vagus nerve several different ways.
00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:20.240
Cardiovascular exercise builds it, you know, a marathon runner will have a strong vagal tone.
00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:25.599
Um, you can also do it with things like, you know, gargling and humming and things like that.
00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:27.519
There are vagus nerve stimulators.
00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:41.039
But what we found is really super helpful um because you're getting not only parasympathetic nervous system activation, but you're also building your mind is to do something called brain tap.
00:18:41.599 --> 00:18:43.680
Uh and brain tap is basically a headset.
00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:56.160
I have no financial connection to them, but it's a it's a headset with um binaural beats that come through the earphones and a visor that comes down, and there are lights, so it's photobiomodulation through the visor with your eyes closed.
00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:56.400
Yeah.
00:18:56.559 --> 00:18:56.799
Right.
00:18:56.880 --> 00:19:04.319
And you listen to something for 11 minutes or 22 minutes or whatever you choose, and you can put yourself into the brainwave state that you want.
00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:04.640
Wow.
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:12.480
So delta would be sleep, theta would be deep, profound meditation, alpha would be regular meditation, beta is what we're doing here, and gamma is a flow state.
00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:12.799
Right.
00:19:13.039 --> 00:19:19.119
So you can actually dial yourself in and train your brain to go to that state.
00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:20.319
Wow, that's interesting.
00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:23.200
And it's also teaching you what it's like to be in that state.
00:19:23.599 --> 00:19:25.359
So it works as a biofeedback tool in some way.
00:19:25.759 --> 00:19:26.880
Sort of as a biofeedback tool.
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:27.519
That's right.
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:31.759
And so what we find is that when people will do that, their scores go up dramatically.
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:32.240
Wow.
00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:32.559
Yeah.
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:36.559
Which is really, really fun to see because we know it's having a big salutary effect on everything else.
00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:36.960
Right.
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:37.279
Yeah.
00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:38.480
That's wonderful.
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:41.039
Um, you mentioned about environment.
00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:43.039
Oh, just say this about the nervous system.
00:19:43.519 --> 00:19:47.200
So the sympathetic, parasympathetic, autonomic, that's just a piece of it, right?
00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:47.440
Right.
00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:49.519
It's also how you think, what you believe.
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:52.240
And then it's also about the health of your neurons, right?
00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:53.839
How you know, how connected are they?
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:55.200
What's your acetylcholine levels?
00:19:55.279 --> 00:19:57.359
What are your plasmologen levels?
00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:00.400
Where are you, you know, getting your acetylcholine from and things like this, right?
00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:01.359
Neurotransmitter levels.
00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:02.799
Yes.
00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:03.279
Yeah.
00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:04.640
I love, I love that.
00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:06.160
I use it a lot in my practice as well.
00:20:06.559 --> 00:20:06.720
Yeah.
00:20:06.799 --> 00:20:06.880
Yeah.
00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:07.599
That's good stuff.
00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:09.279
It does move the needle.
00:20:09.519 --> 00:20:09.759
Yeah.
00:20:09.839 --> 00:20:12.000
And then there's a peripheral nervous system, right?
00:20:12.160 --> 00:20:12.559
Balance.
00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:13.279
How do you move?
00:20:13.359 --> 00:20:16.319
Uh can you do figure eights backwards with your eyes closed, right?
00:20:16.559 --> 00:20:17.119
Oh wow, yeah.
00:20:17.279 --> 00:20:17.599
So, right?
00:20:17.759 --> 00:20:18.319
I don't know.
00:20:18.799 --> 00:20:28.000
Well, we train this because when you do it, when you challenge your nervous system, you know, the body only gets stronger when you challenge it, whether you jump for a sauna, a cold plunge, or do exercise.
00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:31.119
Exercise is just a challenge that your body's going to respond to.
00:20:31.359 --> 00:20:40.160
So if you challenge your nervous system, let me try this, let me try that, you will find that all of a sudden you feel like you're fret of stare.
00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:41.599
I mean, you could dance across the group.
00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:42.240
Yeah.
00:20:42.400 --> 00:20:42.960
That's right.
