Revolutionizing Health: A Deep Dive into Personalized Medicine with Dr. Joel Wussow

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you

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Hey guys, welcome to the Vaycay podcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your co-host. Join my friend, my co-host, Chris Hansen in the Vaycay lounge. We're excited. Got in studio today, a friend, but actually my doctor. And I'm excited to tell you about this because Dr. Joel Wasso is gonna tell us some stories and he's gonna enlighten us on some things that might save your life.

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And at the end of the day, we're about bringing value in that. We can't bring any more value, Chris than saving lives. And that's what our good friend, Dr. Joel, so does every day. What's up, doctor. Thanks for having me, Ryan. Of course. Pumped excited in full disclosure. Dr. Joel is a my longevity doctor, which we're going to be talking about, which is a lot of his passion and what we're working on. He's working on, he's working on me, I should say. And I know Chris.

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You and Dr. Joel, we're so are our friends as well. So it's always fun that we can do the show and have not only a friend, someone we believe in and someone that has great passion around something that's going to change the world. Absolutely. What's happening doc in studio here in Greenville. We appreciate you being here. I love, I think we love to sit the table for our audience. Just maybe given the who the hell is Dr. Joel was so story.

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I know you're currently an ER doctor in Texas, but in the midst of bringing to life a longevity practice, which we'll get into, and but let's tell the audience a little bit about you. Sure. So my name is Joel Wushan. So actually I met Ryan through a mutual friend in Miami where I currently live now, and we hit it off. But let's backtrack. So born and raised in Texas.

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I went to college in Arizona. Actually, believe it or not, I didn't go straight into medical school. I did pharmaceutical sales for a couple of years. This is way back in the day before there was a lot of regulation. And then it was there. I always thought that I wanted to be a doctor. I did all of the prereqs. And then I did, I went to this career fair and I got sucked in cause I did do business as a minor, so I had some background there as well.

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So I decided to do pharmaceutical sales. You were doing it when it was fun. It was fun. It was definitely fun. I, for instance, did that shit. And I was like, yeah, that was the glory days. The glory days. Before they put all the damn regulations in. Where? You, anything pretty much went. Wow, West, what? In Texas. It did. Oh no, this was in Arizona. So I did it. But still. What's got still? It's still pretty cowboy state also, Arizona, in my experience with the medical business. A hundred percent. There's not really no other way of putting, putting a lot of this stuff was just

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borderline unethical and I didn't feel comfortable taking that path. And I'm just looking at these doctors and like, I can be you. And not only can I be you, I feel like I can practice medicine better than what you're doing. I ditched that gig and then I went to medical school in Philadelphia at Jefferson Medical College. And then from there, I decided I wanted to practice emergency medicine. I think it just goes along with.

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My personality, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I like to be managing a lot of things at one time. I like the variety. It goes along with my background in sports and training. I like to be really active. I've always been that way. That's why I decided emergency medicine. So I did my emergency medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital, which is there's a Columbia campus as well as a Cornell campus. So I did.

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a residency at both those campuses. And then after residency, I went back to Texas where I'm from and then I started practicing emergency. Is that like a natural path? I think I hear a lot of doctor friends that I know. It's like, is the ER path like a natural path for a lot of doctors or is it like mainly they go to be a physician's practice or something like that?

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So emergency medicine is one of many specialties. So you could be a general surgeon, you can do orthopedics, you could do internal medicine, family medicine, dermatology. Really, I chose emergency medicine just because I like the pressure, I like life and death, I like using my hands, doing procedures, I like the variety. So it takes a very unique bird to wanna practice that type of medicine. And again,

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as you'll find, we'll probably talk about this some more. It takes its toll, man. It's a very stressful type of a profession. And is it sort of the hotshot track? Is it the path? Top gun? Yeah. You know what, that, it varies. Actually, when I was going, we call it the match. So you go through your medical training and you decide what you want to do a residency in. And essentially you do this whole courtship of going to a residency and you do all these interviews.

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and then you decide what you want to specialize in. And you have to go through the match process. Every year it's different in terms of which specialty is more competitive to match in, because you can try to get into one residency, but you may not get it. When I was going through emergency medicine was one of the toughest residencies to get in, regardless of the program. Now it's actually dropped off a bit, and I understand why. COVID I think has a lot to do with it.

