Barbell Shrugged - [Longevity] Testosterone and Plasma Exchange Therapy w/ Dr. Paul Savage, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #711

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

As the CEO of MDLifespan, Dr. Savage leads a team of dedicated professionals who provide precision longevity health services to our clients. He combines advanced modern medicine with the powerful principles of traditional and integrative medicine, to optimize each client's health and wellness in order to give life more moments.   With over 35 years of experience in the medical field, Dr. Savage is passionate about helping people regain and maintain their health and vitality through personalized and holistic approaches. He has a strong background in anti-aging and longevity medicine, wellness coaching, and data-driven medical solutions. Dr. Savage was also the founder of Forum Health LLC, a nationwide provider of precision health services, and Power2Practice, a software platform for integrative medicine practitioners. He is committed to changing the face of medicine and empowering people to take charge of their health and wellness.   Download Free eBook on Plasma Exchange Therapy Dr. Paul Savage on LinkedIn Dr. Paul Savage Website Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are hanging out with Dr. Paul Savage. Not only does he have the coolest last name of all time, who wouldn't want to be a Dr. Savage? We're going to dig into Dr. Paul Savage is kind of like one of the original people that started looking into longevity, setting up longevity clinics, the early adopter and early researcher into prescribing testosterone in a therapeutic way to men as they age, as well as females, but more specifically men. And this is spanning over the last two decades, which is very cool because longevity clinics are just so popular now that we kind of expect that they've just been around for a long time and that people could just go get testosterone. But over the last couple

decades and his research and kind of being in the longevity space, he's working on some new, very, very cool stuff. And the plasma exchange and kind of understanding. I make a joke about the only thing that I really know about plasma is that I used to give it for money in college when I was incredibly hungry and needed an extra $50 a week. But it turns out there's many more uses for that than just being a broke college kid, especially getting into the longevity side. So we dig into what plasma exchange is, kind of how he found it, what the benefits are, what the future looks like for that therapy. And if you enjoy this conversation, I highly recommend he's got a free ebook. It kind of breaks down all things plasma exchange that I have linked

to in the show notes. And as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. That's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, Dr. Paul Savage, let's go. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. Today's episode of Barbell Shrug, Dr. Paul Savage from MD Lifespan. You were just, I had to cut you off pre-show because you were telling us this big story about why you look so much better today than you did in your 30s. You got a big kung fu background, some jujitsu.

Let's break into, before we get into all the longevity and how we're going to live forever, the best quality of life for the longest amount of time. I'd love to hear just a little bit of your path that you started telling before I said, tell no more. People need to hear this. Well, Andrew, thanks. Thanks for you guys having me on the show. It's always a pleasure to talk to people about life's journey and what it can mean for every individual. I want to start out by saying my belief has always been about giving life more moments. And that's actually the mission statement of MD Lifespan. And I've been working towards that for over 25 years now. So I'm actually one of the old guys in the world of anti-aging and longevity. I was there

when we first built this whole thing back in the late 1990s. So my story is pretty interesting in the fact that I grew up in a small Midwest town to a bunch of alcoholic Irish parents and being gay and kicked out by the time I was 16 on the road and actually put myself through college and worked myself up through the emergency room and then started working at the largest trauma center in the world for about 10 years. And by the time I'm 38, I'm 270 pounds. I have heart disease. I have diabetes. I have cholesterol. I can't sleep. I'm anxious all the time. It was, I was just a one ball of mess. I went to my doctor and he was putting me on my seventh pill. And he goes, Paul, you don't look like you feel good. And I was, Neil, I feel awful. When am I going to my doctor and he was putting me on my seventh pill. And he goes, Paul,

you don't look like you feel good. And I was, Neil, I feel awful. When am I going to get like this? And he goes, why don't you go get healthy? I was like, you know what? I think you're right. I better start doing that. And I walked out of his office. I'm walking down this, down this, this sidewalk and it dawned on me. And it was like the world stopped when I realized I had no idea how to do any of that. I didn't know what to eat. I didn't know what kind of exercise. Do I take supplements? Do I take what I mean? I just had no idea. So I did the thing I thought was most logical was I sought out a trainer and I sought out a nutritionist and he was an excellent, he always has been an excellent trainer. I don't know if Doug knows him, but his name is Dino Spencer.

And he's down in Florida. He teaches boxing now. But he was, at the time, the junior Olympian in martial arts. I forget what year it was. But he was an excellent trainer. And he worked me out hard. And my nutritionist, I had everything that she said for me to do and six months later I'm 13 pounds of fat heavier had lost a pound didn't feel better at all yeah

I'm in the gym and I'm bemoaning to my trainer and one of the muscle head walks by and goes you need testosterone and I was like no dude that's dangerous that causes prostate cancer it causes heart disease I'm saying everything that i was taught in medicine and i go home that night and i'm thinking about it and i'm like god i don't have erections i don't build muscle i don't have energy i'm gonna go check my testosterone level now i had no idea how to how to look at that number but i did my testosterone level and it came back that of a 90 year old it was what is that number it was 84 oh yeah you're my free love my free testosterone level and it came back that of a 90 year old it was what is that number it was 84 oh yeah you're and my free love my free testosterone level my free testosterone level was under one it

was 0.2 or so because i had all this binding protein and i found out later why i had all this binding protein which has always been a question that a lot of people ask me but so i said okay i'm gonna find get some testosterone i still called up my endocrine endocrinologist friend and he said i can't give you testosterone I said why not he goes that's illegal we can't give it to anybody unless you're missing a testicle otherwise it's outlawed and I was like well that's crazy and so I went around different places got testosterone did my own injections talked to bodybuilders because I had no idea how to do it. And some of the guys were really good. And some of the guys were really bad. I'm lucky I came across one guy,

his name is Frankie Ponson as and he's been a bodybuilder in 7072 now, but he said, this is how you do it. And I did it. And I did it rationally. And within six months, I'm down 50 pounds of fat, I'm up 50 pounds of muscles, The lights came on, the erection came on, the sex drive came on. And I was like, what the hell just happened here? Yeah. I mean, I felt like I hadn't felt in a decade. Game on. Game on. So I started researching and that's what I like to do and studying and looked at the literature, found out why it was outlawed, find out why that was wrong. And about six, seven months later,