00:20:43.039 --> 00:20:43.680
It's really fun.
00:20:44.079 --> 00:20:45.279
It's really fun and fascinating.
00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:47.839
So training the entire nervous system is a point.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:48.480
Yeah.
00:20:48.880 --> 00:21:00.640
Well, you had talked about environment, and it's interesting because I'm sure in the patients that you serve, um, I do have a lot of patients in my 50s and 60s that are kids have gone off to college and now they're having all their grand adventures.
00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:01.039
Yeah.
00:21:01.279 --> 00:21:05.599
And so they live really healthy lives at home and then they go and have kids wonderful advantages.
00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:12.720
We're gonna go on vacation, you know, and they're consistently traveling for months in the year, and then they drop the ball.
00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:13.599
Totally.
00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:18.240
Um and and I think that more than anything, I see a lot of alcohol consumption on those trips.
00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:19.039
What do you do?
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:25.039
Yeah, I think um, you know, there's some data that a bit of alcohol is actually helpful, right?
00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:31.759
A little alcohol dehydrogenase, and the liver is actually good for processing endogenous alcohols, and there's a longevity benefit to that.
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.880
I tend to get my alcohol from kombucha.
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:36.799
I drank a little kombucha, you know.
00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:37.920
I actually have some in the room.
00:21:38.079 --> 00:21:41.920
I went to Whole Foods yesterday to get some, along with some greens and some other stuff.
00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:46.240
Um but I think for the most part, there's not much good to be said for alcohol.
00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:48.640
Yeah uh it really disrupts sleep patterns.
00:21:48.799 --> 00:21:53.680
Everybody who wears a whoop or an aura ring or a garmin wash, they all see their sleep destroyed, right?
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:59.759
And and I think it has an impact on you know, it's a disinhibition, so people eat more, slows down metabolism.
00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:06.079
There's not much good to be said about alcohol, particularly in social quantities, right?
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:06.799
So yeah.
00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:07.440
Yeah.
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:09.279
So that's one of the things that I've seen.
00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:24.400
Um and then I think if you were talking to a clinician audience that was just starting out in the longevity space, what are a few things that that are low-hanging fruit that they could start doing for their patients to serve the their population as they learn more?
00:22:24.559 --> 00:22:30.079
Because I think you're gonna have in this audience a lot of uh clinicians that are eager to do more in the space, but it might feel daunting.
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:32.799
It's a really good question.
00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:36.640
I mean um sometimes you just feel like you're just you know figuring things out of the way.
00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:37.920
Trying to feel your way, right?
00:22:38.079 --> 00:22:38.799
I understand.
00:22:39.039 --> 00:22:44.640
Um You know, when I was leaving cardiology, which I practiced for 25 years, right?
00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:47.839
So I had I went through the health journey I mentioned to you.
00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.240
Then I got to a point where it's like, oh, I've been practicing sick care, I want to leave that, I want to go practice health care.
00:22:53.039 --> 00:23:00.400
And with that, the initial thing was to try to work in some of the what I had learned into my practice.
00:23:01.119 --> 00:23:17.279
It becomes very cumbersome, however, because when you're trying to mix things that are cash pay with insurance pay, yeah, and you're working with a s a set of clients or patients that uh have a insurance, my insurance should cover everything mindset, it becomes very difficult.
00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:17.920
It does.
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:25.119
Um and so what I ended up doing uh was basically kind of base jumping out of that and just saying, I'm just gonna go cash only.
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:33.119
Now I had other sources of revenue coming in from other business ventures that I'd created as a cardiologist, so I could do that.
00:23:33.279 --> 00:23:36.160
I could go without a paycheck for four and a half years to figure it out.
00:23:36.319 --> 00:23:36.559
Right.
00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:38.240
Now, not everybody can do that.
00:23:38.400 --> 00:23:40.000
This was back in 2012, right?
00:23:40.079 --> 00:23:41.599
So not everybody can do that.
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:49.359
So I think the thing to do, if I was trying to recommend it to somebody, first off, get as much education as you can.
