The Healthcare Revolution | Darshan Shah

Episode Topics:

• Discover how to extend your healthspan so you can live better, not just longer.
• Learn why strength training at least 3 times a week is non-negotiable after age 35.
• Understand why AI is already replacing doctors and surgeons – and why that’s a good thing.
• Find out which tests you need to schedule TODAY to prevent the most common causes of death.
• Get a glimpse into how healthcare is evolving faster than ever before in human history.

 

 

Rick Jordan  

What’s shaking? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today we’re going all in. That’s be crazy. It’s like, let’s go. You just started in practice. How’s it going?

 

Darshan Shah  

I wish. I wish. No, I’m 30 years older than that now.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh man, no, that’s even that I see now that I don’t believe dude, 30 years older than that. Look at you. Seriously. That means, I mean, you’re older than me. That means you’ve bought 51 Oh, 5252 Dang, yeah, 45 bro. And, I mean, I don’t have those. Looks like you. Go on. Thanks. Brother, that’s pretty awesome, yeah, but, I mean, I mean, we’re recording already, we’re going, so this is how this goes. It’s like a conversation. Brother, yeah, it’s awesome, man. So it’s, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I mean, I saw, seriously, it’s a Darshan Shaw. Is your your full name, right, right? And, dude, how in the world, like, I mean, I’m sure you wanted to be a doctor forever, you know. But how in the world, brother, you know, did you get through everything by the age of 21 and was that in the US when that happened? Yeah, no, that was really so.

 

Darshan Shah  

You know, I just, it’s a lot of luck more than anything, I would say. So my family moved around a lot when I was a kid, and it turned out every previous school I went to, even grade school, high school, they had a lot more credits that accumulated. So then finally, when I moved to California, I was able to skip a year of high school. And then what happened was there were six programs in the country, this was 30 years ago, that it did a six year medical school and combined college program. There’s this the European system. So they do it in London. They take you right out of high school, they put you right into medical school, like intense training for six years. So I did that in Kansas City, Missouri. So I lived in Kansas City. Yeah, when I was 15 years old, I moved there, and I became a doctor in six years, and I was 21 and I did my first surgery, 21 years old as a doctor.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, that’s insane. Well, okay, I’ve got to ask, what was the first surgery? Because it appendectomy. Okay, so nothing like crazy. No. I mean, they didn’t have, you like, doing a quadruple bypass or something, right?

 

Darshan Shah  

Although I have participated in many of those that was a lot later in my career. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah. That’s so crazy. Like I went through six years of this stuff in Kansas City while I was in high school, and then I didn’t have a deduct to me. 

 

Darshan Shah  

Imean, I look back on it right now and I’m like, wow, that was kind of crazy. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, no kidding, that’s awesome, yeah? Because, I mean, obviously you’re not your own doctor, you know, and your story is so different, probably than every physician that you’ve actually had caring for you in your life, you know. So how do you reconcile that? Because, I mean, I got a little bit of the same thing going on in my industry, but how do you reconcile ?

 

Darshan Shah  

You know, I feel like what happens with medicine is there’s so much to know that when you become a doctor and you specialize in your area, like, you know, I’m a surgeon. I’ve been a surgeon for 30 years. I recently retired from surgery. Now all I do is this longevity medicine. But you get, you get really deep in one rabbit hole of knowledge as a physician. And so, you know, when I see other doctors, I know that they know their stuff just as well as I knew my stuff to do surgery, you know. Yeah, that’s kind of how we reconcile it in our brain.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s the case, you know? And like, coming from experience too, because, I mean, I’m in cyber and I’m a CEO of a public company, everything is like sometimes too, when I hear people talk, I’m like, you don’t know. Make it sound like, you know, but you don’t know that too. Yeah, I bet, dude, that’s, that’s every industry too. So it’s not just medical, you know, or my industry whatsoever, but it’s, it’s interesting, because I bet when you were 21 that’s where I’m putting myself, is like, in your shoes, when you’re 21 and you’re being, you know, you’re getting like, an annual physical or something like that, and the doctor you’re seeing, and you’re, like, looking at it like you is 21 talking to the six year. It’s like you don’t know, especially in your 20s. Let’s be real, right? Brother, in your 20s, you got a little more of an ego, right than you and I do in our 40s and 50s. That’s supposed to simmer down a little bit as you start to mature and everything. So back then, I’m sure it was a lot more of for me. It was, anyways, that was my experience. It’s like, I know, I know, I know you don’t know, but I know.