I went to the director of the emergency room and I said, I'm leaving. He goes, where are you going? I said, I'm going to go out and open a clinic. He goes, a clinic? I said, yeah, I'm going to go. What are you going to do in your clinic? I said, I'm going to give guys testosterone. He goes, oh, you're going to be in so much trouble. Oh, they're going to nail your butt to the wall. I said, I'm not going to take insurance. What do you mean you're not going to take insurance? Nobody will come across your door. And, you know, I did. I did just that. Opened my first clinic in 2003 and had 50 of them by 2007, all across the country. And not only for guys, but we were doing it for women and their hormones too, because one of the things we don't talk about enough is how important testosterone is to women.

It is women have more testosterone molecule per molecule than they have estrogen. And people and people like, why do women need testosterone? Every reason in the world. But we'll get we'll get into that further. So I did that. I built all these clinics, but I wanted to gather data. And unfortunately, in the world that I lived in, integrated medicine and longevity medicine, there was no software that managed all this data. So I actually, my background is mathematics and computer, I went and wrote my own program, 1.6 million lives of code. And then I gave it to a programmer. And within about four years,

we had power to practice, which ended up being the largest electronic health record in the whole longevity space. And it still is. And then I left that and retired in August of 2022 because I figured I'm just going to go enjoy life. And I had so many great projects going on. And then a paper was published about plasmic change and how that's and that, guys, that's going to be a game changer. I saw testosterone and hormones change my guys my girls incredibly i've seen stem cells make phenomenal results on people i've seen peptides turn people around but there's not a lot of things in longevity that i've seen have when you start giving it to people they're like it's like, wow, that's totally different. But Plasma Exchange, I think it's going to beat all of them. Yeah.

I want to dig into just the word longevity. And since you've been in this game so long, you probably at this stage have had more than one like cringe moment when you hear it because you were at the very beginning. And now it's like a very popular term and anytime i personally think about i'm like how long is long how how long do you really want to you really want to be like what what what is the quality associate let's get like very specific into what your goal is because longevity itself is probably not the greatest of like um it's not a very specific goal. And we don't know what we're long against, like what's the short part of if we don't do these interventions?

Well, the cringe word was anti-aging. That was the word that really made me cringe, because I'm not against aging. I want to age well, but I'm not against it. That's why I prefer the word longevity or pro-lon age well, but I'm not against it. Yeah. That's why I prefer the word longevity or pro longevity, however you want to say. But longevity is simple enough. And it has kind of taken over the market space in this area as a name. And I'm much more comfortable with that. But you have to ask yourself the question, longevity of what?

Andrew, that's exactly the question. If I make you live 20 years longer but they're terrible years I have done you no favor you know one of the things being in the emergency room and having signed so many death certificates over 10 years 10,000 matter of fact I know it kills people I know there's ways to go out well and I know there's ways to not go out well and I know everybody's going to go out so what really matters isn't the time it It really is about giving life more moments. As we said, if you don't have those moments, which is what we all live for, if you don't have the mental capacity, the physical ability, then that extra time is nothing short of torture. So it is very important to realize or to explain to people, when I'm talking about longevity,

I'm not talking about making you live to 150. That is not my goal. My goal is to make sure that your health span lasts as long as your lifespan. And hopefully I can grab, grab some more years on your lifespan at the same time. Yeah. And if you were to like maybe categorize or, or specific things, maybe like the top two, maybe top three things where people start going, I really feel like I'm getting old. I'm aging. I can't do the things that I used to be able to do because honestly, I just turned 40 like five months ago. I would have assumed when I was 18 that 40 was literally the death of me. And now I'm still trying to do things that I've never done before in my life, especially on the physical side of things. And I don't, it's not that I, I would say that I feel the aging or the getting older side when it comes to the competitive side of physical tasks, but not, I don't, I don't, I'm not missing any of that drive.

I'm not missing any of that, like get up and go. What am I going to notice when I start aging? Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work.

Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going

forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. That's a great question. One of the things to realize is that that question is always changing decade after decade. I've been there for 30 years now. What it was 30 years ago is not what it is today.

Partly because guys' testosterone level is 40% lower in 40-year-olds today than it was 40 years ago in 40-year-olds. So hormone levels have plummeted. Toxins have increased. There's been a lot of changes in the environment we live in. So this question that you're asking is changing as every decade goes by. But the thing that people come to see me the most for is when they've lost the mental strength. In other words, they're just not thinking they feel like they have brain fog, their brains not operating at optimum capacity, their energy level falls. And that's probably

the most common thing that people talk to me about, or their sexual libido starts dropping off. So it always has to do with the brain the body and then the sex gotcha yo a few minutes ago yeah a few minutes ago you mentioned that uh when you were trying to start your first clinic back in you said it was 2003 or 93 2003 2003 um you mentioned that that something along the lines of a reason that testosterone was made illegal in the first place. What is the history there? Like, how did that become illegal? I know bodybuilders back in the 60s used to do steroids, and it was totally fine.

