Dhru Purohit Show - How Stress Impacts Women Differently Than Men, and How To Biohack Your Hormones with Dr. Molly Maloof

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and WHOOP. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Molly Maloof to talk about how women can biohack their lives to reignite their spark in a way that’s sustainable for their unique biology and health goals. Dhru and Molly discuss how women can safely support their hormonal, sexual, and everyday health today and into the future using diet and lifestyle. Dr. Molly Maloof is passionate about extending healthspan through her medical practice, personal brand, and entrepreneurial and educational endeavors. She is passionate about optimizing health and provides personalized medicine to world-class entrepreneurs, investors, and executives. Dr. Maloof is on the frontier of digital health technologies, biofeedback-assisted lifestyle interventions, psychedelic medicine, and science-backed wellness products and services. For more on Dr. Molly’s work, you can follow her on Instagram @drmolly.co or check out her website, https://www.drmolly.co, or Substack to learn more about her mission.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Molly dive into: -The things that take our energy away (1:43) -How stress impacts women differently than men (3:43) -Safely toggling hormetic stressors for biohacking (9:25) -The underrated benefits of walking (19:30) -An example of something Dr. Molly changed her mind about in the health space (34:12) -Biohacking tools that made a difference in Dr. Molly’s life (42:15) -What Dhru and Molly learned from wearing continuous glucose monitors (48:11) -Why social connection is key to longevity and happiness (52:09) -How you can use biohacking to get your sexual spark back (1:03:53) Also mentioned in this episode: -Dr. Molly’s book, The Spark Factor, here.  -Learn more about Dr. Molly’s online course, “Your Healthspan Journey: Optimize Blood Sugar & Mitochondria Function to Expand Healthspan,” here.  For more on Dr. Molly Maloof, follow her on Twitter @mollymaloofmd, Facebook @drmollymaloof, or through her website, https://www.drmolly.co. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to https://www.insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides personalized recommendations based on what your body needs. To get yours, go to https://www.join.whoop.com and get 15% off your membership with code DHRU15. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women have this beautiful capacity to literally change our thermostat of our bodies in nutrient deprivation. So we start to shift our hormones around to actually maintain our body weight with less calories, which is fascinating. How can we learn to harness the power of our mitochondria to create more energy in our life using the latest understanding of biohacking, food, and even therapeutics? Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain. and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Molly Maloof. Dr. Molly is passionate about extending health span through her medical practice, personal brand,

entrepreneurial and educational endeavors. Her mission is to help everyone understand how to step into the power of biohacking and use food, technology, and even psychedelics to truly heal from the inside out. Dr. Molly is the founder of a demo biocyan. A company that aims to reveal how the science of love can unlock the capacity of healing, connection, and creation within everyone. Her first book, which we'll be talking about today, is called Spark Factor, and it will teach you all her tactics to supercharging energy, becoming resilient, and even feeling better than ever. Much of what's included in today's conversation in Dr. Molly's book started from an extremely popular course that Dr. Molly taught on the topic of health span for three years at Stanford University. If you want to learn how to create more energy starting today using the latest science that's out there,

stay tuned to get all of Dr. Molly's fantastic insights that have helped her and her clients feel their best. Dr. Molly, a pleasure to have you back on the podcast, and I'm excited to jump right in. You have a new book out, The Spark Factor. Give us a list. You know, this book is about energy fundamentally at its core. Yeah. Give us a couple things right off the bat that take. our energy away in life. The natural abundant energy that our body was designed to have,

what takes it away? Yeah. Well, anything that damages mitochondrial function is going to drain your energy. And so the big ones are the things we generally know with the wrong fuel for the gas tank. So things like package processed foods, fast foods, fried foods, these ultra-processed foods are basically the wrong fuel for the car. And what we really need to be putting a in the car are whole foods, like real ingredients. And yet most of the American diet does not consist of that anymore. And so that's causing mitochondrial dysfunction, causing reactive oxygen species, too much oxidative stress, causing inflammation, causing gut dysfunction. And that can really drain your batteries pretty quickly. But one that most people don't think about is psychosocial stress.

So, you know, when you get into an argument with someone, maybe get really emotionally worked up, it can, you just feel drained for the rest of the day, right? That's because stress is, is going to drain your batteries. It's a clear experience that you can have. Anyone who's gotten who's cried for an hour, we're going to have argument with their family member, or went to work and had like a bad experience with a toxic coworker. Negative social relationships are hugely problematic for optimal health. You know, so much of this book, which is fantastic, by the way, link inside of the show notes, please everybody pick it up, is also touching on this core idea of like how everybody can step

into this idea of a biohacker. Yeah. What I love about this book is that it's both a book for men and women, but there are a bunch of sections inside of the book that are really personalized for women and women's biology. Yeah. So I have a big picture question because a huge percentage of my audience is female, the majority. Does stress impact women differently in your experience? And what should women know about really thinking about stress in their lives?

that might be a little bit different than men. Yeah. Well, you know, this is controversial to even say, but I really do think that men and women have different biological imperatives that are from our primitive genetics, right? And that's okay, but that we're living in modern life, right? So we're not, we're no longer on the Savannah. We're not hunting and gathering. We're not, you know, like we're not living in tribes in tribal cultures.

We're living alone. We're living in modern lifestyles. And women are really designed to be connected. And we have this oxytocin dominance. So, like, we really were responsible for maintaining the social network of the tribe back in, back in the primitive times. And men were going out and finding food and hunting, right, and bringing you back to the tribe. Now, women's bodies seem to do poorly with too much metabolic stress.

And I think there's a reason for that. I do believe that women's imperative is to produce life. and it seems like when women overload the stress cup with too much ketosis, too much fasting, too much exercise, potentially even under-eating, they get hormone dysfunction more quickly. I've seen this in so many women, and I've seen quite a lot of women stop their periods because of being underweight. And I've also seen a lot of women overstress their bodies through too much exercise and end up with weight loss resistance.

And I kept on asking myself, well, it seems like when all these biohackers in Silicon Valley, are going keto, they're starting to fast, they're exercising, and they're getting ripped, and they're not getting hormone dysfunction the same way I'm seeing women get this, have this, how this happen. And that's when I started really asked myself, well, what's evolutionary biology? Like, what does evolutionary biology tell us about the differences between men and women's biology? And really, women have this beautiful capacity to literally change our thermostat of our bodies in nutrient deprivation.

So we will literally, if our hormones are basically, if we're sent the signal that there's enough food available, then we start to shift our hormones around to actually maintain our body weight with less calories, which is fascinating. So this calories and calories out thing isn't necessarily true. It's very context-dependent. And what I find really fascinating is, like, how many women have subclinical hypothyroidism, how many women are like working out tirelessly trying to exercise and eat right and do everything that doctors tell them to do and they still can't lose weight.

And I do believe that stress is really the way. the culprit in all of this. It's like, I really think that women's bodies are designed to maintain calories and weight in order to protect the tribe to keep the babies alive. And this is primitive genetics, right? We're living in modern lives. So our modern lifestyles are different than the primitive world we came from. And to me, this is part of why I see there's a lot of problems in women's metabolism when they try to biohack like men. So just for context, we're not just talking about the chronic stresses that are out there, we're talking about specifically the stresses that a lot of biohackers step into that are normally considered positive stresses for people. But even then, you're sort of

sounding the alarm that too much of those things can be detrimental to people's health. Yeah. So there's this concept of in the book I talk about, which is toggling mitochondetic stressors. That's a big phrase. Mitroarmeas means mitochondria. Hormesis means stress that makes you stronger. And so there's a lot of toggle switches you can actually use in your body's physiology to optimize your energy capacity. And I talk about this in the book because this is part of how you get better mitochondrial health. The big thing I want to send the signal to women is you have to be careful with how much you do of all of these things. Because if you do too many all at once, you're actually going to do more harm than good. So I'm all for cold plunges.