00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:56.400
Um there's no downside, you know, go to A4M or you know, one of the one of the courses and get certified.
00:23:56.480 --> 00:23:56.640
Yeah.
00:23:56.960 --> 00:23:57.920
IFM.
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:01.839
And just in the learning, you're gonna it's gonna change your perspective.
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:07.599
Don't start to do, don't say, well, I want to get into longevity, so I'm gonna put a sauna in the office and a red light.
00:24:07.839 --> 00:24:07.920
Right.
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:11.039
That's like that's like the really the wrong approach, right?
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:12.319
That's right.
00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:15.519
That's like that's like the sliver off the icing, right?
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:19.839
I think if you want to do it well, you really want to understand what's happening.
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:21.519
So I would do the education, right?
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.079
Keep your practice going while you're doing the education.
00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:26.079
Even that will inform what you're doing.
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:26.319
Yeah.
00:24:26.559 --> 00:24:37.359
And then you'll say to yourself, oh, well, I still really love my patients and I want to keep working in the insurance model, but I'm gonna bring in some extras in an office next door where we can do some stuff.
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:40.319
And at that point, you'll start to get an idea of what those things could be.
00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:40.559
Right.
00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.160
And maybe it's hormone optimization, maybe it's peptides, maybe it's red light, sauna, whatever you want to do.
00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:54.079
Yeah, but it it stands in a standalone space because if people walk into your space, they're an insurance, everything should be paid for by insurance.
00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:54.319
Yeah.
00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:56.160
So you got to go to a different space.
00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:56.400
Right.
00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:03.759
Then what you probably will do is realize that it's much more fun working over here than it is over here, and you can sort of transition over.
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:05.519
But that would be my my recommendation.
00:25:05.839 --> 00:25:07.119
And what would you tell residents?
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:14.720
Because I think a lot of the young docs that are coming up are more interested in this kind of medicine, in precision medicine, longevity medicine, functional medicine.
00:25:14.880 --> 00:25:15.039
Yep.
00:25:15.279 --> 00:25:18.319
Even if they're in specialties, um, what would you tell them?
00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:23.519
Would you tell them just start your practice, don't even go into the traditional model?
00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.480
Or do you think that experience is also very valuable?
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:38.640
Well, I think there's um you know, the things that we learn in medical school and uh residency and fellowship um inform me every day.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:39.359
Yeah, right.
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:40.880
I'm sure the same is true for you.
00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:49.599
Yeah, even though I don't work in that space, yeah, I can access those thought processes and you learn so much um that I would never give that up.
00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:49.839
Yeah.
00:25:50.079 --> 00:25:59.839
And if I was coming out of residency and I'd committed myself to, you know, pick whatever field, um, I would actually go through the training for that field.
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:05.119
And I might even go into practice for a year or two to sort of feel what that's like.
00:26:05.200 --> 00:26:05.519
Yeah.
00:26:05.759 --> 00:26:15.039
And then you could be, you could also be doing the education at that point in parallel to get to the point where it's like, well, I'm gonna jump to a practice that's doing this and I'll join them and do that.
00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:17.519
Not everybody has to start their own practice, right?
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:23.839
So you could do it that way, and you would have the the reference point of seeing the contrast.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:26.000
And they're super valuable to be able to see that.
00:26:26.079 --> 00:26:27.119
I'm sure that's true for you too.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.079
Absolutely, right?
00:26:28.319 --> 00:26:28.720
Absolutely.
00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:32.480
Absolutely to know what you're doing and what you're not doing and what you're able to do that you couldn't do.
00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:33.680
And to know what you don't know.
00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.480
Because I think that's the value of our our training as well.
00:26:36.799 --> 00:26:37.200
That's right.
00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:37.519
That's right.
00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:45.599
Because a lot of people that are practicing medicine might not know, you know, that aren't actually MDs or clinicians or DOs.
00:26:45.759 --> 00:26:48.400
I think they might think they they don't know what they don't know.
00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:48.960
That's right.
00:26:49.119 --> 00:26:52.240
And that gets dangerous too in the space, especially because there's a lot of gray.
