hacks

Transcript Longevity Hacks

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. podcast. Today we’re talking about longevity hacks and health tips for above and below the waist. My guest is cardiologists, Dr. Joel Kahn. He’s back on the podcast and he’s known as America’s Healthy Heart Doc. Dr. Kahn is triple board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology. Dr. Kahn has authored numerous publications in his field including articles, book chapters and monographs. He writes health articles and has five books in publication including Your Whole Heart Solution and The Plant Based Solution. He has regular appearances on Dr. Phil, The Doctors show, Dr. Oz, Larry King Now and many other shows. He owns two health restaurants in Detroit where he lives and practices. In today’s interview, Dr. Kahn shares top longevity hacks that include tests, procedures, practices that help your overall health to help you look and feel your best as you age. He also shares keys for cardiovascular health as well as sexual health and he explains how these two are interconnected. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Joel, it’s great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Kahn: Very honored, but I agree. It’s great. It’s great to see you and share a little bit of health tips with your amazing audience.

Dr. Cates: Absolutely. So we all want to live longer, but do a great job of not only living longer, but also feeling great looking great as we age. Right? So we’re talking about longevity hacks today, right? So I know you’ve learned some, some good ones along the way. So what are some of your favorites?

Dr. Kahn: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you have a special clientele. My cardiology practice is pretty special and you know, I tell different, little different than you, cause I’m sure you’re going to give advice that some people can notice some benefit pretty quickly. I’m trying to stop heart aging and it’s an internal process that can be measured highly accurately. I got to get people to think down the road. I mean my average patient, I’m telling them I’m working on ya, you know, 15 years from now I want you healthier because what we’re doing now, cause that’s kind of the pace of atherosclerosis and many aging processes. It really takes like a longterm buy-in that everybody wants a quick fix to everything. But that’s not the hard work that goes into aging. So, you know, whether I’m talking to patients or speaking, it’s interesting, I was at a couple of really, really powerful medical meetings in the last even month with Dr. Jeff Bland, PhD who is often credited as the father of functional medicine.

Dr. Kahn:

Unbelievably invitation only meeting in Seattle and just recently a cardiovascular conference in New York City. You know, 80% of all the talk about healthy longevity aging is still falling back to lifestyle. It’s not an exciting topic, but you know, is your listener or your viewer smoking or not smoking? Are they getting some fitness in most days, a week? It doesn’t have to be excessive and injurious, but it, you know, whether it’s pilates or whether it’s cardio or whether it’s weights or whether it’s all those. You know, are you eating better than the average person, and you know, that’s always going to favor whole food plant based to some extent. That’s consistent with Harvard School Public Health and the Canadian Food Guide. There’s nothing really controversial about that. It doesn’t have to be all the way to 100% plant based like I’ve chosen, but it has to be very plant strong, for health.

Dr. Kahn: You know, are you sleep has become perhaps the top issue, with brain aging and skin aging and just feeling good. When you’re tired you just make poor judgments and you clearly age faster and then, optimal body weight. And some of these advanced labs that we both know about. Maybe the breakthroughs have been better metrics, sleep ratings and body fat analysis and DEXA scan for things like that to measure visceral fat. So the hacking going on in lifestyle, probably better able to measure it. Um, I’ll tell you an interesting thing that your listeners probably haven’t heard. You know, you really can start to focus on your, like you 32 years old or me old man, 60 years old, which I am 60, hold on I’m not 32, I know always say you’re not, but please honesty. No, wait, I am honestly 60 and a half.

Dr. Kahn: It’s an interesting question when you’re really in this for the health in the long run. How old am I inside? And there’s a couple of different ways to measure that. One is actually your appearance. There is some science that you can tell the difference between a person who smoked their whole life and somebody who hasn’t because typically the person’s spoke may look many years older than their driver’s license age. And there is some software actually that does that and it is said to be almost as accurate as anything else. There are some blood tests that can reflect that. Your C reactive protein inflammation, your Omega 3 blood level, your three month blood sugar called hemoglobin A1C. These all represent the physiology if you’re sort of balanced aging well, vitamin D levels of some particular level there’s a few others.