And then at some point, it became illegal. What was the history there? Exactly what you just said, the bodybuilders. It was the abuse that was coming on with that hormone. Matter of fact, that was the only medicine ever in the history of medicines that had its own special act that classified it. It was called the anti-steroid act. And then it was put into that act and that forbid, forbade doctors for prescribing it for any guy other than a guy who had a surgical decrease in their testosterone. Do you think one of the reasons that it kind of stayed illegal was

like as an example, like the Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire fiasco from so many years ago, like it's considered cheating. You do steroids and you're a cheater. And so that narrative kind of got like implemented into society where if you're taking testosterone, then you're a cheater rather than you're trying to like get yourself healthy. There were two things that happened. Number one was the abuse by the bodybuilders. Exactly. The cheating part, the abuse that was happening that made it unfair to everyone else. Um, but the other thing that happened was, um, it was the fear that testosterone was going to give all these problems. So they wanted it out of the way because they didn't want anybody doing it because God knows everybody knew testosterone gave you heart attacks and it

gave you prostate cancer. So why do we even want that on the market? The risks are too great for any of the benefits. Obviously both of those statements were wrong because there was only a select number of guys who were abusing it. It's not really classified. It's not one of those drugs that give you a psychological addiction to it or a physical addiction to it not like the opioids and the amphetamines but the other part was it was the the base knowledge at the time of the medical field was oh yeah that stuff causes heart attack and cancer.

Well, certainly with any drug, there's an optimum amount and then there's abusing it where you're taking too much and that can cause problems. We call side effect, we say the word side effects and we think that's a bad thing, but really drugs just have effects and there's pros and cons to all those effects depending on the context of your particular situation, whether that effect is positive or negative. And you're in your mind to play devil's advocate here. Like what, what are the downsides for some people in some circumstances when they take testosterone, that could be, it could be detrimental or a bad thing. Sure. That's a great question. I mean, overall testosterone is an incredibly safe

medication to use. Matter of fact, in 2016, all the biggest urologists and urologists around the world got together and published a paper called the fundamentals of testosterone use. And that was headed up by Abraham Morgan Taylor, who is the chief urologist at Harvard. So at that time, they put out all these tenets of all these things about testosterone is testosterone deficiency is a disease. It needs to be treated. It's not age related. You don't treat numbers.

You treat patients. Doesn't cause prostate cancer. Doesn't cause heart disease. And matter of fact, it probably helps with something called metabolic syndrome, which is when guys basically their metabolism slows down to such a degree that it markedly increases their risk for heart attack. When you're, when you're kind of like digging into this process, how far down do we dig, or do you dig into just understanding why they have low testosterone in the first place, but just instead of just saying, yes, it's low and we can go fix this by

putting more testosterone into your body. I always do the former. I never do the latter. And I teach doctors all the time. It's low and we can go fix this by putting more testosterone into your body. I always do the former. I never do the latter. And I teach doctors all the time. Don't treat something if that's not the problem. There are a lot of reasons guys have low testosterone. Number one reason, obesity. Yeah, that's the number one reason.

Visceral fat absolutely diminishes your testosterone. Having heavy metals that bind up, make your binding protein higher, that binds up all your testosterone because it's not the level of testosterone that batters in your body. It's the level that's free and active to do all the work. But there's medications that people take that lower the testosterone, things like anything anti, anti-cholesterol, anti-seizure, anti-fungal. They all lower your testosterone

level. And a good portion of the guys I see who are younger, like under 50, I've been in a pretty intensive workup to make sure that they actually need to have it. Because if I give them testosterone, if that's what we decide to do, I'm subjecting you to be on testosterone for the rest of your life. I'm telling you that you're not going to make enough anymore for the rest of your life. So I'd say about 80% of the guys in their 40s, all they need to do is change things. 50s, probably about 50%, maybe 40%. 60, 70, 80, now you're getting into the range group that it probably is just that the testosterone load, because the testes produce less testosterone every year after the age of 25 by 1%. So by the time that you're 50, it's down at least 25 to 40%. Yeah. It's always an interesting, as the testosterone markets slash or market slash

the number of clinics, how they're able to do things remotely through telehealth now. It's one of the things that I fear the most about the industry is that what you were facing at the very beginning of this journey of it being this like taboo thing, like, oh my gosh, you're going to get cancer. You're going to die. This is purely abuse and you're cheating to it becoming like a, like a something that is able to be talked about in a medical way, in an intelligent way of how it does have benefits. And now it feels like the market is overwhelmingly grown to this part, to this place where it's like you just do the blood work and then they just hand you back the testosterone pills. And, and it, where do you feel like people can, can not their own testing, but how build enough trust with their doctor to have an intelligent conversation, to feel like they're not just at the steroid clinic.

Well, that's exactly the point, Anders. If you're going into a clinic and the whole purpose is to test your testosterone levels, to give you testosterone, you're exactly the point, Anders. If you're going into a clinic and the whole purpose is to test your testosterone level, to give you testosterone, you're in the wrong place. They're good at giving you exactly what you want. But that's not good for you. That's my point. And I have patients come to me all the time. They're like, Doc, they gave me testosterone.

Now I don't feel good because they always give you too much. And then they give you HCG so your testes don't shrink. And then they give you a Rimidex so you don't feel good because they always give you too much and then they give you hcg so your testes don't shrink and then they give you a rimidex so you don't grow breasts if you're get if you have all those side effects or those effects like doug said which is true that those happen then you're on too much you're on you're on too much and you're seeing the wrong doc yeah um let's get into some of the testing i'd love love to know, like, what is that intake process with you? What tests are you getting done? And how can people I would imagine, hopefully, like everybody calls you for these specific things. But, you know, if they're working with their primary care and it's very hard to get additional testing just to find out what your T levels are. That's like a very special request these days. How do they go about kind of like learning where they're at in this process?