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People are switching just lifestyle in general. It's just a really tough job, but it fluctuates. How many, is there always, and I want to get into some of the specific things, but good, bad and interesting in the ER, but is it, does it always have a life shelf? People aren't ER doctors forever, are they? Or are some people, is it a career? It's supposed to be a career, but unfortunately there's.

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The statistics show there's a shelf life for emergency medicine. It's around 10 years and lo and behold, Dr. Joe Wussow is sort of right. Why is that? 11 years right now. Yeah. Why? The toll. Yeah, just the stress. So. You think the emotional stress, the hours, like it just. It's everything, man. Chaos. Or is it people moving on to.

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Like I always compare it to lawyers when they'd be like a public defender, you pay your dues and then you go private and you're making the big bucks. That. No, the money, if you want it to be as great. So it's not a money issue. It's not a job security issue. I think it really comes down to it's just a very stressful and hard job. And if your goal is to maximize your health span, which we'll talk about, it's very hard. You're going to be challenged to do that because the hours are long.

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Sometimes you don't get breaks. I've gone through shifts where I don't even pee for 11 hours straight, let alone try to eat something. I don't get a lunch break, are you kidding me? Sometimes we're afforded the opportunity to do that, but there's just a lot going on. If it's super busy, you just may not be taking breaks. You have hospital administration, you gotta meet your metrics. You're seeing really sick people. You are working very...

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odd hours, days, afternoons, nights, having to switch back and forth from that. So that's really messing up your circadian rhythm. There's just really a lot involved there. And if you are someone that practices general emergency medicine, you're seeing geriatrics, regular adults, kids, the stakes are high. You're dealing with life and death and you're having to deal with death a lot. And unfortunately, we're human beings, right? I am trained to cope with that and to deal with that and to be professional.

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and to when the stakes are on the line to be hold my composure. But where does all where do all those feelings and emotions go? This is a question in the long run. I think it really takes its toll. Is.

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It sounds so morbid, but like roughly, how many people have you had to witness deceased in 11 years? Dozens? I don't think I've ever been asked that question. Is it a lot? It's a lot. I would say if I could, thinking about it just from a month at a time, I'd say at least five to six a month, and then you factor that by 11 years.

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4 to 500, 500, 600 people. Yeah. So it's a lot. Yeah. And people ask me like, how do you deal with that? I don't know if it's, if it sounds callous, but oftentimes it doesn't really affect me much. The actual deceased person that I'm taking care of, but it's more so whenever I have to, because I'm the one that has to break the news, right? I have to talk to the family members when this happens.

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If you could just imagine you watch all these TV shows and dramas, like sometimes people have no idea what's going on, right? And you have to tell them that their loved one is dead. And that's, it's very emotional when seeing the reaction on their face and you have to desensitize yourself. I'm sure you have to like turn that on. That whole, how you relay that information, I think you do a better, you, with practice, you get better at it, but

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those emotions that are going on inside your head that people aren't seeing, that none of that gets old. Every time I have to do that, it's always hard. Yeah. I was going to ask you that doc, do you think having to have those extremely difficult, emotionally charged conversations, do you think, I know you said it, you never get used to it, but do you think it's helped you or you've gotten better at having hard conversations, whether it's.

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in the medical field or even in your other business or your personal life. Say that one more time. I was adjusting my mic. Yeah. And we're not live so we can edit this. Okay. I said, did you think that having to have those emotionally charged conversations has that Chris pause for one second communication and other. Hey Chris, we're fixing his mic. Sorry. It was just, you're good. So many knobs there.

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It was like, was it just creeping down slowly down? I wasn't even paying attention. Yeah. That's kind of, you know, are we still rolling? All right, Chris, you can pick up right there. Just asking the whole question again. Yeah, doc. My question was obviously those are very difficult conversations that most of us. I would venture to say 99% of us have probably never even had to entertain. Do you think.

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I know you said you never used to it, but do you think it's carried over in other parts of your life with just how you communicate? Is it easier for you to have difficult conversations now? That's a good question. I think so. I think for sure it's easier to have more difficult conversations, but when it comes to your personal life, one thing that I've had to work on definitely is being able to shut things off. Right. And.

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You know, I've had a hard time initially in this career, shutting off my brain. I've done a much better job of that in my personal life. But initially, if you don't shut it off, you're not vulnerable, right? And that really did, I felt like that bled over into my personal life. Now I'm doing a much better job of that. By training myself to do that.