Dr. Kahn: In my field and this is relevant to the women and men listening. You can have a carotid ultrasound done. These are beautiful arteries to the brain. They’re very straight. They don’t move. They’re big, they’re very easy to image. And you can get a report back. I can tell you a special way to do it. I do in my clinic in Detroit, but it’ll tell a 52 year old man or woman, your arteries are like a 47 year old. Yeah, hallelujah. All that hard work, that gym work, that diet, avoidance of smoking. Or it might come back quite more commonly in my clinic, you’re 47 but your arteries like a 61 year old and I really disappoint some people but then we put in a plan. So a carotid ultrasound is a good truth serum. There’s a special one I do call four letters, C. I. M. T. Carotid intimal medial thickness, little hard to find a clinic that offers it. If you do, it’s well worth a few hundred bucks to get really internal age.

Dr. Kahn:               There’s a few more you can do this cat scan of the heart. I’m pretty sure we’ve talked about last time, a hundred dollar test. I want to know if my heart arteries are silently aging or not. I’m 50 years old, at 45 years old my dad had bypass, my sister had a stent. It’ll speak, it actually says the same thing. You’ve got arteries like somebody 15 years older than you. You need to really wrap a plan around it hopefully it’s the other. And then we get into telomeres, which people have heard of they’ve sort of have fallen out of favors anything a doctor does routinely or not routinely, exotically. There’s just too many different ways to measure telomeres. We’re not really sure other than lifestyle. We know lifestyle actually favors the idea that your chromosome is a younger chromosome telomeres would be longer. But you can still do that for a few hundred bucks.

Dr. Kahn: I’ll bring you up to date. The coolest thing, and this was discussed at Jeff Bland’s meeting, but is particularly a scientist at UCLA, a PhD named Steven Horvath, the German gentleman. He’s developed something he calls the, the grim-clock or the doom-clock or the epigenetic genetic age clock. But basically with a blood sample, with a saliva sample maybe with a tissue sample. It’s unclear what’s best. I’ve done it with a slide with samples sent my slide to England, $700, you can actually look, you know the term you’re probably, listeners know the term epigenetics. You can get DNA testing. You can now for $1,000, get your whole genome sequenced if you really want to know what you’re made of at every level. I’ve done that too, I do a lot of hacking stuff.

Dr. Kahn: But now you can do you know epigenetics is, have I been around secondhand smoke? Is my sleep optimal? Am I around chemicals and plastics and endocrine disruptors? Anyways, you get a report back. You know how many sites on your, on your genome have been altered by Methylation? It’s your epigenetic change. That’s very cool. That’s actually the cutting edge right now. And only a nine patient study recently was reported that you can actually reverse your epigenetic age in this case with some very advanced pharmaceuticals like Rapamycin and human growth hormone, Metformin and a third agent, D H E A but not ready for prime time, but this idea that we have all these ways now to really get to the bottom line. How old are you inside and how much work do you have to do to maintain that and improve that or celebrate that you’re in good shape. So that’s kind of a broad, you know, eight minute overview of what I keep track of.

Dr. Kahn: There’s a whole lot of things being talked about. Do you take a diabetic drug Metformin to stay younger, but I don’t do that personally. There are some anti-aging clinics that offered it. Do you take an immune modulator called Rapamycin that may mimic calorie restriction, fasting things you’ve talked about with Dr. Gersh and just do it in a pill. Everybody wants to do it in a pill. I don’t do that personally. Where as veratrol, nicotinamide riboside these things called NAD boosters seem innocent, there’s just so little human data, but a lot of people are doing them. And a Harvard professor, Dr. David Sinclair is on the podcast circuit right now talking, nonstop because of a new book he has. It’s a good book. I think it’s called Health Span Why We Age and Why We Don’t Need To. Very advanced science kind of the future.

Dr. Kahn:               But you get down to it right now. It really is, you know, your diet, your sleep, your stress, your relationships, blue zone kind of longevity stuff. I have incorporated in my own life and I do all of that. I mean I’m not neurotic. I’m blanking on the word where you’re, you’re so phobic about your food cause you want to eat carefully orthorexia I think it’s called. But I’m curious, I, you know, there’s people out there, I’ve done crazy things to me but through that process, I’ve added a few things on this year. I, you know, I work out every day. I eat well, I try and sleep, I monitor my sleep. I wear blue light blocking glasses for 90 minutes before bed. I meditate some, I mean, that’s actually been shown to improve your telomeres. That’s one of the easier ways.

Dr. Kahn: But one of the things I’ve added is a very large database and photo biomodulation everybody out there say photo biomodulation PBM photo meaning light bio, your biology and your modulation, we’re changing. It as basically I want a large body of science. It’s about 55 years old that exposing your body, which is largely your skin to red light and near infrared light, which doesn’t cause tanning, it doesn’t do UV damage, has profound impact on both our skin, collagen, wrinkles, anti-aging, lines and all. And already everybody is saying, where do I get one of these red light units? But the near infrared penetrates deeper than the skin and actually penetrates into at least some depth of layers into actually our mitochondria’s coolest science. And when I say science, there’s hundreds if not several thousand research articles in the national library of medicine from animal models to humans on the basic physiology of what happens when our body’s exposed to intense red light and near infrared light.