00:26:52.640 --> 00:26:53.039
That's right.
00:26:53.279 --> 00:27:05.440
I think if you're gonna make this transition, one thing that can happen is doctors in general, I will say this, professionals in general, whether there's a dentist, a CPA, an attorney, we all kind of get shot out of a gun, right?
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:11.200
We're all smart people, all went to good schools, we all got trained, and what we really got was indoctrinated, right?
00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:15.519
And then we kind of wear that indoctrination as that this is the holy grail.
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:15.759
Yeah.
00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:24.640
Some people, when they make the transition from uh it's called traditional medicine into the longevity functional medicine space, they can bring that same mindset.
00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:27.519
Yeah, I want to be reindoctrinated with another way.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:28.000
Right.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:30.480
And quite honestly, that's missing the point.
00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:38.799
What you want to do is learn as much as you can in the new paradigm, but switch your mindset away from being indoctrinated into being eternally curious.
00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:39.359
Exactly.
00:27:39.599 --> 00:27:41.839
Because things are changing so fast.
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:43.200
Much more rapidly than more.
00:27:43.759 --> 00:27:44.319
Much more rapidly.
00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:46.559
I'm gonna talk about that tomorrow when I speak.
00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:49.119
And oh my gosh, it's unbelievable.
00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:51.519
Like it's almost gonna be unrecognizable 18 months from now.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:54.880
That's what I was thinking about earlier when I was speaking to another doc.
00:27:55.039 --> 00:27:56.480
It's it's like it's coming so quick.
00:27:56.559 --> 00:27:59.680
And I was talking about, uh and I wanted to ask you this too.
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:08.720
Do you think that the translational gap, you know, between bench research and standardization is gonna change because of how quickly tech is changing?
00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:09.119
Yes.
00:28:09.359 --> 00:28:09.680
You do?
00:28:09.839 --> 00:28:09.920
Yeah.
00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:12.480
I think it's gonna really change so quickly.
00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:18.480
I think we're gonna have um, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the quantum computing space at all.
00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:19.119
Right.
00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:20.400
It's so fascinating.
00:28:21.359 --> 00:28:22.400
It's so wild, right?
00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:24.160
And what do quantum computers do?
00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:32.559
Well, they can find the signal in the middle of a lot of noise and they can parallel process millions of possible solutions simultaneously instead of sequentially.
00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:32.880
Right.
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:46.000
So when you start to do that in an in silico model, right, when you basically have a digital twin of an individual, yeah, and you do that, we're gonna be able to get to bespoke answers for an individual much, much quicker than we can today.
00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:46.319
Yeah.
00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:53.279
And a lot of the research that's been done, population-based and everything else, it's so flawed in the way it's set up, right?
00:28:53.519 --> 00:29:00.240
All the people that were excluded, right, you know, all the slicing and dicing of the statistics to find a subgroup that was you know responded.
00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:06.559
I mean, there's so much sort of BS, quite honestly, in the research, which people call double blinders.
00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:08.400
They're like, it's the science, trust the science.
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:10.960
And it's like, well, that can also be manipulated.
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:11.680
That's right.
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:14.880
And so what you really want is what's the right answer for this individual?
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:16.000
Yeah, the N of one.
00:29:16.240 --> 00:29:17.440
The N of one, exactly.
00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:20.079
And I think the computing power is going to help us get there.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:21.359
That's really interesting.
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:23.279
I'm excited to hear more about that.
00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:23.759
Yeah.
00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.880
Now let me ask you uh a final question.
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:34.160
Um for the audience that is not a physician, not physician, not clinician, and they want to really start working on their longevity.
00:29:34.319 --> 00:29:39.680
They they want to have a healthy and long health span, they want to live a vibrant life.
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:42.480
What are low-hanging fruits that they can start out with?
00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:45.359
Because I think for the patient, it can also be daunting.
00:29:45.920 --> 00:29:48.000
It can be incredibly because it feels like a long checklist.
00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:49.119
It can be incredibly daunting.
00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:53.680
That's right.