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some of those skills just go away because I've trained my body to do that so that I can be more vulnerable and not be so much a machine. Because to be to be honest with you guys, you have to in a high pressure situation, you have to work like a machine because you have to be, you have to hold your composure. You're leading this group. And if you are showing signs that you are in distress, everybody's going to feel that. But yes, the switch, I feel like the switch is there now.

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And I think also that comes with time and practice. But to answer your question about the personal life, I try not to carry that over into my personal life and be this stoic robot as I am when I'm practicing. What? Related and unrelated. Why are so many doctors seemingly so unhealthy? Ha ha ha. It always blows my mind and look.

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If you're not watching the YouTube, the Instagram TV slash video slash real video, but you will. Dr. Joll's a very healthy, attractive, all the boxes check, but most doctors are not. Let's be honest. And I've never, it has nothing to do with you. Probably personally, you may not even know, but I'm sure you have a guess. I know, but it's you guys know more than anyone. What's killing us. It always blows my mind when the doc walks in.

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Mainly in ER, like my personal doctor is not that healthy either actually, or in the past. Now he is. But why is that? I think that's a complicated question and I don't know that there's one answer for it, but my theory is twofold. One in medical training. So both. So you go to medical school for four years. And then.

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In those four years, you just get like a general overview on everything that medicine has to offer. Right. It's not tailored specifically to what you're going to specialize in. That's residency. So you go from everything from basic biochemistry, disease pathology, biology, all the different disease states. But so we do an amazing job in medical training and medical school. We do such an amazing job of taking

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a fire hose full of information, distilling it down and regurgitating it. That's what we're training for in medical schools. How can you take an abundance of information, make sense out of it and use it? But interesting enough, in medical training, there's very little training or insight into lifestyle optimization. We don't ever talk about, rarely talk about diet, nutrition, exercise. Did you realize that the...

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most like most college, maybe things have changed. However, many years, 11 years removed from medical school. But I had like maybe an hour or two hour lecture on sleep. And when we're talking about optimizing one's health and you're sleeping 33 percent of your life, wouldn't you want your practitioner be being an expert on how to get someone to sleep?

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the best they can because sleep is so important. It's such a huge component. So I think to answer your question from one standpoint, lifestyle optimization matters. We're not taught that in medical training. And number two, doctors live extremely stressful lives and we're taught to be selfless. And we take the backseat.

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And that includes your health. It's all about helping other people. So you may know what you need to do, but if you're taking the back seat, you're going to develop really bad habits. So you're not putting yourself forward or putting yourself first. And that includes diet, exercise, sleep. That's where I think it comes from. Not that most doctors aren't genuine. They don't know what they're talking about. They just and they don't. They just can't practice what they preach because that was never instilled in them from the get go.

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with kind of transitions to some of your passions and where you're moving towards, because you're, it's always been about treating symptoms, right? Treating conditions versus proactive like management and getting ahead of living, not just a long life, but a long life. Where did your passion around all that come from? I've always had the passion. That's the thing. I've always been,

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like an exercise nut. I've always been into health and nutrition. I've experimented with every single diet under this on. Just because I've, I just, I've been weird like that. I, I tried to take like during medical school, I remember they offered this integrative medicine course where this was very cutting edge. But again, this was an elective. This wasn't something that is required, right? This kind of gives you the framework of this is how medical schools want you to learn. Oh, if you want to get this elective on,

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this quote unquote lifestyle medicine, longevity medicine, you can take it as an elective, but it's not a requirement. But I was totally fascinated with that stuff. Everything from genetic testing really wasn't out yet, but learning about different types of diet and what you're putting in your body and how that affects how everything works out in a cellular level, all the impact you get there, emotional health, emotional wellbeing, all that stuff. None of that stuff was really taught in medical training.

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Yeah, I've always had the passion. And now it's, I just decided, I was like, we need to make a change. It's time to make a change. And I've just become frustrated with the way that our system is. We are a, our medical system is amazing. Don't get me wrong. We have the latest and greatest, the best technology, the smartest minds out there.

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especially in America, like our American medical system, I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I just think that we can optimize it, we can make it better. We can piggyback off all of the innovations that we've made today. Talking with Dr. Joel, Dr. Longivity. Ha ha. Who's...