Dr. Kahn: And Harvard professor Michael Hamblin has written textbook, is big on it. But he’s on many podcasts but interviewed fascinating gentlemen. And our mutual friend Ari Whitten has a nice book on red light therapy that’s quite comprehensive for the average reader. That’s really where I went along with some of the original science. But, it’s evolved from dermatology centers and skin treatment centers having 25, 30, $40,000 machines to now home units from little handheld ones. It might just expose your face to particularly red light for kind of aesthetic purposes to a little bigger panels that have red light and near infrared light. And I want to go back to what they do in mitochondria, actually now what I have at home, full body panels where your entire body can imagine science. It says cellulite may decrease extra body fat may be mobilized and diminish.

Dr. Kahn: These are actually FDA approved indication for weight loss for cellulite, that anti-aging of the skin. But even more profoundly, there’s data that when this near infrared gets deep enough in their skin and their cells, cells have mitochondria that make energy, that there is a strange process where nitric-oxide, people eat leafy greens and beets or they’d take arginine to make more nitric-oxide so your blood pressure’s good and your sexual health is good and your arteries. They claim that actually nitric-oxide can get in your mitochondria and gum the work setup of making energy and this near infrared light knocks the nitric oxide off the mitochondrial electron transport chain. You get nitric-oxide back in your bloodstream to lower your blood pressure, help your sexual function, help your general health, and you’d get more ATP energy form all from near infrared light.

Dr. Kahn: It’s actually, there’s a receptor on our mitochondria. It’s called the cytochrome c oxidase that react. This stuff is so fantastically cool, but really when it boils down to it, I get nakey every morning for about 12 to 15 minutes, you know, maybe seven, eight minutes of a full body panel of near infrared and red light entered, turn around. Don’t want the backside all wrinkled up if the front sides tight and nice. And actually use the time, some people are talking about stacked fitness, as long as I’m going to stay on there for 12-13 minutes, I got barbells, I’ve got jump ropes, I’m doing squats. I actually do some pushups. I didn’t mention there actually is a fair amount of data about red light and hair growth. And if you’re getting a little thin, you can buy dedicated caps, but you can also use these panels that just, you know, bend your head over and do it. So, for a lot of us for vanity reasons, we want our hair to stay thick.

Dr. Kahn: The last part is, and I’m done is you can actually, these near infrared penetrates the skull and gets into the brain and there are some serious science going on about Parkinson’s and a memory and all using red light as a way to stimulate the brain and more oxygen. There is a company, I don’t have any interest, V-I-E light, VIE light. They make these dedicated caps for neurologic disease with ongoing research. So you can tell, I’m excited, I can talk about it for a long time. Photobiomodulation is to me, you know, to have the means under $1,000, you’re interested in health and wellness, you want to look good, you just add it into your home gym, homes, a home bathroom it just hangs on a wall, plugs in, there’s really no installation.

Dr. Kahn: And there’s a couple of really good providers. You can I say names? Does it matter? Sure. Yeah. I mean there’s a, the, the kind of the hot company that a lot of health experts are talking about is called Jovv, I think is J. O. V. V. they make these big panels. You could build a whole wall of red light, put it in your gym if you wanted do. I found a company at Ari’s suggestion called redtherapy.co and they make a really great panel at far less cost under a thousand dollars. And I’ve been very, very pleased. So I think it’s cool, I don’t know why anybody, you know, other than spending the money, I’ve had dozens of my patients add that in. You know, I haven’t seen a gym. Actually, I’ve heard there are some gyms that do that. But, so that’s one hack that.

Dr. Cates: I like it. I’m still with the one that you have. How do you, like, how exactly does that work? I mean it’s, it’s one panel or do you?

Dr. Kahn: Yeah, it’s one panel and it used to be they redtherapy.co had a panel called the 360, I think it was 36 inches high. They now figured out how to make it so it has two of those built in. So it’s all the 720 so it’s actually six feet tall. It’s like the matrix. You turn this thing on the near infrared is one button. It, you barely would know that the machine was on, except you feel some heat. The red is intense red and they do give you goggles to wear. A lot of us close our eyes, but don’t wear the goggles I want, I don’t want the wrinkles zone around the eyes to miss the potential collagen boosting benefits from red lights. So I don’t wear them and I don’t think there’s really any harm. There’s actually some therapy you can do for certain macular degeneration.

