Aging Isn’t Inevitable! The True Way To Slow Down Your Decline l Dr. Jeffrey Gladden l Episode #409

Introduction and episode overview 0:00

Hi, I'm Natalie Indenamir, your host, and welcome back to another great episode. Have you ever heard these words? Everything looks normal for your age. Those words changed the course of Dr. Jeffrey Gladden's life and his medical career. After decades as an interventional cardiologist, he hit his own health wall and refused to accept decline as inevitable. In this episode, we talk about why most medicines still treat sickness instead of health, how insulin and nervous system stress quietly drive aging, and why the same diet may help one person and harm another.

If you're done settling for fine, this conversation opens a much bigger door. This episode is brought to you by Young Goose, by Quantum Upgrade, and by Mito Pure Gummies, all with special offers just for you, the listeners. Make sure to check out the show notes below for details and enjoy the shows. Welcome to the Show, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden. It is a complete honor to have you here today. Thank you for taking your time. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Let's get people oriented around who you are and where you come from and all the things.

And you know, you spent over 25 years as an interventional cardiologist. Yeah, we were just talking about this a minute ago.

Dr. Gladden's cardiology background 1:22

And I'm going to invite you to share with us how this happened. At some point, you woke up one morning or maybe we're standing in the OR with somebody's heart in your hands thinking there's a better way to do this. People don't have to get to this stage before somebody intervenes as an interventional cardiologist. Okay. Yeah, we can get into that story. You know, I loved being an interventional cardiologist, right? I did a lot of things in that space here in Dallas, Texas, North Texas Southeast Oklahoma.

It turned out that I was Kind of entrepreneurial as well, right? I put myself through college with my summer painting business and some things like that. And so anyway, when I got into medicine, I kind of circled back in. So I ended up building my own heart group. I co-founded a heart hospital here.I was involved with medical device companies. i was building cath labs. That was, you know, involved in lots of different things and I really enjoyed it. However, um, I was always struck by a line in the cath lab when we would go in and put a stent in or open up an artery and the crew in in, the lab would always say, oh, it's like a new artery.

Right. Because when you look on the angiogram, you would see this, perfect silhouette of contrast going through an arteries. Like, Oh, It's a New Artery. And yet I always so skeptical of that comment because It's like, no, it's not a new artery. It is an artery with a stent in it. And because we were using intercoronary ultrasound to actually look inside the arteries, which most cardiologists don't do, didn't, still don' do. We could actually see they were full of plaque. The arteries were filled with plaque, so there was nothing remotely close to this was a So I had a level of skepticism about what we were doing even then, even though it was interesting work and it good work, and we felt like we're helping people.

And then with some genetics testing came along right after, I don't know, 1999, 2000, somewhere in there. I jumped on the bandwagon of that because all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, let's see what your predisposition is for heart disease. Maybe we can make different decisions based on what And in actual fact, we could. And so we found that if people would implement what we've found based on some of the genetic insights we had, and even whether they would benefit from a statin or they wouldn't benefit, from the staten or these kinds of things, it was like, oh, this is interesting.

We were getting better outcomes for people with that. But what really flipped the switch for me was not an insight standing in the cath lab per se, but it's my own health journey. So what happened to me in my 50s was that all of a sudden, you know, I found myself putting on weight, being exhausted all the time. Even when I got a couple of good nights sleep, I was doing a lot of things so there was stress in my life and I would find it if I got overly stressed, I'd become anxious and then I go over a cliff of depression.

And I had struggled with some depression earlier in life as well, going through a divorce and things like that. I think I spent most of my 20s actually being somewhat depressed. And so I'm concerned about all these things. And my father died with dementia and I am developing brain fog. So I've got brainfog, I have got exhaustion, losing muscle mass, putting on fat, right?

Personal health crisis and career pivot 4:46

Not looking good. I get depressed, and it's like, okay, there's a problem here. Now the interesting thing is, my grandmother, my mother's mother, I was very close with my mom's parents, had always told me as a kid and teenager and whatever else, Jeff, it's hell to get old. You don't ever want to be old, and initially it was like, oh yeah, grandma, blah, now here I am sort of like feeling this stuff. So I go in and I'm tested by one of my colleagues and what I've told is, you know, all your tests come back looking normal for your age.

You're just getting older. Why don't you take an antidepressant? And I think it was that moment in time that was really one of the most existential moments in my life. It's like, oh, my gosh, I'm looking right down the barrel of this aging process, and it's all going to be downhill from here. Right. And it like really I've hit the zenith of my. I am 52 or whatever it is. This is it. this is the peak. it doesn't get any better than this. Yeah. And I couldn't make peace with that, of course. So I've always been very athletic.

I grew up playing soccer, basketball, running. You know, I do a lot of athletics to this very day, snowboarding, mountain biking, all that kind of stuff. But the point is I could believe it was all going to be downhill and that I wasn't going be able to keep up with my kids anymore. Right. which is also a big deal and so I basically at that point threw myself into the functional integrative age management medicine space and it took me two and a half years and I had some help of course but I figured everything out right so clinical hypothyroidism the blood work looks fine but it's by reflexes were very slow resting metabolic rate was low Genetically, I don't convert inactive T4 to active T3 in my brain.

I'm homozygous. A DIO2 SNP that decreases my ability to do that. That'll bum you out. Right. So if you'd just given me Synthroid, typical T-4, it wouldn't have done that much for me. But I got on the right combination of T 3 and T 4 and all of a sudden it's like inside of week the lights came back on. It's, like, oh my gosh, i can bounce out of bed again. Then I was hormonally depleted, right? 20 years ago, that was a newer thing than it is today, but testosterone was down, DHEA was done, things like that.

I got some of that repleted. Lost 20 pounds of fat, put on 10 pounds And then the anxiety, depression, and brain fog are all related to the fact that I don't have Alzheimer's genes, even though my father died with dementia, but I, I didn't make certain neurotransmitters efficiently. So once I figured out the methylation cycle and it was beyond the methylation cycle, some other things that factor in there, um, got on the right set of supplements and I also learned how to meditate, But I could, come under lots of stress and not get depressed.

And all of a sudden I'm like, gosh, I feel great again. I've been practicing sick care, not healthcare. Uh, I can't do it anymore. Don't want to have sick-care conversations anymore, actually help people that are going through what I'm going to optimize their life and get back what they think they've lost irrevocably and actually get that back for them. So I left in 2012 and I kind of based jumped out of, you know, a very successful practice into a world where I had no idea how to make a living.

and simultaneously was putting a couple girls through school and then went through a divorce and everything else. It was heavy lifting, right? Lots of things going on. But the point is that When I started to feel really, really good again, I, started ask the question, gosh, wonder how good I can be, right? How fit, how strong, mentally sharp. How many years and decades can we carry forward? And that was really the initial question that kind of drove me forward. Because in the process of reclaiming my health, what I learned is that it's the questions we ask.

that we get the answers to. If we're not asking the right questions, we aren't getting the wrong answers, right? You and I were talking about a couple of things about diet prior to just jumping on the podcast here. And we can circle back to that. The problem is people are asking wrong questions. I'll show you how that works. But anyway, it's really, really interesting to go through that journey. So really initially it was costier cardiology, then health optimization, and then it you know, really what's grown into glad and longevity, which is really focused on this concept of when we're 100, we want to have a 30 year old body.