I invite everyone to my website, to our website, because that testing section, that website has 350,000 words. It's literally seven novels that I wrote in about six months. And I put it together. And this is 25 years of my clinical experience. I say all the time, I love David Sinclair and all the research he does. There's so many people out there doing great research in the world of longevity medicine, but actually putting it into practice, knowing how to do it well, there's only there's really not that many of us, I'm happy to say I'm one of the best. And the only reason is because I've done it for so many years.

One question that you said is how do they get the information? Check out our website. Check out our blogs. I'm constantly talking about these are all the things you can do. You don't need to see me to be able to start out. What's the first thing that almost everybody should do when they're on the longevity journey, a detox program. And I have a detox program, you can buy the supplement, do it for two weeks, because there's five essential parts of health. And you have to dry address those five things first, before you go on to any of the other stuff in longevity, if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck. And that's nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep, and detoxification. And I always start with detoxification because it's simple, it's easy, and almost nothing else like it can happen well if you don't have a good system or your liver is

detoxing and your kidney is detoxing. It's so easy for people to understand that as we get older, things decline. Our hormones decline, our brain cells decline, our muscle fibers decline, and our detox programs, processes decline. We don't get rid of toxins like we used to as we get older. But there are ways that you can assist that detox system to getting into plan. A lot of the time, Anders, just what you were saying with the guys with low testosterone, they have high estrogen. They have high estrogen because they have all these things that are still in their system. And once you flush all that stuff out, their testosterone comes back to normal just by doing a detox program for a couple of weeks. Yeah. That's where we start. Yeah. I feel like the, one of the, one of the things that I think about so often now is really just how do we prevent sludge getting in the engine?

Because it's going to accumulate over the years. And if you don't have a process for getting in there and cleaning things out, all you're going to do is just accumulate over time. Really negative, like a quarter percent a year. cleaning things out, all you're going to do is just accumulate over time, really negative. And like, like a quarter percent a year, but over like 30 years, it's going to add up. Yeah. What I would love to dig in just to a little bit of like what, what that detox process means to you. Is it supplementation? Is it a fast? Like what, what does that look like? A detox program that I think is good for everyone when they're starting out on their longevity journey is some supplements,

and basically changing your diet. So you're eating a very low hypoallergenic hypo hypo carb diet. So you're really looking at vegetables, colored vegetables, chicken, fish, and high quality stuff. I am a huge understand, I have a huge understanding about how toxic the food here is in the United States is compared to Brazil. I was telling Doug earlier, I spent a lot of time in Brazil. When we went to Brazil and we started cooking in Brazil, the food, the taste of the food was incredibly different. And I'm 61 years old. I remember when chicken tastes like chicken. I remember when eggs taste like eggs and I I live in Chicago now. And that's not the case. So one of the things is after this detox program, which is just basic stuff of vegetables, good protein, grains, whole grains, and some

supplements, two of the supplements I think are the best is one by it's called Inflamacore. And it's basically to decrease inflammation. And the other one is called Ultraclear. The first one's made by Orchid Molecular Products. The second one's made by Metagenics. Ultraclear is all the stuff that you need to get your liver working, get your kidney working, get your colon working. And then on top of that, if we're still, if you're still having problems with your stools, that they're too light or they're too too loose or too firm then there's

magnesium and aloe and things we add up to get the colon working as well but that process by itself i have everybody go through and become my patient yeah before we even do labs i want you to do that because as soon as i do that your labs are going to change it doesn't even matter to do the lab so that's why i was like the first thing to do isn't the labs yeah the first thing to do is a detox program second thing to do when you're done and it's a two-week program, and you can download that program from my website. It's called the Detox and Cleanse Program. It's free to everybody to use.

And then after that, it's nutrition. You've got to keep with the vegetables and the good. And you've got to get away from the processed food. You have to get away from stuff that is not organic. And even if it's organic, you've got to learn how to cleanse your vegetables, cleanse your fruit, and get good meat from an organic butcher. There's a lot of good places online where you can get really good fish, really good beef. There's North Fork Bison. There's Vital Choice for Fish.

There's Omaha Steaks, they all have very good quality beef, and it's worth your money. So before you start spending money on a bunch of tests and a bunch of drugs, go spend some money on a good nutritional program. Yeah. I'd love to dig into the testing that you're doing. what does that what does that protocol look like it's um if you went to your doctor in order through your insurance it's ten thousand dollars worth of lab tests matter of fact when you go for your first lab draw i instruct all my clients to take orange juice with them because the lobotomus is going to take out 25 vials of blood it's a significantly sized program because but that's after the detox, when I got you

working, when I got you eating well, hopefully I get you to sign up with a trainer because I don't think anybody who hasn't been working out knows how to work out. God knows I didn't. I had no clue what I was doing. And my trainers, my nutritionists had been, I still have them, the same trainer and the same nutritionist. There I am, you know, 30 years later. So that program has to do,

it breaks down to different parts. We do a significant cardiometabolic workup because heart disease is number one killer. Let's get right into that. Now I'm not testing just cholesterol. I'm doing the particles and the particle sizes and the sub particle sizes. I'm doing the inflammatory markers, not just CRP, but sedimentation rate. I'm doing oxidative markers like myeloproxidase because I tell clients all the time and anybody who will listen, cholesterol is not the problem. The problem is oxidation, inflammation, and glycation. That's a fire, the heat, and the sugar. Those are the three things that are going to make everything in your body turn bad. And it's going

to make all your systems go haywire. And it's going to make everything good become everything that's not good. So we do a lot of that stuff. Next, another thing that I do that is hugely significant that we need to teach doctors and patients how to do better is looking at your immune system. Your immune system is everything. It is your command and your defense. It protects you from everything that's not you. And as we get older, it gets older and it declines, but it declines probably more because of toxicity buildup than it does from us getting older.

