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Why Healthy Aging is Not Longevity · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Welcome to Doctor Turned Health Coach. My name is Dr.
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  Ashwari. I'm a board-certified family medicine physician turned health coach,
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  specifically focusing on healthy aging.
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  And today I want to talk about that, healthy aging and its close cousin, longevity.
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  And of course, there is a lot of interesting conversations about longevity these
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  days, so we'll get into that.
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  So first of all thank you for tuning in if you
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  find content like this helpful please share it
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  with somebody that you love that you think would benefit from
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  it i would love some good reviews or good feedback on your favorite podcast
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  app so healthy aging the reason i focus on healthy aging is because many of
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  us thanks to good public health policies good public health programs,
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  good health education, health literacy, we tend to do quite well.
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  By the time we're 30, most of us are free of a lot of chronic diseases.
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  In the past, many people would have already hypertension, maybe tuberculosis,
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  other infections, major trauma from physical work.
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  We're talking maybe several hundred years ago, a hundred years ago.
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  But now our workplace is very safe, thanks to OSHA.
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  We have public health programs for sewer waste and air quality and chemical
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  toxins, etc. So we're in a better position.
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  But at the same time, once you hit your 30s, you start getting into your 40s,
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  you start realizing that things do catch up, right?
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  The whole point of chronic disease is that as we get older, our risk increases.
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  And many of us have passions and interests outside of just health.
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  We want to hang out with our kids and eventually grandkids. We want to go do
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  fun things outside. We want to go work. We want to socialize.
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  We love all these things.
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  So it's understandable that our health ends up taking a bit of a back seat.
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  It doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice everything just to regain your health
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  or gain some good health.
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  In fact, that's the opposite. The reason I want to talk about and focus on healthy
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  aging is because oftentimes you go to your primary care doctor.
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  You do the important things. Maybe you start on a particular medication for
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  a certain medical condition like high blood pressure or some early signs of
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  blood sugar issues, or maybe you're on autoimmune medications for rheumatoid
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  arthritis, psoriatic arthritis.
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  But you want to not go down that cyclone of more and more meds and more and more testing.
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  And you want to decide on a few things that you can do that's going to have
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  a huge impact on your overall health.
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  And that's exactly what I do in my Healthy Aging Coaching.
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  The goal is to make those right decisions or slightly more ideal decisions to
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  prevent the common chronic conditions in our society, which at this time tend to be diabetes,
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  high blood pressure, obesity, cancer, dementia, osteoarthritis.
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  Those are the common things. Now, in more detail, there might be strokes,
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  there might be kidney disease, and now unfortunately a lot of liver failure or liver disease.
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  So preventing those with some
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  small changes in our daily routine is very doable, it's very feasible.
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  The data shows that. and that's kind of my goal as
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  a health coach i'm going to take as a health as a physician
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  turned health coach i want to take good solid scientific
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  evidence translate it into actionable steps in and then decide as i've talked
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  about before as a first order second order third order choice what is the first
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  order thing that i can do what is the one thing that's going to move the needle
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  the most and let's focus on that let's not focus on the fifth order stuff because
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  it's not going to move the needle very much,
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  and it's just going to create a lot of unnecessary noise.
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  The health coaching idea has been around for a long time.
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  Healthy aging, I haven't seen a lot of that. I haven't seen a lot of discussions,
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  or I haven't found a lot of fellow clinicians yet, and I hope to see many more,
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  who are focusing on this 30 and 40-year-old age group, who are just seen the
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  first signs of maybe aging,
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  maybe it's a little bit of fatigue, maybe it's a little bit of weight gain,
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  no time to find, not enough time to exercise, and they're,
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  Maybe seeing their parents age, they're seeing their parents come up with these
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  unfortunate diagnoses and they're like, okay, I want to prevent this.
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  So that's what healthy aging is versus longevity.
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  Longevity medicine seems to be more about living as long as possible.
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  I have nothing bad to say about longevity medicine, but it is very different than what I do.
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  And I think longevity medicine is also a little bit in the early stages where
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  people are willing to try something, maybe get a whole body MRI,
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  get blood tests to catch cancers early.
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  They're willing to maybe even undergo surgery to remove a small tiny lesion
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  on their pancreas in the hopes that it will not ever turn into a cancer.
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  They are willing to take many supplements, undergo many blood tests,
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  more complicated tests like VO2 max, sleep studies,
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  and exercise physiology testing in order to live longer, in order to catch anything
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  as early as possible, and they're willing to treat it as early as possible.
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  Many will be in the biohacking community, they're willing to take blood pressure
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  medications, blood sugar medications, just for the sake of prevention.
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  That, in contrast to healthy aging, which is more aligned with how are you living
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  right now, what do you enjoy about your life, and is there room for a little
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  bit of improvement if you see yourself 5 years,
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  10 years, 20, 30, 40 years down the road, and what your ideal vision of your
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  health is in that time, could you make some small modifications to what you're
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  doing? or maybe you're already facing a choice.
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  For breakfast, I either want to have sausage and eggs or I want to have oatmeal.
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  Or maybe I want to have eggs with toast and I just want to know,
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  should I pick a different toast?
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  Should I pick a different egg? What does the science say?
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  And would I still enjoy that? Is it okay for me to have some eggs from time to time?
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  And as I've always discussed in previous episodes, we use a trend method,
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  T-R-E-N-D. T for testing.
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  So if you're eating eggs, we look for inflammatory markers. We look for triglycerides.
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  We look for the LDL particles, ApoB particles.
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  Are there any early signs that maybe this diet in particular is causing any
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  issues? No? Great. We continue with that diet.
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  Are there any signs that it is? Okay, maybe now we can change the ratio of how you eat.
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  Maybe you eat the eggs with something else, or maybe you have eggs a little bit less often.
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  So I hope this is a good introduction of what my healthy aging coaching is like
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  and how it is different from the current standards of longevity medicine,
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  if you're interested to find out more click in the show descriptions you can
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  go to my website if you want to do a 15-minute introductory session there will
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  be a link there I'd love to chat with you see if we're the right fit to work
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  together and as always thank you for listening.