Or pick whatever age you want, 27, 26. 40 would work. Yeah. Three year old body. Great. I just finished a call with a guy out of Atlanta that wants to be 52. So that's great too. Whatever you. But develop a 300 slash 3000 year-old mind, right? All the insight, equanimity, wisdom, tranquility, transcendence, and being able to resonate in a very powerful, strong, vibration of creativity and from a loving place creating joy. And so when we're able to do that, it's like, gosh, all of a sudden, longevity is like the most exciting prospect on the planet.

It's not about living longer. Just that. I just thought about more golf or more grandkids. it is about, Gosh, we get to actually step into a life that nobody's been able live before. Right. Youthful body, All this wisdom, and then bring that forward. So that's kind of how it has evolved. You know, that is the most appealing articulation of living a very long life that I've heard from ever from anybody, because everybody talks about, I want to live to 150 or 180 or 200 or I don't. I had a guy on the podcast who said I'm never going to die.

Like they're dying is unnatural, he tells me. Yeah. And I was sitting there going, it sounds exhausting. This just sounds exhausting. But this idea of a youthful body with a 3,000-year-old mind, both of which are founded on principles of resilience. With that resilience is how we now can ebb and flow. And I'm still not convinced that 200 years is a good runway, but to hang on to that, to have that concept for as long as we're on this earth, for whatever reason, It seems like a much more mature approach than I don't want to die.

Right. I'm not an immortalist. And if I get hit by a bus on the way home this afternoon, I am actually fine with that too. It's been an amazing journey.

Longevity mindset and the five-circle framework 11:40

So it's not about that for me. It's really about how do we actually step into a higher level of what it is to be human, right? Create better relationships, all these sorts of things. To me, that's exciting and fun. So I think about. And I. Think it such an abstraction to think What does it mean to be 150 or 200, right? Every person, every picture I ever saw of somebody, 120 or 110, it's like, geez, I don't know. That's not really what I'm going for. Right. So there's a lot of appeal to that. I think I like the target that we have and it helps us to really reference things and stay on track also, because I'll tell you this, when I When I wake up every morning, I woke up 27. I was born in 1954 and February of 54. Right.

So but I is because if we say, well, I'm good for my age. I am better than most people my, we're already acquiescing to aging, right? So it's like, no, pick the age you want to be and then reference that. And if I don't feel that age, it is like well what do I need to do to get back there? And that drives so much of asking the right questions. What do we need do? What are we, you know, blah blah, and you get to where you go. Hey, folks, I just wanted to throw a little message in here for those of you who are sending me all these incredible questions on social media or through YouTube or even on Spotify, wherever you're listening to the podcast.

I wish I could get back to each one of your personally, but unfortunately, And because I cannot, I created, about a couple of years ago now, a membership community where I get to hang out with people just like you. I do live weekly Q&As, almost weekly anyway. We also do have podcast guests come in to answer everybody's questions and do presentations, you get to interact live with those podcast guests. We will sometimes do challenges with some of the partners. Like in 2026, we have a mitochondrial enhancement challenge coming up where we're going to be testing mitochondria function.

we are going be test people's deuterium levels. If you haven't heard about deutereum, We've got podcasts coming down the pipes on that. And then people will be invited to follow a personalized protocol and then retest their mitochondria on the other side. We offer that in the membership community and we do it at incredible discounts that you just can't find anywhere else. So if you're interested in hanging out with me and other like-minded people, which actually happen to include some pretty awesome practitioners and even some previous podcast guests who've come and joined the community, then I invite you to check it out on my website natnidam.com slash the dash longevity dash community or just go to natnadam dot com and look for the Longevity Community tab at the top of the page.

Click on that and see if this is right for you. I would love to see you there. And we could make 2026 our best year ever together. So once again, that's natnidam.com. Just look for the Lungevity community tab, at top the of page, now let's get back to the show. The piece of question that a lot of people leave out and we'll talk about some of consequence of this, is for me. because it is about the individual, right? So like you said to me, you know, well, if you want to be 40, because maybe that's the time in my life when I felt the most amazing, like in 30s, I was a hot mess.

In my 20s I, was like, don't even talk to him about it. But when hit 40 men, and I crushing it, so, that where, exactly like your patient who said I want be 52, cause that probably in his mind when he finally got it together and felt his best. That's exactly right. We often talk about physicians personalizing medicine or personalising this, that, and the other thing, but are people really getting their heads around, how do I personalize everything for me, myself? How do So critical journey and and you talk about longevity mindset and I think this is what you were you are Alluding to just now this longevity Mindset that and maybe you want to talk About it and get into it a little bit more that is rooted in wisdom and equanimity equinimity is not a word we hear very often But it inherently is probably the missing ingredient in the world at this very second Yeah, there's several missing ingredients and i think equinox is certainly one of them yeah for sure Yeah, where would you like me to start?

Let's just describe what this longevity mindset is, right? Because maybe it's a place of wanting less but doing more or whatever, however you... Yeah. I'll tee it up for you by... I'm giving you the construct that we've created. So the, you know, one of the handicaps, I think that, we have, and I will just echo, it is individual. Just as I am saying this, understand it's individual, but one the problems that have with the aging process is that perceive it to be linear. when it's actually exponential.

Every year is another birthday. I don't feel that much different. It's a linear process. And yet we know people age a lot more between 70 and 80 and 90 than 20 and 30. But if we ask ourselves, what are we going to be like in 20 years? If you and I do that, What are going be in like 20? It is virtually impossible to imagine we are any different than we Now the human brain doesn't do that. It doesn' go there, right? So we're basically in an exponential game that we relate to from a linear perspective that That puts us at a big disadvantage, right?

And so understanding that it's an exponential game and then understanding many of the solutions that are offered in the quote unquote longevity space, it is all about diet, exercise, VO2, this, that, peptides, stem cells. Ultimately, all those things are great in a right place for the right person at the linear approaches to an exponential problem. They don't actually get at the real root cause. So in our world, what we did was to think about how do you actually develop an exponential response to an experimental problem?

What's the exponential strategy gonna be? And so for us, there's really five circles, five areas that need to be addressed. The first one is life energy. Second one, is longevity itself. And these are the actual hallmarks of age in the biological processes that drive aging, right? Which are not typically addressed directly, but there are things like senescent cell formation, immunosenescence, shortened telomeres, decreased autophagy, produce proteostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, oxidative stress, these things.