 

Darshan Shah  

Absolutely like I I feel like my 11 year old son thinks he knows a ton more than it’s so crazy How naive you are and how you grow older and you just understand it. The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, right on. But let’s you know I love our Convo too, man, because the direction this is going, yeah. On the inverse of that, though, yeah, let’s take an example, like, like, Baron Trump. Right on the inverse of that, you take a look at somebody who is, you know, are now President Donald Trump, and looks at his son, who’s 18, and his son’s like, Dad, you gotta go on Rogan, uh huh, you know. And it’s like, he’s starting to say, like, these are the things you need to do, dad in order to campaign, because this is how my generation is going to hear the message. And I think to the medical field too. It’s like, there’s so many new things, you know. Or I think to the technology field as well, there’s so many new things, right? And the only way that I can keep up right is if I’m asking people that are fresh, right, that are 20 plus years younger than me, it’s like, what did you learn today? Well, what’s new? Can you show me how to do this, please?

 

Darshan Shah  

You’re absolutely right. And you know, I think what happens is, as you spend a lot of time in your career, you end up thinking that the way you’re doing it is the way it’s supposed to be done over and over and over again, where, in reality, there is revolutions happening. And the younger people are seeing it, you know? And so I, like a perfect example, is in medicine right now, obviously the older generation of doctors is looking at AI and they’re thinking, oh, you know, there’s no way AI is going to replace us. And the younger generation doctors like AI has already replaced you, dude, yeah, you got to figure out how we’re going to do this differently so you still maintain some relevancy.

 

Rick Jordan  

Totally. I mean, I’m seeing I read all the time. You know, that’s how I consume. That’s my morning routine. Actually is my morning routine. I will consume so much data, you know, through through current events and just, you know, articles that I’ll read, but I mean even obscure publications, you know, and I see things like that to where it’s like, oh, somebody totally diagnosed themselves with a rare disease today using AI that 17 doctors missed, yeah, you know, and they’re learning how to use it, and people are starting to diagnose themselves. But same with legal right, my one of my general counsel for the company, right, 45 year trial lawyer, a litigator, and he says, like, AI is going to replace me, and I’m arguing with him, you know, like, dude, no way. Your brain is so strategic. It’s like, I cannot see AI replacing you. And then sooner or later, it’s like, I just settled the case of my own using AI by itself and fired a lawyer in New York. Wow, I spent 30 minutes on it. I could have saved myself seven weeks of this negotiation between these two things, you know, and I got it taken care of just all by myself. So I can totally see that, man. But this is a good way to take the Convo, right, yeah, AI, right. You were a surgeon for so many years. How could that apply?

 

Darshan Shah  

It’s already been applied. So, you know, we’ve been using robots in surgery for about a decade now. Yeah, these robots are controlled by doctors. Remote control, kind of like playing a video game. It’s actually really cool. Yeah, never. Just recently, an AI did an entire surgery using a robot. Ai did. Ai did the entire surgery, beginning to end, utilizing a robot. And so this has already happened, and it’s only v1 of this, right? I mean, you fast forward five. Good point, dude, you know v3 Why would humans want? Why would you want a human doing your surgery when the robot can do it with much more precision and have the knowledge of 1000s of other surgeries being performed all over the world in its AI brain. No, no, the next move is, right? 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s right. yeah. I mean, I love that. It’s a lot of people are scared, right? And I even wrote a, I even wrote a LinkedIn post today about deep seek, you know, because that was just announced or rolled out over the weekend. Yeah, crazy. You know, a trillion dollars in market cap loss from all these tech companies, because they’re like, how the hell did these guys do it for 6 million and you’re asking for, what was Sam Altman’s thing? Like, another 3 trillion in capital is what he’s looking for. It’s stupid, right? And it’s, there’s got to be a middle ground somewhere. But writing about that, it’s like, I’m hoping you know that this does enhance the quality of life across the board, and I’m starting to see it that way. But it’s also, I mean, I’m in tech bro, and just like you, in medicine, some of it’s got to be a little shaky. You know, when you look at it’s like, I don’t know that’s going to work out, but let’s go for it.