Don't get me wrong. These are fantastic. But I've seen clients do 20-minute cold plunges. and they were like, oh, I worked my way up to 20 minutes of cold plunging. I'm like, no, you do not want to do this. And they end up having HPA access dysfunction, right? They're literally overstressing their body with a good stress, but they did too much of it. So what I'm trying to teach people is that these switches are good, but you need to be careful

with how many you layer on top of each other. So let's talk about some of these switches. One is heat and cold. So sauna and cold plunge. Fantastic for mitochondrial health. But you can overdo the cold plunge if you do too long and too long. and too often. And there's all these people that are doing like, I'm going to do cold plunge every day for a month. And I'm like, that's actually not totally necessary for the benefits. In fact, it may cause more

stress than good. The second thing is, is exercise and recovery. I'm all for exercise. Like, exercise is fantastic. But like Barry's boot camp and Orange Theory, these are hit training. You actually shouldn't go above 150 minutes of hit training a week if you want to protect your mitochondria. There's more recent research that has come out that has demonstrated that too much hit training is actually detrimental to mitochondrial health. Same thing with regular exercise. With high-intensity exercise, you really don't want to go too many minutes per week because you can actually end up causing too much stress on the cellular level. Now, moderate intensity exercise, like exercise that doesn't get your heart rate up too high, you can do pretty much unlimited amounts. But it's that high-intensity

exercise that you don't want to overdo if you want to maintain your hormones. Then there's things like hypoxia, hyperoxia. So I'm all for H-Bot, and I'm definitely into breathwork. But if you do too much Wimhafe breathing when you're under, like, let's say you're borderline burned out, and you think, all right, I'm going to try to like get in better fitness and shape and I'm going to work on my breathwork. Wimhoff breathing is highly sympathetic dominant breathing. It's really designed to get your energy levels up. But if someone's on the cusp of burnout, that's not really going to help. You're going to want to do more gentle breathwork. And I love the app othership for this because they have such good breath.

work practices that are not so overly stimulating to the nervous system. There's also PEMF, right? So like I love pulse electromagnetic training. And there's all sorts of companies that have different versions of PEMF. And like it's good for you in the right dose. But some of these companies, you literally feel your whole body shocked by this stuff. And this is a biohacking tool. But if you are really, really getting close to burned out, you do not want to just shock your body with tons of electricity. It's going to potentially push you over the edge. So what I'm trying to teach people and like feasting and fasting, right? Like I am all for fasting if your body's in like a generally good nervous system state.

You're not too stressed out. But if you add fasting with a lot of stress, you might end up actually causing your body to create too much cortisol, which is actually going to break down your muscle tissue for glucose. So fasting has really helped me in the past improve insulin resistance. And my blood sugar was like, my fasting blood sugar was like right below 100. and it really did help me improve my liver insulin sensitivity. But during the pandemic, I was like, man, I really just can't fast anymore.

And it was because my stress levels were so high. So fasting is great. But if you overdue fasting in the context of a high stress state, you're going to actually do some harm. Same thing goes with ketosis, right? Fantastic to flip the metabolic switch. We need to flip the metabolic switch from carb to fat metabolism and back to build metabolic flexibility.

But if you do continuous ketosis and your body is sent the signal that it's basically winter metabolism for too long, it can cause some hormone dysfunction, especially if you're under-eating, which can happen because you're not as hungry when you do ketosis. So I love biohacking, and all these tools are great tools in the toolbox. I just want women to be a little bit more careful with their bodies because we seem to have a little bit more higher risks for hormone dysfunction when we overdo the biohacking. And I'm a biohacker, so I do all these things. But I wrote a book on this because I was like, well, I'm noticing some differences in men and women. We might want to talk about them.

Let's talk big picture. Where do you think the drive to want to do, you know, something's a good thing, but let's like overdo it or let's do all of it. Yeah. Which obviously is not what most of the world is dealing with. We're talking to a very specific group of people, people that are like listening to this podcast and not a phone or that. Where does that come from?

I mean, we live in a, I mean, I lived in San Francisco and when I, when biohacking became a thing, it was very much a Bay Area trend, right? And arguably, women have been biohacking for like thousands of years because of our fertility and because of our life changes that really do throw us through a lot of shifts that men don't experience. But biohacking as a thing really kind of emerged out of San Francisco tech culture, which, by the way, is extremely aggressive and competitive. And I do think that that permeates the culture of biohacking a bit. It is, I mean, And it was largely male dominated originally, but like, as Dave Astry mentioned recently, he believes that there's actually more female bi attackers than men, which I don't know where

the numbers come from, but it seems like it was kind of a male-dominated sport and now it's becoming more widespread in men and women. But there is this sort of like concept of like, well, whatever doesn't break me makes me stronger, right? Well, not necessarily true, you know. Hormesis can make you stronger, but you do need to be careful with how much you stress your body because, you know, I personally learned this a little bit of the whole. hard way. Like, I did a little too many things last year. I fundraised. I taught at Stanford. I moved.

I traveled. I went to Antarctica. I finished a book. I edited a book. I recorded a book. I marketed a book. I advised like 20 companies and I still saw patients. And it was really probably too many things all at once, you know. And I learned that there is a limit to like how much we can actually accomplish before our body starts to show signs of stress. But there is. Can I jump in real quick? What were those, because you're so, you know, being vulnerable about your story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What were some of those signs of stress that you saw on you that you were doing too much? What were those early signals that there was like too much that was on the way?

Oh, I have a general sense of where my cortisol is at because I've measured it so much, but I did measure it in maybe September or so. And maybe it was like end of September, early October. I just liked to get my labs done pretty regularly. And I could tell that my body was in a higher cortisol state. and I was like, uh-oh, time to course correct. So I basically, you know, there's actually a questionnaire. If you pre-order my book, you can get all, you get my stress questionnaires and you can get my stress protocol.

But when you're in a high cortisol state, your body is a little bit more insulin resistant. So I was wearing my blood sugar monitor and I was wearing my aura ring. And my HRV was, my heart rate was going up. my HRV was going down and my glycemic variability was getting a little bit more, more variable. And so interestingly, glycemic variability on your blood sugar monitor should be, you want lower variability, but on heart rate variability, you want higher variability, which is fascinating, kind of confusing too. But so I was just noticing that these were changing.

So I was like, I should really get my cortisol checked. Got my cortisol checked. And it was like, and you're too high. Your cortisol is too high. So what did I do? I started resting more. I started cutting back on the intense exercise. I started taking more adaptogens. I stopped drinking caffeinated coffee. I weaned off caffeinated coffee. I designed a coffee detox for mudwater, and so I just

took my own medicine and started weaning off coffee. Only recently restarted coffee because I felt like my body could handle it. And then I just started prioritizing recovery. You know, I have all these biohacking tools, and I wasn't using them. And so I started using the red light, the PEMF mats, the infrared mats, the sauna, less cold plunge, more gentle exercise, more walks. And, you know, I definitely avoided burnout, which was great. So I took my own medicine, you know, you got to listen to your body. And I took a vacation, which is what I really needed to do. And that was pretty powerful. Plus, I did, I didn't write about this in the book because I hadn't done it yet, but I did five days of NAD therapy, IV because I knew my body just needed some, you know, I just needed to recharge

the batteries. And that was pretty profoundly impactful. I was really surprised at how much that really shifted my energy levels. One of my friends does these retreats for IV, NAD, and I was like, I'm feeling like I need this. And so I did it. And it was really, really fantastic. And now there's actually a company that makes NAD patches called Ion, ion layer by Anthony Guston. And I'm, like, so excited about that company because I was using NAD patches in, like, 2019. And now they're, like, available direct to consumer, which is awesome. So a big fan of NAD, but I really biohacked my way back to balance. And it worked. So in the book, and just right now, you talk about all the great gadgets, tools, things that are available to us.

And you also talk about a lot of the basics, a lot of the basics that people are just even missing. Yeah. And let's go to some of those basics. We'll come back to diet. Sure. That's kind of usually the big conversation. Yeah. One of the basics you talk about inside of the book is even just something as simple as like walking and how walking is so underrated.