So going at those becomes important. Then all the health things, right? Every organ system and all of the subsystems. And then performance. When I'm 100, I want to be fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced, great cardiovascular capacity, reserve capacity. You know, anything I wanna do. Flexibility. I can do that now. But I have to train for that. When you're 18, you lift some weights and go for a run. You know, as you go through the decades, it takes different training, right? You've got to training.

And one of the biggest insights about training is it's not about your muscles. It's about you nervous system. Now you actually training your nervous. The muscles come along for the ride, how you move, quick you are, et cetera. So that's the fourth circle. Then the fifth circle is really understanding the environments we reside in. We all live at home, work, business, travel, vacation. And when you optimize those, and what I mean by optimize is make it as easy as possible to do what you want to get done, keep the toxins out, whether it's mold or, you know, chemicals or whatever else or toxic relationships for that matter or It's also where your sneakers, you know, what's in the refrigerator?

What's the freezer at eight o'clock at night when I know I'm gonna eat whatever's there? No matter, no matter So it's about architecting those spaces to support the mission if you will so when you put all that together Then you can actually start to create an understanding of what the levers are that reside on each of those circles, how to test for those, and then how basically take action on them. That becomes an exponential response with the feedback loops of follow-up testing and wearables and things.

So that's how we think about that. Now, back to the mindset of aging. I think people can get into longevity for many different reasons. They don't want to die.

Personalized nutrition and metabolic testing 20:38

Because longevity represents this opportunity for us to be expansive in terms of our psychospiritual development, the Life Energy Circle is really focused on that. And it starts off with a growth mindset. So we've all heard that term, but what does it mean actually, right? So for me, they way I've defined it for myself is, are you married to your answers, or are married your questions? Love that! Right? Love that. Too many people married to their answers for sure. Right. They get married because we were talking about that before the show started.

And so the thing for me is that even if you have strong beliefs, all of your growth is going to come from the questions that you're asking, not the answers that And I think that's so critical to understand. And so in our world, we have thousands of answers in this practice, literally thousands, right? And we'll happy to apply them in the right situation. But we're not married to any one of them. We're only married a five questions. How good can you be? How do you make hundreds of new 30? how do You live well beyond 120? Do you live young for a lifetime?

and how Do You develop a 300 year old mind? So, every day we wake up asking the questions. So it's like, there's something new, interesting, good, new insight, right? So we're learning at a massively accelerated pace here. The other thing about growth mindset is, are you a binary thinker or are your quantum thinkers? When you look around the world, there's so much binary thought, right? We're right, you're wrong, we fought about it for 2,000 years, let's do it another 1, 000 years. Somebody should shoot a nuke because, it's just total BS, so humans are not very smart.

We have intellectual capability, but we don't have much wisdom, right? And so moving from binary thinking into quantum thinking, like a quantum computer, zero to one, and when you flip a coin, if it's spinning in the air, that's like qubit. It's everything at once. That it becomes. That's right. And so when you have the ability to look at something rather than a binary, it's got to be this or that. But it is a field of all possibilities. How do we get the best solution at this time for the people involved in this situation?

Now it opens up the creativity. Now you're asking the right questions about how do you actually do that right now? You can actually move the planet yourself, the plan, your community, you family, whatever else forward. So I think that growth mindset, those elements of it become really, really critical. And I could walk you all around the circle, but that's a piece of it. The death of curiosity is the death. Of humanity. And i think that even if we go back to even allopathic medicine, I think it's failing is that in training doctors when they're young, I've always kind of believed that they crush the curiosity out of them.

Like they discourage it, they beat it out, of they exhaust them until they can't ask another question. You know what I mean? And it's because, you know, people like to put down allopathic medicine. And I don't think anybody's out to, most 99% of doctors are out do good. It's just the toolkit that they were left with by the end of their training was lacking in this one very, well, two critical ingredients, which is humility and curiosity. I agree with you completely. The way I characterize is we were all brainwashed, right?

We all went through a brainwashing school. And at the end of the school, what we led to believe was that you now hold all the answers. There's no other discipline that can colds a candle to the knowledge that you have. Everything else is really not of much value. And you are now the holders of health, right? And that's how we were brainwashed, and so you come out to your point of four years and sleepless nights and thousands of hours of work and you're now in that system. Yeah. And it wasn't until I realized the failings of that, system that I was able to leave it.

I always curious, like, Oh, couldn't we do this better? How about if we did that? You know, I even remember a medical school wondering, geez, wonder if I could do labs and see if could optimize a person, not just make it better. Right. But the point is, um, Yeah, all of us are brainwashed. And then what we do is we get married to those answers. That's so powerful. I don't care if you're a chiropractor, a naturopath, an MD, whoever you are, psychologist for that matter, if your married your answers, it's not really that helpful.

Yeah. healers come out of all of those disciplines. What I think is really exciting is, and I've interviewed some really powerful healer who aren't medical doctors, but who are healing people in ways that are so incredibly powerful. Helping people to kind of break through that paradigm. But also, you know, the other thing with the amplification of social media and whatnot, everybody becomes an expert, helping people are really cut through the chafe. And I think it's when you it is that thing that you said about people who take and I don't know.

I remember how you set it. You said it way better than I'm about to. Well, no, You just said you're married to your answer, which means they've taken their flag and they staked it in the ground. This is the only way. That's right. Because they needed to write a book and they need to pitch an idea and the publisher needed that idea constructed in a certain way. I'm like, so now what do you do when you find out that wasn't right? Or that there's something else? That that's not the whole truth? And so, yeah, I mean, there was not even a question there.

It's just like... No, but it's a good comment because I think if you're listening to this and you are wondering, you know, the field is so full of many voices, right? And who do you quote unquote believe? I Think the person you can believe the most is the persons actually asking the questions that isn't married to the answers. Right. And One of the things that we do in our practice here in the clinic here is, even though we literally have thousands of answers, the first thing we want to do when we're working with somebody is actually deconstruct their situation and understand them incredibly deeply.

You know, genetics, testing, biometric testing. I mean, you name it. Like, we are literally sending things around the world to get the results that so that we deeply understand this individual, and then the psychospiritual piece of it, going through conversations with them about that, why do they want to do this? What's important to them? Personality profiles, many, may layers of decoding and deconstructing the individual. It's like, oh, OK, so now we can actually start to make recommendations, right?

A classic example is food. You know, food is, everybody needs to be a carnivore. Everybody needs a vegan. Everyone needs, you know to eat this. Eggs are good, eggs are bad, blah blah, so the problem with every diet, the way I see it, is that it always starts with the food. Right? Kale is good. Kail is bad. It turns out that we think Diets are actually very, very personalized. And so you really have to start with the individual. How are they built? Genetically, what do they do? How do the process carbs genetically, right?