Dr. Kahn: So I think it’s probably a benefit. And you just you can hang it on a hook. You can, I have mine actually on like an art easel just you know, propped up. Cause where I have it, there wasn’t a door to put it on a door hook. And it’s really, it’s portable. I think the Jovv actually has a mobile little stand so you could move it around. Clinics have it, I haven’t put one in my heart clinic yet, but I might let people while they’re waiting go get a little rejuvenating light. So very cool stuff.

Dr. Cates: That is cool. I, you know, I, I haven’t tried that yet. So might have to.

Dr. Kahn: Why am I excited? I mean one when the science was so profound, I couldn’t ignore it. I took this, this little bit about nitric-oxide. We don’t have any direct data. I mean, I don’t know what’s happening when you’re bare chested in shining, if there’s enough penetration, you know, to actually create more nitric-oxide and cardiovascular benefit. There’s certainly no reason to suspect harm. But that’s the next wave to see if you know, blood pressure. I think there’s some data for blood pressure. So you know, it’s a, it’s a great thing to do.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. But that’s not what you are focused on right now. You’re just sharing this information.

Dr. Kahn: I’m just sharing because it’s got me excited. It’s a health hack that’s very doable and very science supported. You know day in and day out I’m doing what I talked about in the beginning. More taking a person apart, seeing where they are health wise, age wise, inflammatory markers, nutritional levels, cholesterol, genetics, my really cardiology passion and what I see people now from all over the world. There’s a genetic, and this is important for listeners, there’s a cholesterol that is inherited. Now sometimes the typical cholesterol, your total cholesterol, your LDL cholesterol is inherited. I had a woman today, her cholesterol is 350 on a perfect diet. It’s genetic. It didn’t decrease at all. But there’s a special cholesterol that’s called LPA, Lipoprotein(a) sometimes called LP, little a or lipoprotein little a cause it’s a lowercase a lipo L-I-P-O protein a. It’s a genetic inherited cholesterol that one in four people. That’s 1.7 billion people in the world, it’s about 80 million Americans. One in every four inherits at a level detectable above normal. It’s about a $25 blood test and we learned about it in 1963 so it’s more than 50 years. It’s not on anybody’s routine panel in clinics, gynecologists, wellness panels, it’s available, you have to ask. If there were rare, you could say, well what’s the point? There are many of your listeners that since they were one year old, cause it takes about a year to get that level up. They’ve had a high cholesterol that could, it may not, but could be affecting their arteries, their health, even one of the heart valves. It’s a very weird molecule that will scar a heart valve and about one in every seven person going for a heart valve replacement of the aortic valve, it’s cause of this cholesterol.

Dr. Kahn: So I knew of this 10 years ago, I’ve drawn this on thousands of people, but all of a sudden there’s a lot of discussion. The medical science in Europe now, it’s becoming part of a routine panel once in your life. Find out if you’re wondering, this is by far the most common and important genetic finding that impacts your cardiovascular health, your chance of having an early stroke, early heart attack. It was advised, still is advised, if your family has 42 year olds having heart attacks and strokes, this is one of the tests you ought to do. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want to know at age 20-25 so I had better get a better lifestyle going. I better be a little bit more serious about this stuff. There is no specific therapy right now that’s FDA approved as a pharmacologic agent. There will be in a couple of years, it’s going to be a lot of money in this field, which is why all of a sudden there are articles in New York Times, Men’s Health.

Dr. Kahn: Bob Harper, The Biggest Loser fitness trainer had a heart attack two and half years ago. He announced on the Dr. Oz show it’s because I inherited something that never got checked til after my heart attack at age 51. And that brought a lot of press. It really has some people frightened and I write about it all the time. I have a book coming out in early 2020 called the Lipoprotein(a) Solution. Now eating well, good lifestyle is critically important because you can fix everything else you want, good blood pressure, good blood sugar, good cholesterol, good fit. There are some things that lower it, Niacin, a B vitamin if you don’t get terrible flushing and rash can lower it. L-carnitine a vitamin can lower it. We just don’t have many studies that prove the point and the academics say that really just watch it and maybe take a statin. And I do try and do as much I can, more natural things with patients and kind of waiting for a new drug to come out. But it’s really a big deal. I see young people with damaged arteries and I’m the first one that identified the reason. Now that doesn’t bring great comfort. We still got to come up with a therapy that kind of gets him back in good shape and that is possible. I do that all the time. So lipoprotein(a) is a real important message for The Spa Dr. crowd. Red light therapy is a real important message.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So now when people just ask their doctor to add on Lipoprotein(a)?