 

Darshan Shah  

Yeah, I agree, but, but I do think that you know, like what you just mentioned with Deep Mind, right? Deep Mind is deep seek, yeah. So really, my perception of this, and correct me, if I’m wrong, is, they basically found a better way to do things with better algorithms. They utilized a lot less computing technology, right?

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, and I really were forced to.

 

Darshan Shah  

Right, because they were forced right? This is human innovation at its best, right? And so what you’re going to see in medicine is the same exact thing, right? We’re trying to play Whack a Mole with every single disease, trying to turn it around. And what we what we’re need to do is look at what’s going on at a cellular level, apply the tools that we have now we didn’t have before, specifically AI and say, look what’s going on in the cell that we can affect at a protein and at a DNA level, so that we never have a disease in the first place. Yeah, right on. We’re in that world right now, right? And so, so I think it’s just a reapplication of the tools that are now newly available into new ways of thinking. And this is where I hope medicine goes. Is like, let’s stop playing the same game we used to play. We just play Whack a Mole with pharmaceuticals with every disease, and let’s like, really get down to, how do we solve disease and aging once and for all. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, I can, I can totally see your brain and how you transition from surgery over to longevity now too. After you explain it that way, it’s like, that’s where your passion lies, man, I love those I mean, talk about consuming content. I love those articles too. I think it was, it was sometime last week I saw a new Harvard study. And I love coffee, always have, you know? And I loved the Harvard study from a couple years ago. It was like a 40 year long study that said, like, the best amount of coffee to have during the day for longevity was like three to four cups. Yes, you know. And I used to do like, two cups, but I remember that was like, Oh, I gotta increase. Oh, shit. That sucks, you know. I was so crushed when I saw that. But then the new one was about like the time of day, and it was tying the time that you consume coffee to a decrease in mortality, you know. And that blew my mind too. It’s that those that consume coffee only in the morning, like right away when you wake up, you know, including breakfast, whatever is, like a 31% reduction in average mortality, right in age. And then they got, they tested against, you know, placebo, obviously, which is non coffee drinkers, but then those that drink it throughout the day and throughout the day, there was no difference between them and placebo, but it was that morning. You know, it’s like that stuff fascinates me. Man, what’s really got you gripped for longevity these days?

 

Darshan Shah  

Yeah, you know. So one thing I will say about studies like that, and I’ll talk to you more about what I’m what I’m really excited about longevity, is that you have to look at every study as one. There’s one major overarching theme that you have to really focus on, which is that studies take the average of the 1000s and the hundreds of 1000 people that they’re looking at, right? But we know is that every human is on a bell shaped curve right the average. And it’s a bell shaped curve. And you your particular genetics, your particular gut back bacteria, microbiome.

 

Rick Jordan  

Can change three times a year, yeah.

 

Darshan Shah  

React differently to the same amount of coffee than someone in the average right? And so really, what I’m really excited about, which leads me to the answer to my question, is every single one of us having a personal AI telling us how every single thing that we’re exposing ourselves to is affecting our bodies. So now we’re not looking at these studies that take forever to come out, and looking at the average human of which none of us has really average, right? And now we’re applying every molecule coming in, how it’s affecting our system, using monitoring, which is incredibly advanced now, and it’s going to get even more advanced in the next five years.

