Everything You’ve Been Told About Heart Health (and Cholesterol) Is Outdated
Heart health isn’t just about cholesterol. And despite what you’ve been told, your annual checkup may be dangerously outdated.
In a world of AI, data-driven medicine, and rapidly advancing diagnostic tools, our traditional healthcare systems are still stuck in the past. That’s the message from Dr. Anand Patel, a board-certified internal medicine physician, entrepreneur, and the founder of Elevate Health—a clinic at the forefront of personalized, proactive healthcare.
In a recent conversation on my podcast, Dr. Patel broke down precisely what’s wrong with modern heart disease prevention—and what we can all do to take back control of our long-term health.
Let’s dive into the big ideas.
Watch The Episode
Heart Health: More Than Cholesterol
For decades, we’ve been told that cholesterol is the main culprit behind heart disease. But Dr. Patel wants you to know that’s only part of the story.
“Heart disease isn’t just a clogged pipe. It’s soft plaque—and it’s deadly.”
Traditional cholesterol tests (like LDL and HDL) offer a limited view. They don’t measure particle size, inflammation, or soft plaque buildup, which are the actual causes of heart attacks.
Soft plaque can rupture unexpectedly and trigger a clot, even in people who appear “healthy” on standard labs. According to Dr. Patel, advanced lipid panels and tools like Cleerly Scan offer a far more accurate picture of cardiovascular risk.
The Tests That Could Save Your Life
One of the most eye-opening parts of the conversation was Dr. Patel’s take on testing frequency. Annual lab work? Outdated.
“If we don’t act the same way every day, annual testing is absurd.”
Instead, Dr. Patel conducts biweekly or monthly data-driven check-ins with patients, utilizing a combination of lab tests, wearable devices, and AI-powered analytics to make health a dynamic and personalized journey. He also uses advanced imaging, like Cleerly CT angiograms, to identify early-stage heart disease—long before symptoms appear.
What About Statins?
The statin debate is heated, but Dr. Patel takes a firm stance: if you have real cardiovascular risk, statins are proven lifesavers.
“Statins are probably one of the most amazing medications that hit the market in the last 40 years. Until you give me something better that works, I’m going to use the tool that’s saving lives.”
Medicine 3.0: Proactive, Personalized, Preventative
Dr. Patel believes we’re entering Medicine 3.0—a world driven by real-time data, AI diagnostics, and personalized protocols.
At his clinic, Elevate Health, care isn’t reactive or one-size-fits-all. Patients receive:
Custom data dashboards
Regular biomarker tracking
Advanced imaging and bloodwork
Lifestyle coaching, accountability, and goal setting
The goal isn’t to avoid disease. It’s to optimize health before disease ever shows up.
Education Is Broken Too—And Dr. Patel’s Fixing That
Interestingly, Dr. Patel isn’t just reinventing healthcare. He’s also pulling his children out of traditional school.
Why?
Because just like medicine, education is lagging behind the real world. Dr. Patel is building Elevate Academy, a hands-on, AI-integrated learning environment where kids learn coding, robotics, 3D printing, and entrepreneurship—skills that matter in the age of exponential change.
“We’ve taken part of what it means to be human and given it to a technological base. Now we need to redefine what we do.”
Health Optimization Tools He Recommends
Dr. Patel is also a big believer in advanced therapies to enhance longevity and joint health, including:
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (for tendon/joint recovery)
PRP and stem cell treatments (for degeneration)
Red light therapy and photobiomodulation
Personalized supplement protocols
High-frequency tracking through wearables like WHOOP, 8 Sleep, and continuous glucose monitors
But more than any one tool, it’s the system and strategy that matter.
“You’re not just buying a test. You’re buying time and health. And those are the most valuable assets we have.”
Final Takeaway: Redefine Success, Redefine Health
Dr. Patel's mission is bigger than lab numbers. He wants people to rediscover purpose, take back control, and build a future-proof life—starting with their health.
“Success is when your work gives you energy. And your health should do the same.”
Connect With Dr. Anand Patel
Website: https://www.lv8.health/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dranandpat84/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-patel1484/
Transcript (May not be exact)
Julian Hayes II
(0:03) All right, Dr. Patel, thank you so much for joining me. (0:07) I'm looking forward to this. (0:08) I'm glad Jeremy connected us.
(0:10) The first thing I have to ask, and I always start off interviews with a random question, is how is Zion National Park in Utah overall? (0:18) It's a state I've wanted to go to.
Dr. Anand Patel
(0:19) Yeah, you know what, that's the second time I've been there. (0:22) And I forgot, every time I go to those areas, and I've just recently started getting more into the national park system in our beautiful country. (0:29) And I'm like, my God, I can't believe I've been to more of these earlier.
(0:32) And we got to do our first hike with our kids there. (0:35) And it's just so beautiful. (0:36) We were very lucky that the weather worked out for us.
(0:40) But now Zion was just gorgeous, man. (0:42) I can't wait to go back again. (0:44) We hiked the Narrows the time that I went previously, which was a pretty intense experience, because we went in December, I think, and it was really cold.
(0:51) But it's one of those things, you go back, and you're like, man, that was pretty awesome.
Julian Hayes II
(0:55) Yeah. (0:55) What is it that got you, I guess, interested in national parks?
Dr. Anand Patel
(0:59) Yeah, I had a group of friends that they've been going for years. (1:03) I'm like, oh, you got to come with us. (1:04) You got to come with us.
(1:04) So a few years ago, we started joining their trips. (1:07) And I'm like, all right, you guys got us hooked. (1:09) So now we're all into hiking and getting out there and trying to plan family vacations around national parks.
(1:15) I think going to see the Redwoods is going to be the next thing on the docket.
Julian Hayes II
(1:19) Yeah, I haven't done too many national parks. (1:21) So that's something I need to get to. (1:23) Have you been to Utah in the winter?
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:25) I have not. (1:26) We're going to go this winter, though. (1:27) We bought our pass, and we're going to head out to the mountains out there.
(1:32) Because my wife just picked up skiing, and I got my kids into snowboarding last year. (1:36) So I think we're going to go from the little hills of Wisconsin out to the mountains in Utah this year.
Julian Hayes II
(1:42) Yeah, see, that's the final frontier for me. (1:44) I don't have a winter sport. (1:45) I was speaking to a previous guest about this, that it's between skiing and snowboarding.
(1:49) I think I'm going to do skiing. (1:51) I think I am. (1:52) But I can be convinced to do snowboarding instead.
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:55) Yeah, I mean, look, they're great either way. (1:57) I mean, they say that snowboarding is a little harder to learn. (2:00) I think they're both kind of difficult to learn at either point.
(2:03) But I've lived in Chicago for 40 years, and I just detest the winters. (2:09) So finally, having something to look forward to in the winter by having a winter sport makes it a lot more tenable. (2:14) So I'm like, I wanted to get back into this a little bit more and bring the family back into it.
(2:18) And now we're all kind of excited to head out and do some stuff in the winter.
Julian Hayes II
(2:21) Yeah, that's understandable. (2:22) Because you've actually experienced real, real winter. (2:25) See, I'm in Nashville right now.
Dr. Anand Patel
(2:26) Okay, yeah. (2:27) So you get a sprinkling of winter every now and then.
Julian Hayes II
(2:29) Yeah. (2:29) And I'm sure you're familiar that in case the threat of snow, the light dusting, the whole city shuts down. (2:36) So speaking of Chicago, I saw you went to school at Midwestern University as well.
(2:41) Have you always wanted to be a physician?
Dr. Anand Patel
(2:44) It's funny. (2:45) So my parents, they immigrated here from India. (2:48) And it was kind of bestowed upon me that I would become a physician, right?
(2:53) I was like, Dad, I want to go to investment banking. (2:55) He's like, no, you should be a doctor. (2:57) I'm like, Mom, I want to go into business.
(2:58) She's like, no, you should be a doctor. (2:59) So it was kind of told to me very similarly to many other Dr. Patel's of the world that we were going to be physicians. (3:06) But yeah, you know, I couldn't really fault my parents for wanting me to do a great profession like being a physician.
(3:12) So you know, I acquiesced and obviously it turned out to be a great decision. (3:15) I thank my parents for their support and all of that. (3:18) But you know, I did have kind of a tenuous relationship with wanting to be a physician because I always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit and much of my family.
(3:27) You know, it was really there's only a few professions you are allowed to be. (3:30) It was like physician, engineer, pharmacist or entrepreneur. (3:34) Right.
(3:34) That was kind of the entire spectrum of all my cousins, uncles, everybody. (3:37) That's kind of where we fell. (3:39) And as I progressed through my medical career and everything, I kind of always maintained a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit.
(3:45) You know, I worked as a chief operating officer for an early stage health tech startup for a few years. (3:51) I worked for pharmaceutical company as a consultant. (3:57) You know, I do medical legal expert work when I was a hospitalist previously.
(4:01) So I kind of dabbled in a lot of things. (4:03) I built and sold the brick and mortar business. (4:05) So even during my tenure of being a physician, I kind of still branched out a little bit.
Julian Hayes II
(4:11) Yeah. (4:11) I have friends who share the similar thing of you in terms of you can be anything you want within these four choices. (4:19) Yeah.
(4:19) Exactly. (4:21) And I ask them, I see the benefits of that, but I'm curious with your kids, do you think you'll do the same thing or not? (4:30) Or will you slightly nudge them or really let them just pick?
Dr. Anand Patel
(4:33) No, that's actually a very loaded question because I actually am. (4:37) I'm ripping my kids out of school next year because I don't actually think that the education system is like prime for what's about to happen with the disruption of AI. (4:44) And I don't think that sitting in a traditional didactic setting is the appropriate way for them to move forward such that like this, the skills, right?
(4:53) Like if you told me that you could drive from Nashville to Chicago without using a map or anything, it's a great party trick, but no one cares because I pull out my phone, I could pull up Google maps and I can navigate to anywhere in the world. (5:05) Utility of memorizing maps and navigation is really lost, right? (5:10) Like somebody knows how to use a compass, you don't really care, right?