Totally. Let's talk about that for a little bit. What do you want people to know about walking? I mean, honestly, my friend Katrina, who I was doing this NAD therapy with, like, she, she made me walk twice a day when I was with her in Sedona. And I realized that, like, one of my bigger issues I was having was, like, I had lived in a very hot summer this year. And it was, like, upwards of 100 to 120 degrees every day in Austin. So my walking actually suffered the summer. And I was so, like, the summer before, I was in Florida.

And I was walking constantly. And I was getting 10,000 steps easy. But interestingly, a lot of people focus, when they're thinking about, like, getting fit and healthy, they think about working out. But one of the bigger problems we have is lack of non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is called neat, which is all the work that you do, all the movement that you do throughout the day that's not exercise. So, like cleaning your house or, like walking down the street, you know, like riding your bike around the neighborhood, like just for fun. Like, you know, running errands, for example, like I use my bike to run errands. But like if it's there's, then there's like me going to the gym and getting purposeful exercise, weight lifting and weight training.

But neat is really important for weight maintenance. And it's really important for overall health because you can actually reverse some of the benefits of exercise by just sit being sedentary all day long after you, I've been working out in the gym. So, you know, this is part of the reason why we all need to be getting like treadmill desks. And, you know, and these are, these are getting cheaper and cheaper. But I realized that like I had, um, I had. One of my biggest problems this year was that summer of not getting enough movement in

and realizing that I actually needed to get more walking in, which was hard to do in that weather. But really, basically, it's putting an aura ring on or putting a wearable on and just seeing how much are you moving throughout the day. And if you have long stretches of sitting, you want to start breaking those up. And I was on a podcast with Joseph Cohen from Self-Hacked. Right before the podcast, he was out of breath. And he's like, I just did like 80 push-ups. I'm like, wow, well done.

He's like, yeah, I was just waiting for you, and I was just doing pushups. And, you know, we forget that we can move our body at any time. We think we need to be in the gym. But actually, we need to just use our bodies throughout the day to get in better health. And when I was first getting fit like 10 years ago, after being kind of out of shape for like most of my 20s, I just started walking. You know, it was like the first thing I did before I even started exercising. And I think it's a really good first step for a lot of people just to like make it. The thing is you're never going to really.

maintain consistent habits if you don't make it easy on yourself to make them additive. And for a lot of people, it's really intimidating to go to the gym when they don't know how to use the machines and like everyone's really strong and fit and they feel out of place and intimidated. It can be easier just to be like, just focus on getting more steps. Just focus on moving your body more throughout the day. And just add a few more every day. Like today I woke up and I was like, you know what? I need to get some movement in because I don't have a gym right now and I'm in L.A. for a week. And I just did an hour long walk. and I walked to a coffee shop that was really far away.

And I walked back and it was great. And I felt really good afterwards. If somebody's starting with that with walking, you know, making it easy. That's a great tip. Is there something that they could shoot for in the day based on anything that you've seen in the literature? You often hear like the 10,000 steps shared like what is a good number to sort of work your way up to? Yeah. Or it could be amount of time.

Yeah. It could be, you know, something with your breath. Like what's a good measurement tool to kind of work your way up to? I mean, a simple thing to do is try to get a morning and evening walk in, 30 minutes morning, 30 minutes evening. That may not be possible for everybody, but you can also do like 15 minute walks after our meals, which is going to greatly improve your blood sugar stabilization. And in terms of numbers, you know, really what I typically ask people to do is let's first track you for like two weeks and like see what your baseline is. And then let's start adding like a thousand steps.

Because I find that when you tell someone 10,000 steps and they're moving like 2,000 steps, it's like it's a big. jump. 8,000 steps is a big jump. So it's, it's really, to me, best to do incremental improvements. But they do say that 7,500 steps a day is pretty darn good. 10,000 is obviously better. You know, 13,000 to 15,000 will probably be best. But you're going to still get a lot of benefit at 7,500 steps a day. So, like, even if you can't make 10,000, just try, you know, to get more steps in and make it kind of gamify it, you know, give yourself, like, I find that, like, gamifying things makes it easier for me because I'm very, like, novelty driven. So when I first started getting more steps in, I would just like find farmers markets

in San Francisco when I live there. And I would just like walk or run to those markets. And that made it fun because then I knew I would get a reward of like eating some fruit and like getting, you know, trying some samples and just that feeling of a reward is really important for some people. Especially if like, you know, you don't really resonate with like steps doesn't matter. Like that doesn't mean anything to you. Like try walking to something that you really like to do. Yeah. The walk goes by so much quicker. Yeah. Especially if like you're in a more city or suburban environment.

And it also just feels more natural to me because I think we evolved to be on the Savannah and we evolved to be walking all day long to find food. And so it kind of feels in some ways like returning to your instincts, you know, except for now we're finding coffee or like macha or whatever it is that you like. Which for some people is like going on a hunt. Exactly. I mean, a lot of ways, like I do kind of feel like a modern hunter and gather. Like I literally go out of my way to source high quality fruits and vegetables in any city that I'm in.

I go out of my way to source like the best meat. I like to meet the farmers. Like I get meat from an amazing rancher in Texas. We have like a great relationship and like he comes by and drops off meat to my house. Like it feels way more traditional in some ways. But like I feel so much healthier when I get food from like places where I know where it's grown. I know who's grown it. And I know the farmers.

Have you ever killed an animal? I have. I have. I've been quail hunting with my dad and fishing. And I haven't done any deer hunting yet, but I do feel like killing quail is really hard because there was this baby quail and it was like not dead yet. And it was like it had fallen out of the bag. And oh my God, like I still think about that baby quail every time I have quail.

But like I do think it's important if you are going to eat meat that you have a relationship to your food and you understand. like how those cows were raised, you know, and how those, where were those birds from, you know? And like, the thing is, is there's actually this woman Hannah, and she has a, she has like a farm in, like, near Bastrop in Austin. And I was just on stage with her at Soa House. And she was just talking about how, like, she has a relationship to her animals on her farm. And like, yes, they are going to become, you know, food for her and others. But they get a beautiful life. And she loves them. And everyone's like, how can you love something and kill it? And she's like, you know, at the end of

day, like, there's this, like, there's a, this is a regenerative farm and there's a relationship we have to food and to animals. And these animals help the ground and these animals have a purpose. And that's hard for a lot of people to hear. I mean, there's a very big movement towards plant-based eating. And I, one of the things people have been asking me in the book is like, is this book going to recommend a specific diet? And I try to explain that, like, I don't prescribe a single diet to people. Like, I have found, I know enough people who are thriving vegans to know it can be done, but I also know enough people who've failed on veganism to know that doesn't work for everybody. And for me, more of an ancestral paleo diet works best. I mean, I really thrive on

meats, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fish, game. And that's, you know, fruits and vegetables is the majority of what I eat, but I do eat high quality meat. And to me, it's really, like, that's what works. And if it works for me, that's great. If it doesn't work for you, I mean, I met a woman on a podcast a few days ago. And she, she's like, you know what, I was insulin resistant and I went off of meat and it made me insulin sensitive and improve my PCOS. And I'm like, that's amazing. And I do think that like some people are going to thrive on vegetarian diets and that's okay. And we need to get past this dietary dogma crap. We're like like if there's one diet that suits all people, we wouldn't live in a

world that has completely different diets depending on different countries you go to. So I'm just all about how do humans learn to adapt to different food supplies? And then how do you find out what works for your body, especially if you come from a mixed genetic background like me. Like I'm Lebanese, Dutch, Irish, Scottish, German, and Jewish. Like, I'm, I largely like to eat Middle Eastern food and I also like to eat, you know, like Scandinavian food, but, you know, meat, meat and vegetables and fish, it's like a big part of what I eat. And, and like, it's interesting that we have so much data now to personalize nutrition. And there's all these ways that you can figure out what works for you. And I think it's going to get easier.

and easier for people to find out, like, what's your best diet? But you do need, I mean, if you really want to figure this out, you should just test. And so, like, nutritional evaluation from Genova Diagnostics, the uran organic acid test, that test, plus I use doctor's data, hair minerals. That will tell you if you have vitamins minerals. If you need, if you need to improve your vitamin mineral status, you're going to find out through those tests. If you are missing enough protein, you can see that on the NutraVal. You can see if you've got protein imbalances, if you're not getting enough glycine. You can see if you've got issues with the terrain of your gut through the Genova Diagnostics GIFX. I've been using these

things for years to personalize nutrition. And to me, if you are confused about what works best for you, find a good functional medicine doctor, run some tests, see what works, you know, see where you need to change your diet. And like, if you have blood sugar dysregulation, that's a really easy fix. You just need to know that you have a problem in the first place. You've talked about blood sugar, even though you're open to a lot of different ways that people eat. Yeah. And you're encouraging of that and within the personalization.