Dr. Kahn: Yeah. You know, anybody just if you want to Google my name and lipoprotein(a), you’ll see a bunch of blogs, a couple of YouTubes. I mean I talk about it not all the time but quite a bit. I have a podcast, I talked about it, you know, you get a little background. But I would encourage and if you know you have high lipoprotein(a), get your kids checked by age 15 to 20 as a little scary. Because you just, if nothing else, they should have a little more focus on healthy lifestyle from as young as possible. Cause it is a little scary. I mean, yeah, you start smoking at age 18 to age 25. Well, this lipoprotein(a) from age one, it’s starting to potentially age your arteries, age your heart valves. So the earlier you can identify that and you know, put a whole good blue zones healthy package together. If you people don’t know what the blue zones is, hopefully they do these longevity geography areas in the world that have taught us a lot about the lifestyle of longevity. Red wine is on the list.

Dr. Cates: So you know, it’s the lipoprotein cholesterol test is something I’ve been adding too, since I’ve, since I’ve been in practice, almost 20 years. And, but I was, I’ve always been shocked when people say, oh my other doctor didn’t recommend this, you know, my cardiologist and, and so I’m glad that you’re bringing attention to this and that it is something that’s really easy to add. And then maybe, but I mean, I know I’ve had some people say, well, my health insurance doesn’t cover it.

Dr. Kahn: They can go to life extension.com and just pay $50, if your doctor won’t order it. And it is true, I mean, it’s patients educating the medical community, which has happened. It’s happening with plant-based, you know, nutrition. Often patients are educating the docs, who need an education cause we’re a very unhealthy group on average. But, yeah, I think that will all change. Good or bad, doctors learn new things from pharmaceutical representatives that have a drug to sell. Well there’s no lipoprotein(a) drug to sell butt there will be in a few years. But nobody needs to wait its a simple test.

Dr. Cates: Right. And you know, we’ve talked about some of these hacks today, but really like you said, we get back to healthy lifestyle and plant based diets and those sorts of lifestyle practices that make the biggest impact. And those are the things that those choices that we make on a day to day basis. Anything in particular you want to share about plant based diets and why they’re so important? And I know that like you said, you’re 100% you’re vegan, but you don’t necessarily say that’s the only way to go.

Dr. Kahn: I, you know, I have reached out, some of my vegan brothers and sisters and I’ve been vegan for 42 years now. Quite a long time since I was 18, kind of a quirk of my first week in college. I hated everything but the salad bar never deviated from that. But I mean, I am on panels with paleo, I’m on panels with Keto, I’m on panels with Mediterranean because we’re all aligned that the biggest health crisis in America is eating practices, garbage, you know, at vending machines. Cafeterias, you know, a fast food restaurants, you know. And I’m not elitist. I mean, if somebody, one of my three children adopted a paleo diet and had a lot of health benefits, I’m not going to tell him he’s wrong. You know, he’s not eating beige noodles everyday like he did as a kid. I mean it works for some people.

Dr. Kahn: I think, you know, we now more and more, any discussion on nutrition has to take in the environment and advice on maintaining a healthy you live in one of the prettiest places in the world. You know, how do we maintain that beautiful if we’ve got ozone destruction and greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation in the Amazon and that has a you know, a global impact on warming and there’s no more snow on the, you know, mountain caps in 20 years. So these are repeatedly brought up by Oxford University, World Health Organization, United Nations. Just this week, 11,000 scientists signed a joint letter that got published in the British Medical Journal and all of these have said the same thing, reducing meat industry, increasing plant diets are going to be necessary for the environment. It’s sustaining food for 10 billion people that’s coming. So that’s one part of it.

Dr. Kahn: But we should have a concern and compassion down that road. Whether we live in Detroit or Park City or wherever it is. From a health standpoint, you know, the database that choosing a largely, and again, we kind of know in the medical world, I don’t use the word vegan very much. Vegan is more an ethical approach about not using animals for any purpose, including your clothing and such, you know, whole food plant based diets where we’ve got fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, lentils, you know, just in 2018, 2019, the number of studies that have come out, whether they’re epidemiology studies, you know, the more plants we eat, the less heart disease. And it usually is not junk plant based food, junk plant based food is not, you know, there’s a huge explosion of junk vegan options. They don’t play out well in these epidemiology studies.