But you have to look at, you know, all your B cells. You have to look at all your T cells. You want to look at your natural killer cells. You want to look at your complement factors. You want to look at your cytokines. You want to look at your IgGs cells, you want to look at your complement factors, you want to look at your cytokines, you want to look at your IgGs, because you can look at the you can look at the immune system, and you can tell you're tired, because you have a chronic infection, you have chronic virus, or you have chronic Lyme, or you have chronic mold, or you

have, I can see heavy metals, I can see oxidative particles, I know, probably what's going on with you, looking at the immune system more than any other test. It tells me everything I need to know about you because without your immune system, we can't survive the week. I check every hormone. I check every kidney, liver function. I check cancer markers. I do a lot of vitamin markers, but let's be clear. Vitamin markers in the blood are not great.

So generally, it's just a B vitamin, B vitamin in your iron level. Other than that, I'm going to refer to a nutritional testing, which does it much better. Yeah. Regarding the immune system, it seems if your immune system is depressed in some way that you would really need to upgrade many different systems in the body simultaneously in order to fix that. That larger system that seems to be infused into every cell in your body. Well, I mean, the immune system, we are, I mean, there's two things that we're on, right? We're a metabolic engine. We burn. So we're an engine. And the other thing is we protect ourselves. Those two functions alone, digestion and immune system, take up 80% of your energy expenditure every day.

So that leaves you 20% for working out, for sleeping, for talking. 80% is just making yourself more fuel and fighting off everything that's not you. So you're right. When that immune system starts going away, you start getting in trouble because let's look at the top 10 things that kill you. Heart disease, which might be an immune system problem. Cancer, which definitely is an immune system problem. COVID, influenza, pneumonia, urosepsis, and Alzheimer's and all these neurodegenerative diseases, likely an immune system problem. If you don't have a strong immune system, you're heading into the last quarter with no defense. Yo, dig into that a little more. How does the immune system specifically affect cognitive function and help with the progression of things like Alzheimer's?

Sure. So I'm very much of the opinion that all these neurodegenerative diseases are an immunologic reaction to a toxin, whether it's organic or inorganic. Take your choice. Look at the Camp Jujune, where all the 70% of the vets have been diagnosed with Parkinson's because of trichloroethylene. So that's the immune system attacking trichloroethylene in the brain, giving you Parkinson's. Now, Alzheimer's, we've connected to viruses, we've connected it to microbiome, we've connected it to aluminum, we've connected to, it doesn't matter which toxin you're talking about.

The immune system treats them the same way. So whether you talk about an organic toxin, like a virus, a parasite, a bacterium, or whether you talk about an inorganic toxin, like a heavy metal, an environmental toxin, or a pesticide, herbicide, plasticide, it doesn't matter. It affects the brain. And beta amyloid is the poop that the immune system leaves behind when it has a fight. So this whole focus on beta amyloid is just you're looking at the wrong thing. All that's telling you is you had a battle. Interesting. One of the things we're going to talk about, I think, down the road here a little bit is plasma exchange. I have not been this excited about something in longevity medicine since I started giving

my guys testosterone back in the 2000s, because people would change in front of your eyes. And I've not seen that very often in 20 years or 30 years in longevity medicine. Plasma exchange is one of these new things that has come to fruition. Finally, it started in 2005 when two Stanford PhDs took an old, fat, gray, arthritic mouse and a young, thin, lean brown mouse. These poor mice. These poor mice. They poor mice and they tied the circulation together. And within a month, the old mouse reverted younger. Like if it were 70 year old, it became 50 and the old mouse or young mouse stayed at 20. And for seven years, everybody around the world did this study and everybody was trying to figure

out what it was in the young mouse that got the old mouse younger even bezos invested a billion dollars i was about to say bezos was the guy that was to find out guess he was wondering how crazy everybody was putting new blood in itself but it wasn It was nothing in the young mouse. But it wasn't in the young mouse. That's not where it was. It wasn't what the young mouse was giving the old mouse. It was what's in the old mouse that was making the old mouse old. In other words, here we are with inflammation, oxidation, glycation, and toxins all over again. And the same PhD said, well, if that's true, then let's just take that old arthritic fat mouse, let's take out its blood, give it back all of its blood cells and albumin, but throw the plasma away, which is where all the inflammation, viruses, toxins, all that stuff is. What they found out within a month is the old mouse got young.

And suddenly they went, oh, my God, this is all about toxicities. And it was so now fast forward to 2020 and a aphoresis doctor that's a doctor that process of taking out your blood and giving you back your red blood cells plus albumin has been around for 50 years hell i used to do it in the emergency room on drug overdoses so it's been around in college to get beer money huh i used to do it in college to get beer money you get plasma plasma every day. It's like 50 bucks. You get it twice a week. You get plasma donations.

Yeah. Close. I mean, they're very similar. The difference is volume. I mean, you took out 500. Everything I did afterwards made my aging go through the roof what I did with that money.

Probably that plasma donation actually helped offset that a little bit not a lot i don't know how much you drank andrews but it was as much as i drank your liver and my liver should go out and eat sometime because they probably have a lot of memories to talk about it was it was enough for me to be happy that i don't do it at all anymore really i haven't i got sober 20 years ago. Beautiful day, right? 25 years ago when everything changed for me. Because one of the things I realized is, like my martial arts, you can't do this and that. Take your choice.