 

Rick Jordan  

All the way into an Apple Watch, exactly, yeah, totally.

 

Darshan Shah  

Because every single one of us is an n of 1n, of one, meaning, like a study with one participant, right? Like that, right? And so an AI is the perfect scientist PhD in our pocket. I’m holding my cell phone here, that could be our PhD, really analyzing every input and how is it affecting us? That’s going to be the Holy grail.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s incredible, man, you got to be so grateful, like to yourself, seriously, for starting as young as you did, because it’s like, I think my my primary physician, who I had for 30 years, I think, is what it was. He just retired at like, the age of 72 you know. And I look at him, and it’s like, he and I. For most people, it’s hilarious, because most people thought he had a horrible bedside manner, but he would hang out with me for like, 20 minutes after my exam. We would just chat, dude, seriously. And it’s like, you just know how to communicate with people. It’s like, you know, doctors are humans too. Then he would start to take naps during the day, like at the exam rooms. He’d pick out an exam room, you know, if he got got older. But I think of him, and I compare him to you, because it’s like all of this cool stuff is happening right now, you know. And I’m sure he went through the normal program, you know, to where he really didn’t start practicing, truly, until he was in his 30s. So it’s like, could you imagine, seriously, like you’re 51 now. Could you imagine, like, 10 years from now, and trying to grasp all the new AI stuff that was there? It’s like, I think that you were at the perfect spot, bro, really.

 

Darshan Shah  

I think humanity is at the perfect spot. That’s a good point, right? 

 

Rick Jordan  

Everything for one upping me, by the way. Sorry, that’s not. Yeah, that was brilliant.

 

Darshan Shah  

You see it too, right? Like every field, whether it be physics, whether it be medicine, whether it be even, even something as human as how we socially interact, is changing exponentially every moment of time that passes by right now. Yeah, never in human history I’ve seen change so fast. I can tell you, last five years, medicine has learned more than it has in the last 150 years. True, you know it is, and that is what we’ve learned in the last five years. Yeah, it’s gonna happen in a year next year, and then in a month the following year is just exponential. And you know, like, you know Moore’s law, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, so Moore’s law. Gordon Moore, CEO of Intel, predicted in the 80s that computer power will double every two years. Well, we’ve blown through Moore’s law in the last few years. And yesterday.

 

Rick Jordan  

definitely, right? Yesterday, you blew through that, dude, it’s insane. Yeah, it’s absolutely insane. Yeah, because, I mean, that’s when you get into, when it’s doubling every two years, that’s also getting into compound, you know, because it’s not just, you know, that it’s a, you’re talking exponential. I mean, that’s literally that, you know, I almost said square roots, which is the opposite way that’s a, you know, it’s the middle of the afternoon. Give me a break, right? That’s why you need some coffee. Guy, seriously, I’m recognizing that because I this. I just read that a couple days ago, seriously, and ever since, I’m like, I’m only drinking in the morning. Now it’s like, I value my longevity, you know, but I feel you. It’s like, my my personal assistant brought an espresso like, around 11 ish today, or something like that. Like, no, no, no, no. He’s like, he looks like, what’s wrong with you? I’m like, like, I’m gonna live forever. That’s what’s Yeah, that compounding too. You know, I can use a personal story on this dude, because it, you know, my dad passed. I was 16. It was 1995 it was CML, and he had a Philadelphia chromosome. So not genetic. I mean, it is genetic. Sorry, not hereditary. It’s not passed down. That chromosome flipped, right? You know, when he was conceived, I studied all this stuff, like afterwards. That’s really what got me interested, even in medicine to begin with. I’m not a doctor, obviously, but I read a lot, and he during that time period, you know, he was on interferon to keep the white cell count low for a few years within the light, the only thing we can do, because it will turn super acute soon, is to do a bone marrow transplant, you know. And then it was a combination of staph, of a staph infection when his immune system was low, and graft versus host. That was the real reason why something happened. And it was 95 but then seven years, like, just seven years later, there was a medication that was mass produced and released, I don’t know, I don’t remember the name of it right now, but something that he could have just taken an injection, you know, like once a week, and lived an entire life, yeah, no bone marrow transplant, no, nothing, right? And that was just seven years and we’re talking that would have been like 2002 now, when that was released, yeah, and here we are. You’re talking about Moore’s law. How many two year periods since then, when all the knowledge doubled? Because now it’s 2025, you know, that’s the insane thing to me. I think this is true in a lot of industries, and I hope that’s the case, because you talked about the robots. And I know I’m on like a grandson, a grandson. I had a robotic surgery that started out as a robot when I had an almost death experience with a gangrenous gallbladder. Well, yeah, for sure. They started with the robots, but then it was supposed to be 45 minute, all robotic 2015 so 10 years ago now, and it ended up being three and a half hours by hand, right? Because of adhesions and all the stuff that they found that they just weren’t expecting. Sure? Yeah. So, I mean, I’m grateful, dude. I mean coming out of that, because I went through and I’m grateful for the medical knowledge. I’m grateful for Moore’s law, because going through that, nobody could figure out what was wrong with me for eight months, wow, I had weird symptoms, you know, that just didn’t make sense. You know, even like full body CTS, they just skip right over it. Everything looks normal, all of that, you know, no real attacks. However, I almost died from it, you know, and coming out of it, it’s like I read so much and got so involved in medicine myself to try to figure out what was wrong with me. You know, coming out it’s like there’s two great things that I think everybody needs in life. Medically speaking, one is a chiropractor, you know, to put shit back in place. And the second is a really, really good surgeon to take the bad shit out of you. Beyond that, AI can do everything.