00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:12.640
You know, the the easiest way to start, uh, you know, if you're if you're not working with somebody or and you're not a professional yourself, and even if you are a professional, is really to look at your life and look at the lifestyle choices that you're making and figure out what you would change, right?
00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:16.079
Okay, so I'm gonna not eat these foods over here anymore.
00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:16.240
Yeah.
00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:20.079
I'm gonna start eating these foods over here because I've seen that this is this is good.
00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:22.559
I'm gonna go to bed earlier, I'm gonna quit the alcohol.
00:30:22.720 --> 00:30:29.039
It's as much about when you're starting off, it's as much about identifying what you don't want to do as identifying what you do want to do.
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:29.359
Yeah.
00:30:29.519 --> 00:30:35.440
And even if you were to start by saying, I'm just gonna focus on things I don't want to do, that's a massive step forward.
00:30:35.519 --> 00:30:35.759
Yeah.
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:42.240
And the other thing I would say is to pick that age that you want to be for the rest of your life and let that be your guide.
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:43.839
Um, that is so powerful.
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:45.839
I have to tell you, it's incredibly powerful.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:50.720
And then as you take the things out that you don't want to do, you start putting in the things that you do want to do.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:30:51.920
I want to exercise.
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:54.480
Okay, well, let's start by walking around the block.
00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:59.519
Because what's more important than the exercise initially is the habit of exercising.
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:03.519
So if every day you get up and put on your sneakers, yeah, do something.
00:31:03.680 --> 00:31:03.839
Right?
00:31:04.079 --> 00:31:07.039
Even if you don't feel well, put on your sneakers and do something.
00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:11.680
And if you get into that habit, then the habit actually becomes ultimately a ritual.
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:15.519
And you stand, and a ritual is basically something that is part of your identity.
00:31:15.599 --> 00:31:15.680
Right.
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:18.319
That's the point at which you know you're really making progress.
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:20.240
I am a healthy, youthful person.
00:31:20.319 --> 00:31:21.039
I exercise.
00:31:21.119 --> 00:31:28.319
You know, when these things start to become your identity, as to, you know, saying I'm an older, overweight, drinking, you know, that's your identity.
00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:30.799
You've changed that identity, that's going to be so powerful.
00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:32.160
Then you'll fill in all the other stuff.
00:31:32.319 --> 00:31:34.079
I need hormones, I need this, I need that, right?
00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:34.319
Right.
00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:35.920
Continue and optimize.
00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:37.519
Start with what you can control.
00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:38.480
I love that.
00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.319
You know, just a quick anecdote.
00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:48.079
When I was 40, my daughter had a birthday party at a roller skating rink, and I never became a very good roller skater as a kid, but I had so much fun when I went.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:48.480
Yeah.
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.319
And I actually had to use a stroller.
00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:51.039
Oh, okay.
00:31:51.519 --> 00:31:52.000
You mean a walker?
00:31:53.039 --> 00:31:55.039
One of these little walkers with wheels.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:55.519
Okay.
00:31:55.759 --> 00:31:59.599
And I thought, but but then I got better and then I kind of got my confidence.
00:31:59.759 --> 00:32:01.039
And I loved it so much.
00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:02.000
And I thought, you know what?
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:03.519
I want to learn how to roller skate.
00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:04.079
100%.
00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:04.960
I love that.
00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:06.480
I went and took lessons.
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:06.640
Yes.
00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:10.960
And then I started roller skating with my daughter and her best in our in our driveway.
00:32:11.359 --> 00:32:12.160
And it was so much fun.
00:32:12.559 --> 00:32:13.200
It's so much fun.
00:32:13.359 --> 00:32:16.799
And then we'd go to the roller skating rink, and there's people in their 70s roller skating.
00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:17.200
100%.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:20.640
And I think we just we forget to have fun, we forget to live.
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:24.000
Um a lot of my family is of Cuban heritage.
00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:24.319
Okay.
00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:26.079
And they tend to be a very joyful people.
00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:33.680
And so it's interesting to see them now all in their 80s and 70s, and you know, they don't accept that age for themselves.