(5:12) But now imagine that with all of knowledge ever, right? (5:16) You have a PhD level guide, tutor, instructor in your pocket all the time, like immediately accessible, never fatigues, always ready to answer every question. (5:26) Now it hallucinates, people hallucinate, right?
(5:28) So it's the idea that there is no longer, right? (5:32) We used to go to, we had this pathway that would go from education to higher education, to the workplace, become a professional, define your purpose in life, accumulate enough wealth, and then sit on a beach and retire, right? (5:46) That's kind of the paradigm that we had.
(5:48) Well, now it's no longer that in my mind. (5:50) I think that we're shifting to a point where, but I envision the time that my children are 18, that as I pulled them out of school, what I'm actually doing is developing, I have Elevate Health, I'm actually developing Elevate Academy, which is, I'm going to create this area where children will have 3D printers, raspberry pies, robotic kits, and then just general AI courses. (6:14) And so this will be a community where kids will come in, we'll have instructors that will kind of give them a little bit of guidance, and then some free time in the lab.
(6:21) Really, it's kind of letting kids explore their own innate curiosity with what is the material that you like, right? (6:28) It's okay, I want to make a t-shirt, I like clothes, I like cool, okay, let's explore that. (6:33) You've made a t-shirt.
(6:34) Well, how would you go about selling this t-shirt, right? (6:36) How would you make a business plan? (6:37) How do you create a website?
(6:38) What is a payment rail, right? (6:40) These are terms that are usually held off for people at much different levels of their career, where it's like, you're not going to talk to a 12-year-old about payment rails, setting up Stripe on your website, but what if we could, right? (6:51) What's holding us back from doing that?
(6:53) Because I think there isn't really anything left in the idea that you can just do whatever you want, right? (6:58) I might not be an educator, but that doesn't hold me back from the idea that I don't think I can educate my children appropriately in a world where we can integrate these two new types of tools to get them prepared for what I think is going to be a very different world 10 to 15 years from now. (7:12) Me as a physician that took 11 years to get here, patients constantly, friends and family always ask me questions.
(7:18) I literally copy-paste their text message into ChatGPT. (7:22) I look at it, that sounds pretty much right. (7:24) I didn't have to write out that long response and I give it back to them, right?
(7:27) It's like a lot of the utility for this initial level of evaluation is gone, right? (7:32) I think OpenAI just released Healthbench yesterday, which is their ChatGPT with 226 physicians that created this entire health library and all the metrics that they started assessing through all the different LLMs, whether it's Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, everything. (7:51) Their metrics are better.
(7:53) They're better than humans, right? (7:54) When they come to diagnosing, they're not going to have sleep deprivation like I will. (7:59) They might not have had a fight with their spouse, right?
(8:02) They're going to be perfect and they're going to be consistent all the time, right? (8:06) Yes, they have problems. (8:08) And I think the one thing that saves me is I still pay malpractice insurance.
(8:11) So you can sue me, but you can't sue an LLM, so I'll have a job for a little bit. (8:16) But that's the idea. (8:17) You think about, I haven't used a lawyer for initial stages of things for a while.
(8:21) I'm like, I'll just write a business agreement quickly that I'm going to start something and then we can get it more codified when we get to a later stage, right? (8:27) So it's funny how we went from this big progression away from blue-collar jobs, pushing everybody to white-collar jobs. (8:33) And some of the first things to go in this new iteration of the post-AI world are going to be the white-collar jobs.
(8:38) And they're going to be a reversion back to this hands-on type of economy, right? (8:44) And so part of what I want to create in this and what I think what a lot of people want is now as we get attached to screens and we have a lot of virtual things going on, we've always wanted a place of community, right? (8:57) And I think that's kind of what I really want to push forward with Elevate Academy is the idea of community and community with children, right?
(9:04) The tagline that I have is country club for nerds or Y Combinator in a strip mall. (9:10) It's like, give these kids the ability to do whatever the heck they want. (9:13) Put them around other kids that feel like they can do whatever the heck they want and then see what happens.
(9:17) We've seen it in Stanford and all the other incubators and tech startup hubs. (9:21) Look at that. (9:22) You get a bunch of committed kids together.
(9:24) You say, look, we're going to provide you the resources to help you succeed and give you that positive environment. (9:29) And look at how many unicorn companies have come out of Y Combinator, right? (9:32) How many amazing things have come out of the Thiel Fellowship.
(9:35) So it's strong leadership and guidance in the appropriate environment that I think leads to some amazing results. (9:43) And, you know, it's funny because you asked about, you know, I think of that relevance between my parents leaving a country with nothing, coming here in the 70s with no money, no job, right? (9:54) And like dealing with, you know, a different environment of being a colored person then than now, right?
(10:00) And all so that I could have a better life, right? (10:02) Obviously it was for them, but like really, like, you know, I have two kids that are nine to 10. (10:06) That's like, I really, most of the things I do are for them, right?
(10:09) It's, we really try to pass on what we can. (10:10) And, you know, this is kind of my iteration of that, right? (10:14) It's like, I'm not leaving this country to go somewhere else, but I'm leaving this current education system to put you at something that I think is just, you know, as difficult in a sense of like, well, it's easy for me to say bye, the bus will pick you up at the end of our cul-de-sac.
(10:29) And then I'll see you eight hours later. (10:31) Because I think that, you know, it's kind of like almost like a daycare, right? (10:33) So it's like, I don't have to worry about it.
(10:35) I don't have to think about it. (10:36) But now people are like, what are you going to do? (10:38) What are you going to teach your kids?
(10:39) And I'm like, well, I don't know. (10:40) But like, I do think that, you know, there's, and there's so many examples of this. (10:44) But, you know, I think that, you know, with a certain amount of structured time where they're just not held to a common core curriculum or standard amongst all their children, they're pushed to the level that they can achieve.
(10:56) Well, then in two to three hours, they could do what they would have done in eight hours in a different setting. (11:00) And then I'm like, okay, let's get a voice coach to come in and help you with public speaking. (11:04) Let's get your golf coach to come in and help you work with this.
(11:07) Go play video games for an hour. (11:08) I don't care. (11:09) Like, you've done your work, right?
(11:10) Like, there shouldn't be such a distinction between work and play. (11:13) Like we have to find the thing. (11:16) I mean, Neville Robicont is a guy that I like a lot.
(11:18) And you know, he's always like, when you can find the thing that blurs the lines between work and play, you win, right? (11:23) Like, there is no goal of retirement. (11:25) It's just a goal of happiness.
(11:26) Just start there and work backwards. (11:28) And then kind of find your way. (11:30) Sorry, I know it's a long winded answer to your question.
Julian Hayes II
(11:32) No, no, I love that. (11:34) Because I see so many parallels between actually health and actually what you just talked about. (11:38) And, you know, I don't have kids yet.
(11:41) But I do something what I call future thinking. (11:43) And so I really like to think about this. (11:44) And I thought about this in terms of myself with my career, and where it's going, right?
(11:49) Because I've always felt like, well, not a physician, I didn't stay in medical school, but I'm not this thing neither, right? (11:55) And so but where's the world going? (11:57) And for a lot of people, I think, if you don't have a highly specialized field, you're almost going to be kind of like this hodgepodge of different things, right?
(12:06) But maybe there's a core nucleus, like for me, that the core nucleus is still health. (12:09) But that is expressed through so many different means. (12:12) And that's, that's kind of how you know, and and once you said, and what you said earlier, you do that work.
(12:18) It's not work, it's enjoyment, right? (12:20) So this is fun. (12:20) We're just talking.
(12:22) And who knew about homeschool, but I'm curious about that. (12:25) Because I do think about that a lot in terms of the health field, a lot of times ideas are for mainstream are about 10 to 15 years behind. (12:36) And so the educational system at some point will definitely have an overhaul.
(12:40) But is it going to be 10 to 15 years later, again, that's the thing I think about because it's an outdated curriculum.
Dr. Anand Patel
(12:47) But I completely agree. (12:48) And like the idea is that, you know, it's my kids are nine and 10. (12:52) So if their delay in introducing these massively leveraging tools, like artificial intelligence, LLM is delayed till they catch up till maybe high school.
(13:03) And how do they compare to the kid that got it five, six years before seven years before they're already so far behind, their minds are like sponges, right? (13:11) Like, it seems like such a disservice to me to not give my children the opportunity to, you know, work with a technology that is probably the most disruptive thing to society since like, written word, right? (13:23) I think that like, I've listened to a lot of podcasts about this.
(13:26) And I think that was probably the most apt description, because I don't think there's anything as revolutionary to this time point than that, right? (13:33) We've, we've taken out a piece of what defines us to be human and given it to a technological base. (13:39) And so then we have to kind of redefine what it is we do, right.
(13:42) And I think so much of what we defined previously in purpose was our profession, what we do on a daily basis for 40 hours a week, right? (13:51) And now purpose is not driven by what you do, purpose should be something that's inherently driven internally, and then expressed outwardly. (13:58) And like, if you're, if you're just doing something to make money, that's fine, make money, but then also just know that money isn't the purpose, right?
(14:05) Money solves money problems, money doesn't solve life problems. (14:07) So you got to figure out what life problems are, make sure you have a plan for those and then get the money to take care of all the basic necessities. (14:13) So I think helping my kids understand that paradigm shift is huge.
Julian Hayes II
(14:18) And speaking of making a leap here, what made you leap into what you're doing now, compared to being more in a traditional healthcare system?
Dr. Anand Patel
(14:27) Yeah, so I mean, I practiced traditional healthcare for almost a decade, right? (14:30) And so I was in it, I was a hospitalist, so I got to really see the inner workings of, you know, how the hospital works and all that kind of stuff. (14:38) And it was it was rewarding.
(14:40) And I enjoyed it. (14:40) But then COVID came along. (14:42) And that was a really difficult period, given, you know, the amount of like, death and destruction that was occurring during those two years.
(14:49) But after that, I kind of took a step back and said, you know, is this really how I see myself for the next few decades of my life. (14:55) And it was at that point that I decided I kind of needed to reevaluate how I viewed medicine, how I wanted to help people in their health journeys. (15:04) And, you know, I kind of went on a personal health journey.