What's their gut biome? what's your digestive tract? You know, What is their immune system doing? Right. You get all that stuff together, whether they like what actually tastes good to them, you get on that together and then you can actually put together a diet that works for them. But we pull from all kinds of stuff. For one person, it feels great, for another person it's not. You have to figure out who fits who. I think also when I was practicing as a nutritionist, one of the most powerful questions I felt I needed to get clarity on from someone, and it comes very fast, is are you a person who eats to live or lives to eat?

Because that is going to really inform how you help that person to adopt the diet that's really going nourish them, right? That person, who lives eat, man, it better taste good. It's not going to happen. And it better be around pretty often, right? Yeah, yeah, and the eat-to-live person is like, they can eat the same four foods every day for eternity. They don't care, so they're going... It just another set of challenges and constructs that they need to deal with. But let's go back to the personalization of diet, because I do think that's really fascinating.

One of the conversations we had before we turned on the mics was the... And I don't want to name names or anything, but even in... and we'll talk about cardiology because that's your roots. In the world of cardiologist, we have cardiologists who believe that a carnivore high fat lifestyle is the path and any carb is really going to destroy your arteries and create that situation you described with the plaque. And versus we leaders in the field who believe that plant-based diet is the only way to go, that those animal fats are just going to clog you up and kill you.

And I think that before we get into the conflict, which is a sad part, I We have, both sides have success stories. Both sides help some people. Correct, exactly. They help people and of course everybody who talks about the people they help, they don't really talk about litter of people in the background that didn't get helped. No, that's exactly right. I'd love to invite you to kind of weigh in on this whole... And it repeats in all different areas, right? That's right Seed oils, you know, are seed oils really the product of Satan put on the earth to destroy ourselves or is there some nuance that we need

Stress, trauma, and internal environment 30:38

to pull out of there? Yeah, no, exactly. Well, again, I think it really comes down to the fact that You know, one man's food is another man is poison, so to speak, right? And so it's it is important to understand who you are, how you're built, what your digestive system is doing, where your immune system's doing what you've got biomes doing. And and also what we have found empirically is that people's guts do better when they're exposed to a variety of foods. So if people were to eat the same foods, so most people eat about 14 or 16 foods a day or, you know, that sort of thing.

They just cycle through. Yeah, exactly. What we found is that when people Uh only eat certain foods their immune system starts to react to those foods and so that can set up inflammation and other problems So we like people to have variety in their foods, right? Expand it to 40 foods right and So each time you go into the store buy something a little different while we got beats last time. Let's get turnips this time Let' get you know, just switch it up. Yeah So, we find that to be helpful. We also find That um People really don't understand the whole carbohydrate scenario.

And one of the things that we do is we measure how many copies of amylase gene they have, which is basically an idea of how So this is a redundant gene, just for the audience. This is redundant. You have many copies. So you can have one copy or 20 copies of this amylase gene. And if you have more copies, you basically secrete in your saliva more amyloids, which helps you start to break down carbs. It turns out that people that can break-down carbs more efficiently can carry more body weight and become diabetic.

They can tolerate more carbs, if So knowing that is helpful. One of the things that we do for everyone is a two-hour glucose tolerance test with an insulin curve, because it is stunning to see how many people have insulin resistance, even though they have a normal hemoglobin A1c of 5.3, they're abnormal fasting blood sugar of 90 or 89, and yet when you challenge them by giving them 75 grams of glucose, oh my gosh, There are a lot of genetic factors that decrease somebody's in creatine levels to where they don't get the signal that sugar just hit the system and they could go from 90 to 180 in the first hour.

Their insulin may lag way behind, but their insulin they come out at the end and crush it. Now they have a blood sugar of 49 at end of two hours. So there's that process. And then there are people where They control the sugar perfectly, but they're taking way more insulin than they should to do it. Right. If you have an insulin level of three at rest or two, it should go up maybe four to five times. So call it 15. You know, we just had a guy in here from Virginia, 40 year old guy, healthy guy had arrested insulin at 10. Um, It was up over 130 at one hour.

Wow. That's intense. Exactly. And nobody would have picked that up. I mean, did you crash on the other side? No, he didn't crash. No. His insulin was still over 100 at two hours and he just controlled his blood sugar normally, right? And so is that a good thing for him? It's good to control your bloodsugar. It is terrible to have high insulin. To need to have those insulin levels so high. Yeah. Correct. Because the insulin drives aging, just like IGF-1 drives ageing, right? So it basically increases senescent cell formation, it stiffens arteries, It does all kinds of things.

And sugar itself will destroy the glycocalyx, which aligns the arteries which keeps them healthy. My point is, unless you're deconstructing the situation, And unless you're looking behind the curtain, behind-the-curtain, you really don't know. And this is one of the problems with most practitioners, they really do not know what they're prescribing. They're prescribed into a double-blind placebo-controlled trial where more people did better on this particular diet. Yeah. Okay. But how many people were excluded from that trial?

Right. And then are you going to really generalize that back to a population that wasn't really even represented in that trail? And now you see what I'm saying. So we have all the outliers. We have the skewed data. What we believe is that everybody is an N of one. Everybody has their own system. Yes, there are similarities, but even if you know what mom and dad were, you still don't know yourself. Because the genetic profiles get mixed up. I mean, it's really, It's like a lottery. Right. All the balls are spinning and you don't know how they're going to come out.

So just because somebody had Alzheimer's doesn't mean you have any Alzheimer genes or just Because they didn't doesn' mean You don' So it' interesting. Yeah. Well, and I think the overlay there, no matter what your genetics are, because, this is why we talk about genetic predispositions, is where to your environment right now, which is going to impact how those genes express, has been impacted by the environment, has be impacted your life, by your diet and that too. So your genetics may, and this is where I think the genetics card gets overplayed by so many people, is yeah, it's great to know what that blueprint is, but unless you have real clarity on how those switches are set right now, they mean nothing.

That's right. Well, they still mean something, but they are, because to your point, genes are a set of tendencies or proclivities, right? They're biases. And if you put them in the wrong environment, it'll cause certain problems. To your poin, the environmental impact can be much greater than the genetic impact. I think that's the point you're making. But even so, when you're looking at the environment, you kind of want to know what genes are most susceptible to that and what she's most resilient related to, right?

So you get the whole picture and then you can bring somebody back in the balance. Well, I mean, environment could even be your diet to your point on the amylase gene. If somebody has 20 copies of the Amylases gene, they may have a, You know, must have half a copy because if I eat rice, okay, come diabetic instantly. I must be, like, miss the AMLase stop. Well, there are more issues than that, too. It could be that you're not getting the signal that is coming in, right? The TCNF7 and some of the other genes that we look at.