 

Darshan Shah  

I’ve taken out a lot of necrotic gallbladders myself. And sometimes you just need to go from, you know, the minimally invasive robotic method to just opening somebody and moving it, you know.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh yeah, sturgeon was great, dude. Seriously, I’m grateful to him same, but it was, uh, but yeah. I mean, it’s now that we’re talking AI. Can use that as a joke. From now on, it’s like, you know, chiropractor, surgeon and AI, that’s, yeah, right on the longevity wise, you know, because I’m interested in this, I mean, I’d love to live until the most possible age that I could. And even more so, when I say live, I mean actually be living when I’m 97 you know, 102 whatever, rather than seeing someone who’s just kind of held on and the walking dead for the last 20 years of their life. You know? I mean, there’s things that, obviously I read, but it’s like a lot of people are pegging the amount of muscle mass you have to being able to actually live life when you’re older too. What are some some big things, man, as we wrap this up, because it’s been high energy, dude, I appreciate you. Yeah,

 

Darshan Shah  

yeah, absolutely. So what you’re talking about is making sure you maintain your health span, right? So, yeah, lifespan is number of years you’re going to live, which, right now there’s an upper limit of 115 to that. But no one wants to live 215 being frail like a little old man, exactly. Yeah, wheelchair, unable to recognize your family. You know you need someone to take you to the bathroom like no one wants to live that life, right? So how do you maximize your health span so it matches your lifespan? I’d rather live 80 good years and spend the last 20 years in the wheelchair, you know, and without my brain. So what I tell people, there’s three or four really important things that every single person can do right now, you mentioned one of them, that is, maintain muscle mass. We know for sure that if you maintain muscle mass, that you will maintain mobility as you age, and decrease the risk of you falling as you age. Falling, believe it or not, takes out most 70 to 80 years old, more than any other problem.

 

Rick Jordan  

Until my grandma. I mean, she was in her 90s, but still, same thing. Yeah, that was it, yeah.

 

Darshan Shah  

That’s usually the event that takes people out. Now, what I will say on the muscle mass piece is, if you are not doing some kind of strength training at least three times a week after you turn age 35 and you actually want to start way earlier than that, then you are not going to have enough muscle mass as as you get into your 80s and 90s. Okay? It is an absolute necessity. And the workouts you do, they don’t need to be long, gym workout for hours, you know, at least 20 to 30 minutes, but you got to be training to failure. So that means you got to be lifting heavy enough so that you can’t go past five to eight reps?