(15:06) And I think that's for many people is like, you know, it starts with yourself and having two young children going through COVID, probably drinking way more than I should have. (15:13) And, you know, just putting on some weight and all that kind of stuff, I decided I needed to get that all back together. (15:19) And then kind of from there, in my trials and tribulations, I kind of had learned a process about how I thought this would work.
(15:26) And then I helped coach a few people on the side while I was still working. (15:30) And then after that, you know, it kind of began to pick up a little bit steam. (15:34) And I thought, you know what, maybe this is the thing that was really more aligned with my calling.
(15:39) And then, you know, that was about two and a half, three years ago. (15:41) And then it's kind of just snowballed since then.
Julian Hayes II
(15:45) Yeah. (15:45) So I'm curious, the company name Level8, what's the name?
Dr. Anand Patel
(15:49) Well, yeah, I thought it was cute, right? (15:51) And like, this happens all the time, but it's Elevate, because it's supposed to be like Elevate Health, right? (15:56) So just trying to take your health higher.
(15:58) You know, and it's also like trying to figure out the best domain that you could buy, right? (16:03) So, but no, I was like, and I was like, I always wanted to like, see, because it's like everything that we do for our health is it as the baseline, like the bare minimum, right? (16:11) Whatever we get for barely passing is our standard of health, because healthcare is dictated by who?
(16:16) The federal government and for profit insurance companies. (16:19) So do you think they want the best thing for you? (16:21) Are they trying to adjudicate care for 400 million people, or answer to their investors quarter after quarter to being like, we're making more money.
(16:28) So that's not elevation of your health. (16:31) That's like, okay, you're not going to die tomorrow, probably, right? (16:33) That's kind of, and so I'm like, what happens if we shift it the other way 180 degrees and say, let's what if what if you spent as much money as you had to elevate your health to the highest extent possible?
Julian Hayes II
(16:44) I think there's a term now, I believe it's some people say medicine 3.0. Some people say longevity 3.0. Someone comes to you that's unfamiliar with this, they've been stuck in the traditional healthcare system. (16:56) How are you going to describe this to them? (16:58) What would you tell them?
Dr. Anand Patel
(16:59) Yeah, so I came up with there's a three P's, right, personalized, proactive, preventative, right? (17:08) The idea is that everything we used to do, right, if you if you ran a business, and you said, my business is my lifeline, right? (17:16) This is what provides the roof over my head.
(17:18) Would you go check that business once a year, and then say, Oh, how's business? (17:22) I don't know, it's okay. (17:23) And then leave and not come back.
(17:25) Like, that's the most ludicrous sounding thing. (17:27) Well, for most people, health is a pretty important part of our life equation, right? (17:31) But that's what we treat it as.
(17:33) And so what would happen if we treated our health as a business? (17:36) What if we took that same level of metrics that you hear in the corporate world with KPIs, and, you know, quarterly goals, and all that kind of stuff, and apply that same rubric to your health? (17:45) Well, then we would be entering the idea of medicine 3.0, right?
(17:48) We would be saying, okay, let's use data, personalized data to you, consistently monitored in a dynamic fashion to get you to the place that you need to be with your health journey. (17:58) And so it's not just, okay, well, that doesn't look bad. (18:02) That's okay.
(18:03) That's okay. (18:03) No, it's like, how do we optimize that? (18:04) How do we optimize that?
(18:05) How do we make it better? (18:06) There's always room for improvement, right? (18:08) Everybody has room for improvement.
(18:10) And the more, and it's the idea about compounding effects. (18:13) We all understand compounding interest when it comes to our bank accounts, but somehow we don't understand with that with our health accounts, that if you start making these really good decisions at 35, 40, 50, that when you're 80, 90, you're going to be much happier, and much more content with your quality of life, because you've made those investments early. (18:30) And so it's kind of the way I really like to use the analogy of a business in your health to kind of help people understand, like, we got to take more seriously.
(18:37) And we have to buy a lot more data and metrics and monitoring to it, right? (18:41) I'm like the accountability guy. (18:42) I'm the cop at the end of the street, making sure you don't speed.
(18:45) Or, you know, you said you're going to work out for a week and you didn't do anything. (18:48) Why not? (18:49) It's not okay to say I didn't feel like it anymore, right?
(18:52) So it's a big, that's a big part of it is, you know, really having that relationship with my patients. (18:56) I talk to them every two to three weeks and, you know, their plans remain dynamic to make sure that we can adjust to whatever life throws at them.
Julian Hayes II
(19:03) Yeah. (19:04) And, you know, to piggyback on what we talked about earlier with the AI and the data, this frees you up, frees me up to do those types of things, to really develop that relationship and get to the core of the issues of what's really blocking people. (19:18) Cause a lot of times, and I'm sure you've known this by now, you know, someone could have, you know, they can be pre-diabetic, you know, but a lot of times the reason for that is a life problem per se.
(19:30) Right. (19:31) And a lot of times if you're just going to visit at a primary care physician, you get 15 minutes to discuss this and you're not going to get to the root. (19:38) You're not going to get to the actual root of what's causing this for this person.
(19:42) You know, he might be having marital troubles or whatever. (19:44) Right. (19:45) And so, and I think that having that data now, having these large language models helps with that.
(19:51) And that's where humans can really thrive now to bring more nuance into it. (19:55) Interpretation, accountability. (19:56) I think that's the beautiful thing now with, with the new model that's coming in probably is going to even grow from here.
Dr. Anand Patel
(20:03) Yeah, no, I completely agree. (20:04) I mean, I think that, and you know, we're just scratching the surface now, right? (20:08) It's not that we have so many beautiful applications and programs that address the things that you just mentioned, but I think that we're on the cusp of those coming out within the next 12 to 18 months.
Julian Hayes II
(20:18) Yeah.
Dr. Anand Patel
(20:19) Go ahead. (20:20) Sorry.
Julian Hayes II
(20:21) Yeah. (20:21) I'm curious. (20:22) Go ahead and finish that first.
(20:23) And then I was going to go to something else.
Dr. Anand Patel
(20:25) Yeah. (20:25) No, I was just going to say that, you know, a lot of these things we're going to see in like large corporations like whoop and, you know, other, you know, health biometric data tracking services are going to be integrating these things to provide that nudge for you. (20:38) Because it's like, if I slept poorly on my eight sleep mattress, I'll get a notification.
(20:43) Right. (20:43) And then like, if it's tagged into my loop, so there's this entire ecosystem that we're going to be building. (20:47) That's a consistent monitoring system.
(20:49) Right. (20:50) And the more active and dynamic data we have, the better we can, we can, you know, make sure that we're adjusting what you need to do on a daily basis and not waiting like until 10 days pass before we make any adjustments.
Julian Hayes II
(21:03) Yeah. (21:04) So I have a question here. (21:05) This is devil's advocate because somebody posted this to me recently.
(21:09) You know, I was I have a whoop on right now and I was in the red and they were like, well, are you just going to cancel your workout or not do it? (21:16) I was like, no, I'm still doing my two a days today. (21:18) And they were like, why?
(21:19) Because it's like I feel pretty good. (21:21) I know my body really well. (21:22) Right.
(21:23) And so and so the question was pretty much essentially is sometimes there's risk with now over relying on data and devices to let that control us now. (21:33) So how would you recommend people to balance tech with still intuition and human judgment?
Dr. Anand Patel
(21:38) Yeah, no, that's a great question. (21:40) I think, unfortunately, this comes back to like the current state of our society with social media and the Internet and stuff. (21:46) It's like we've lost nuance.
(21:47) Everyone's like diametrically opposed to either side. (21:50) It's like it's red. (21:51) It's like, no, dude, like, OK, it's red, but you feel OK.
(21:55) And, you know, maybe I'll cut it down by 10 or 15 minutes. (22:01) And then you're like, oh, I still feel good. (22:03) Next day was better.
(22:04) And then you've learned that when I felt good and I had a red, it's still because you're the ultimate LLM, right? (22:09) You're supposed to be the thing that integrates all the data. (22:13) So use your nuance, use the fact that you have this amazing mind to then discern that.
(22:16) And the like the other thing, though, is you are probably more in touch with your body and your assessments of these things than others. (22:22) So I think the biggest thing is to understand these numbers as a guide, as general trends, as not certain things are absolute, right? (22:30) Like if you're wearing an Apple watch and it shows you have a fib, you better go get that evaluated, right?
(22:34) There's really a lot of black and white. (22:36) But it's like to your point, my sleep score is down a little bit. (22:38) I'm not going to freak out.
(22:39) I'm going to understand. (22:40) Maybe there are some things. (22:41) Maybe I could have improved this.
(22:42) Maybe it was a fluke. (22:43) Who knows? (22:44) But you shouldn't live and die by the number.
(22:46) It's simply use that as a reference and a framework and move forward.
Julian Hayes II
(22:50) Yeah. (22:51) Yeah. (22:51) For me, it was a large meal too close to bedtime.
Dr. Anand Patel
(22:53) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(22:54) Yeah.
Dr. Anand Patel
(22:54) So I fall victim to that every now and then too, man. (22:57) I get it. (22:58) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(22:58) Yeah. (22:59) So normally if I if I stop eating around five thirty or six, it's it's it's it's great. (23:03) Like it's a huge difference to my respiratory score, heart rate, HRV and everything.
(23:08) It's it's it's quite fascinating. (23:10) Just something as simple as that. (23:16) So making this shift is you go through medical school, you're taught a certain way, you're taught a certain paradigm, and then you're essentially kind of breaking that paradigm right now.
(23:27) And so that has to, one, a removal of the ego. (23:30) Right. (23:31) And there's also a philosophical shift there.
(23:34) What do you think is the biggest thing stopping other physicians from kind of seeing seeing this whole this other paradigm?
Dr. Anand Patel
(23:44) You know, it's it's funny that it's a great question because, you know, I was the other person. (23:48) Right. (23:49) I was the person foo fooing anything that didn't fall in line with the dogma that I was taught.
(23:54) Right. (23:55) It's like this is evidence based medicine and this is the way that it should be. (23:59) And we need to follow the guidelines.