Dr. Kahn: It’s gotta be simple foods put together in simple traditional patterns that have one ingredient. A cucumber has one ingredient. I mean it doesn’t need 50 ingredients on it. But the data that’s come out partly understanding more why a high meat diet has some relationship to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, brain disease, there’s a chemical in meat we didn’t pay much attention before called newfy GC. Humans don’t have it so we get an immune reaction to red meat and then that seems to inflame our arteries. A whole new science and pathway we didn’t understand. Increasingly you’ll see this come your way, but the East Coast is riddled with people that have a red meat allergy and anaphylaxis after a tick bite was a very rare thing 10 years ago. Now, 20% of people in Virginia have been bitten by a tick that then the next time they eat meat, they may actually get anaphylaxis or wheezing or hives.

Dr. Kahn: It’s this insane thing that’s called red meat allergy. I mean, the science of understanding some of the implications, not just the environment, but to our own health. The basics being animal foods don’t have fiber. Plant foods have fiber. Animal foods can be medium or high in cholesterol. Plants never have cholesterol. Animal foods can be very high in saturated fat. Most plant foods aren’t except coconut oil. Coconuts aren’t bad, but coconut oil is insanely high in saturated fat and we’re not sure if that’s a healthy food or not. I don’t advise it to my heart patients. You know, minerals and this whole, you know, broccoli, broccoli is a one hour discussion of all the chemistry of broccoli and, uh, this wonderful chemical that you get from eating mildly cooked or raw broccoli called sulforaphane that we’ve seen kills breast cancer cells in a petri dish or promotes better brain health.

Dr. Kahn: But anyways, there’s the chemistry of understanding why and around the world, not exclusively, but there’s a very high content of fruits, vegetables, beans, peas, lentils, even organic soy products in longevity diets. It’s cause of the, you know, the chemicals that are only found within plants are called, you know, phytonutrients plant base nutrients, antioxidants and carotinoids and polyphenols and such. So, and you don’t see that, I mean, the paleo movement is still out there. I don’t think they’re quite as loud. The ketogenic diet is, the carnivore diet are loud, but there’s no explosion of science going on. There’s an explosion of commercial and products and proponents and big ripped guys and gals doing a low carb, high fat diet. There’s no explosion of science that you can say, wow, we really have a new, way to, you know, to eat that we know slows aging and reverses our cancer risk.

Dr. Kahn: There’s concern that is quite the opposite. I actually have taught and practiced some plant-based ketogenic diet. You can actually take a a plate and put arugula, walnuts, avocados, Tempe imparts, chia seeds, a little cubed organic soy tofu and put some extra virgin olive oil and you got an 80% calories of fat plant based diet, but it’s also very high in fiber, still very high in nutrients, you know, no added sugar in your diet and you can get into ketosis with plants. I play around with it. There’s a little bit of scientific data that it actually makes your biomarkers, your blood sugar inflammation markers better. But if you’re coming from a garbage diet, and I dunno, compared to my traditional, usually naturally low fat diet cause it’s just whole foods without oils smothered all over. But if anybody’s doing the ketogenic diet, go to one of the social media platforms. There’s many Facebook user groups, vegan keto and yeah, we don’t have enough data to say, absolutely it’s a great option. I just think it’s a better option than taking a 16 ounce steak and putting butter and pork rinds all over it, which, you know, if you can do it, that’s very tasty too. I kinda do it maybe every couple months. I’ll do five, six days of vegan keto. I don’t have any interest in it, but there’s a little device you can blow into to prove that you’re in ketosis or you can do urine test strips and make it semi scientific.

Dr. Cates: Right. Yeah. I mean I think that the, the big focus on that a lot of times is around, body composition, getting more lean body mass versus in drama. And it can be a pretty fast way, it seems to get that direction. But the cardiologist, I’m sure you’re focused more on people’s cardiovascular function and longterm. What is that? What are, what are our habits today? Not just about weight loss, but what is this going to mean down the road? So I appreciate that.