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trademarked or owns that and we're trademarking it too, right? We're trademarking the name. Yes. Dr. Longevity. Not only are we talking about it, we're actually doing it. I couldn't go any further in the episode today without talking about our favorite sponsor, Caldera Labs. This is premium in skincare. And look, I need all the secret weapons I can get. I'm 46 this year and these fine lines are starting to show.

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It's all thanks to Caldera Labs, the official skincare partner of the Radcast. But, doctor, what's interesting to me about medicine is I feel like I've also been in health and fitness and supplements and all these things. I feel like you're seeing this medicine start to be influenced by the biohacking community. Consumers, people have been clamoring. I think I want to get ahead. I want.

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How can I be most productive? How can I live longer? How can I do these things while medicine is trailed behind with still treating symptoms, still, yeah, you do blood work, but we're only checking for like the worst things possible and not necessarily how to get ahead and live better, but how to treat diseases we already have while these communities have built up around biohacking. How can I be most productive? How can I live longer?

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Where's the fountain of youth? And I feel like it's somewhat, those worlds are starting to collide and you on the professional medical level bringing to life what we're working on. I don't know, talk to me about your perspective of that, those worlds and coming together or being influenced by one another. For sure. When you look at, let's call it conventional medicine and that's what

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you're seeing now in today's healthcare system. I think that the general audience, people that don't have a lot of experience or with science background, medicine, in order to actually see results or for you to create something that's innovative, it takes time. And the reason why it takes time is nothing is going to be given to the masses until we know

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that it works, we know the side effects that are associated with it, and to do that you need to have numbers. And in addition, and that's called power. But in addition to numbers, you need to be able to test things effectively. So randomized controlled trials. So there are a lot of biohackers out there that claim that this and that works, which is great. And it may work for some people, but.

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as far as conventional medicine is concerned, it's gonna move much slower because that needs to be run through the whole system to make sure that you're getting consistent results. Stuff just doesn't work as quickly as the way that our society is growing and how fast and innovative things are going with technology. Medicine doesn't work like that, unfortunately. I've been an adopter of both and I think that we can piggyback off conventional medicine and at the same time we can look at new innovative stuff.

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and intuitively think, okay, this potentially makes sense. And looking at risk benefit, we can try some things out that don't necessarily have all the literature there and stuff hasn't been 100% validated, but in theory it makes sense. So I can integrate both of those styles together. But don't you think it's like, in a way though, it's telling that it obviously takes, I totally get the trials thing, because everybody's body is different, there's so many different variables

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chemicals, structures within the body that because some biohacking formula works for 20 people, doesn't make it safe. But it's like the fact that we've been that we have these groundswells of people doing this, I think goes to show that the medical world's a little behind like in they should be doing testing on these things maybe before, right? Yeah. And I think that some people, I mean, in the medical community are not going to have to say, but

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There's also a reason why things lag behind in addition to making sure that the data is validated because I think that's extremely important. But what happens if you flip the switch or you turn the table and you're taking a proactive approach to where you're actually preventing disease? Because our whole system is based off of treating disease and chronic disease right now.

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Lots of money to be made by hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, treating disease, right? But what if you are actually turning the table and you're preventing that disease from even existing in your timeline in life? Period. Your hospital systems are going to lose a lot of money if they're not filling beds, if they're not writing or pharmaceutical companies are not...

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you're putting money into R&D for prescriptions for specific disease processes, which quite frankly, a lot of them are preventable. And then not only that- Careful, Dr. Joel. Sorry. Piss off the wrong people. Oh yeah. But just look at- You're speaking our language. Yeah. Look at insurance companies, right? There's no, we call them ICD-10 codes. There's no ICD-10 code for anything preventable.

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no preventative medicines. It's really sad because if you have. Quite in fact, even the opposite, I would say, which I'll show after I continue. For sure. But if you look at a doctor and he or she is they have to make a living, right? If they're sitting there counseling a patient on what they can do to prevent them from getting this disease and there's no ICD-10 code for that to be billed for insurance, how are they supposed to make money off of that? How are they? And a doctor's day is already

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jam-packed. All of that time that they're spending with preventative care and they're not getting reimbursed for it, how can they do that, right? Unless they're doing charity work. I've just decided that I'm still gonna practice some emergency medicine, but I really have become frustrated treating chronic disease. And the problem also lies with

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Not only our medical system, we need to hold the whole society accountable because people want to be spoon-fed their health, right? Or at least our medical system has made it, made the thought process that it's okay for us to tell you what to do. It's okay to take this pill and to have this disease. This is part of life. But there needs to be education around, no, you need to be proactive. You need to be proactive in preventing this stuff.