(24:01) And the American College of Cardiology said this. (24:04) And then you're like, OK, that makes sense. (24:05) Right.
(24:05) As a young medical student, you're like you're looking up to all your mentors and peers and thinking, all right, this is you know, we've treated people, we've created this amazing medical system based on these things and we've progressed and we've you know, look at we've our five year survival rates for these cancers improved by thirty five percent with the introduction of the blah, blah, blah. (24:23) Right. (24:23) And they're like, oh, that sounds great.
(24:25) But that's population health data. (24:27) You're just an end of one. (24:29) Right.
(24:29) Like all that stuff could make sense for those thousands of people. (24:32) But you could be the exception. (24:33) Right.
(24:34) Or it's just the idea that we don't always know. (24:38) And I think the biggest thing to your point was it's the removal of ego and that it's we don't know that much about we know less about the human body than we do know about it. (24:46) Right.
(24:47) Like think of the brain. (24:48) We think that this area generally controls speech, but, you know, it could be different for the next person. (24:54) It's like someone strokes out two people who have a stroke in the same place and they can have different physical symptoms.
(24:59) So for me, it was really kind of reevaluating what I think is going to be the most beneficial thing for my patients and not necessarily saying we need a 50 million dollar FDA funded study for this to have validity because it's my patients like, hey, this works. (25:16) And I'm like, good. (25:17) It looks like it's working.
(25:18) You're staying committed. (25:19) All these metrics are improving. (25:21) Well, in my mind, it works.
(25:22) What else do we need? (25:23) It's like, well, the next eight people it didn't work in. (25:25) OK, but for my patient at work.
(25:27) So then who's right? (25:28) Right. (25:28) It's like some I think today's medicine, we want it to be more applicable for the masses, which is understandable.
(25:33) And we have to figure out a way to make sure that everyone in this country gets health care to a certain extent. (25:38) But we're now learning and we have because of our technological advances, because of our access to different resources and facilities, we can now apply this level of individualized medicine. (25:48) And yes, it still does self-select to a specific cohort of patients that have a socioeconomic status now due to the costs associated with it.
(25:57) But as that group gets more entrenched in these ideas, then it'll start helping to access that technology to more people like Cleerly ScanCleerly Scanstarted off as a thousand dollar test. (26:10) And now Medicare just approved it. (26:12) So think about it.
(26:12) It's like if it wasn't for those early adopters, it would have been hard for that company to then get the funding to then proceed to do all the studies they needed to then tell Medicare and payers that, hey, this is worth it.
Julian Hayes II
(26:23) Yeah. (26:24) You know, and that's what I tell people a lot of times about that these types of services is a lot of times these services are not maybe accessible to the masses yet. (26:33) Right.
(26:34) Because there's a cost for it. (26:36) And but over time, it will be. (26:39) And that's a prime example.
(26:40) I think you can get a you can get full body scans. (26:45) And those costs have dramatically gone down. (26:47) Genome testing has gone down dramatically compared to what it used to be.
(26:53) And so that's that's the thing. (26:55) And you need these early adopters. (26:56) And so I think we'll shift now to more granular topics.
(26:59) Now, I think the first one we'll stop with is annual testing and and how it's around 85, what, 90 percent a lot of times that you can miss things in those. (27:12) I forgot the actual number with that. (27:14) But what I'll just leave that to you.
(27:17) What do you think about annual testing and kind of the downfalls of that? (27:20) I have my own opinions, but I would love to hear yours.
Dr. Anand Patel
(27:23) Well, I mean, I think the problem is the first word annual. (27:28) My testing is like biweekly, like once a month, at least in the idea that a testing is a conversation, right? (27:35) A testing is because my goals, like so the way that my my clinic is structured is like we have the four pillars of daily life.
(27:43) Right. (27:43) So it's fitness, nutrition, sleep and mental well-being. (27:45) But all of our other tests then revolve around the icebergs of heart disease and metabolic disease and all that kind of stuff.
(27:52) So if we're going to check metabolic disease once a year, that would be precluded on the fact that you ate the same thing the entirety of the year. (27:59) Right. (27:59) Like that's kind of absurd.
(28:01) So if there was a consistent level of something for a year, then fine. (28:06) Annual testing is prudent. (28:09) But if we don't act the same way every day, then annual testing is absurd.
(28:13) And I don't think that there's really another way to put it. (28:15) I don't even know. (28:16) Like, yeah, if you're just trying to make sure that people might not die, then that's OK.
(28:22) But like anything beyond that is just a complete disservice to your own health. (28:25) Right. (28:25) Like now, I think the thing that we've lost and what I tell everybody is like, I don't care if you stay with me for a year or 20 years.
(28:31) But if even if you stayed with my clinic for a year after you leave, I'd love for you to just have some autonomy and agency over your own health, for you to feel informed, for you to feel educated on how to interact and how to how your body works and you're making better choices. (28:45) You know, I still get, you know, text messages from patients that, you know, like this this one guy who moved out of town and he found another physician. (28:52) He's like, look, man, I've still always eat my my two eggs and my yogurt in the morning because of you.
(28:57) And he'll send me pictures randomly. (28:58) And it's like it's that consistency. (29:00) It's right that that education.
(29:01) So if we think of it as annual, we've lost. (29:04) And I think that's my biggest issue with it is that there's no way that something as important as this can go down to once a year.
Julian Hayes II
(29:10) Yeah. (29:11) And in doing that way, you miss so many of the early issues, you know, and I think one area we can start with, we can start with the heart health and how we how we think about that. (29:20) You know, both our population groups are pretty hard hit when it comes to this.
(29:26) And so when you think about heart health, what's your I guess what's your framework? (29:31) You have a.
Dr. Anand Patel
(29:32) Yeah, I have a framework and I'm like, this is the this is my soapbox, the hill that I will die on, that like this is the most absurd thing that we do in health care today, because, you know, for the people that might not understand listening to this, we check cholesterol, which is an ancillary marker for the assessment of heart disease. (29:49) So somebody says you have high cholesterol, you have a higher preponderance for the development of heart disease. (29:54) OK, so what does that mean?
(29:55) Well, OK, for if we calculate something that'll give you a 10 year risk score and because you're a smoker and your cholesterol is a little high, you have four point two percent risk of heart attack in the next 10 years. (30:06) All right. (30:06) So what does that mean, Doc?
(30:08) It means you have a little bit more risk than the rest of the population. (30:11) So what do I do? (30:12) Take a cholesterol lowering medicine.
(30:14) OK, so how much heart disease do I have? (30:16) Oh, I don't know that. (30:16) I'm just saying that you might have possibly a higher risk.
(30:20) OK, well, you know, it's it's so absurd because the thing is, we have the capability to just look inside someone's heart and say, do you have heart disease? (30:29) Right. (30:29) And then heart disease isn't just a catch all term.
(30:33) Right. (30:33) As as we know that there's different types of plaque and what people don't realize is that I think even for like early medical students and physicians in the early stage of training, they think that heart disease is it's kind of like a pipe that gets clogged. (30:46) Right.
(30:47) You know, it's after years you have so much gunk that gets stuck in there that the diameter slowly closes and nothing can pass. (30:53) And then that's what causes a heart attack. (30:55) But it's really the development of something called soft plaque.
(30:58) And, you know, the way that I really tell this analogy to people is imagine a crack on the sidewalk, right, split in between the seams of concrete. (31:06) Well, if you threw a basketball at that, it would hit the crack and bounce off. (31:10) Right.
(31:11) If I had a handful of tiny little pebbles and I threw them at that crack, guess what? (31:16) A few of them would get stuck in there. (31:17) Well, how did that crack form in the sidewalk?
(31:20) Well, it could be tension, whatever. (31:22) But that's like our body. (31:24) So if you have heart disease, an inflamed state, the interior part of our vessel can get torn.
(31:31) And then think of that handful of pebbles. (31:33) Well, that's the small LDL particles. (31:35) Well, guess what?
(31:36) All you know in a basic lipid panel is how much LDL you have. (31:40) When I get an advanced lipid panel, then I do a lipoprotein fractionation. (31:44) So then I say, OK, what is your LDL particle size?
(31:46) What is your LDL number? (31:47) So then that essentially tells me how many pebbles do I have in my hand and how big or small are they? (31:52) Because if you imagine if I had a ton of tiny little pebbles, the possibility of getting stuck in the crack is much higher.
(31:58) But if I had a bunch of bigger, if I had fewer larger pebbles, then lower probability. (32:03) OK, so then we've done the advanced lipid panel to understand, OK, what is my true risk with my cholesterol breakdown? (32:10) And then after that, we say, OK, let's just go inside and take a look in your heart.
(32:14) Now, the problem is this is a cash based procedure. (32:15) So you're looking just under two thousand dollars to get this done with the two steps of the CT coronary angiogram and the analysis. (32:22) But after you do this, then you have a true risk assessment of where you sit for the development of heart disease.
(32:29) It is the thing that kills more Americans than any other disease in the country. (32:32) And yet we're sitting here like, I don't know. (32:34) And then everyone's like, I need the PR marketing campaign people for that that are anti statins because they've crushed it.
(32:40) Statins are probably one of the most amazing medications that hit the market in the last like 40 years that I talked to cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons that would practice in the 80s and 90s and talk about people just coming in, dying left and right. (32:52) And statins completely changed that paradigm over decades. (32:55) But it was one of the most widely prescribed drugs and people got side effects.
(32:58) Well, yeah, I mean, that's going to happen. (32:59) Right. (33:00) But, you know, there's been a negative connotation to that.
(33:02) So, you know, we get this appropriate assessment, you know, Cleerly Scantells us exactly how much heart disease you have, where it is, what type of plaque it is. (33:11) Right. (33:11) Because the thing that I was alluding to earlier is it's not the gunk that gets stuck in the pipe that causes a heart attack.
(33:19) That soft plaque comes and then the soft plaque, which is those little bits of particle, those pebbles that get stuck in the crack and they start to coalesce and they create this little structure. (33:28) And over time, it can become calcified, which actually means it's like concrete that is cured and is now stable, which is great. (33:35) But in the earlier stages, it can rupture.