Dr. Kahn: And when people hit a roadblock, you know, you want to help them out, I want to help them I mean whole food, plant based diets are amazing and they’ve transformed many people’s lives, gym, exercise, all these things. But there are people that hit a roadblock and they’re just not getting any further down the road. So yeah, I’m looking for creative and semi-rational solutions. So, you know, transitioning somebody for 10 days on a vegan keto diet, putting photo biomodulation red light and seeing if, you know, they little cellulite and weight loss. I mean, sometimes you gotta think out of the box. Infrared sauna, you know, as a way to maybe accelerate some weight loss or natural blood pressure control. I’m not an anti steam sauna guy, there’s actually some pretty good data that if you threw, you know, inferred sauna or steam sauna into your life program few times a week and it may prove to be a life enhancing habit that some scientific data or actually pretty large data out of Finland, it’s a good thing to do.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Well, there’s so many great tips and you see a lot of men in your practice. And I know that you’ve kind of got some things going on with helping out some of the men that you see. And even though The Spa Dr. audience is mostly, I think for the most part, mostly women, we all have a man in our life. So what do you, what do you have going for the men in our lives?

Dr. Kahn: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s just shocking how men are just resistant to getting involved in this health and wellness movement. You know, it can’t make categorical change, but men live six, seven years less than women on average. They have way more accidents we’re just dumb sometimes, and you know they go to doctors far less than women and I certainly your audience is largely female. When I just give a general public talk, I’m giving one tonight in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there’ll be 80% females. I mean, it’s not advertised with a female or male title. It’s just the way it is. So there’s a real big need. I’m little scruffy right now cause I’m doing the Movember, no shave November, bring awareness to men’s health. I’m posting every day on social media about prostate health and prostate cancer and heart health and erectile dysfunction and get checked, don’t have a heart attack.

Dr. Kahn: So I have transitioned my cardiology practice to a significant amount to men’s health and erectile dysfunction. Partly because there’s a tremendous need. The statistics are a man by age 40, 40% are having erectile dysfunction, 50% by age 50, 60% by age 60 and just carry it forward. So it’s happening. And I get phone calls from 35 year olds that are having serious problems. One reason it’s important to a cardiologist is it can be a clue. Erectile dysfunction is often called the canary in the coal mine. The early warning system, three, four years before a man shows had been in emergency room having a heart attack. He may have talked to his family doc about having erectile issues cause it can be the same problem. Bad blood vessels, bad blood vessels with damaged lining called endothelium. And it may just show up below the waist before shows up above the waist.

Dr. Kahn: The sad thing in the United States is here’s your generic Viagra prescription or one of the other agents without, here’s your advanced blood work to check your lipoprotein(a), your cholesterol and maybe go get a heart CT scan for 75 bucks or a hundred dollars and I insist on that. I will treat men for erectile dysfunction with everything under the rainbow, but I have to characterize their heart disease first. I don’t want to make, you know, that go up and they go down into the grave and I really worry about that. So they all get checked. And then, you know, I’ve actually developed, you know, between checking hormones and working, I actually usually work on men hormone naturally in that really a fan of injecting a lot of hormones. I like matcha there’s some natural matcha products out of Australia that really raise men’s testosterone, if they need to, very safely.

Dr. Kahn: You know, weight training, physical exercise, weight loss, can all help, plant based diets can help erectile dysfunction. But the most bizarre therapy, I’m just got to take a minute and tell you, but it’s so exciting, about two years ago, friends of yours and friends of mine started having articles and Cosmo and Men’s Health that they were going to Miami and getting a treatment of erectile dysfunction or a treatment of better male sexual performance called shock therapy. GAINSWave shock therapy, and I read these things. I said, you know, I know they do some crazy things for headlines, I guess they’re doing more. But good or bad, six months ago I was at a good functional medicine meeting and there was the GAINSWave provider table and there were all the articles in a little folder and I was going to the airport so I grabbed it, said I got some stuff to read now, and honestly I was shocked.

Dr. Kahn: And so the story is most people have heard, if you have a really big kidney stone in your kidney that isn’t breaking up, they may put you in a tub of water and do what’s called shockwave, extra corporeal lithotripsy, but they blast the heck out of you under anesthesia to break up the kidney stone. Well, 20 years ago, some cardiologists in Europe knew of some data that said that treatment at a low energy might actually cause better blood flow, better nerve growth, better STEM cells, and actually start treating heart patients after some animal research. And in Europe and Asia, if you’ve had a heart attack, they take the same device but it’s called low energy or low intensity shockwave actually improves heart function. I’m looking into whether we can bring that into United States because it doesn’t exist. And then to finish the story, well, if it helps the heart get better blood flow, why wouldn’t Israeli urologist ten years ago say, I’m going to turn the energy down a little bit more, stick this probe in my pants and see if I get a better blood flow through the arteries that feed the pelvis.