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, your arms are shaking. You think they’re going to drop off of you? Yeah? Exactly. Yeah. You got to lift heavy stuff. You know, I’m with you as a man or a woman. It’s the same. It’s the same. Yeah, exactly.

 

Darshan Shah  

The second thing you want to do is there’s a metric called vo two Max. VO two max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use when you’re exercising. Now, the VO two Max is kind of a it’s a test that you would take like an exercise laboratory, but it’s highly correlated to your health span and your longevity, so you want to get that measured. And if your VO two Max is not at the a level that is about better than 50% of the people that you’re in your age group, you need to start adding some intense cardio to your everyday.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh, interesting. So the cardio, I mean, obviously that would increase lung capacity, but it probably does some. I can’t remember the name of the cells within your lungs and all that too.

 

Darshan Shah  

Yeah, yeah, alveoli are in your lungs. But the main thing is it does, is it promotes your mitochondrial health, your mitochondrial powerhouses of all of your cells, right? So having a vo two Max when you’re 50, you want to be over 50 on your VO two Max, but that, that’s another key metric. So those are on the physical side of things. I would say. The other part of things that I that I would have everyone consider highly, is just don’t die. And what I mean by that is, yeah, I’m awesome. So what I mean by that is there’s about four things in big picture that will that’ll end up killing most of us, right? We already mentioned falls, and that comes from decreased muscle mass. But then there’s heart attacks. We know heart attacks the number one reason that people end up passing away. So you want to be extremely proactive at seeing if you have blockages in your arteries. There’s a test called a coronary calcium score that everyone needs to get when they’re 40, and monitor that and monitoring a blood biomarker called APO B, so don’t get a heart attack. Don’t get cancer. So cancer as big as enemies being diagnosed as stage one, do all your screening tests for cancers. Consider some advanced testing like full body MRI, that’s getting a lot cheaper as well. And thirdly is Alzheimer’s and other Alzheimer’s and diabetes. And I put those together because they’re all different forms of poor metabolic health that lead to these and so maintaining good metabolic health is really important as well.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome, man. I mean, you just gave me, like, a laundry list of things that I’m going to start scheduling here. Seriously, muscle mass is there, but I like that. You hit that because it’s a Yeah. I mean, I don’t do this often at all, but, I mean, I built it. I know exactly, but I don’t. I don’t do much. It’s like, oh, how often do you go to the gym? I’m like, I don’t do it at home with dumbbells push ups, you know, I use dumbbells for squats, you know, just body weight resistance. I have a bench, which I will do chest presses with, again, just with dumbbells. And I put on the majority of my muscle mass in my early 40s too. You know, it wasn’t difficult when it was done consistently, right?

 

Darshan Shah  

Consistency is the key. Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t need to be some extensive, you know, trainer workout for an hour and a half. It just needs to be even 20 minutes consistently every other day. It’s fantastic.

 

Rick Jordan  

Right on. So now the chest press is like 50 pounds each, you know. And I started coming out of the surgery too. I couldn’t even do 10 push ups, dude coming out of the surgery now I do 150 is warm ups. Yeah, so it’s a big difference, dude. I appreciate you, man. I want to stay connected seriously, because this is we just dropped, dropped right into it today. I love it.

 

Darshan Shah  

Appreciate you conversation. Thank you, friend.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh yeah, you bet. Where can everyone find you. Yeah, is it just Dr shah.com.

 

Darshan Shah  

Yeah, Dr Shah. And that’s not with an H at the end, dot com, my social media is at Darshan, Shaw, MD. And yeah, those are the best places to find me. I have a my clinic is called next health. Next-health, if you want to look at it on the internet, www.next-health.com and yeah, those are all my places.

 

Rick Jordan  

I love it, brother, you’re incredible. Thank you.

 

Darshan Shah  

Thank you so much. So great talking to you.