(33:38) And when that soft plaque ruptures, what it does is it releases these particles and it activates something called cytokines. (33:44) The cytokines will then cause platelets to aggregate. (33:46) And that's why everyone tells you to start chewing aspirin if you have chest pain is because it breaks up that platelet clot.
(33:51) And people think it's like, oh, Mike was so healthy. (33:54) He was running marathons. (33:55) He was only 50 years old.
(33:56) How do you die of a heart attack? (33:57) It's because Mike had a little bit of soft plaque right at the beginning of his left anterior descending artery that popped at a very inopportune time. (34:05) Right.
(34:05) But Mike never knew that because Mike was healthy and Mike had no concern. (34:09) But Mike wasn't healthy. (34:10) Mike just didn't know.
(34:12) And we stick our head in the sand because, well, the current health care system doesn't think I need to. (34:18) Well, I don't care. (34:18) If you told me that this is the thing that is most likely to kill you and all the people around me, you better be darn sure that I'm going to be figuring out as much as I can about what the hell is happening in my body to make sure that I don't end up that cautionary tale.
Julian Hayes II
(34:33) Now, I'm sure someone's wondering what is soft plaque? (34:37) How do you even develop this in the first place?
Dr. Anand Patel
(34:39) Yeah. (34:39) So that goes back to that crack in the sidewalk. (34:42) So those pebbles that are getting stuck in there, that's the formation of the soft plaque.
(34:46) That's the LDL that is kind of coalescing and coming together. (34:50) Now, over time, more and more of them will pack in. (34:54) So that little soft plaque will just kind of solidify over and become calcified.
(35:00) But in the early stages, right, if you have high blood pressure, different things, that plaque can rupture. (35:04) And then when that plaque ruptures, you're in big trouble.
Julian Hayes II
(35:07) So would you say if someone says, hey, Dr. Patel, I'm worried about, I don't want soft plaque to develop. (35:13) A lot of this is attributed to lifestyle factors.
Dr. Anand Patel
(35:16) Correct.
Julian Hayes II
(35:17) Right. (35:17) But then what about those people who are, some people are maybe predisposition for higher cholesterol, right? (35:25) Or I forgot the name of it.
(35:27) I forgot the actual name of it.
Dr. Anand Patel
(35:28) Yeah. (35:29) Familial hypercholesterolemia.
Julian Hayes II
(35:30) Yeah. (35:31) Yeah. (35:31) What about those people?
(35:32) Would they have a higher propensity to potentially develop that soft plaque?
Dr. Anand Patel
(35:37) Absolutely. (35:37) I mean, it all kind of starts as soft plaque and then moves towards calcified. (35:40) The beauty of this is like, right now, if you go to see your doctor and they're like, Oh God, we know we did, you know, your cholesterol is through the roof.
(35:48) It doesn't look good. (35:50) Take this heart, this cholesterol lowering medicine. (35:52) I'm like, Oh God, your cholesterol is better.
(35:53) Great. (35:55) It doesn't give you any more data. (35:56) Now, if you saw me and I said, your cholesterol is high.
(35:59) We did a Cleerly Scan and we see soft plaque in these areas. (36:02) And then you take the medicine for two or three years, we would do another Cleerly Scan. (36:06) And I could say, look, all that soft plaque has calcified.
(36:09) The total amount of plaque in your heart has decreased overall. (36:13) These areas of narrowing have slightly improved. (36:16) And the goal is we're not going to get rid of the plaque, but if you died with a tiny amount of plaque in your heart at the age of 103, who cares, right?
(36:23) The idea is that you don't die of a heart attack. (36:26) We have to mediate the intensity of our therapy based on appropriate data. (36:31) And that appropriate data is a Cleerly Scan.
(36:33) And then we use the advanced lipid profiles as guideposts throughout the monitoring process to make sure that the patients have the right levels that they need.
Julian Hayes II
(36:42) Yeah. (36:42) I'm curious to go back to the stats real quick, because I've talked to a lot of people who are against them and a few who are for them. (36:48) Right.
(36:48) So I've heard both sides of the debate on this. (36:53) What's your reasoning that you think that you're, I guess, are you a proponent of it more? (36:58) Yeah.
Dr. Anand Patel
(36:58) I mean, I'm a proponent of the thing that stops heart attacks for me. (37:02) I mean, like the people who say no to statins, I have like significant concern for the medical qualifications, right? (37:07) It's like, you can't like you can't take away.
(37:10) It's like one of the biggest interventions for this. (37:14) Are there other opportunities for you to maybe improve those things? (37:18) Yeah.
(37:18) Maybe there's a bunch of stuff out there that I'm completely unaware of. (37:21) But until that becomes publicly known, and there's a bunch of data that shows that it's going to be just as effective in saving my patient's life, that a medication has been around for 40 years with millions of patients of lives data associated with it. (37:33) I feel like, I don't know, I don't, I just, I feel so strongly about this that it kind of, I don't understand the anti-statin movement, unless you give me a better reason, right?
(37:44) It's like the only reason they have is I don't like statins. (37:47) Okay, great. (37:48) Now what?
Julian Hayes II
(37:49) If I remember correctly, I don't remember the exact study or whatever. (37:54) But I think one of the conversations I had, it was around, I think they, they came up with that it didn't actually extend life as long in terms of longevity.
Dr. Anand Patel
(38:04) Like, that's like, it's not about that, right? (38:06) I mean, like, the thing is, it's like, you can start messing with all these stats within these studies, however you want, right? (38:12) Like, okay, it didn't extend the life over 100,000.
(38:16) I don't even know that that's true, because I don't even know the study they were referring to. (38:19) But like, the idea is like, let's just say that there was a study that stated this, right? (38:22) You have to understand what the primary endpoint of the study was, was a secondary endpoint, what was the analysis, right?
(38:28) Like, if we, if we all agree that soft plaque can kill you, and having a lot of plaque in your heart is bad, then the number associated with how many years that it extends life beyond in a study is immaterial. (38:42) I told you, you have, Julian, you have a bunch of soft plaque in your heart. (38:46) All right, well, I don't want that.
(38:48) So it's like, okay, I can give you this drug, but it might not make you live longer. (38:51) Or it might stop a heart attack or stroke. (38:53) Like what if you still lived at 100, but you had a stroke at 80?
(38:57) You would technically still live the same, but you would have 20 many different years without the stroke, right? (39:02) So it's like, people confound the idea of study endpoints with what's really utilitarian and in our current construct. (39:11) I think that's kind of the medicine 3.0 thing. (39:13) A lot of the medicine 2.0 people will be like, well, I don't know. (39:16) But I'm like, well, that's okay. (39:17) But it's not the point.
(39:18) The point is, are we reducing the risk by the only tool that we know that we have? (39:22) Then yeah, then I mean, let's use it. (39:24) Until you give me something better that absolutely works, I don't know that I'm going to tell my patient not to do something they don't feel like it.
(39:29) I'm like, no, this is the thing I'm going to say you should probably do. (39:33) Obviously, if you don't want to do it, I'm not going to say you have to do it. (39:36) But there's even studies like, oh, statins increase your risk of dementia.
(39:40) And these are all, if you look at the grades of evidence on papers, these are all retrospective analyses. (39:46) So it's like the lowest grade of evidence. (39:48) And then, you know, one study says it's positive and other debunks it.
(39:51) And so it's like, okay, well, yes, we're all scared of developing Alzheimer's dementia. (39:56) But like, don't you want to at least live that long to get the chance to develop it? (40:00) Because if you're probably not going to get dementia at 52.
Julian Hayes II
(40:03) So yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, that was that was another thing, you know, with this is that, you know, I'm thinking for the person where they are presented with this thing to to get on one or not. (40:14) And it's so conflicting with research with different opinions and stuff. (40:20) Yeah, but I don't think it's conflicting.
Dr. Anand Patel
(40:21) I think, I think it's conflicting. (40:23) If you if you find the source that agrees with you, because then I think the problem with today's world is there's an equivalent equivalency of opinion, right? (40:31) I could be somebody who spent four years studying this, right?
(40:35) Or I could be a TikTok influencer and say the opposite thing. (40:38) And there's two opinions. (40:40) Well, sure, there are two people saying two different things.
(40:42) But you know, are we holding them at the same caliber? (40:45) And I think that's the problem. (40:46) No one asked, tell me every source you're telling on this side of the debate with every source on this side of the debate.
(40:51) And do they match the same level of pedigree and understanding or like thought process that's gone into this? (40:58) It's like, no, dude, that person spent like three minutes thinking about this and decided to say the opposite to rise up, get a rise out of everybody. (41:03) So I think there are things that have a very healthy debate.
(41:07) But I think sometimes it's in today's world, anybody that has a platform already has some level of authority. (41:12) And I'm like, just because they have a lot of people that listen to it doesn't mean that they have a lot of authority in this specific subject matter.
Julian Hayes II
(41:17) Yeah, that's I mean, that's a new wave, right? (41:18) You can call them health influencers, fitness influencers, and that kind of thing, right? (41:23) And there does come he who has more followers, more, more numbers are deemed the expert because they have all these people, so they must know something.
(41:33) I understand that's not the case. (41:36) But I guess because I'm involved in the internet a lot, I'm involved in this world a lot. (41:40) So I understand there's many different ways you can get followers, I can be very controversial.
(41:45) And, and I have a better chance of going viral if I'm super controversial and say outlandish things, right? (41:50) So I understand kind of the game of this. (41:53) But the average person probably is not going to understand that, especially if they're just a passerby.
(41:57) And they just this is the first thing that comes up on the algorithm. (42:00) Right? (42:01) Yeah.
(42:01) And then it's going to keep feeding you that because it's gonna learn, oh, he must like this type of stuff. (42:05) Let me feed you more information on this. (42:07) And so you'll never get to hear the other side.
(42:09) And so that's why I think that's, you know, that's a very interesting thing that's going to grow in the future in terms of especially in health, because there's so many different opinions on on a myriad of different topics.