Dr. Kahn: And low and behold, there’s a therapy. It’s known by the marketing named GAINSWave, low intensity shockwave. But I have you know, I practice in Detroit that is in part checking men with erectile dysfunction for the whole functional medicine spectrum of hormones and diet and toxicity and heart disease. But they’ll come in and six times in about four or five weeks for about 10 minutes, I’ve got a device that literally, it’s like a frigging woodpecker, jackhammer. It’s not particularly uncomfortable. They don’t need to be put to sleep. It’s not particularly sexy. They’re usually scared so nothing happens that shouldn’t happen. I do the procedure because I haven’t convinced my nurses they want to jump into this, but it has been remarkable after three or four therapies of the six and you can do more than six, you know, they’ll tell me stuff that’s happening that wasn’t happening.

Dr. Kahn: Things are happening at night. You know, we’re raising the flag pole without you know, they’re having a response. So if they were needing generic viagra before they often don’t need it. If it wasn’t working. Now the generic viagra is working. And there are just some studs and want to be studlier or even though they’re not really having much problem is a cash business, they have the right to enhance. And it’s kind of being called like root cause. It’s cause you really are creating better blood vessels, better nerve function, STEM cell release, nitric oxide. You still got to match it. If you’re smart with a super healthy lifestyle, sexual health is, you know, very much your diet, your fitness, your weight, your sleep, your stress. So you’ve got to do the whole thing. But yeah, so I am now a men’s health shocker. But you know, it’s really, it’s really gratifying to see the responses are so meaningful. Cause you know, it’s so frustrating when that part of life, you know, is going away without permission. You know, some guys just don’t have an interest.

Dr. Cates: Well, what do we, you know, we wouldn’t be talking about healthy longevity if we didn’t address sexual function and, because certainly that’s part of quality of life.

Dr. Kahn: And it may be quantity of life. There’s some fascinating data and fortunately most of the sexual health data in terms of you know real science, in humans is male. It’s just a little easier to measure. This GAINSWave is actually being developed as a female treatment too, it’s the same device, same potential, but it’s not exactly being done, officially yet though anybody probably could. I’ve actually treated some people’s legs with blockages with the same device for the same reason. There’s some data for Europe, so it’s very, you know, flexible in its potential use. But there is actually some data that if you’re a man living in Wales, part of the UK and you said you filled out a survey 20 years ago that I have sex this often during the month from less than one to more than 10 a month, you can just basically track your risk of heart attack and the more you have sex, the less you have a risk of heart attack. More powerful than any drug on the market. Now it might be, it reflect you’re in better shape, you a better relationship, you have more energy, you’re less depressed and it’s just a marker of good health that could be measured in other ways. But God, I love telling patients about that and they write it. They want me to write it on the script. So 10 a month. That’s what you want. And I got to go share that with my partner.

Dr. Cates: Of course. Yeah. That’s all part of the healthy lifestyle certainly. All right, well Joel it’s been a pleasure as always to catch up with you and you’ve shared so much information today. I’m sure people are gonna want to download the transcripts on from today cause you share a lot of information. So a lot of great tips and valuable information. Tell everybody where they can learn more about you.

Dr. Kahn: Well you’re so kind. I live and work in the Detroit area, born and raised. I have a website, drjoelahn, D R, J O E L K H N.com, which may be changing in a couple of weeks, but that’s fine. You know, flip over there, no matter what, rebranding a little. If you’re ever in Detroit, I own two restaurants called Green Space or Healthy Plant-based Bars and Restaurants cause I am cuckoo. It’s a very difficult business but very committed to a full service health. I want you to so healthy in my restaurants, you don’t need to come to my clinics. And I thank you. Yeah. You keep up your wonderful work. Cause it’s really, it’s beauty on the outside beauty and on the inside it all happens together.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Again, thank you so much and we’ll have your um, your, the links and everything up on our website too so people can find you. Thanks again.

Dr. Kahn: Thank you, have a great day.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Joel Kahn to learn more about him. You can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. That’s also where you can find the transcription of the podcast. He covered a lot of information, he’s a fast talker, covered a lot of ground today. So you might want to download that transcription so you can take some time to go through that. And if you haven’t already taken The Skin Quiz, I encourage you to do that, to find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health. Just go to theskinquiz.com your skin is an outer reflection of your inner health, and when you, when you take The Skin Quiz, you’ll find out more about your skin personality type, which ties into the root causes behind your skin issues. Again, theskinquiz.com is where you can find that. Also, I invite you to join me on social media. The Spa Dr. Is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. You can join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.