So, yeah, I mean, it's all... It's indistinguishable, Do you have an example of where improving environment over labs really made an impact on a single person or created the biggest downstream? I'm sure you've got a million examples in your head, but where tweaking the environment was the thing that really moved the needle for someone? The biggest environment to tweak, There are several really heavy hitters out there, right? Mold can be a very heavy-hitter. Lime can a be very very-heavy-hitter. Some people really don't detox.

Hydrocarbons very well. Genetically, they don�t. That can really be super heavy for them. But I really think the environment that matters the most is the internal environment, the psychospiritual environment. I think so many people spend so much time stressed. There was an interesting study showing recently that people that are able to get into a deep meditative state, like a theta state. If you're familiar with the EEG, right, there's delta waves, which are sleep. That's like the slowest wave. Then there is theta, pre-sleep, hypnagogic state if you're being hypnotized.

It turns out young children between about zero and fives for most of their life in theta. Interesting. Then you have alpha, which is normal meditation, and you've beta which has this conversation, then you get gamma which a flow state, a higher frequency. But it turns that if people can get into a theta state And then they have a stem cell, peptide, bioregulator, combination of things on a rejuvenation procedure. They actually do much, much better than if they come into that stress. That makes so much sense though.

You've quieted the landscape, right? You calmed everything down. Your body can't heal when it's in fight or flight. Yeah. And so I think that landscape is the most important. There's an interesting study I've done on Buddhist monks who were meditating and about 10 or 15 minutes into going into a theta state, a deep meditative state. They were releasing their own stem cells to kill themselves, right? So I think the biggest environmental challenge we have is actually regulating our own internal environment.

And then, yes, all the other things we talked about, and we live in a toxic environment, so air filtration, water filtration. Whatever you have to do to try to combat it. We can treat long haul everything. We've done all that. But the thing is, the piece you can control is this, how stressed am I all the time? Is your mind running all of the times? Can you turn it off? So what are your thoughts on all these vagal nerve stimulating devices that are out there right now? I feel like maybe they're just a bit of trying to go with a big problem with one thing.

What are you thoughts? Yeah, so I think the vagal nerve stimulators can be helpful. What they're doing is they are stimulating this nerve that carries the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system tone and it tends to amplify this healing, slow down the system parisympathy signaling, right? So I think that's helpful. It also increases HRV, heart rate variability, right? When you have more parasympathetic tone. So, I thing when you're meeting people, it's another tool in the toolbox. However, It's not the actual answer, because really the actually answer is how you are perceiving life.

I've gotten into this thing recently where I've come to understand that we spend a lot of time efforting, right? It's like, we're going to try to make things happen. We need to get this done. There's things to work at this. Yeah. I got to do this, I gotta try this and when we were working out, you know, whatever it is, there's this kind of go, go mentality. What I have discovered is that I can flip the entire script by going into a situation, even this podcast for example, rather than coming in from an efforting perspective, I'm here to receive.

I'm actually here to receive. And if I say I am here receive, then all of a sudden, my whole system calms down. It's like, oh, let me be aware of what it is I receiving. All of the sudden it makes me incredibly present. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful day. What a wonderful conversation. I so glad to be here. So now you're looking at life through this very sort of transcendent space of this is what a gift. What a gif that is, right? Instead of all this efforting of, oh my gosh, everything's not the way it's supposed to be.

And I think being able to control that, if you combine something like that perspective and the ability to meditate, which we use a lot of brain tap to do that photobiomodulation, binaural beats, and if use vagal nerve stimulator, Now you're getting a trifecta of things to where you can have a massive impact. So I think that's how I would think about it. You know, it's funny, I was just with Dr. Porter at a conference this past weekend and he, you know he shows up at every one of these conferences and you got to know the guy doesn't need to do that anymore if he doesn' want to.

That's right. But he's so committed to this mission of his. And the brain tap tool to me, what's fascinating about it is it makes accessible something that would take years to develop, a skill that may take many years. Like meditation, Like, let's face it in this world that we live in right now, if you weren't, If you don't have that right mindset, which so many people by the time they're 40 or 50, and frankly, with these things and social media and whatnot, it's going to become even more elusive as we go.

We need a tool. You just need it. I, you know, I just don t think most people are going t be able to get there on their own. Some people will, but not everybody. Not everybody, not I learned how to meditate actually by reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and then having things hit me and kind of go into a meditative state. To your point though, I think meditation becomes a little bit of a black box because for me it's like riding a bike. Once you know how ride a ride, you can just not ride for five years.

You can jump on a bicycle and ride it. You can drop in. And you get to a point with meditation where you can actually drop-in any time you want. The interesting thing, though, is that the point you're making is it's difficult to get that initial feeling, like, what am I supposed to be doing? Am I doing this right? Much thoughts go by, I'm doing, this I am breathing, focused on this. What am i doing right and then what is this supposed feel like? The beauty of, and there are different devices out there too, but the beauty it entrains your brain, it actually pulls your break into a meditative state.

And so the fact that it pulls you in there, then if you actually couple that with, oh, okay, let me just be present. Let me not, Let Me Be Receiving. Lemme go into receptive mode instead of an efforting mode. Then it's like, Oh, I'm feeling this sense of calm. It's now I am feeling the glide on the bicycle, right? And once you feel that glide and then you tip over, It is like oh okay but I felt the glide, lemme back to the Glide and you learn how to ride it. Now you can ride over different terrain.

And you can get to a point I will say this about meditation That the goal is not to meditate in the morning for 10 minutes and meditate at night for ten minutes The goal was actually to go through your entire life in a meditative state That's pretty intense But if you if go into every situation in receptive mode and When you put yourself into theta, you can actually go through life in a meditative state. Your life is much more effortless and there's much joy in it all the time. And just think of all of the stress you're taking off your system.

Well, yeah. You're going back to that concept of efforting, working through everything, like pushing as opposed to moving into flow. I mean, that's a... And the physiological benefits of that would be... massive unbelievable that's so um wow okay so i was going to ask about mitochondria but it all seems so irrelevant now well once you organize the internal environment right the eternal environment that is our biggest challenge and also our greatest opportunity we want to focus on the thing outside the enemy is always outside but actually You know, we are the we've seen the enemy isn't as us, right, so to speak.

Well, I think when you and this might go into weird territory, but when look at people who come out of the worst situations on the planet. So people, someone, let's say, who's been taken hostage, somebody who has lived through a horrifying experience. even Holocaust survivors, right? So people who've been through the worst that humanity has to offer.

Resilience, anti-fragility, and key health markers 46:38

And quite often those people end up being the most remarkable people. Not everybody. But some of these people find a way in those situations to turn inwards and to find this equanimity, this resilience, or be resourced enough that they're not eternally damaged. I mean, they'll carry scars maybe with them, but they somehow, I had a neighbor who was a Holocaust survivor and she was the most resilient person. She was most positive person and the strongest, most resilience person I'd ever met. And Lord knows the universe was not done with her after the Holocaust.

she went through all kinds of other crap and yet this woman just She kept on going and she was kind and intelligent and wise. She lived to 97. That's a contradiction in our life because we tell people stress is going to kill you. The stress that she lived through should have killed her alone. There's always been this conflict in my mind going, if stress kills you, then all these people should be dead. And sometimes they're the longest-lived people. Yes, yes, and yes and, I'll give you a little bit of insight around that if you'd like.