Dr. Anand Patel
(42:20) You know, and I think I tell this to my like, the patients that seek me out are of a different caliber a lot of the times in this, but, you know, if I have a car, and I take it to a mechanic, and I and I relatively trust the mechanic, and he's like, Look, dude, you need to replace this belt. (42:34) And we got to put this fluid in. (42:36) I'm like, you know what, man, that sounds great.
(42:38) But I'm thinking let's do a spark plug, and then change this piece of electronics. (42:41) He's like, but that doesn't really affect the thing that it's like, now you know what, it's been my car for like 15 years, I really know my car. (42:48) So I'm just gonna stick with that.
(42:49) But thanks for your opinion. (42:50) So why the hell do you bring it to the mechanic, if you should do what you wanted, right? (42:53) Like, this is a person that does this thing.
(42:55) So there's, we went from this like paternalistic sense of medicine, where it's like, I'm the doctor, you better listen to me to like this team approach of medicine, where it's like, Oh, what do you think? (43:05) What do you feel like, like many times in the world, the pendulum swings, and sometimes the pendulum swings too far, right? (43:11) It's like, dude, I don't know how to fix a car.
(43:13) So I brought it to you, right? (43:14) It's like, fix my car, please. (43:15) It's like, yes, I'm intelligent in certain things, but not how to do this thing.
(43:19) So I came to you for your opinion. (43:20) So the same way that the patients that seek me out in my clinic, they understand these are the guys that have $1,000 hour lawyers, right? (43:26) It's like, Alright, man, what do you think?
(43:27) This is my plan. (43:28) Here's my justification. (43:29) Here's some data backing that up.
(43:31) It's like, cool, thank you. (43:31) Like, let's get initiated with the plan. (43:33) Because this is an understanding of we have a job to do.
(43:37) And we're trying to achieve a specific outcome. (43:38) It's not about feelings. (43:39) It's not about how you want it.
(43:40) It's like, do you want to be healthier? (43:42) You want to live longer? (43:43) Let's do these things, right?
(43:44) And I think I, you know, and this might not be the best personality type for everybody out there. (43:49) But I think that, you know, if you're very type A driven person, it's like, let's cut the bullshit and just figure out what we need to do. (43:55) And then we can move forward, right?
(43:56) And it's like, dude, if you want to like talk about this for hours, go find somebody else. (43:59) If you want to hear my opinion, you want to move forward, you want to figure out how to do this, right, we'll do it. (44:04) And you know, again, it doesn't, it might be a little abrasive for some, but I think, you know, those that understand and those that want specific levels of outcome and what they what they're investing in, they'll understand that.
Julian Hayes II
(44:17) Yeah, because ultimately, you know, you're, you're saving time and giving them the most precious assets time.
Dr. Anand Patel
(44:22) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(44:23) And going back and forth, debating between 20 studies and meta analysis and double blind studies, and what was the parameters that isn't all that so waste of time. (44:32) And a lot of times people are not interested in that. (44:35) They're just not either.
(44:36) They're just not interested in it. (44:38) I guess the next area is one of the other, I guess, four horsemen that people like to talk about is cancer. (44:43) And now with a full body scans now, what's your opinion on those?
Dr. Anand Patel
(44:50) Yeah, that's a, it's a very, it's very tough topic, because this is probably one of the most double edged swords that we have out there, right? (44:57) There's two rules of cancer. (44:59) One is don't get cancer.
(45:00) And two is get it early. (45:02) So with that, right, so let's just say that you're like, okay, I'm perfect with the current construct of healthcare. (45:08) I do everything my primary care doctor tells me I get all of the right evaluations at the time, I got my colonoscopy, you know, I got my mammogram, I did what they told me to do.
(45:16) So in the US, how many cancers would we catch out of 10? (45:20) Just to pick it, like, how many do you think we catch out of 10? (45:23) One out of 10, two out of 10, five out of 10, seven out of 10?
(45:25) With our basic sets of evaluation?
Julian Hayes II
(45:30) Early enough, probably I'm going with three.
Dr. Anand Patel
(45:33) Yep, it's exact. (45:33) It's three out of 10. (45:34) So we get three out of 10 can, the other seven go undiagnosed.
(45:38) It's not until you develop symptoms that you actually understand that a patient has cancer. (45:42) So now is like, okay, so I have a patient who is an executive and he's like, all right, I don't, you know, he's had family history of cancer, he's very concerned about this. (45:49) So I said, okay, we'll get a full body MRI scan.
(45:51) Now this will show us, you know, if you did a full body MRI scan, to the extent that you wanted to get every part scan to its entirety, it would take eight to 10 hours in a tube. (46:01) No one's going to sit eight to 10 hours in an MRI tube. (46:03) So the whole, the whole premise and their intellectual property relies on the fact that they scan things quickly in certain areas just to get the very base levels.
(46:10) Okay. (46:11) So now you don't get the clarity that you might always get. (46:14) So then let's just say we scan you and you say, oh, Julian, you got a little something in your lung.
(46:18) They're like, eh, it's just a little bit big for us to ignore. (46:21) We can't repeat it. (46:22) We got to stick a needle in there to make sure it's not cancer.
(46:24) We do the lung biopsy and we're like, ah, you developed a pneumothorax. (46:28) I'm sorry. (46:28) All right.
(46:29) You're gonna have to stay in the hospital. (46:30) It's like, oh God, we, it's really not resolving. (46:33) We have to put a chest tube in.
(46:34) It's like, oh, the chest tube resolved the pneumothorax, but now you've got an infection and it's kind of inside this plural space where I have to give you IV antibiotics for two weeks. (46:42) Oh, the report on your biopsy came back. (46:45) It was a calcification.
(46:46) So you would have lived and died with this thing for the entirety of your life. (46:49) And then you went through two months of hell because of this MRI or you catch cancer early. (46:56) So it's like, it's such a dichotomous thing that like, you know, it really, and I think this is utility of like physicians like myself that understand these technologies well and are really partnering with patients, right?
(47:08) It's harder if you're just a guy off the street, that's like, I want this test. (47:11) You get the test. (47:12) And then you're like, you get these eight pages of reports and all these things.
(47:15) And it's like, it, yeah, now with chat GPT, it can help you discern what's serious and what's not. (47:19) But even then, right? (47:20) Like without that distinct level of knowledge, it's still harder for you to interpret everything with that, you know, true depth of analysis you probably want in something as important as this scan.
(47:31) So do I think it's useful? (47:33) I mean, like, like I've gotten one and it, it showed me some things that have changed my lifestyle, right? (47:38) It showed that I had the very faintest amounts of like fatty infiltration on my liver, right?
(47:43) Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is on the rise. (47:46) And I'm like, well, guess who's not drinking booze much anymore. (47:48) So now I drink booze maybe once a year, twice a year, because it's like, I'm not going to even mess around with that possibility.
(47:54) I know that booze is not great for me anyway, but that was kind of the kicker to like, dude, stop. (47:59) So now it's not only will it help with cancer, but there are other things I've noticed advanced degenerative joint disease in my knees. (48:05) I'm like, okay, well, I better start being better about leg day and making sure that I'm doing the things that preserve my joints.
(48:10) So now my, it actually shifted the way that I view my fitness journey to say, I need to do more joint preservation management type things. (48:17) So now this, what thing has been, you know, framed as a cancer detection tool is really another health optimization tool because I'm like, hey, let's use it for all that it's got. (48:27) You know, it tells us the size of your prostate.
(48:29) We can understand a little bit about your thyroid. (48:32) We're not going to get true joint understanding. (48:34) Like you're not going to replace the knee with this MRI, but you know, you get some cursory level understanding, which really helps kind of craft a more detailed and personalized plan for all my patients.
Julian Hayes II
(48:43) Yeah. (48:44) You know, I, I've been thinking just me personally about like, like I'm really big on language and a lot of times how we describe these tests. (48:54) It feels so heavy and almost intimidating and scary.
(48:57) Right. (48:58) And you know, something like that, right. (49:00) Instead of saying this is a cancer detection tool, let's just say it's a health optimization tool.
(49:04) It's, you know, it's a, something that's going to help you improve your behaviors, motivate you, inspire you more to do your behaviors. (49:10) And that's just the weight is taken off of that because we have this stickler when we hear the word cancer, it conjures up all these feelings and stuff. (49:19) And everyone's family has probably been affected in some form or fashion on that.
(49:22) And then you start thinking of these things in your thoughts. (49:24) And as we know, we, our thoughts influence our health. (49:30) And, and so to my understanding with the AI ones, are those a little more sensitive?
(49:36) Is that why sometimes?
Dr. Anand Patel
(49:38) No, I mean, there really isn't like an AI full body MRI per se. (49:42) They're all just traditional MRIs. (49:46) You know, sometimes they do have like, they run a little like AI regression on top of it to help with the detection of things.
(49:53) So like radiology has two distinct parameters, right? (49:56) So full body MRIs basically do the scanning and then a radiologist will read it. (50:01) But then you can also have an AI read it as well, because the same way that like the Cleerly Scan uses CT coronary angiogram as the base, Cleerly Scanis a layer that's added on top.
(50:11) This is an AI layer to help augment its ability to that might've been missed by the human. (50:16) So some of these have an additional AI layer on top of it. (50:20) A lot of the times, you know, it, the problem is the AI layer might start over-diagnosing and that's really the kicker, right?
(50:27) Because in this thing, we want to be more sensitive to over-diagnosis than not, because we probably are going to have a lot of incidental findings that you would have lived and died with. (50:36) And we want to be more cautious, right? (50:38) Because there's sensitivity and specificity.
(50:40) So we want to drop the sensitivity a little bit and make sure that we don't just call everything. (50:45) And then the patients get super upset and concerned about this.
Julian Hayes II
(50:48) Yeah. (50:48) Yeah. (50:49) That's the thing.
(50:49) A lot of times now patients, people can get so many, so much data, right? (50:55) You can, I can, I can do my, I can, I can do my true age test, right? (50:59) I can, I can get my genetics done.
(51:01) I can get my microbiome. (51:02) I can, I can do a full body blood work. (51:05) And so you have all this data now, right?
(51:07) And so it can, it's, it's I like it because it's like a game to me, but I can see how to others, it could be, it could just be like, oh my goodness. (51:17) Right. (51:18) And, and plus that's why guys like you exist.