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You need to have insight into your own health. So the patient or the human who's being treated needs to have some autonomy and not 100% rely on your physician. You need to have the structure in place. All of these lifestyle modifications optimize your lifestyle, right? Diet, exercise, nutrition, sleep. If you have all those things dialed in, for the most part,

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at least in your young life. When I say young, I'm saying for most people into their 50s, if you are exercising regularly, good strength training, you're eating clean, getting plenty of protein, avoiding excess sugar, and you are getting good quality sleep and tracking that and you're doing something for your emotional health to help decompress, reflect, meditate, journaling, things of that nature. You are going to be leaps and bounds above.

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99% of the population in the world. Because most people don't do that. I'll let you guys talk, I'm talking too much. Yeah, no, you're not. No, it's, you're right. And I think- Awesome. Yeah, but the motivations of doctors and the people don't, the irony of this is, we go to the doctor when we're sick, and we get prescribed something that makes it better. And so we're valuing-

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that relationship and that exchange when there are a lot of times if it had been preventative, you might not have needed it to begin with. It's like we're treating the wrong end of the spectrum. That's the eye opener. That's why people, oh, thank you. Thank you, doc. You saved me. You saved me, doc. When no, they didn't really save you. They saved you from what they could have prevented.

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to begin with. That's the scary proposition here. It is. You know what? I don't know. I saw this on your Instagram. It was an Instagram reel and you talked about, and this, I think this really hits home, especially with executives of people that have everything figured out or they have a lot going for them. The one finite resource that we have is time. Right?

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That's something that you can't take back. You can't necessarily turn back the clock. We don't have any medicine right now to turn back the clock, okay? And I'm not gonna pretend that we do. However, if you look at things in a way where if you're optimizing your health.

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then if you're optimizing your health and you're trying to maximize your health span, which is your quality of life, and you're trying to, the name of the game in life is to compress morbidity, and that means to compress the time where you're sick, you essentially are getting some of that time back. So if you're constantly working that in the forefront, you're gonna gain more quality years in the end. So you are buying time.

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So I argue if you treat your health as just an integral part of your life, you are getting some type in the back end. You are investing for the future. If you don't do that, you're going to lose those years. I don't know. I was just thinking about that one. That's true. That's why you're my doctor now. Because I want to prove myself and what wrong. Because I don't, the time is finite. And even.

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If you worked with me and all that, I could get hit by something tomorrow, but I'm healthy whenever that moment comes. I think it's more that we don't ever know when that clock's gonna end because there's a lot of variables beyond how healthy you're gonna make me that are unfortunately out of our control. But I want every moment to be as healthy as it could be. Because think about the people that live that are healthy, that are 20, 30, 40 years old, but they spend 130 out of 360 days a year sick or feeling bad.

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That's not a good quality of life. Right. And, but Chris, please jump in here.

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I agree with everything everyone's saying. Something I thought of when Joel was speaking just about the system in general, in my experience with my medical laboratory business, there was a point in time we did genetic testing and we all talked about this before I think we started recording. Great tool, right? So we were doing pharmacogenetic testing where if your doctor was gonna put you on a medication, then let's use the example antidepressants. We worked with a lot of psychiatry offices with this.

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We could essentially swab your mouth and tell the doctor which medication metabolizes best based on your genetic makeup, what is gonna be the best medication for you. Especially with something like antidepressants, doc, you know this, it can take three, six months to even know if it's working or not. And I would tell doctors, hey, you can do this test before even prescribing anything and know, and you'll start out with the right medication. You won't need to do this trial and error. That could take, honestly, nine months to a year to find the right med.

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And what talked to me was how many doctors were like, nah. And they would just stick with the drug they were used to or the rep they saw the most. I'll say it's Prozac, for example. They're just like, I know my Prozac rep. We know that the data is pretty good. I'm just gonna start them on that. And I would always think, why would you not utilize another tool, especially a genetic test? Genetics are pretty fucking black and white. But you add on top of that.

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reason we stopped doing it, because we did have doctors that saw a lot of value, the insurance companies stopped covering it. They considered it preventative. And they actually said, we won't cover this until you've showed the patient has failed on three other medications. And I would always think, because I have depression in my family and I've seen the members go through it, three, six, nine months for someone in depression is a long ass time. Like what you guys said, how much time are you missing because your quality of life?