Sure, bring it. Yeah, there's several things around it, first is that back to our genetics, certain people actually handle stress much better than other people, some people are much more impacted by stress. So you can have two kids that grow up in the same family, same abusive parents or whatever, physically, psychologically, whatever. And they will come out with completely different experiences. One will be sort of really on tilt and kind of living in reaction to that in a very powerful way. The other one will have been impacted by it, but not significantly in any way, right?

And so there's a genetic predisposition to it to start with. Then to your point, I think there are people that are more introspective and people who are less introspective. And you have a guy like Viktor Frankl, right? Right. Right, and so talk about Holocaust and man's search for meaning and, you know, obviously very intrespective, reflective in the context of what he was experiencing. But he would that way in every context he is experiencing, not just in Holocaust. And so this woman that you're speaking about probably had some good genetic robustness to her and then also probably has some introspection and some sense of purpose beyond that, right?

And that can pull people a long ways. The way that I tend to think about it is that all of us have suffered trauma, right? All of this. And I think almost all anxiety, depression, you know, PTSD, addiction, a lot of it is trauma based. And so I want the audience to understand that even though and maybe some of you did go through the Holocaust, but if you didn't go to the holocaust, we've all gone through traumatic experiences. And I think one of the key things of developing the 3000 year old mind is to acknowledge that we've all had traumas and we all live in reaction to those traumAs, right?

Some that were aware of, like you're a little skittish about doing something because of something previously, but some just put you on tilt and you just have normalized its way. No, the world is, everybody's like this when in actual fact they're not, so there's the seen and the unseen reactions that And I think one of the real goals in our own personal development is actually to dissect into those traumas and understand them. You know, what actually went down, What happened? Who did what? What was my contribution?

what was their contribution and and how was I impacted and you know how were they impacted whatever who were They right because you get to a point I've been able to get to this point where you can forgive everybody involved, including yourself, right? My mom had her own stuff, my dad had his own, stuff right, you know, everybody's got their own staff, and so you get you a point when you forgive everyone involved and that's the healing process. And then from there, you can actually go to a transcendent process where you actually become grateful for everything that ever happened.

And I think the people that went through the Holocaust that actually did the best. had the ability to realize that this ultimately was a gift to them. Not because it was terrible, and not because was horrible, but because of what they learned about themselves. Their own resilience, their sense of robustness, or sense being able to care in the worst of circumstances. The insights that they got about what's important and what not important in life. And so in all of these traumas that we experience, there's a plethora of lessons for us to learn, so to speak.

And when we actually are open to learning those, we are become more empathetic, more loving, and more caring. We can bring more joy into the world because of those traumas, once we've healed them and transcended them. So then we become grateful for them, then when you're grateful, you no longer living on tilt, no more living in reaction. And now you can show up as your fully expressed self with all of your gifts and say, oh, let's go do something really cool and fun and creative, right? So I think that's part of the 3000 year old mind journey.

Yeah, I think this is all... I mean, it's so interesting. This is a completely different conversation than I had planned for us, which I don't care. I actually think, this way more powerful than talking about, you know, well, how should people, whatever, what kind of fat is healthy and unhealthy? I have my own beliefs in this, but you will have seen this clinically in your work with patients. how much does this help like that person who gets that place who's resolved the trauma accepted it move past it like whatever however and and guys you know it doesn't like like jeffrey just said like it Doesn't have to be the holocaust it could be any experience that your self took on as a trauma it Could be anything it can be a teacher who was mean to you like Whatever.

Yep How much Does this set the stage for I don't know if transcending is the right word, but transcend, I'm going to use transcended anyway, the assault, physical assaults and the chemical assault that the world throws at us. You know what I mean? Like people, like someone who can smoke and not die of lung cancer versus someone doesn't smoke in dies of one cancer. There's things in the world we can't explain. My video producer, who will howl when I say this, because I've said this about, he said to me a long time ago.

He talks about his grandmother, you know, she's in her nineties and she drinks and smokes and is cantankerous. Because he once referred to her as a cockroach. She's indestructible. And those people defy. Cause, cause you know, now you're sitting there across from patients saying, you got to cut back on the booze and you gotta quit drink is smoking. And they're like, well, he's drinking and smoking and he is 95. That's right. Is it that internal environment? Do you think that, I mean, part of it is going to be genetic, right?

100%. Superhuman detox pathways. Correct. Whatever. And ones that are super susceptible. Yeah. But this internal environment, do you think it can really offset so many of these other things that we all worry about, like non-native EMFs and pesticides? Not that wouldn't work towards diminishing the load, but when you get that internal environments set, can it be our superpower for longevity? I think the internal environment is a superpower. And at the same time, if there's a lion in the room, we need to take the lion out of the It's a physical reality, right?

So, you know, all the toxins and all of the other stuff, and yes, there are people that are genetically gifted to where they can smoke, but actually, if they didn't smoke they probably would have had an even better life, quite honestly. Yeah, 100% and better breath. So that's true too. Which brings up the concept of robustness and resilience. And I know resilience is a term that you have an affinity for. So the way that I think about robustess is it's the ability of something to withstand an unexpected challenge.

It's minimally impacted, robust. Its robust, right? Yep. Then resilience, is he actually the able to be impacted by an expected challenge, but to actually recover from that. Right. That's resilience And we know that resilience is cut in half in biological systems like ours, about every eight years it's cut half. Interesting. Hence the exponential decline, right? This is why older people with COVID died. They didn't have the resilience to come back, so resilience becomes incredibly important. One of the best ways that we can actually maintain, build, and grow our resilience is through increasing that sense of equanimity, the parasympathetic nervous system tone, our ability to heal ourselves, or ability receive the healing from other therapies that may take in and rebuild.

And in our world, we have kind of an anti-fragile position on life, which is right. Being anti fragile, I think it was Nassim Nair that wrote the book, Anti-Fragil, and his contention was that there is no word that's the opposite of fragile. We talk about strong, We talked about sturdy, but what he was saying was, no, something that is anti fragile, instead of being broken, actually comes back stronger when it meets an unexpected challenge. And so that's what we think about. How do we make ourselves anti fragile physiologically?

And I think so if I I hurt my knee the other year, right? And it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna make it stronger than ever. And I have, my ankles were weak from twisting them. My ankles are now stronger then ever, how do you make yourself anti-fragile? This is part of identifying with more youthful age, but also this concept of anti fragility. Well, do how you do that emotionally as well? Or you meet the the person that's now bullying you the way somebody else used to or whatever, But you're not impacted by it, So this is, I think, to your point, when we can create this resilience in ourselves and really it's in the psycho spiritual space that it occurs, we have control over it.