And I needed to do that because it ran in my family. And I'm one of two people in my family that actually made it out of the family with being in recovery. So the reason I say that is I tell people this all the time, Andrews, I smoked, I was fat, I drank, I was emotionally mature, I didn't know anything about health, you're not going to tell me something at during one of your appointments with me that I didn't do myself. So I get it. I really get where you're coming from. I get where people I get when people come in, they say they have these things they need to overcome and this fatigue. I understand that these people are telling

the truth the doctors need to stop dismissing people as oh that's chronic fatigue or you know is this a psychiatric matter of fact in 30 30 years if i prove myself one thing when you pick up all this stuff with longevity and you clean up the diet and the exercise and get all this inflammation stuff out the psychiatric problems go away yeah i'd love to yeah i would love to dig into um specifically the role of plasma um and and even before we start taking junky plasma out of our body um what does it do because if if you know listening to you talk if i uh were to guess, it's kind of like a place that holds a lot of the sludge in the engine that we've kind of been talking about, the toxicity and things like that. We need to remove it. What is plasma's role in our body?

And why is it kind of like where the focus is for what you're what you're working on? So be clear, blood is made up of two things, plasma and blood cells. So let's put the blood cells to the side and just talk about the plasma. What is plasma? Plasma is a conveyor belt. It takes things from one area to another area and picks up things and brings it from that area back home. So it might pick it up from the stomach and the liver, all the nutrition, stop by the lung, pick up all the oxygen, and then it delivers all the oxygen, all the nutrition, all this stuff to the cells where you want it to be delivered. Then at that point, it's picking up all the garbage. So it's

picking up all the debris, all the carbon dioxide, all the trash that's left over from metabolism and circling it back to the liver and the things for detox. But it also carries all the carbon dioxide, all the trash that's left over from metabolism and circling it back to the liver and the things for detox. But it also carries all the proteins that you need to have to clot your blood. And it also carries all the antibodies that you need to fight off all the infections. Matter of fact, it also carries antibodies and infections and stuff that you've accumulated over the years because guess what? Some of these things you get, they never go away. They become a part of you. Epstein-Barr, cytomegalovirus, HIV, herpes, these viruses incorporate in their DNA, and they're constantly flaring up and erupting

and into your system itself. And it's in the plasma that you carry all these things. And that's where you also have the immune system response, all the inflammation, all the stuff that's telling your body to go to war. But over time, as I mentioned, you start detoxing less effectively. And we've added whole tons of toxins to our environment we've never had. So you're getting it from both sides. So that's why by the time you hit 50, 60, your, your plasma just starts getting less and less healthy, less and less clean. Yeah. So you can clean all the trash out of the plasma. And then what's preventing the new trash from refilling into the plasma?

Is this something you need to be doing on a daily, weekly basis? Or how do you account for the fact that the plasma is just going to get filled back up, so to speak? Sure. So let's be real clear here. When I take out your plasma, I'm not only taking out the bad stuff, I'm also taking out the good stuff. I'm taking out all your sugar, your nutrients, your hormones, and your inflammation, and your virus. I'm taking everything out, and I'm replacing it with albumin, which is just a placeholder, because 24 hours later, your body is going to make all the new

plasma and have all those new proteins and all those new immune systems and all those nutrients and all those things back in. But it's not going to have the trash that we took out the toxins. But as I mentioned before, toxins, I think of them as two types, your organic toxins, which are viruses, bacterium, things that are incorporated into, they will start to gradually creep up again. And then you have the inorganic toxins, which are the heavy metals, the pesticides, the plastics, which will never be producing you again. And it will never go up again unless you don't change the way you're doing stuff and you're introducing them back into your system. So when we do a plasma change in everybody, what we're doing actually is I'm taking 70% of your plasma and giving you back albumin during one visit. And then the next time you come in about a month later, I'm doing again. So this time of the 30% that was left, I'm taking 70% of that and you're up to 91%. Then I do it a third time,

you're up to 96. I do it a fourth time, you're up to 99. I do it a fifth time, you're almost at 100%. So in most of the cases of longevity, when we're looking, we're looking at people who get somewhere between three and five treatments over the course of four months. Now, if you're healthy and young and lean, I've had people come in just for one. Matter of fact, we had a guy 67 years old, who's anti-aging, knows a lot of stuff, takes testosterone, works out, eats clean, takes NAD. He just wanted to see how the plasmic change worked for him. He did confide in me that he's felt great the last seven years, but the last year he's sliding a little bit and he called me up the next day and goes, I feel like you just erased the entire year of fatigue because we all get these toxins eventually. The question is, and we don't know yet, is what then? Once we clean the stuff out of you, and you make your own new plasma,

and I'm introducing all the good stuff into you, and you're not introducing all the bad stuff into you, how long does that last, that vector last? And the answer is, we don't know. However, I have a very good idea that if you don't introduce the things back in, and if you were to go now, like Anders does, and donate a unit of plasma once a month, that might be enough to keep, out of seven liters, you're taking 500 each time. That might be enough every month to keep that relatively clean. That's what we're looking at right now. So we've already done hundreds of people through the fives and we did all their numbers and the numbers we're looking at these people have 100 different biomarkers and we've seen them change pretty dramatically. Now a lot of these people I'm just

watching over time. Some of them don't want to do plasma donation, so I'm using them as my control. Some of them do want to do plasma donations, and we're going to see how frequently they're doing them and we're going to look at these numbers change how quickly they return to their bad basis um i i would love to know uh kind of how this how this fits into like kind of at the beginning of the show we're really focused on testosterone and its role and just staying healthy uh aging well um how does this is this in combination with testosterone is this um in replace of how do those two things kind of fit together or have you moved away from uh the old practice and this really is like the new thing that you're oh no this is all in on this is just another tool in my belt, Andar.