Are there core principles that you sort of follow by? So like you talked about protein. For a long time, the trend inside of the world of food, even for people that were sometimes more on like the side of eating more of an omnivore type of diet, there was the trend of sort of deprioritizing protein. And then in the last few years, it feels that there's been a lot more conversation about the detrimental impact about that. Oh my God, it's so controversial.

And this was one of the hardest things in the book to write about because literally my editors were like, what about all these other longevity experts who are saying like protein is going to impair your lifespan? And then I'm like, and then there's like other fitness experts, right? Like Ellen Aragon, who is so well-sighted. And I literally went to Allen. I was like, Alan, I'm just so confused about this protein question. And really it was talking to him that helped me figure this out. like at the end of the day, you need to figure out what you want. And so like some people are like, I want longevity. I want to live as long as possible. I want to live to 150. And there's some people

like me who are all about health span. Like I'm totally fine living to 100. And like to me that, that's a good goal. And I think that like 120, cool. But like I'll be really old or wrinkly by then. So like maybe. But like I'd be down with 100. I'd be cool with that. But I think health span is is really really important and quality of life for longer. And the one thing I know for a fact is that if your muscles waste and you get older and you fall and you're frail, you're going to break a bone and you're going to cut your life real short. And so to me, what I know about muscle mass is that you need to maintain it for longevity because your muscles are basically your power packs, they're battery packs. They're covered in mitochondria. And so when people get older and they

and they go on these diets that are, you know, protein deficient diets, like, let's say you're following the government guidelines of, like, 0.7 grams per kilogram. That's not enough when you hit 65 to maintain muscle mass because you actually absorb less protein as you get older past 65. So there is this question of, like, what's the right amount of protein to consume? And I really think that 1.6 grams per kilogram is pretty darn solid. It seems like a lot for some people, but, like, you should be weightlifting. If you're weightlifting, you're using that fuel to replace.

pear muscles. There's a purpose for it. The thing that I think is problematic is all the people eating excess amounts of protein in the context of excess carbohydrates and excess unhealthy fats. So it's really, I think it's very context dependent as well. If you're eating a diet that's carcinogenic because you're eating a high carb, high sugar diet that's causing insulin resistance and then you pour a bunch of protein on it, yeah, you may have issues with cancer at risk. But I think if you're eating a diet that's whole foods and healthy forms of protein, it's one of the best nutrient-dense foods you can find. And it's really about sourcing. It's really about context. And yeah, and I think it's also about, like, how well your body, you know,

digest the fat. Like, I tend to prioritize lean protein. I'm not really into, like, the super fatty proteins. Like, I have a lot of friends that are. But what works best for me is, like, lean meat and not too much saturated fat because I'm one APO-E4 gene carrier. So, you know, I have a healthy cholesterol level and I have healthy blood sugar levels and I have, you know, no problem putting muscle on when I work out. To me, that's really what you should be aiming for and just recognizing that like frailty is a massive killer and it's just something I want to avoid because the thing that got my grandparents was, at least two of my female grandparents was frailty.

Yeah. And I think the other thing about the protein thing is, you know, all the studies that have been done on mTOR, but is mTOR really that big of an issue long term? They're saying that it's not. Like there's a lot of controversy. I was like all for the mTOR being like too much mTOR. Oh my gosh. And the thing. Exercise increases mTOR as well too. Exactly. We're not telling anybody not to like not exercise. Exercise also increases autophagy. Yeah. You know, who knew? You know, there's a lot that exercise does. And so I think we're, I think we have a lot of learning to go. But. But, you know, I'm willing to change my opinion if better science comes to me. But I like to, you know, I like to look at different experts and take what works, like kind of try on their perspectives and then figure out what works for me. And my goal is to look awesome as long as I can, you know, and like the people who age the best are people with high VO2 max who have solid muscle mass, you know, like they, when you're strong and fit, you're going to live longer. I think changing your mind is a total superpower that, you know, a lot of the world could benefit from. Yeah.

Can you think of something, you know, that you want to share the audience with? Like, what's something in your life that you've changed your mind about? Could be related to food, could be related to, like, health. Could be just something overall. You know, is there anything that you can think of that you used to have a more black and white opinion on it? And then as you experience or read, other types of things, you change your mind about it. This is a good one. You know, I think this whole LDL argument, like this whole idea that like LDL is this bad cholesterol and HDL is this good cholesterol, these are sort of being debunked.

And it's pretty clear now that like, so there's a lot more complexity to HDL and LDL than just calling them good and bad. And I think that, you know, there's this, when I started understanding the interplay between the microbiome and our metabolic health, that's when I was like, oh, wow. Like, we've missed a really big picture here. And that's that your LDL and your HDL are like highly dependent on the gut, on the health of your gut. And I did not know this. And so I thought it was all diet.

I thought it was all. And yet, your diet affects your gut. Don't get me wrong. But like, I really thought that like, okay, if somebody has high cholesterol, like the next step is statins. And it was like, whoa, there's so much more you can do than just starting someone on a statin. And it's still very commonplace modern medicine to, like, just put everyone on statins. But as we've learned, statins can cause depletion of coensum Q10.

Coenzym Q10 is incredibly important for mitochondrial function. We know that statins can cause diabetes. Diabetes can cause heart disease. In fact, it causes damage to the blood vessels, which contributes to heart disease. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Most doctors are still practicing that everyone should be getting statins. we are not looking at the big picture here with metabolic health. And like that was a big shift in my consciousness when I was like, oh crap, like literally

millions of doctors across the country practicing this out-of-date medicine. And I feel like I'm so fortunate because I get to just read so much. Like I've read thousands of papers on metabolic health since 2014's since I started working with blood sugar monitoring. And I feel like it's a real shame that there's like so much good research that just not properly distributed. because it's really hard to keep up with all the literature when you're like working 24-7 in a hospital. So we have to have some like, we have to give these doctors grace.

But I do think that the healthcare system should update a lot of its guidelines. And some of these things are just out-of-date medicine, you know. Have you ever come across a test for soft plaque in the heart called the Clearly test? Have you ever come across that? Ooh, is this new? This is new. It's been kind of coming out in the last like year or so, two years. test. This is awesome. People get like CT scans, right? That looks for hard plaque. But in general,

most people of you're relatively healthy. Oh my God, I got to do this. You're going to be a zero anyway. When you got it done, I got it done last year. Yeah. In preparation of me turning 40 and other stuff, and mindset zero. Yeah. But the problem isn't the hard plaque for a lot of the people. It's the soft plaque. Yeah. And then your ethnic background, all these things kind of play a role in it. And like a lot of people, you know, I'm not an expert like yourself. I just get a chance to ask questions, but I consider myself a professional amateur. Yeah. I'm reading. I'm reading. I'm seeing what's out there. And I recently met a cardiologist who was like, you know, we should really do, actually,

I interviewed Dr. Gabriel Lyon. Oh, she's great. And she was telling me, you know, you should get this test done and look into it. It might answer some of the questions. Yeah. And then I got connected to a friend of her as Dr. Twynam. He's based in Missouri. He's cardiologist, you know, kind of functional medicine integrative.