(51:20) Right.
Dr. Anand Patel
(51:20) And you know, why do people with like lots of wealth have wealth managers, right? (51:26) Because they need somebody to do something with all this. (51:27) I don't have time to deal with all this money sitting there.
(51:30) I need it to work for me. (51:31) Right. (51:31) I don't have all this time to deal with my health data all the time.
(51:34) I need my health data to work for me. (51:35) Well, I'm your health manager, right? (51:38) Like I'm the guy that's going to take this and then codify it into something that's utilitarian for you and say, okay, all right, man, this doesn't look good, but you better stop drinking as much on Tuesdays.
(51:48) Like let's figure this out. (51:49) Right. (51:49) So there's definitely a way it's funny.
(51:52) You mentioned like true age and things like that. (51:55) So I used to do a lot of like epigenetic testing. (51:57) And I realized I just, that, that technology is just broken.
(52:02) It's like, I haven't found any single clinical utilization for that. (52:05) I was so hopeful that this would be such a cool talk. (52:07) I mean, I actually, I don't know if you've like heard about the drug rapamycin.
Julian Hayes II
(52:12) Yeah.
Dr. Anand Patel
(52:13) Yeah. (52:13) So, I mean, I have patients on rapamycin. (52:15) I took rapamycin for a little bit, right.
(52:17) Because for everybody that doesn't understand rapamycin is a drug that has been considered the anti-aging drug. (52:24) There are epigenetic changes and methylation changes that occur on our DNA over time as a signature of aging. (52:30) And the idea is that rapamycin could help revert some of these changes.
(52:34) And so in a calendar year, you would age one year while on rapamycin therapy, you might only age 0.7 years biologically within that same timeframe. (52:44) So the idea was that these tests and these interventions could be, have a way of intervening and monitoring along that path. (52:52) But like, there's been no correlation.
(52:54) I mean, there's still people that are on, you know, mTOR inhibitors like rapamycin to extend their life. (52:59) And I mean, I know a guy I met last month who's running a fund for like $300 million specifically just looking into all of these different mTOR inhibitors. (53:10) So it is a huge play by Pharma to try and get in this because we understand that there is a medication that will literally slow our rate of aging.
(53:19) Right. (53:19) And so that'll probably be a big, big new push in the next 10 to 15 years.
Julian Hayes II
(53:25) Yeah, I started to, you know, kind of get rid of some of the ones, the assessments and tests as well. (53:32) Because, you know, I was saying, I was like, how much does it really move the needle, you know, more than I'm, I like these things. (53:38) And, you know, is it really as effective or is it doing more good than harm?
(53:41) So I've kind of started to reassess some things as well in the arsenal. (53:47) You know, so speaking of that, what are some other, I guess, tools in your arsenal now that you are, that are, I guess, non-negotiables that you're going to use?
Dr. Anand Patel
(53:55) Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, the non-negotiables, I think everybody knows, right? (53:59) Exercise is the most important longevity tool that we have, but get up and go exercise. (54:03) That's number one.
(54:04) Sleep. (54:05) We sacrifice sleep for everything. (54:07) And sleep is probably just as important, if not as important as exercise, right?
(54:10) We spend a third of our life doing it. (54:12) Sleep as we age becomes more difficult to do well. (54:16) More things affect our sleep as we age.
(54:19) Our hormonal release is not as good. (54:21) So if you don't get at least two hours of deep sleep between REM and deep sleep, you're not releasing growth hormone in your fourth, fifth decade of life. (54:29) So those are like, you know, the massive important ones, you got to eat right, et cetera.
(54:32) But like now if we're thinking about ancillary stuff, right? (54:35) One of the things that I think is probably the most underrated and thing that I'm telling most of my patients to figure out how to get and see how they can convince their spouse or whoever allow them to do it is put a hyperbaric chamber in their house. (54:47) If you look at like every major athlete now, they all have hyperbarics in their home.
(54:51) It's funny because I just talked to a buddy who redid his kitchen and spent like 60 grand on his kitchen cabinets. (54:56) And I'm like, dude, you should put a hyperbaric in your house. (54:58) And he's like, are you crazy?
(54:59) And I'm like, yeah, you just drop like all this money on your kitchen cabinets. (55:03) And it's like, that's not gonna make you live any longer. (55:05) But this thing that I'm telling you that will literally help you like be a 75 year old that's skiing down the hill all day long with your grandkids, you're going to say no to, right?
(55:13) But to me, like hyperbaric is one of those things because we age. (55:17) One of the biggest problems is our joints, right? (55:19) Like we define our quality of life through our independence.
(55:21) Independence comes from movement and ability to do the things that we want to do. (55:24) And if our joints don't allow us that, then we're kind of stuck and we lose a lot of what we want to be able to achieve. (55:29) And so as we age, our tendons are the most poorly vascularized structures in our body.
(55:35) And when you get in a hyperbaric chamber, you increase the oxygen tension and you increase the pressure. (55:39) So now you're getting red blood cells to areas that they didn't have before. (55:42) So the healing and regenerative properties becomes increased.
(55:45) And I get my patients to do PRP and stem cell and exosome therapy and all these other things. (55:51) So then it's this synergy between these modalities where it's like, okay, well, what happens if you did red light therapy, but you do photobiomodulation, you do stem cells or exosomes and they do hyperbaric. (56:02) Okay, well, now you have a really powerful confluence of tools to address a specific thing.
(56:06) So for me, it's not really a specific intervention, but it's like, how do we take these and use them synergistically to get the most efficacious outcome that we're looking for?
Julian Hayes II
(56:18) Yeah. (56:19) When you go about exosomes and stem cells, is there a certain, I guess each patient's probably going to be a little different in terms of how much they're going to use, right?
Dr. Anand Patel
(56:30) Yeah. (56:31) And it's kind of a more nuanced conversation too, because exosomes and stem cells technically in the US are a little bit like of a gray area. (56:40) But a lot of this is for, they've had things where we're getting to a point where it's a chronic problem.
(56:49) The traditional methods of physical therapy and exercise have kind of fallen to the side. (56:53) And now we're like, look, in a few years you might need surgery. (56:56) So we're kind of, this is the Hail Mary to see if we can prevent any type of surgical intervention or delay that to whatever extent we might be able to.
(57:03) So I'm like, we throw the kitchen sink. (57:06) Because what is it? (57:07) So it's really a time money resource thing.
(57:10) Because I mean, one of these interventions I'm doing with my patient, we might have to fly to Antigua to go, right? (57:14) And then it's going to cost them like five, 10 grand on top of that, right? (57:18) PRP, if you need three, four sessions of that seven, $800 a piece, you're looking at 2,500 bucks.
(57:23) And that's not always covered by insurance. (57:25) So all these things for me, if it's a joint issue, I like give it as much and as hard as you can, because the idea is you're just giving substrate for the healing process for it to innately occur. (57:36) So as much time and energy and resource you have to devote to this until it gets better, keep trying.
(57:42) Otherwise, what's left, right? (57:43) You're going to do surgery or you're just going to limit the mobility through that joint space.
Julian Hayes II
(57:47) Yeah. (57:47) And to me, that's still a more expensive option. (57:50) Yeah, it's definitely an expensive option.
Dr. Anand Patel
(57:53) But yeah, I mean, I read, you know, Bill Perkins, die with zero. (57:56) And I tell all my patients, I'm like, okay, you're 88. (57:59) If you have an extra comma in your bank account or another $400,000, what does it matter?
(58:03) What are you going to do with that? (58:05) Everybody says Warren Buffett would give all of his wealth to revert back to the age of 40. (58:10) When you have all of that, then what is the point?
(58:12) It's all about now. (58:13) Invest now, right? (58:14) And it's like, yes, it's expensive.
(58:16) Everything's expensive when you look at it, because you're only looking at it as something that you're like, I pay all this money for health insurance. (58:21) I don't want to pay this on top of it. (58:22) It's like, no, dude.
(58:23) It's like, screw the insurance, screw everything else. (58:25) It's like, we don't care about the baseline. (58:27) We want what we want, because we want that best outcome for our life.
(58:31) And as you said, you know, like we only think about the most important commodity is time, but it's really not just time. (58:36) Because if you have, I gave you five years bedridden and you're hemiparetic, you wouldn't care. (58:42) You're like, hell no, man.
(58:42) I don't even want to live like that. (58:44) It's time plus health. (58:45) And that's the most important commodity.
(58:47) And that's what I tell patients. (58:48) I'm like, this is what you're investing in with me, with other practitioners like myself. (58:52) I'm going to give you a commodity that nobody else can, because I'm going to give you time and health.
(58:55) And it's that, that you're like, then I should be like, then I'm only going to charge twice as much. (59:00) You know what I mean? (59:00) It's like, then it's like, then money shouldn't even matter.
(59:02) And that's what I try to tell my patients. (59:04) Stop thinking in this myopic view of what am I, I'm spending to us? (59:08) It's like, no, it's like what you could possibly achieve.
(59:11) That ceiling is so much higher. (59:13) You know, most people, they give you money to get more money. (59:15) You give me money, I'm going to give you this different type of thing.
Julian Hayes II
(59:18) Yeah. (59:18) You know, I learned this lesson probably in my twenties. (59:22) You know, I've been consistently exercising, eating, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.
(59:25) Right. (59:26) Pretty dialed in since I was 20 years old. (59:28) And you know, I think about some of my broke his days and I would literally still eat well and everything else would just look like nothing.
(59:36) Right. (59:36) I will go without clothes. (59:38) I'll wear old clothes, old shoes, whatever, but my food and all that is going to be dialed in like my health behaviors and all that stuff.
(59:47) You know, that's a non-negotiable no matter what the rest of the budget, everything else can get slashed.
Dr. Anand Patel
(59:52) But you're definitely in the minority dude, because that's how most people will work. (59:56) You know, it's like, I'll be like, no, my gym membership is the first thing to go.
Julian Hayes II
(59:59) Well, I think it is. (1:00:00) Well, I think it is. (1:00:01) I think the lesson somehow I, you know, I saw my father who was, who was sick and suffering.