00:32:33.920 --> 00:32:34.160
That's right.
00:32:34.319 --> 00:32:34.559
At all.
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:35.039
That's right.
00:32:35.359 --> 00:32:37.519
They dress young, they think young.
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:38.000
That's right.
00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:40.880
They laugh, they dance, they dance, they listen to music.
00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:41.279
Yeah.
00:32:41.519 --> 00:32:41.839
Exactly.
00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:43.359
No, it's fantastic.
00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.480
I think, I think it's really fantastic that you started roller skating with your daughter.
00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:48.799
Yeah.
00:32:48.960 --> 00:32:49.920
And I'll tell you why.
00:32:50.079 --> 00:32:56.720
It's because I think as we go through life and we go through school, we're graded basically on how competent we are.
00:32:56.799 --> 00:32:56.960
Yeah.
00:32:57.200 --> 00:32:58.240
Did we get the right answer?
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:00.480
This is the other problem about finding answers.
00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:02.400
We're graded on how we got the answers, right?
00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:04.559
But it's not about the answers, it's about the questions.
00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:06.559
So we basically get trained up.
00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:09.599
Then we become professionals or young professionals and become parents.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:12.720
And it's all of our identity is based on how competent we are.
00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:18.720
So when you're put in front of a situation like there's a skateboard or there's a pair of roller skates, right?
00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:20.559
I'm not competent at that.
00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:21.839
So I'm not going to do it.
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:24.720
I'm not going to try it because my identity is competence.
00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:24.960
Right.
00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:28.720
What I found so powerful is to go back and be five years old.
00:33:28.880 --> 00:33:29.039
Yeah.
00:33:29.119 --> 00:33:29.279
Right.
00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:32.880
When I was five years old, if a scooter went by, it's like, oh, I want to try that.
00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:33.119
Right.
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:38.640
And so when you saw those roller skates, God bless you, you went back to being five years old and said, you know what, I want to roller skate.
00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:39.599
It was so much fun.
00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:40.799
And it's so much fun.
00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:44.240
And this is part of the this is part of living young for a lifetime.
00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:47.039
It's having that eternally youthful perspective.
00:33:47.279 --> 00:33:47.680
I love that.
00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:48.160
Yeah.
00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:52.079
And I think for professionals, because we tend to be achievers.
00:33:52.319 --> 00:33:52.480
Right.
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:58.640
Then you throw in the achievement on top of the competence, and it's like, well, if I'm going to be terrible at this, I'm not going to do it.
00:33:58.880 --> 00:33:59.119
That's right.
00:33:59.279 --> 00:33:59.839
Because I'll fail.
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:01.680
Or if I do it, I've got to be really good at it.
00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:04.240
And I don't have the time to be really good at it.
00:34:04.400 --> 00:34:04.559
Right.
00:34:05.119 --> 00:34:05.920
It's not about that.
00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:06.960
It's really about joy.
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:07.279
Right.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:08.719
It's really about having fun.
00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:09.119
Yeah.
00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:09.440
Yeah.
00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:09.840
That's it.
00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:10.559
That's wonderful.
00:34:10.800 --> 00:34:11.199
That's awesome.
00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:13.119
Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on today.
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:13.840
Oh, my pleasure.
00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:14.079
Yeah.
00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:15.199
It's a wonderful conversation.
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:16.079
Great to chat.
00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:16.559
Dr.
00:34:16.639 --> 00:34:18.880
Gladden, thank you so much for being here today.
00:34:19.039 --> 00:34:25.199
Make sure that you guys follow him on Instagram at GladdenLongevity and visit his website, gladdenlongevity.com.
00:34:25.360 --> 00:34:36.400
Whether you're a provider looking for patient solutions or patients looking for a root cause, go to vibrantwellness.com and see how tests like the Hormone Zoomer, Gut Zoomer, and more can get you the answers you've been searching for.
00:34:36.639 --> 00:34:43.440
Be sure to like and subscribe for more great content and follow at VibrantLongevity on Instagram to see what we're up to next.
00:34:43.599 --> 00:34:44.559
See you next time.