And he has a lot of like layered nuanced thoughts about this because part of what he's seen over his, well, first the clearly test. Yeah. You get both a hard plaque and a soft plaque score, right? And then within that soft plaque score, you get a much more understanding of like, where is this? What plays a role kind of inside of it? And a good cardiologist can help you kind of unpack that. Oh, my gosh.

And then for some people, hire APOB, which everybody's talking about, might be an issue. And for other people, it may not be as much of an issue. Yeah. For some people, you could be eating really healthy right now. This is all my understanding for Dr. Twynam. We're going to have them on the podcast to talk all about my results and we're going to share with the audience and everything like that. Along with that test in context with, you know, your full Boston heart labs.

Yep. Right? Because it's not one test in isolation. You have to look at everything together. Yeah. So could me being on a vegetarian diet when I was young, growing up in the South Asian community, eating a lot of like processed foods and sugar? Yeah.

And then I became vegan and I ate a lot of refined carbs. Could I have done some damage to my arteries and my heart that then, you know, to use basic languishing, created either like divets or inflammation that then some foods that might be good for somebody else are more problematic for me because of that past history. So now we are taking it even further because LDL, why do people even care about that? They're thinking of really the epidemiological studies that are associated with high LDL and populations that have increased rate of heart disease. Yep.

That's there. But if we could peek into the heart a little bit more, not saying that this test, I have no affiliation with them, is like the Holy Grail. But we're starting to take steps closer to the idea of what actually works for people, which is exactly what your book is about. Well, that's the thing, right? Like these population measures were, that was how medicine was practiced in the 90s, right? in early aughts.

And now we're really moving towards a personalized world. And, you know, personalized medicine is available. It's definitely not evenly distributed, but it is out there. And one of the most interesting things that I came across through Robert Lustig's work was the overfat, underfat concept. And so basically there's a lot of people who are obviously obese and overweight, but part of those people are going to be metabolically healthy and part of those people are going to be metabolically unhealthy.

And the difference is is where is the thing? fat located. Is it in the viscera? Is it visceral fat? Is it causing problems for metabolism? Is it infiltrating the liver and the organs? Or is it distributed throughout the body? At the same time, there is a lot of people who are metabolically unhealthy and non-obes. And this is oftentimes people of different ethnic backgrounds, like, you know, Indian populations, Asian populations, but even white populations where you carry the fat in the visceral cavity around the abdomen, and it can cause pretty significant metabolic dysfunction and increased risk of chronic diseases. So we've got to get away from BMI as a marker because it's just not a good, it's not a good tool. But we also need,

you know, to properly get people screened for higher waist circumference, right? And I love this idea of this test you have because, you know, it's because the thing about disease is that it happens slowly over time. It's not like it happens overnight, usually. Chronic diseases are slow moving. So what's beautiful is that we now have so much technology that's being developed and being distributed to help people check these things before they become full-blown illness. And look, like, I don't drive a car. I like, I don't, like, have a ton of major expenses, but I spend a lot more on my health than the average doctor because I really want to avoid getting chronic diseases. Like, I really don't want to end up with the same diseases.

that have plagued my family. And I think a lot of what, you know, I've seen in my practice and in the world is the vast majority of what you see in medicine is preventable disease. So like, let's go out of our way to like get better data so that we can avoid getting sick. One of my favorite questions that Tim Ferriss asked his podcast guest, and I don't ask it regularly, but I think about it. And it's such a beautiful question. And in the context of just everything you've shared, because you do a lot of experimentation, is like, what's something in the recent past that is less than $100, right? I'll bump you up a little bit. I'll bump you up to $200 that you feel has made a significant difference in your health and might be something that you

want to put the spotlight on. Oh, man. What am I going to choose? There's so many things to choose from this. Let's see. I mean, does it have to be like a biohacking tool? No, anything, anything. Think broad in terms of your book being about a lot of different subjects. Well, what's the, what's the budget again? I'll bump you up to 200 bucks. Okay. Well, if you pre-order my book, actually, there's a pre-order deal right now for the Lumen device. Okay, got it. And I really like the company Lumen because they've really put metabolic flexibility on the, like, in the forefront of our, like, of our minds these days.

And metabolic flexibility just, like, wasn't a thing people thought about. Everyone just thought about blood sugar or weight or BMI or, like, you know, fitness. but people weren't thinking about metabolic flexibility, and it wasn't easy to test for. And really, this is how well your mitochondria are doing their job of fuel switching. So the respiratory quotient is basically like this marker of metabolism. It's calculated with, it's basically called the respiratory exchange ratio. So when we eat food, we breathe in oxygen, we burn the fuel, we breathe out carbon dioxide. and the amount of carbon dioxide that we emit changes depending on what we consume, right?

So carbohydrates have more carbon in them and fatty acids get metabolized differently. So there's going to be a different respiratory exchange ratio depending on if you're eating a higher fat meal or a higher carb meal or if you're fasting versus not fasting or if you're, you've just exercised and you've done it before or after exercise where you've burned off glycogen. So you can literally see how while your metabolism is switching. between carbs and fats. And if you are under a lot of stress, if you're in a high cortisol state, you're going to find you're not going to fuel switch as well because that cortisol is going to prioritize maintaining a higher blood sugar. So it's a really cool tool in the toolbox.

I'd say besides blood sugar monitoring, because I do have to say, like, initially I would have said CGM. CGMs are pretty cheap if you can get your doctor to prescribe them. Like, they're usually only like 35 bucks. But they're not direct to consumer necessarily unless you go with levels. and Levels does have an app, which they do charge for, so it's a little bit more expensive. But CGMs, to me, like, along the same lines as Lumen, like, really important for monitoring your metabolism. And then there's also tools like the Abbott Precision Extra, which is, like, something that you can use to test for ketosis if you're dropping into ketosis.

But the cool thing with the Lumen is that if you are getting into ketosis, you're going to be blowing off more. You're basically going to be, it's going to show you if you're in fat metabolism. So fun fact, when I first started using Lumen like maybe five years ago, like their company had like five employees. And I was like, you guys have got to give me one of these things. I've got to try it. And I ended up becoming an advisor and doing a video with them. But the reason why I signed on to work with them was I was like, I needed to lose 10 pounds before my sister's wedding.

And I didn't, I knew I was like, I was like, wow, how am I going to do this? I have like a month or like, no, I have like, I had like two months. And so I just used it to get into ketosis. And I was like, I could see that I was breathing out, you know, and I was, I was, when I was breathing using the device that I was in ketosis. And I like lost the weight really quickly. I liked great for the photos and I felt really good. And it was fun because I would now use, I now use the device like to basically identify if I'm metabolically flexible or not. And it's just such a cool tool. But that along with CGM and like keto monitoring, like we have so much data now that we can play with. And you really can

know exactly what's going on in your body with your metabolism if you have these tools. You don't need all of them. You can just start with like CGM and then if you like it, then Lewin you might enjoy because they do prescribe different diets, which is cool. Just a question on ketosis. That seems like a very, like, I think one thing for my friends that are like, have measured it and like are actually seeing like if they're in ketosis, it's really hard to get into. Yeah. You got to get fat adapted.