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But that to me, it pissed me off with the system. That was one of the aha moments I had where there's tools out there to treat people better and quicker, save that time. But the insurance companies don't wanna, they don't wanna get on board with it. They don't wanna pay for it. And what you said, there was no codes the doctor could bill for performing that test. So not only is it new, kind of new science, but doctors like, they can't make money on it. So it's, we have this disconnect from actual.

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technology and progress in the tools we have. And then the insurance companies, the way you said kind of medicine is being taught. And one more thing I want to add on that, I was, cause I had this conversation literally last night about cancer as a whole really of, when I spent a lot of time in Houston as well with the med center there, huge, one of the best cancer treatments in the world. And we celebrated, and part of me is like, why are we celebrating?

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I don't think this is a sign that our society is doing good if we have these sky-rise hospitals coming up everywhere for cancer. It tells me we have a cancer problem that's not being treated properly. Yeah, that's, we're celebrating the wrong thing. That's what I'm saying. Thank you, doc. Thank you, doc, for saving me. Oh, we got a new hospital. Yay. We're celebrating the wrong end of the spectrum. Let's have this big ribbon cutting ceremony that we're opening this brand new cancer center in town. And it's, I would rather.

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be opening a new gym and cold plunge place in town because everyone's so damn healthy and we don't need a cancer center because no one's got that much cancer. It's literally like celebrating. We just opened up new ice cream stores. At the end of the day, it's, I'm serious, ice cream stores, but look, we have this wool pulled over our eyes. Okay, the ice cream store's there because they're in business. It may not be good for you, but it's the American way it's consumers when they're making money.

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Hospitals somehow get cloaked not being a business. It's a fucking business. It's a business. Have you guys probably, hopefully don't spend much time inside a hospital, but I've worked at a lot of hospitals. I can't tell you. Actually, I can think of one, but most hospitals, you look inside their cafeteria, what are they feeding you? Chick-fil-A.

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Boom. What kinds of snacks and nutrition inside of a hospital? If this is the Mecca for your health. Meat and three. It's a lot of the processed macaroni and mashed potatoes and everything else. Oh, I had a family member in the hospital this weekend and they're telling me they don't feel good now. The first of all, you've been in a hospital bed for two, three days eating what? Jell-O.

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shit cafeteria process, Salisbury steak. It's like what you said, Joel, if this is the pinnacle of health, what are we feeding the people while they're in the hospital? Is it healthy food even? Yeah, no, not at all. Just to piggyback off what you're Chris, what you're talking about with that genetic testing for an antidepressant. And I think genetics is a relatively genetic testing.

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is a relatively new technology in terms of how it's integrated into our overall health care. But it's so exciting in that I use it in my practice and to go along with why we do all these randomized controlled trials and in conventional medicine and you want to adequately power a study, meaning the number of people that are in a study to make it validated. But there's one caveat to this and that is everybody's biochemistry and genetics is unique.

36:35

So sometimes you have to take studies with a grain of salt because everybody's genetics is unique. So one person's not gonna necessarily, how they respond to a study, it's not gonna pan out the same for another person because their genetics are unique. So the approach that I'm taking with medicine is everybody is unique. Every single workup that I do on a patient, I get a blueprint on them.

37:01

and we go all the way down to the bare bones, all the way down to the molecular level. We're looking at their blood work with biomarkers paired with genetic testing. So I can come up with a tailored customized plan just for that particular patient. And yes, we look at studies and we reference that based off of the masses, but everything needs to be tailored individually to the patient if you want to optimize your health. I think that's where.

37:27

the future of healthcare needs to go. And it's, I'm seeing it going there in some regards, but just like anything else, if you're gonna get a suit, if it's not tailor-made, it's just not gonna look as good. So. And it won't fit me. But yeah, but personal. We're- The big and tall store. Yeah, big and tall, but then they're all too big. I've got a dainty waist for how big I am. You're looking like MJ in the 90s. Big and tall. My girlish figure. You have broad shoulders, but girlish figure. My hourglass.

37:56

broad shoulders, knee waist. But what we're dancing around, and this is what I love about what Dr. Joel's doing is personalized medicine. Concierge personalized medicine and it's, I think growing, but it's a nascent, it's an early category. That's why you're so ahead. I think yesterday's a couple of, like we can name two maybe. And I bet you 99% of our listeners don't even know who they are. And so.