It does filter into all the physiology and it makes us much more resilient there as well. That would be my take. Yeah, no, I agree with that. That's a great way to put it. I think that when we talk about chronic stress lowers your immune system. Chronic stress, which increases inflammation, we go back to the hallmarks of aging, inflammation that whole nine yards, that's where it kind of sets in. Okay, let's get a little more concrete now for the audience just just before we finish up. So if you had what are the three performance markers in your in in Your experience that best predict health span five years out?

What would you be looking at? Well, one of the things we're measuring here is we are measuring parasympathetic nervous system strength. So I think having a really high parisympathy nervous tone and the ability to have equanimity, I that's one for sure. Another one is VO2 max. We've been measuring VO 2 for over 20 years. I did it back when I was a cardiologist. And then carried it on into what we do today. The data on VO2 is incredibly strong, probably stronger than any other predictor. There's some underlying things though with VO 2 max that a lot of people don't look at.

That has to do with As the workload increases on the stress test, what is the left ventricle, the main pumping tumor in the heart? What is its ability to continue to increase the amount of blood that it pumps each beat as that workload goes up? It is a very, very subtle indicator of cardiac dysfunction. And so even though you can have a high VO2, you can have a left ventricular curve that actually tapers off as the workload goes up. And that is a telltale sign that there's a problem. If you rule out structural things like there is not a valve problem or the sac around the heart, the pericardium spine, or you don't have the thick muscle from hypertrophy.

You rule a lot of the clinical findings that would cause that to happen.

Practical longevity tools and testing 59:38

Then you get down to the blood vessels that are bringing blood to heart are not working as efficiently as they should to supply blood so it can continue to beat stronger. Or potentially there's a mitochondrial issue with the heart where it just can't generate the energy, right? So one of the things that we go after is looking at that curve in people, even with high VO2s, to see if we can optimize that for them. Because we could improve it by improving the glycocalyx. We don't have a scope, we look under the tongue and actually measure the Glycocalypse, which is this sort of fuzz that lines the inside of the artery that's negatively charged and repels bad things and also senses blood flow and triggers the arteries to make nitric oxide to dilate, right?

Which is good for brain function, sexual function and cardiovascular function. So, when the glycocalyx is healthy, you're healthy. When the Glycocalypse is not, your going downhill. So there are ways to measure that and then improve it with a couple of different supplements out there. Ravaska, Arturocil, things like that. That's super important to look at also. I think when you are talking about VO2. One of the other things that I see critically important for people is hormone optimization. Hypothyroidism is missed all the time.

People come into us and their thyroids are off. They may be on thyroid medication, but they're not. even though their blood work is normal. So it's the fact that people aren't testing biometric testing to actually see where things are set. And they're not looking at the genetics to see what kind of thyroid they need to get it into their brain properly. Right. Then the other thing is hormone replacement therapy. You really can't stay youthful without hormone, replacement, therapy, but you don't want to give cancer either.

When your testosterone and prostate cancer can be there, certainly estrogen and breast cancer, Actually, prostate and breast cancer embryologically come from the same tissue. So they're kind of a male expression and female expression of the embryologic tissue, so you really want to make sure that that people are safe if you're gonna do hormone replacement. And the way to do that is number one, do the genetics. What is their predisposition for cancer, right? And then two, um, did they have any cancer?

Right? So there are tests out there where we're looking for circulating tumor cells to see, because that's a much earlier sign than, you know, what you'd see on a scan. Then beyond that, how are those hormones being metabolized? Are they being safely metabolize and excreted? They're actually detoxed by the body to get rid of them. Or is this person accumulating too much dihydrotestosterone in a male or too many 4-hydroxyestrone in woman or a man that could lead to one of these cancers? And so you want to make sure it's done safely, but with hormone optimization, you know, bone density, muscle mass, you know, sexual vitality, intellectual capability.

There was a large study for women done at Kaiser, 500,000 women, and they looked at women that got any form of hormone replacement therapy, which means they could have gotten testosterone, estrogen alone, progesterone alone. They could've had it for three months or three years. It coulda been just one dose. You know? It was crazy. And they took the people that had got hormone replacements and compared them to those that didn't. And the ones that did, at the end of a decade, had like a 40% reduction in dementia.

So, for people with histories of Alzheimer's, having estrogen for men and women in their brains is super important. And one of the travesties of male hormone replacement therapy, testosterone replacement, is that they crush the estrogen to try to get the guy more testosterone, which actually is shortening life and robbing their brain and their blood vessels and bones, quite honestly, of estrogen which they need for bone density and brain health. And hormones are critical and it's critical that they be done well.

But I think they're another super important piece between thyroid and the sexual hormones. Yeah. I love the way you explain that because every time I come out with a podcast with an interview with the hormone specialist, you have the raging people who are like, well, I did hormone therapy, and I got cancer. It's a very lightning rod subject. There's just this ultimate lack of nuance. That's the way that you just, you know, like you, I mean, no, we're not going to take you back to your 18 year old raging hormone self, but we are going get you to a place where your brain can function.

And this is, and you I talked to so many women who are like, Oh, well, don't have hot flashes. I don' need hormones. Just because your head's not on fire doesn't mean your bones aren't melting and your brain's atrophying right now. Never mind the rest of you. And it's this expectation, right? Our expectations as we move into our 70s and our 80s, and 90s are very different than the expectations of the people who came before us. Like we expect. Right. We expect to be good. I'm 27. Pardon? I'm 27 and I expect to be 27 for this whole decade, right?

Then I'll be 28, the next one. Happy birthday. Thank you. Yeah, it's good. It's going to young. You know, It is good to everything. I am 42. Well, good for you, you look great. As do you. All right, so let's I mean, I honestly, truthfully, say this a lot, but I really, really talk for a long time here. And I feel like you probably have other things to do and other traffic jams to get stuck in. So for for people who are, let say self directed listeners and outside Dallas, who can't come to you to your practice.

What do you think is the most cost effective starter path to proactive longevity that avoids shiny object traps and Lord knows there's a lot of those around. Yeah, there are a lot of them around. I mean, if you want to learn more about us, you know, GladdenLongevity.com, we have a podcast also, the Glad and Longevity podcast. We've got, I don't know 200 and some episodes out there now, maybe 250.I don t know what it is.We record a couple of weeks now. And then the book is out. There are 100 is the New 30, which is a really good...

I need to get that. Yeah.And it's also on Audible. If people like audible books,I read the entire thing myself. But it's actually a really good dissertation, quite honestly, on many, many topics related to longevity, all from the perspective from which I'm speaking, right? So if that resonates with you, you'll find more of that in the book. And I think from the standpoint, we also have a supplement shop. So we have in the supplement shops, things that are focused on particular categories of things, that we find to be typically good.