So fat. Even if you eat a little bit of carbohydrate and you're trying to get in like full blown ketosis like with ketones and everything in a ketone monitor. Yeah. Even like the tiniest little bit of carbs will throw you out of that. That's true. Is that been your experience? Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think that definitely you've got to be careful with the carbs you choose during ketosis. And really you would only need one of those monitors, not Lumen because you're saying that that's about metabolic flexibility, but just because you brought it up, I would say that the way that you eat on a normal basis is not one where you're recommending necessarily for like people to go to. I don't do continuous ketosis, but I did use it as a tool to get metabolically flexible. Yeah. Because I wasn't able to fast in 2018 without first dropping into ketosis for a couple months. And I think it was maybe a month and a half that took me to get metabolically flexible, to get like fat adapted. But like somebody who's obese and overweight may take three months

because or somebody even just who's just really metabolically flexible. So the more metabolically flexible you are, the harder it is for you to fuel switch. And that's going to take a longer duration of effort and consistency. But, you know, there are some downsides to continuous ketosis. Like, if you stay in low carb for too long, then any time you eat carbs, you're going to get a blood sugar spike. So to me, the real move, the real next move we're all going to be pursuing, kind of similarly to like how we got to get away from these like dietary dogmas. We have to get away from like macronutrient dogmas. And like the real move is like metabolic flexibility in like changing up your macros to basically teach your body to adapt to different, different amounts of fuel and different

types of fuel. I know you're affiliated with levels. I'm also investor with levels as well. And people say, like, what was the best thing that you got out of like your experience, right? I would say that overall, the biggest takeaway that I got is we talk so much about diet and levels, especially during the pandemic, my gym closed down here in Los Angeles. And the trainer that I was working with, him and I stopped, you know, working together because we were work at that gym. And I was doing hikes. I was playing a little bit of tennis here and there. I thought it was like pretty active. And then when I showed some of my data to some of my friends out there, they're like, you know, you should, you should really see because I was like,

like a lot of people when you first start doing continuous glucose morning, you're like, okay, this thing is bad. This thing is good. You know, it seems like very black and white. But then it was really my brother-in-law, especially, shout out to Dr. Neil Patel. He was like, you know, try, you know, you used to work out a lot more. Like go back into strength training. Go back into getting into the gym, lifting heavier things, and now see how you tolerate some of those same foods. And that's exactly what ended up happening.

A lot of the foods that not working out, that I had more problems with, when I simply started hitting that, you know, 150 minutes plus, you know, a week around there through like three or four strength training sessions with the group that I work with here in Los Angeles is called ultimate performance, they, I saw a completely different glucose response that was there. So now all of a sudden, and then along with it, I was constantly measuring my fasting insulin. Yep. And like almost it got me like more into working out. There's these things that like everybody knows working out is so important.

But then when you're using one wearable like to track your sleep or you're measuring something else with your glucose monitor, you forget how sometimes not working directly on your diet and working on movement. Totally. Or your stress. It makes such a huge difference. Like lowering your stress. I mean, like I have a friend, David Melman, he's the founder of Amex. It's a really cool company that's developing like a food tracking app for athletes to help like really personalized nutrition for their fitness goals. And he blew me away because he started training for marathons and started he actually started winning marathons. And this is a guy who like self-described like out of shape financial dude from New York like moves to my.

Miami and starts training and getting in really good shape. And he's like, I can eat all the carbs I I want now because I'm burning all of them. I'm burning thousands of calories on these long runs. And so we do forget that exercise, I mean, reverses every homework of aging, you know, it's the best thing you can do for your metabolism is to get into a consistent movement habit. And I mean, I can get in and out of shape, like really fast now. Like I can, like, I don't get out of shape as quickly, but I definitely can get into shape faster when I, um, I, I, um, I, when you're more metabolically healthy, it's like easier for your body to like sort of put on fat and take it off whenever you need to. But like last year, I was in really, really good shape

right before Burning Man. And I got COVID at Burning Man. And so I got a little bit out of my fitness regimen for a few weeks. And it was amazing how it changed my metabolic health. Like I saw my body go from really metabolically healthy to like not metabolizing sugar as easily. And then I got started working out again. And then I saw my CGM improve. So it really does. It's not just about what you eat. It's about how you move, how you sleep, your environment. If there's a lot of pollution in your environment, that's going to change your metabolic health, which a lot of people don't know.

And it's also about how much stress you have. So it's a lot more complex. I mean, it's also your micronutrients can affect your insulin sensitivity. So if you're just micronutrient deficient with like vitamin D, magnesium, chromium, you can see your body really change. And so trying to think about insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity more than just your diet, is really important because we get so stuck on diet and thinking that diet's the way to change everything. But it really, it's about lifestyle.

Speaking of lifestyle, you know, I like to just check out people's social media following before they come in and just, you know, and I follow you normally anyway, but I just don't spend a lot of time on social. And I was checking out your stories. And one of the things that you were, that you re-shared, I forgot who the professor was, but he had posted this slide from a recent presentation talking about how one in seven men do you want to pick it up from there? I think one and either seven. It's somewhere between one and five and one and eight, probably one and seven. Do not have any friends.

And that's a really big problem in society because like your social network is your net worth. And like I really, really believe that like my community is a massive reason for my success in this life. Like I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for my friends. and your social network is also highly tied to your health and longevity. And so, like, I'm very, very, very fortunate. I spent a lot of time during the pandemic with my family and on purpose because I knew I needed to sort of like, like not repair my relationship with them, but I'd gotten distant

from them because I had lived in California for 10 years and they lived in Illinois. And I made it a priority to really strengthen my relationships with my family. But in doing so, I like lost some of my, I mean, like my relationships with my friends suffered because I was now in a new part of the country hanging out in the Midwest during, you know, during part of the quarantines of the summer of 2020. And I saw my mental health really start to decline when I got really isolated when I moved to Florida temporarily to teach it. I was teaching at Stanford and I was using one of my family's homes that wasn't being used. And I was like, okay, I'll have a focus, I'll have quiet, I'll be able to teach. By the end of those three months, I was really not emotionally well. And it was because I was very isolated.

And I had very little social interaction. And it was not good for my mental health at all. And I think about all these people. And there's something around, it's not just men. It's like somewhere around one in ten women as well, don't have friends. And I saw patterns in my practice that I started, it started really to wake me up when I realized that the clients in my practice that struggled the most were the ones that were most socially disconnected.

And I realized that there was something to this. And it was that when you spend time with friends, you get send signals that you're to your brain, that you're safe, and you get oxytocin. And oxytocin is the hormone of safety, trust, and love. And we all need oxytocin. But we also get a sense of protection from our friends. Like, I am extraordinarily loyal to my friends. And if someone attacks my friends, I feel like they're kind of attacking me, and I will defend them, you know? And that's space of pressing talking. And so we need these social relationships. to feel safe and protected in this very crazy chaotic world. And without that, we feel almost, you know, we feel alone and like loneliness is basically sensed like a pain signal in the brain.

And that pain signal, we evolved for a reason because it was supposed to bring you closer to your tribe. And being closer to your tribe would mean you would actually be protected from neighboring tribes. It would mean that you would have information to be shared. I mean, one of the best things about my social life is that no matter like how much basically every time I have dinner with friends or go to a party with friends I get so much information downloaded I get so many insights I get so much help and advice for free from people who just love me and then we share resources right like every time I have a dinner party abundance comes back to me 10 fold like every time I give more I get more and I'm like one of my goals of 23 my resolutions is to be far more generous in every aspect of my life because I feel like

generosity is just, it's like always comes back to you. It's carmically the best thing you can do is just to give. And I think that we've lost a lot of our civility in this world. Like there's a lot of just like maltreatment and just like animosity and anger and permeating a lot of culture because of the media. And it's not true. It's like there's small populations on each side of the political spectrum that are extremely local, and they are sending us messages that we are divided and that we are not a United States. And that is very toxic to our mental health and to our capacity to bond with others. And arguably, like, politics is where a lot of people get divided with their friends, you know, like being in California is so funny because just the way that people talk about vaccines

and masks here and the way that they talk about them in Texas, just like so different. Like such different worlds. And like I'm Switzerland. I'm like I'm here for it all. Like I'm here to support everyone's individual medical autonomy. I'm like very much about medical autonomy. But I find it really fascinating just how much these things set people off and actually divide others.