(1:00:06) I saw my aunts and some of my other ones. (1:00:08) Right. (1:00:09) And that just stuck in my head.
(1:00:10) And then I think I went to a doctor one time and I said, yeah, probably around 30, you're going to have, you know, diabetes and stuff like that. (1:00:16) Cause everybody else in your family. (1:00:17) And I was like, I don't really like the sound of that.
(1:00:19) It doesn't make sense. (1:00:20) Right. (1:00:21) And it just didn't make sense.
(1:00:22) And you know, that led me to medical school to a certain extent. (1:00:24) And then I left, you know, but, but still that thing just didn't make sense that like my genes weren't my destiny, that whole notion. (1:00:30) I didn't know about epigenetics then.
(1:00:32) I just knew that that doesn't make sense that everything's predetermined for me already.
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:00:35) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(1:00:36) Yeah. (1:00:37) So, so to go out of left field here, I have a random question. (1:00:40) What do you think are, is maybe one or two of the biggest misconceptions people have about this new age of medicine?
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:00:46) You know, I just, I don't like the moniker longevity, anti-aging. (1:00:52) It seems, you know, kind of like snake oily where it's like, Oh, what are you going to try and sell me now? (1:00:59) There's a new supplement that's going to be like this or just some no new products.
(1:01:02) And I'm like, no, man, I'm going to tell you to do the basics. (1:01:05) I'm going to utilize a system that we, we already have in place and then put you within that and optimize your health. (1:01:12) Right.
(1:01:13) And I think that's kind of the biggest thing is that the misconception is that like, we're out here practicing this crazy stuff. (1:01:19) And like some of these things that we do are pretty out there relatively, but a lot of them are really expensive. (1:01:24) So it's like, it's easy to just, you know, not give them much credence.
(1:01:27) But you know, once you look back and you, you peel away some of those things, it's like the core of what we're doing is we're not going to do annual follow-ups we're going to do every two to three weeks, man. (1:01:37) Like that, that is a huge change, right? (1:01:39) Like the misconception is like, I see you, I take all your money and I give you a bunch of these drugs and all these other things.
(1:01:44) It's like, no, it couldn't be further from the opposite. (1:01:46) Just like I said, your health manager, your health coach, like, you know, that, that data aggregation tool, right. (1:01:53) And it's, it's that it's supposed to be this like really conductive layer between you, your health and your data.
(1:02:00) And how do we get all that together? (1:02:02) And that should be us. (1:02:03) And I think that's what, you know, this medicine that we're trying to purport really shows.
Julian Hayes II
(1:02:08) Yeah. (1:02:08) I, I pretty much said I, I am sometimes I'm a cure, I'm pretty much a curator or, or maybe kind of helping lead an orchestra. (1:02:16) That's, that's pretty much kind of how I describe it because you, you're absolutely right.
(1:02:21) That the thing I, I want the field to make sure now listeners, I might use longevity, anti-aging in the titles as for search engines. (1:02:30) I share a sentiment as well, just to put that out there. (1:02:33) But you got to get them in somehow, right?
(1:02:35) You got to get them in. (1:02:36) Like, it's like the guy I remember as a young boy, he had a really nice car, but then, and I asked him what he did to get that, what he does. (1:02:42) And he told me, he started talking about discipline and habits like that.
(1:02:45) Right. (1:02:46) And so he let, you can lead it with that, but then you're going to get the real meat of the material in there. (1:02:51) Right.
(1:02:51) But anyway, I, I, sometimes I see in a field, I don't want people to swap being pushed out pills, maybe in a traditional healthcare system for being pushed out a bunch of pills in functional health or whatever you want to call it. (1:03:05) That's the thing now. (1:03:05) And so it's such a delicate balance because some of the stuff is expensive.
(1:03:09) Some of it's useful, how useful, who knows what's the percentage. (1:03:12) Right. (1:03:12) And that's kind of a personal call.
(1:03:13) And that's what you kind of got to explain to people. (1:03:15) Right. (1:03:16) You know, but some people that one to 2% does make a big difference if you're really into it.
(1:03:20) Right. (1:03:21) It makes a difference if you're willing to pay that, but not everyone is. (1:03:24) So that's why I think it's decentralized.
(1:03:26) It's almost like I almost think of it a little bit like Bitcoin in that space. (1:03:31) Right. (1:03:31) It's, I think helps become a more decentralized and more choose your own adventure.
(1:03:36) Just make sure.
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:03:37) Yeah. (1:03:38) And I think that, I mean, everything is really like becoming more decentralized education. (1:03:42) Right.
(1:03:42) Yeah. (1:03:43) Like Harvard, or like, even if you look at the early days of education, if you wanted to become a carpenter, you would have to go to the carpenter's guild. (1:03:51) And then the carpenter's guild would teach you to become a carpenter.
(1:03:53) Right. (1:03:54) Fast forward to today, you want a degree from Harvard that gives you a piece of paper that you can show to the world that says I graduated Harvard, which means if I come work for your company, then you, this is evidence that I will be a good worker. (1:04:05) Right.
(1:04:06) Now the decentralization of that is you can acquire any level of knowledge at any time. (1:04:10) And you could just show people with a portfolio of your work. (1:04:13) Here's what I could do.
(1:04:14) So now it's not about the Harvard institution. (1:04:18) It's not about the Mayo clinic. (1:04:20) It's about, Hey man, I got all this data with my health.
(1:04:21) How do I do it? (1:04:22) It's like, well, I don't, you don't need to go to Mayo clinic. (1:04:23) We can just do it right here and we can figure this all out.
(1:04:25) So absolutely agree. (1:04:27) Decentralization, like you're your own media company. (1:04:29) You wouldn't have been a media company 20 years ago.
(1:04:31) The decentralization of media has been one of the biggest changes in the last 20 years of social media and all these things have occurred. (1:04:36) Right. (1:04:36) So yeah, I think decentralization is happening everywhere.
(1:04:40) You know, we probably wouldn't be talking if I kept all my Bitcoin from when I had it earlier, but you know, it's like, it's, it's definitely like it's, it's affecting every sphere of our life. (1:04:49) And I think it's great because I think it gives people more autonomy over the way that they can really live their lives and decide who, who makes the choices that they want to, they feel aligned with.
Julian Hayes II
(1:04:56) Yeah. (1:04:57) I'm sick to my stomach for what I, but you get Bitcoin at the price you deserve, they said. (1:05:01) And that's definitely true because I, I think it was around 10 years ago, someone introduced me to it.
(1:05:07) It's like, you should get this Bitcoin. (1:05:08) And I was like, okay, what do you got to go do? (1:05:10) Well, it's like, well, you got to go meet someone at the coffee shop to get, cause it, you didn't have Coinbase.
(1:05:15) You didn't have Swan, none of these exchanges. (1:05:19) Right. (1:05:19) You just had to go meet someone.
(1:05:21) And I was like, well, I'm like, this sounds shady. (1:05:22) I'm just going to go consume and I don't know, go buy, go buy another blazer or closer or something. (1:05:26) Cause I was in New York and I had the biggest egg on my face.
(1:05:29) I was like, I wonder if that guy kept his Bitcoin. (1:05:32) I wonder what he's doing.
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:05:34) Yeah. (1:05:35) He said he's sitting on his island somewhere.
Julian Hayes II
(1:05:38) Oh my goodness. (1:05:39) But one of the last questions here is what does success mean to you?
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:05:44) You know, I think that's such a great, great way to end. (1:05:48) No, I, I, when I, when I started this journey, I had, I just was sitting at one point and, you know, I was looking around, I, I was working as attending. (1:05:57) I had a wife, two kids, a house in the suburbs, a nice yard, you know, everything like, where is the sign?
(1:06:04) Where's the banner? (1:06:05) Where's that endless sense of fulfillment and happiness that I've made it right. (1:06:10) And I'm like, I felt, I felt more empty at that point than I ever had.
(1:06:14) And it wasn't until this point now, right. (1:06:16) Getting back to the idea of I wake up and I'm not like, oh my God, so upset about the fact that I need to like get up and do my work. (1:06:23) I'm excited.
(1:06:24) Like my work gives me energy. (1:06:26) And I think to me, that's it. (1:06:29) Like find purpose and find something that gives you energy.
(1:06:32) And to me that defines success, because now I feel aligned with the things that I do before I was making money for somebody else. (1:06:38) I was seeing patients I didn't want to see. (1:06:40) I was in environments and talking to people I don't want to talk to, but now I've removed all that.
(1:06:44) Talk to the people I want to talk to. (1:06:46) I talk to the patients I want to talk to. (1:06:47) They inspire me to do great things.
(1:06:49) And so now just living this life where I get to kind of define what I see as purpose and happiness is really, you know, made me feel like I'm successful now.
Julian Hayes II
(1:07:00) That's a great way to end it. (1:07:01) Where can listeners find you at?
Dr. Anand Patel
(1:07:03) So we're our websites at www.lv8.health. And you know, my Instagram is dranandpat84. (1:07:17) And so either one of those sites, you know, you get a lot of information about what it is we do, a lot more information about just our longevity tips and tricks and things like that. (1:07:27) And if you know any of your listeners want to reach out, you know, feel free to reach out to the website.
(1:07:31) We have a form there and be happy to answer any questions they might have.
Julian Hayes II
(1:07:34) Awesome here. (1:07:35) I will have all his information in there and I'm going to end this a little differently. (1:07:38) I'm going to share some of what he wrote on his Instagram.
(1:07:41) It was a nice point that you're in, by the way. (1:07:43) I'm not going to share it all. (1:07:44) I'm just going to share a little bit of it.
(1:07:45) He said, leaving behind comfort and complacency is never easy. (1:07:48) You venture into something new burden with the rock of inertia, striking it day in and day out, years of worry, months of despair, insights of abject failure until one day a crack emerges and the cumulative weight of your efforts is felt. (1:08:01) Success now seems like an eventuality and not some distinct intangible goal.
(1:08:07) So listeners out there, keep pushing, keep striving, keep building, stay awesome, be limitless and as always optimize today so you can lead tomorrow. (1:08:15) Peace.