Gotcha. It's just like I still, and like I said, you don't even need to come to see me. Just read up about detox and nutrition and exercise and stress management and sleep. And you're going to get 90% of what you need to do. Then come see me after you check your labs and you can get your labs checked at Life Extensions.

They can send you an order. You don't have to go to a doctor. You can get a whole panel done at life extension or through your company rapid. I mean, they, you got to do a lot of stuff. So that's, they don't have to see a doctor for those types of things, but this stuff that we start adding on, which a lot of the solutions, so the peptides, the hormones, the stem cells, the exosomes, the NAD, the peptides, the hormones, the stem cells, the exosomes, the NAD, the plasma exchange, all these different things that we do for clients are in addition to the five bases.

Gotcha. I know you've you've kind of built a team around you when I go to your site and kind of see the wheel of people with you kind of at the head of it all. How is that integrative approach? Like, I know you have, go back to old barbell shrug, which I knew the number, Joey Thurman on the team. But really dealing with like those five big pillars. Are you able to, is the plasma therapy, is its the plasma therapy, is it, is its own, like, if we need to use this as peptides, if we need to use it, testosterone, if we need to use it. And then all of the other pieces really are like a, a non, um, intervention. I guess everything's kind of an intervention in a poor life, but when you start to, um, talk about really like a more

holistic approach to stress reduction, behavioral health pieces, the training side of it, how do you triage based off of like a more root cause approach or what is the biggest rock that you can move with that person? How do all those pieces really integrate into understanding what is the best path for each person? So the path is pretty much the same, but everybody's going to have their own little avenues, as it were, because people do vary depending on life choices and their genetics, things like that. But we're back to that initial, let's do detox, let's do nutrition, exercise and sleep. Interestingly enough enough once you get those four done stress almost takes care of itself always here's a funny little story i had

a lady come in and she's very stressed out that's why she came to see me she's much more anxious than she used to ever be she can't sleep she cries a lot all these things going on now we cleaned up her diet we did a detox we got her exercising we got her sleeping better and then I came back to her and said to talk to her about her stress. I was like, how are you doing? She goes, and she goes, good. I said, how's your husband? He goes, oh, he's still an asshole. How are your kids?

Oh, they're still terrible. How's your job? It still sucks. I said, how do you feel about it? She goes, I feel good. So this is the thing that I've said for a long time is stress and all these depression and anxiety stuff are nine times out of 10 based upon the first four. So you got to clean that stuff up first. Plus, you do that

testosterone can come up, your peptides can come up, you may not need to do all these things. And it's not that I won't do it for you when you need it, I certainly will. Because I believe in not waiting until the thing paints before we start getting replaced, because the biggest thing that you have to remember about longevity medicine is it's either to, it's easier to retain what you got than to regain what you lost. So let's not wait till you tank on those things. But it's pretty, I see these patients pretty regularly. So we can follow their symptoms. We follow their labs.

And over time, yeah, I'm going to put you on hormones because eventually everybody needs it. Yeah, probably I'm going to put you on some peptides because eventually everybody needs it. Yes, I'm probably going to put you on supplements and digestive enzymes and things to make you digest your food better because you're going to need it. And also down the road, I'm probably going to want to do plasma change because at some point you're going to need it.

But I customize this to everybody on their own. Now, that's up to you, whether you want to do it or whether you want to spend your money in that kind of way, because some of these therapies are not inexpensive. Now, my company, what I've done when I built all my centers is I have such a buying power with the labs that I can get almost all these labs that I'm doing for the, that would cost you $10,000 through your doctor. I get it for about $900 and that's wrapped into the first visit. Along with the other things I can do full body exams. Cause if you don't look for it, you don't know you got it. In other words, I do MRIs and MRIs of people's heads, because

if you have an aneurysm and I can fix it, I'm saving your life. Or if I can find out that you have calcium in your heart, so I can get really more aggressive with you on protecting your heart and stopping that from happening. And in fact, trying to reverse a lot of those damages. If I can find even a benign tumor, a tumor like a big blood clot, that we call hemangioma inside your liver, I'm not going to do anything about that. But watch it because if it gets big enough, it could break and then you could die for absolutely no reason that you need to die. And then finally, the liquid biopsy test for cancer, because up to this point in time, all those preventative screens your doctors do both for men and women, they only catch about 30 to 40% of all the cancers that kill you 60 to 70 percent we're not looking for and those are the ones that are going to present at stage four but now we have the ability to do

these liquid biopsies and detect cancer way earlier than we ever thought possible and let's be real clear about cancer you catch it early and it's a sissy it's easy to take out just by nutritional hanging up the micro environment. But if you leave it alone and it grows and it grows and it never dies, eventually down the road, it's going to learn a lot of tricks. And that's what makes cancer such a hard thing to cure when you're late. So my advice is don't wait. Go do the liquid biopsy of all the tests that we talked about here with your clients. I think the liquid biopsy and the calcium score of your heart are two of the most important. Write that down, Doug. We need to go get those done.

Dr. Paul Cassavis is going to hook us up, man. I'm over here talking, but I'm muted. Wait, so for the coronary artery calcium CT scores, like me and Anders are relatively healthy 40-year-old men. Do we need to be concerned about that? At what point do you, what symptoms do you need to be experiencing? You just want your 40s to go do it? I want you, I want, I want everybody to do it by 40.