38:26

That's why it's exciting to see you ahead of the game, but I want, as we tailor into the show here, I do want to talk about the specific markers in this personalized medicine. I know we could talk hours on each one, but the types of things that are available now to be that you can see with this personalized blueprint and what can be preemptively treated, again, the preventative side.

38:54

What are some things that might surprise and delight the audience that you'll be able to do that these markers that are able to be seen and treated are? Okay. We already touched on it a little bit before, and I don't want to under stress the value in optimizing your lifestyle factors. Because if you're not optimizing sleep,

39:23

exercising regularly, eating clean, and having some form of an emotional outlet and work on your emotional health. All of these tactics that I'm going to be guiding you through are essentially a drop in the bucket. This is more so icing on the cake, but it's a big icing.

39:41

OK, but what I'm saying is you're going to think icing that I like to lick off the top. But I won't be doing much anymore, Doc. I get that spoon out. My national daddy made me a piece of cake and all he does is eat the icing off the top. That's we're talking about thick icing. Big icing. All right. All right. So really, it's just like building that foundation. And once you've built that foundation, we can really work from there. But we're going to be chasing our tail if you don't have all that other stuff dialed in. I want to emphasize and I have tools to help guide you through that whole process.

40:10

I focus on that first. In combination, first we get a blueprint by looking at your blood work with biomarkers. And I have a little over 70 biomarkers that we look at. I'm not gonna bore you guys with the details, but some of them include just looking at stuff for your cardiovascular heart health, looking, just optimizing your lipids. Things that are not necessarily done with in traditional labs or traditional blood work ordered by your doctor, like one being

40:40

in terms of lipids, your APO-B level. Your APO-B is the number one biomarker that is linked to heart disease, and that's not routinely checked by most doctors. That's just one example. Others being markers of inflammation, also vitamin, mineral deficiencies, and then hormones. Looking at all of your sex hormones, testosterone, SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin.

41:06

a number of other sex hormones to get those optimized, thyroid function. So those are just to name a few. So what we do is we take your blood work. And I think blood work needs to be done regularly on a routine basis. My clients are doing them on a quarterly basis because you have to be looking at what's underneath the hood at all times. How you expect to optimize your health if you're not looking into it regularly.

41:35

One checkup, a 30 minute annual checkup, which is the traditional conventional medicine way, that's just not enough. Not if you want to optimize your health. So we're doing quarterly blood work and then we pair that with your genetic testing. You do a little cheek swab, order that, comes back in a couple of weeks. And then those two data points work synergistically and I can help.

42:03

make a tailored plan just for you. I know what foods work for you. I know where a lot of your genetic deficiencies are. I can tell if you're metabolizing vitamin D correctly. I can see whether or not you process saturated fat. And if you don't process saturated fat, that leads to rises in APOB. Some people, like for me, I eat bake, I look at bacon, my APOB levels are through the roof.

42:28

For Ryan, we haven't done his genetic testing yet, but he may not be sensitive to saturated fat. I hope not, I hope not. Criss-crossed, fingers crossed, legs crossed, toes crossed. But again, this is where the custom-made personalization comes into play. So making a blanket statement, oh, you should just eat this or do this or that. No, everything needs to be custom-made just for you. And I think there's a lot of value in that because a lot of people can miss out on restrictions that they're having because

42:58

Health professionals are making blanket statements, which doesn't apply to everybody. That's what I do in a nutshell, those two things, and we can talk about diagnostic imaging and stuff and cancer prevention a little bit later on, but I do a lot of diagnostic imaging. I'll just touch very briefly, full body MRI. I do that for early cancer detection, as well as a screening called a liquid biopsy.

43:25

which is another cancer screening test, and it detects over 50 types of cancer in a very early stage. These are all things that you can be doing to be proactive and looking at things before they even begin. And that's the name of the game. I want to be looking, if I see a little blip that's incorrect, we address it as opposed to saying, oh, I've got symptoms. It's already too late. Then we're managing chronic disease. So how often are we doing body scans? How often do you

43:55

So when you say body scan, so a full body MRI will probably do that on a, depending on your age group, starting in your mid forties, I like to do that on a bi-annual basis. So twice every two years do a full body MRI. But then there's another scan that I like to be doing a couple of times a year. It's called the DEXA scan. Now a DEXA scan is very useful because one of the main reasons it does a lot of things, but it looks at organ fat.

