The New Rules of Preventive Medicine: Catch Disease Early & Extend Your Healthspan | Dr. Darshan Shah | #181

Dr. Darshan Shah (0:00)

As I was looking at my patients that were unhealthy, I took a long, hard look in the mirror and said, You're 50 pounds overweight, you're no different, and you're the doctor telling them to get healthy. It was just not a piece of advice that I felt good giving because I wasn't living it.

Dr. Vonda Wright (0:11)

Dr. Darshan Shah spent 30 years as a general and plastic surgeon, switched from disease care to true prevention.

Dr. Darshan Shah (0:19)

Longevity is not adding years to your life, it's making the years that you do live full of health. I knew that diabetes was a part of my problem, I measured a fasting insulin and a hemoglobin A1C on myself. I know I'm inflamed in my gut. Let me look up what are markers of inflammation. I found in my biomarkers all the answers that I needed.

Dr. Vonda Wright (0:37)

You're like, I have got to make being tip of the spear healthy a KPI of my life.

Dr. Darshan Shah (0:43)

We live in an incredible time now where you can get a lot of these markers to understand what's going on inside, under the hood of your body. If you start soon enough, you're empowered with your data, you can check off many of those items from the list. It doesn't mean you're just not going to die as soon. Your health span will become longer to match your lifespan.

Dr. Vonda Wright (1:02)

I love that you didn't say it's living to 150, but it's living in health through absence of disease, so that one day you're just done.

You are not here by accident. You're here because you were done being told to slow down. This is a space for women who want real science, straight from a surgeon who's lived it too. Hit subscribe. You're one of us now. So you know when you look forward to seeing someone professionally, you've met their family, and you're not only colleagues, but you're friends, that is exactly... I was so excited today, Dr. Darshan Shah, to have you on. We have this special bond, not only because we care a lot about prevention and longevity, not only because I have met your family, and Nancy, your wife is a nurse and she's delightful, but also because you're a surgeon.

And I was just telling my producer, you're a prodigy surgeon, you're the guy who finished medical school, like, I don't know, I'm making this up, 20, and then spent 30 years as a general and plastic surgeon before you decided to switch from disease care to true prevention. And when you switched, I mean, I was reading and preparing, it was like 2015, you started Next Health. You were really the first, or amongst the first true medical doctors to jump in an arena with biohackers and say, we need to be more science-based, we need to be evidence-influenced, we just can't make stuff up, we have to be at least evidence-influenced because we're real doctors. So I love the perspective you bring, but not only allopathic medicine, which you and I were both trained in, you're a very curious person and willing to think outside the box to what is next. And so that's really where, and let's talk about this, where longevity is evidence-influenced, willing to do N of 1 work, which I want you to explain because that's really one of your words, and not necessarily demand billion-dollar randomized control trials. So does that summarize kind of where you are? Don't let me put words in your mouth right now.

Dr. Darshan Shah (3:24)

Well, absolutely. I mean, you did a fantastic job. Probably better than I can do.

And I just want to say I'm so honored to be here with you. You're such a great friend and colleague, and we've kind of shared the same journey through life. And as you know, being a surgeon, everything you need to know has to come from some body of evidence, right? You can't be opening people up unless you know the evidence deeply.

You're not just trying things, right? But we also know that every single surgery is different from the last, right? And so we have this unique perspective that, yes, there's a ton of evidence out there, but what's more important than the evidence is the end of one, is the patient on your operating room table, right? At that moment in time. And when I switched to this new kind of like career path, I would say, in longevity medicine, it wasn't really called longevity medicine. It was just, there was no word like longevity medicine. It was more just getting people healthy, right? And I started applying that thought process to my patients that were coming to Next Health. And Next Health, I don't think I ever shared this with you Vonda, but Next Health was a place where I would send my surgical patients to get healthy before surgery.