And I really think that we all need to be emphasizing social connection as much as possible because I don't think that the world's going to get easier in the next three years. I think it's going to get a little bit more chaotic. And I think that the best thing you can do for your mental health, your longevity, your happiness. is to spend time with people. And, you know, arguably, like a lot of people are looking for, like looking to date and looking to settle down and have families. One of the best places to meet people is through your network. And so to me, it just is a no-brainer. And yet people just don't understand love. They don't understand social connection. And it's because it wasn't part of our

education and training as doctors or as, you know, when I was in college, it was not part of my education. So that's part of the reason I founded the company Adama bioscience, because literally I'm trying to teach people that like the science of love is a complex thing that we need to understand because there's a there's like there's basically a positive and negative side to love itself, right? For sexuality, the positive of it is like we get orgasm, we get feeling of connection to our partners. The downside is we have things like rape, right?

When it comes to romantic love, upside is it feels amazing. You feel like you're high on life. The downside is that like the passion isn't going to be like that all for the rest of your life. Like, it's going to wax and wane with your partner. And there are experiences like stalking and harassment that come from romantic love that's potentially dangerous when people fall in love with people and it's not reciprocated. And then when it comes to attachment, right, like we need human attachment because it helps us raise children, helps us bond with children, helps us bond with our partners, helps us create familial bonds. But the downside is that when you

lose someone in your family that you love and you're deeply attached to, you're going to some of the most immense pain of your life, and that will potentially cause mental illness. And then there's things like social connectivity, right? Like we need a tribe. We need family and friends. Downside of that is ostracism can happen. Cancel culture happens. People get kicked out of their communities from making mistakes. And so I really feel like if we understood the complexities of love and the science of love, we'd all have better health and happiness. But we have to recognize that it's not a Disney movie. And it's not this, I mean, as much as I love Disney movies, like real is not a Disney movie. Real life is going to be filled with contrast. But polarity is actually what

creates life. This is part of the existence. This is part of human existence. So we need to accept it and understand it and educate ourselves so that we can thrive in the face of adversity. With the book covering so many different areas and topics, even the topic of friendship and social connections you did, sexuality, you talked about that a little bit. What was a part of the book that you had the most fun writing about? I'm sure the whole process was fun and a little agonizing at the same time because books are like that. But was there some part of the book that like it felt like, oh, even this is like a little bit of new territory for me or you know about it, but the assimilation of the research instead of that

space was like, oh, wow, this is like really interesting. I had no idea how much culmination of research was there. I mean, I think the, I'm trying to think of like what was like the fun part, but I really do think because it was like, it was certainly a challenge. This whole book was a major challenge. But I think what was helpful was, and what was like what was fun about the book was like, you know, I taught this course at Stanford for three years and I poured my heart and soul into building this course for students at Stanford. And it was only reaching like 30 students a year, you know. What was the title of the course? It was called live better longer, extending health span for longer lifespan for longer lifespan. And it was pretty popular. It was like the first year I taught it, it was the highest rate of course in the department.

That's great. So that felt really good. Like I would never talk before. I'd over. were prepared, I would go to class and I would give these lectures and then I would get these like standing ovations from students. And I was like, are you choking? Like I didn't even get into Stanford. And like now I'm teaching here. Like what? That was like a really big peak. I remember walking on Stanford's campus and I was just like, this is like a peak life experience for me. Like to be here in this place that I have such deep respect for that I did not get into for medical school or undergrad. And now I am getting to teach. Like that is a, I think it says a lot about like how much I've grown since I was younger.

Like I had terrible test anxiety growing up. Like I really did not perform well on tests until I dealt with my test anxiety. But I've always felt like I have a really unique perspective on life. And I would get students who like one of my students wrote a review of my course and she was just like, this course like prepared me for my life. And it also made me want to study life itself as a domain. And I was like, whoa, gosh, if I could go back to college and like, changed my major, I would have been like, how do I study life itself? You know, like, that is cool. But I think it was, I think it was like the beginning, I think it was like the introduction of the

book that was really fun for me because it was really me getting to tell my story. And we actually edited like half of it out because it was just too much to talk about. But telling my, like, being able to like reflect on my life and reflect on coming, you know, I was not a healthy kid. Like, I was not a healthy child. I was born with a core prolapse. I had a rough birth. I was in the hospital. I had pneumonia.

I, like, had tonsillitis, strep throats chronically. I was always giving antibiotics. I had clearly a lot of gut dysfunction, which led to hormone dysfunction through puberty. And acne in high school. And just, like, the number of health problems I've overcome to become who I am today, like I had ADD, diagnosed in medical school. Like, I have overcome pretty much every single health problem that I faced. And it was because I knew as a child in fifth grade, I was like, I'm going to become a doctor and I'm going to understand the roots of human suffering.

I didn't know I was going to solve it all, but I was definitely going to figure it out and understand it. And to be able to write this book and feel like, honestly, this book plus I would say Christopher Palmer's book on brain energy, like if you read these two books, you're going to have a really good understanding of what causes most of disease. Because my book covers a lot of metabolic disease and his book covers a lot of mental disease that are rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction. And so getting to actually tell my personal story and show people that like, I'm not the kind of guru that's always been this health expert. Like it took me years of learning how to fix myself and fix my clients to get to this point where I was ready to write a book. And I didn't have the, 10 years ago, I'd not have the confidence I have today to write a book. I didn't even have the knowledge I needed. I'd say I've learned more in the last 10 years than I learned to medical school in residency.

Like this is you learn so, I mean, if you're a lifelong learner like I am, you can learn anything. anything and you can become really proficient in science, but you have to be committed to lifelong learning. And this book is sort of like a testament to like my own personal journey of healing and my own philosophy of health that is different than what mainstream medicine taught me. We talked about it a little bit on our first podcast together. Yeah. But what did you learn?

You talked about learning so much in the last 10 years. Like what did you learn about the approach of biohacking your sexual spark? Oh, yeah. And why did you want to write about it in the book? Yeah, I mean, sexuality is so taboo and it's so unbelievably just charged as a topic for a good reason. But I really think it's the frontier of biohacking and health because it is such an exciting place to be thinking and working in. And one of the things I'm working on in Adamabioscience is we're building a new sex therapy. And we're also designing the sex therapy to be drug agnostic, but to be able to use with different

pharmaceuticals and prescription medicines. And the reason, I mean, and also it can be used alone. You don't have to take any drugs at all for this medicine. But there's a lot of sexual dysfunction in this country. And I accidentally healed three different sexual dysfunctions in my late 20s before I became a doctor while I was experimenting with a partner using this medicine MDMA. And I definitely would never recommend people go out and use this experimentally because it is, it has a lot of risks.

And one of the things that people don't realize is that there are, like this is a love drug, but there's also real risks associated with it. Like you can become prematurely attached to someone. You can fall in love artificially. You can basically like think that you're in love of someone, but actually it was the medicine talking. Let's say you're really struggling with your partner. and you fall in love with them.

Like you can, or let's say you take the medicine and then you like become extra bonded to them and you decide to get divorced and it can make it harder for you to actually uncouple. So I'm not recommending across the board that people experiment with MDMA. But in my experience, it played a role in healing some sexual trauma that I had. And so since then, you know, I've been on an interesting journey through my 30s of like really, really discovering my sexuality. And I think a lot of women in their 30s discover that there's your 20s do not They just pale in comparison to what your 30s offer you when it comes to your sexuality.

But in my journey, I went from basically being, feeling dissociated during sex, feeling not aroused, feeling like I had a lot of pain and feeling like I had no ability to orgasm with a partner to now being normally aroused, having, you know, actually I would say the sexual pain thing is tricky because it's very dependent on the other person as well. their style of sexual activity. But I'm really interested in helping women heal sexual pain, helping to teach people how to have sex in a way that doesn't cause pain because it's really a big issue. And then an orgasmia is like a really common problem for women. And it's very much rooted in psychological. It can be very psychological often, sometimes physiological.