Okay. Because your cholesterol can be, it's not cholesterol. So you can have a normal cholesterol. You don't have to have high blood pressure. You don't have to have diabetes. You don't even have to have a family history of heart disease to have a bad score. Now, granted, that's a small probability. But for $60 to $150 for one time to make sure, are you that guy?

Because being a knee or dock, the youngest guy I saw die from a heart attack was 26. From a heart attack. Nothing he was doing drug-wise. That was just bad genes, bad environment, all that stuff. So by 40, I want all my guys and girls to be getting that calcium scan because that levels your playing field. Longevity isn't just about what you do to treat people or prevent people. It's about detecting things before they become a problem. Because again, it's easy to regain or retain what you got. It's hard to regain it when you lost it.

So let's get in front of the ball. Gotcha. So you guys offer those scans at your various clinics? Nope. I offer those scans with a lot of the clinics or a lot of the radiologic places around us, just like labs. And I get them a good deal for people to go get it done.

Yeah. The way you've been talking about this plasma thing makes me feel like you you are your excitement is probably similar to many a couple decades ago when you found the testosterone was something that you do um do you feel like this is something that you know 15 years later we're going to look back and be like that pa Paul Savage guy sure was good at what he was talking about way ahead of the game. Is this something that is like. Kind of kind of like really on the cutting edge of what's going on and where we can take this conversation. Anders, I've been in this for 30 years. I'm one of the docs that brought testosterone out of the anti steroid act into traditional medicine. There's only a handful of us back in the 90s were like, this is what we need to do.

And we went up against the medical boards. We went up against the FDA. We went up against the government saying, this is good science. And just watching how people transformed in front of my eyes, I knew this had to be good because you can't give all these things to guys, have them lose weight, have them gain muscle, have them and not be a positive effect down the road. I'm a statistician. That's what my background is. You add up all these positive factors and it can't be down the road. You're going to have all these negative factors. Once we ruled out, it doesn't cause heart disease.

It doesn't cause cancer. But then I did that with stem cells. I was part of the first program that set up a fellowship with stem cells in the United States. And I saw stem cells make phenomenal changes on people in different areas for different reasons. This, if you remember, I retired. I left. I quit. I was like done. I sold everything.

And I went to Brazil. And three weeks later, the study came out. And four weeks later, I had my investors back. I had my people starting to mobilize. I knew what I was going to do. I just had to get all these parts together. And then I launched in March of this past year. But yes, yes. The answer is this is going to transform the way we age. Yeah. And it's, it's you mentioned stem cells at the very beginning of this thing. And I feel

like it's, it's very hard for new things to come into the market that actually work whether it's through the FDA, but like when, I mean, we work with a bunch of pro athletes and sometimes I'm like, you know, they're, they're pitchers and they go, well, now I got to go to Mexico to go get actual stem cells done, like an amount that is going to make a difference in their life. Is that a big challenge in being able to bring this? It needs to be FDA cleared and tons of testing. And it just slows this big process. And you're up against so many regulations where down in Rio, it's party time.

Yeah. Unfortunately, the United States has put the brakes on a lot of the stem cell research and a lot of the stem cell therapies. So we started out strong. We started out with going in good directions. There were a couple of rogue players out there that got the United States to be worried about those rogue players, and they pretty much clamped down on all the different ways of administering the stem cells, unless it's what we call homogenous. In other words, bone to bone. So you get bone to knee, bone to tissue. That's okay. But the rest of them, they pretty much said, we're not going to let you do, we're not going

to advance that science. And that's too bad for the United States because most of the European countries, China and the South American countries are way ahead of us on stem cell therapies. And I do have relationships with stem cell clinics around the world. And I do send people there. We do the joints and the tissues and all the stuff that we can do in our office. But when you're outside that, we're looking at referrals outside the country. Yeah. Fantastic, man.

I really appreciate having you on today. This is very interesting stuff. Where can people find you, work with you? We're going to get all this stuff up in the show notes as well. We've got an e-book to put in there as well. Well, they can go on our website, which is really easy to find. It's MD Lifespan. We're giving life more moments.

So that's the doctor who wants you to have a better life. I'm not talking about time. I'm talking about life. They can give us a call. Our number is 1-844-PLASMA-X. And everybody is invited to speak with our patient service advisor. And if needed, I'll jump on the phone with anybody if they have any specific questions that they want answered. Because my goal, our team's goal, is to help bring this type of medicine to the masses. Again, one of the things we're

launching within the next year is a whole program for your viewers that you can basically design your own longevity medicine program without having to see a doctor. There's so much you can do. And it's relatively simple, but people just need, like I did, I needed a path. Well, I've been down that path for 30 years. So have you. So has Doug. It's a better path now than it was 30 years ago. And I want to share that with people. I love it. It's very, very cool. Doug Larson. Right on. Yo, I remember in 2016, 17, when there was so much talk and hype around the mice that got spliced together and the results yourself. And the best thing that you

can invest in is your health. Because all of us have things that we need to learn. Somebody asked me once, what's the best biohack I ever learned? The best biohack I was ever taught was the ability to say, I don't know. Because when I said, I don't know, suddenly the world, the possibility opened up and my world changed. So stop thinking you know everything. Understand that you know nothing. Ask people who are smarter than you, which is what I do. Talk to people who are smarter than you. Get the message out to people that this is your life. And there's people out there that want to help give your life more moments. On the TPE part, they can download that from our website. We have free brochures all over that website because I just want people to get good information.

Absolutely. It's great advice. Paul, appreciate you coming on the show. You can find my Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged, the Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you can find Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galvin doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. That is at rapidealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.