Now, you know, I'm a big fan of custom fit, right, when it comes to longevity. I would say the other thing to really go after is is to work on your mindset if you're listening to this, right? Don't become a binary thinker, don't get married to your answers. Identify what questions drive you. I shared the ones that are driving us, how good can we be? How do we make 100 to new 30? how do live well beyond 120? Live young for a lifetime and have a 300 year old mind. But you may have your own questions and it's really important to do that because if find those questions it'll actually start to drive your purpose.

And the other thing I think is really work on the psycho-spiritual space because we find that that is the circle, the ring that binds all the circles together. Without that, people are self-sabotaging, there's no meaning, no purpose, toxic relationships, lack of self love, everything goes to heck. So in the context of psycho-spiritual having been handled, I actually have a question for you. In this world of now emerging gene therapies and peptides, what do you think about those things? Everything's a gift, right?

It's just a question of how you apply it. So, yeah, we love peptides. We've been using peptide, and we like bioregulators, you know, exosomes, stem cells, PRP, ozone, all kinds of things. all the things, but, you know, red light, etc. But, what we find is it's really about preparing the individual to receive the therapy. So, the mental elements of receiving the therapist, then also doing plasmapheresis for people to kind of clean out all of the trash, right? Do the senolytics, do the plasmaferesis, maybe a couple of rounds of that before you start putting in the regenerative products to try to heal whatever you're trying to.

What we're really trying do is orchestrate a symphony of healing for the individual. And it's taking out the trash, then putting into good stuff, and supporting the good with ongoing peptides and supplements, whatever else they need, right? And then you never get away from the psychospiritual space. So we'll put in a plug for Patrick Porter if you want to go check out BrainTap. Brain Tap, T-A-P, that's a very useful tool. It's a powerful tool. All right, lightning round, last three questions of the day.

One mitochondrial supplement the internet overestimates and one mundane intervention it underestimating. For the mitochondria? Yeah. Yeah, we like Urolithin A a lot for mitophagy. We also like NAD. I think, however, N.A.D. has really gone down an odd route. Yeah, we don't even have time for that. But yeah, that's a whole other Pandora's box. We feel like we've figured it out, quite honestly, but it's only because we're deconstructing stuff here and figuring it up, putting it back together. We think that a lot of the NAD stuff out there is not really what you need.

You don't really need IV N.A.D. and that kind of stuff. It doesn't even get into your cells. Ninety-seven percent doesn�t even to get in your cell. So we're big fans, however, of improving the NA to NAH ratio and have actually given you the precursors to make it. also to recycle it, and the block CD38, an enzyme that as we age accumulates and basically siphons it off, because you do need NID, it's critical, but you have to do this well too. It's like hormones, has to be done well. They can't just, oh, I'll get a patch and slap it on.

Or the people sub-queuing it every day. Oh my gosh, you're killing me right now. All right. A test that almost nobody needs as often as they think and a test almost, nobody is getting enough of. or soon enough, actually, maybe. Is there something people should be looking at sooner than they think and test that people are just grossly overestimating? Grossly, over estimating. I think what gets grossely over estimated is when people go to their doctor or even to a longevity clinic and they get a comprehensive blood panel.

I think they are way, way overestimating what that comprehensive actually includes. From our perspective, those comprehensive blood panels are really child's play. They're useful, but they're so inadequate at actually really Helping you to understand what's going on So and the reason for that is that a lot of them were adopted from a sick care mindset, right? This is this is a panel now We're gonna apply it to you and if we don't see much then you're fine And so that's why these comprehensive tests.

I would be very skeptical of people offering comprehensive We're going to check 200 markers. Okay, well, that's nothing. We checked thousands of markers, right?

Closing resources and final takeaways 1:11:48

So, I think just be, you know, buyer, be aware of that, what you're getting. And so what should people be looking at sooner than they are typically, do you think? Man, it really depends on who the person is, where they're in their life, so it's really, as I would say, know, if you're a young person, what would actually be useful would be to actually mark, you know what are my levels of things now? Right. Yeah. So I have baselines on my youthful markers, hormones, thyroid, whatever else, resting metabolic rate.

I think What about a 50-year-old? I think the thing that gets missed the most is what I would call the biometric testing. So we do a lot of biometrics testing here. What do I mean by that? Well, it's not a blood test. It's a stool test, a saliva test or a urine test you come in and we actually test your body in some way, either by measuring it or having you pedal a bike or sit in a chair and wear a mask or do something. Those biometric tests are full of real world, really personalized information about you.

And they are so, so important, whether you're trying to optimize your parasympathetic nervous system or understand your cognitive abilities or, uh, understand how your mitochondria are working through several different lenses. They are, they're so incredibly useful. So the biometric tests like VO2 max testing, resting metabolic rate, um, that one. Yeah, we don't use it. We get everything we need from our VO2 max testing that has pulmonary function tests in it and then, you know, there are things where we use actually brain tap makes a computer called a neuro check where you can actually measure the balance of the sympathetic comparison that's super helpful.

Then personality profiles, right? How are you built? Like we use culture index. We see that people are built one way, asking themselves to show up a different way at work and create tremendous stress for them. So we've had people sell companies, you know, hire assistants to all kinds of stuff based on that. These are tests that don't require a needle, but can be super, super enlightening. Yeah. Cool. All right. Last question. The biggest misconception about biological age numbers that you want listeners to stop believing today.

So I think, yeah, this is a good one because, you know, everybody has a chronological age, right? Everybody agrees to that. Yeah. How many times around the sun have you traveled? Period. That's it. So, but for biological age, I think one of the greatest disservices to humanity has been the concept that we have a single biological-age. And we actually are a mosaic of many, many biological ages. Every organ system, every hallmark of aging has its own biological or age equivalent, right? And so the way that think about it is if you really want to know how old you are, you have to look at the entire You really this concept of all I did a biological age test and I came back five years younger eight years Younger, I'm good that that is like the worst lie.

That's the worse thing you can possibly perpetrate I'd be like saying I'll bring my F1 car into it for a pit stop and they're gonna check the tire pressure on the front right tire and everything's good We're good. Let's go race, right? Yeah, it's about that silly. Yeah Love it. Dr. Gladden, this has been a fantastic, enlightening conversation. Thank you so much for being here for your time. Let's just let the audience know where they can learn more. You kind of did a little bit before, but let's close off with connecting them to all your resources and your book and all the beautiful things.

I'm not, but the company is on Instagram and Facebook and all those places. But the easiest place to get to us is just gladdenlongevity.com. You'll have access to everything through that. If you go to gladdennongevity dot com, that would be the best spot. So yeah. And if you'd like to talk with us about being a client, you know, people fly in from literally all over the place, to work with. Um, we'd be happy to have that conversation too. I am sure they do. Thank you so much again. It's been a pleasure.