But this is 40% of women dealing with sexual dysfunction. That is a lot. And there's about the same amount of men dealing with erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety, and premature ejaculation. And I think the level of sexual dysfunction that we have as a society is actually a direct reflection of the amount of dysfunction we have around the topic of sex. Like parents are afraid to talk to kids about sex. Parents are afraid to even go near the topic with their children because they were never trained on how to communicate about sex. So I have deep intentions of creating like modern sex education rooted in really good science.

because, like, we have so much good data, and we just, it's not just not distributed. So in my personal experience, like, what I learned was that, like, you have a pelvic floor that needs exercising just like your body. And yet women or men are not taught this. And learning how to exercise your pelvic floor is one of the coolest things you can do to actually optimize your sexual performance. Learning about how to actually relate to your pelvic floor, like learning when it, what is it mean to have a pelvic floor that's too tight versus too to lax? What does it mean to have a pelvic floor

that's armored based on trauma? Like some of this stuff is not in the book. Some of the stuff is in the book. I'm definitely going to have to write another book on sexuality. I think it's going to be called turn yourself on because it kind of goes along the same lines of mitochondrial health and energy. But breathing is a big facet of optimal sexual function. And yet many people do not breathe during sex. They get tense. They hold their breath. And it is a really profound shift. switch, which you can flip and learn to breathe, you can amplify pleasure dramatically in your body. And you can actually prolong orgasm. And there's so many different ways to optimize sexual function. I feel like I'm definitely not trying to like have anyone in the audience, does Dr. Molly

think she's a sex expert now? Like I am certainly in the process of becoming more educated in this area. But my job is basically to talk to all the experts and to translate what they have learned for a broad audience. Like I look at myself as a communicator. Similar to, to you. Like, we are here to like take really good ideas and give them, like, bring them to the world. So when it comes to sexuality, like I am in the process of like digging into many, many, many books. I had an internship last summer. I had like at least 10 to 12 interns reading books for me and summarizing them. So I have, I've like, I got a lot of shortcuts to learning, but I look at sexuality as a major opportunity to destigmatize, to reduce the taboos around it,

to create good sex education, to create new therapy. and to create a more wholesome approach to sex that doesn't always feel like it's this shameful act that we need to hide. You talked about pelvic floor? Any couple exercises you want to throw out or things that people are already doing, but maybe not doing enough to strengthen their pelvic floor, both men and women? So I write about kegles in the book, but what I didn't realize until literally three months ago when the book was finished and I couldn't change it, I started talking to pelvic floor

therapists. And like, kegles for me have been great for keeping my pelvic short. calipul floor strong. But I learned that not only is important to actually, this is crazy. So men have erectile tissue that causes an erection. Women have erectile tissue as well. We're not taught that we need to engorge our own tissues. We are taught that we want to pull in our organs and pull in our pelvic floor, but we're not taught to push it out. So just like when you're lifting weights and you want to lift the weight, but you also want to let it go down slowly, because you're going to get more muscle hypertrophy, if you not only lift it, but also lower it, you know, like lowering it

can actually create more hypertrophy if you lower it slowly and actually work the muscle on the way down. Similarly, you want to pull in your pelvic floor for a kegel, but during sex, you also want to push out the pelvic floor. And for women, women don't realize this, but when you learn to push your pelvic floor during sex, you actually create more engorgement of your tissues, more blood flow, more arousal, and you actually create more tightness around the, if you do have sex with men, the penis. And so you can actually, like, you can actually have more pleasure and more erectile tissue that's pleasurable and engorged if you learn to do the pushing, not just the pulling in, but the pushing out. And that's created, like, that's

definitely created a shift in my own sexual experience, which is pretty cool. And I learned this from these amazing sex educators, Dr. Seida desolets and Aaron Michaels, who I'm working with at my company. So they've been working with a bunch of different companies and they're just really, really world-class teachers. I love it. Yeah. What are some final things that we want to get a chance to touch on that we didn't talk about? Anything that you want to highlight inside of the book, any message that's been top of mind for

you that you feel like is just not getting the attention it deserves right now and you're on a mission to really spotlight it? Anything come to mind? Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound so nerdy, but like, we have been thinking that it's genetics that creates disease, right? Like, and yes, genetics can create disease. Like, there are genetic inborn errors of metabolism that can create disease. But this idea of the genetic theory of pathology is kind of out of date right now, because

if you really think about most metabolic diseases and mental illnesses, I believe that they're far more rooted in the mitochondria. And so the mitochondria are these power plants of the cell. that sense and integrate the environment. And so they're not just taking in fuel and metabolizing it to create power, which is bioenergetics, right, bioenergy capacity. But they're also doing biosynthesis. So they're actually helping you produce sex hormones, stress hormones, norpenephyne and epinephrine

in the outer mitochondrial membrane. And they're also mediating the immune response, the inflammatory response, and program cell death. and like they have this really unbelievable role in the cell. They literally power life. Like when the sperm meets the egg and the spark turns on the cell and the cell division begins, if you remove the mitochondria, there is no cell division. It does not function. It doesn't happen because you need the power plants to make the cell to divide, right?

So this is really, to me, like this is the seat of chronic disease, is the mitochondrial dysfunction. It's the seat of mental disease, according to Christopher Palmer's book. And if we understood how to optimize mitochondrial, we're going to, we understood how to optimize is mitochondria, which we do, and I teach in the book, you can avoid a lot of metabolic diseases and mental illnesses. And you can actually fix them if you catch them early enough. So we have so much more knowledge than we've ever had today, but it's just not out there. And so I wrote this book because I was like, mitochondria are literally where it's at when it comes to understanding

chronic diseases, chronic metabolic diseases, that Christopher Palmer Kim was out writes this book on mental illness. And I was like, and he's solved that side. Like I had a lot of beliefs and I had a lot of hypotheses. And he goes out and he just like nails all the science. I'm like, thank you for saving me literally thousands of hours of research. Like, thank you, dude. But we have this unbelievable new science around mitochondrial health. It's just not out there. But if you understand it, you can change your health and you don't have to get sick. And to me, that's what's so exciting. It's a beautiful message. You talk about preordering the book and you get all these goodies. Yeah, totally. Pre-order the book. Dr.Morley.com. And, you know, there's like,

Honestly, we did not have the right code. Just go to Dr. Molly. That code's front and center. But if you go to Dr. Morley.combeck slash free dash gift, then you can plug in your order code and you can get my HPA access dysfunction protocol for stress, my stress questionnaires, my top supplements, my top lab markers, discounts on Hanu health, levels health, Lumen by Betaflow, and othership, as well as $1,000 off my online course, which was my Stanford course that I turned into an online course. So lots of goodies. Highly recommend you pre-order it

before the 31st, but get it at any time. It's a great book. Yeah. And people can follow you on Instagram. Oh, yeah, at Dr.mali.com. Yeah, I'm most active on Instagram. Are you on like the TikTok train yet? I am, but I don't want to be. And also I don't because- it's another way to spread the message. I mean, it is, but I do feel like China's watching. So I actually think that there's a really good chance that our country could close it off, like close it down. So I'm worried about building an audience on a platform that could be like if there's a major conflict with China, you better believe that they're going to they're going to shut off

TikTok. Well, you know, here's what I know is that the people that follow you there that are like fans of yours, they're going to probably follow you elsewhere. I know. I know. I know. I do post on TikTok. So you can find me there too.

Okay. They can find you. What I love about TikTok is I'm just seeing more people in the health space being like fun and playful over there. Yeah. Sometimes like Instagram can feel so serious. I know. And I want to be more playful.

So I think I want to do more TikTok. And you have a strong, playful side of you. Yeah, that's true. Just from like our limited interaction. That's true. And it's just like, you know, just highlighting and showcasing a little bit more of your life and doing it in a way that's not as, because that's how most people are human beings. They're not like so serious in every situation.

Yeah. And I feel like TikTok brings out a lot of that. That's my Siri going off. I feel like TikTok encourages a lot of that. You know what? I'm inspired. I'll spend more time there. And yeah, I'm like, I'm like trying to post things to LinkedIn as well.

and got a sizable following on LinkedIn. So, you know, I'm pretty accessible overall. People can find you and they can find the book. It's called The Spark Factor, The Secret to Supercharging Your Cells, optimizing your health and feeling better than ever. Molly, thank you for coming on this podcast and teaching us all about how to feel better. Thank you so much for having me.