44:24

Organ fat causes havoc in your body. It causes a bunch of metabolic issues, insulin resistance, diabetes, inflammation, your, some lipid dysfunction. So I can see with a DEXA scan how much fat you have around your organs. This is called visceral fat. So this is another marker that we're looking at. So I can see through time, through our interventions, how much visceral fat are you losing, which in turn,

44:52

provides beneficial information for overall wellbeing.

44:57

I love it. It just makes sense to me. Like 20 years ago, when my friend came home and said, he just had his blood drawn, and he's going to an internal medicine doctor, I was like, that makes sense to me. Okay, because I was just going to the right, I feel like I've always been into working out and trying to be ahead of things. He told me that and made sense to me. And then the same thing, when I know and I know, and I feel the internal medicine's advanced, and I've been pleased with that doctor for the most part, but then I've seen and heard,

45:27

Dr. Joel stuff and okay, wait, there's advancements in this and that and these markers and that markers. And I don't know that the internal medicine has come along fast enough for the personalized level. I still feel like I'm getting, I might be ahead of some people getting internal medicine, it's such a young age that I did, but now I feel like I'm behind in it's not as personalized internal medicine. I think that's the key word

45:57

is so individualistic to each person. 100%. Any final thoughts here, Chris, as we come down to the end?

46:08

What Joel said, I hear this a lot lately, especially for men, go get your fucking blood work done like regularly. Yeah. I, yeah, it seems so silly to even say that you go get your oil changed in your car. It almost blows my mind. And we talked about this a lot of why this hasn't been a conversation kind of. Being had more over the last couple of years. It almost seems like COVID really made a shift in.

46:36

people looking more for preventative solutions and whatnot. So I just am a huge proponent. Obviously I'm a big believer in what Dr. Joel's doing and excited for the future. I'm excited for more people to take their own health and their control. Exactly. And I think it's also, let's be honest, we pay for a lot, fluent Americans pay for a lot of premium experiences.

47:06

And the one thing that's not fucking premium is healthcare. For the most part, it's just not. And I mean, I to have on speed. Like think of how even me, I can, I have a really good doctor. I've been very pleased with. I do not want to put down any way the doctor I've had. He's definitely been more available than most doctors, but there's still. A cloak of unavailability that comes with.

47:36

doctors and medicine, all that, that there's this wall there so that you don't feel like you're getting personalized premium experience with the doctor. And why does anything else matter if we're not getting premium, the best that we can afford, whatever the best healthcare and the most premium experience in healthcare that you could afford, why would you not do that?

48:04

And I think the answer is we would if we knew it was available and we knew there were doctors like Dr. Joel. And I'm talking about the ones that can afford it and do all that. But just like I'm some people drive a Mercedes and some people drive a Honda and some people drive that. But why wouldn't you want the Mercedes of doctor care? I don't know. Well, I think the answer is you would, but we need the availability of that and to feel like that, that you have that concierge slash.

48:34

premium experience slash personalized, I think you're gonna see that market explode. Dr. Joel's gonna be in the front of it. And I think there's a lot of people that are ready for it. I think so too. It's been a great discussion. I think we'll be having many more and you'll see my journey with Dr. Joel and Dr. Longevity on all of my feeds and his as we go through this discovery with all my stuff. I'll be transparent.

49:03

There's no STDs I'm hiding or anything. I'm a married man. I'm not worried about that. It's it'll all be, how many markers do I have? I'm up to the good one. I just want that bacon eating one.

49:15

I'll work on that. See if I can fudge that one for you. Just wanted to make sure. I know dude, if that one's not looking good, you might need to cut out hotcake Fridays at Mickey D's or Paul's. I have got, I will say this, I've cut back to, I take my protein bar, doctor will be happy. I take my protein bar with me. The kids eat the hotcakes.

49:37

I eat my protein bar and have my energy drink. Where you just smelled that McDonald's bag and then. Yeah, free smells. The smells don't mess my markers up, right? Oh, if that went away, oh, like you couldn't smell anything. It sticks to you. But we appreciate you coming on Dr. Joel. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Hey guys, you know where to find us? TheVKPodcast.com. You'll find all the episodes and highlight clips from each one. You're to find Chris and I.

50:05

We got that blue check next to us on Instagram and all the other platforms. We'll see you next time on the Vacate Podcast.