#128: A Cellular Approach to Health: Measuring What Drives Longevity and Performance

126_Fetcho_Patel

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Josh: [: 00:00:00

Join me and other practitioners as we guide you towards vibrant health, body, mind, and spirit, and move beyond symptom management into true healing. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Beyond the Pills, where we explore the intersection of modern science and true healing to help you reclaim your health, body, mind, and spirit.

uide people back to the root [: 00:01:00

It's one of those conversations that's has the potential to shift how we think about health entirely. For years, we've been talking about things like gut health and all these other facets of functional health, but what if there was something even deeper? What if the real conversation is about the energy itself?

Because at the end of the day, no matter what, what protocol we're running, what gut, hormones, detox, if your cells don't have energy, nothing else works the way it should, and that brings us to mitochondria. And so today, I'm joined by two leaders helping bring mitochondrial science into the forefront of modern healthcare.

ular bioenergetics, studying [: 00:02:00

Today, I'm excited because we're gonna unlock and debunk all things mitochondria and how we're- they're helping define and redefine healthcare, not just around symptoms, but around energy, performance, and cellular function. So today, we're breaking down the mitochondria, the chronic disease, and how energy production impacts everything from fatigue to cancer to human optimization.

So let's just dive in, guys. Um, thank you. Welcome to Beyond the Pills. I'm so excited and honored for you guys to be here.

Sean: Thank you. It's good to be here.

osh: Um- Who wants to start? [: 00:03:00

Hemal: Yeah

Josh: We talked prior to this podcast, uh, recording, is... Well, uh, just let's... Give me the rundown of mitochondria.

Hemal: Yeah. Um, so I think one of the things we were discussing, and I think what's obvious in this space is people don't think about mitochondria, right? The thing is, if it's not present in your present moment, you don't seem to think about it. So to really understand mitochondria, we gotta go back, uh, 1.5 to 2 billion years, right?

This is when it becomes important to who we are now. And so this happened a long, long, long time ago. Mitochondria are old bacteria. They have their own DNA, um, and the unique feature that they had that had allowed them to adapt in an environment that was harsh to other organisms is that they could actually process oxygen and use it to create energy.

dn't have a mitochondria. It [: 00:04:00

And for the cell, it gives it something the cell needs, a boost of energy to allow it to do crazy amazing things. That cell now realizes that it can grow, it can move, it can become more complicated, it can become from structured, it can start to build multicellular organisms. And so energy drives everything.

It drives movement, it drives kinetics, it drives structure, it drives shape, it drives complexity. And so this is that first moment, about two billion years ago that came together that make us who we are. Mitochondria, because they are their own organism, they divide. And so they continued to divide in this cell.

ans, this grew. And so if we [: 00:05:00

What we learn in high school is they are the, the powerhouse of the cell. They make the ATP that allow us to do something. Unfortunately, we don't have Tesla batteries that store inside us, and so we constantly have to make energy 'cause it's used and burned all the time. And so we need to have systems that are working efficiently, consistently to do this.

itself. It's a huge mass of, [: 00:06:00

And the unique element, and the heart becomes a unique example of this, is that if your mitochondria stop making energy, your heart stops beating and you're no longer present, right? You're no longer alive. And so they not only are the source of energy, but they are the regulators of survival and, and death and all of these...

The, the, the control points for all of this as well. So in addition to making energy, they regulate cell signaling. They regulate how things behave and orchestrate in a cell, and whether that cell lives or dies is regulated at that level of the mitochondria. And so they become this really complicated thing in a cell that has its own DNA.

our discussion will sort of [: 00:07:00

These mitochondria have retained their ancient nature of infectivity and transformation. They can actually move into these things. The next phase of, of therapy, I think, is mitochondrial therapy, right? Can you actually take mitochondria that you culture, grow, um, create in a bioreactor and transfer them to living systems as a way to improve health in a dynamic structured way?

ut this is to not understand [: 00:08:00

And I'll, I'll let Shawn sort of translate for me and, and make this come down to low level.

Josh: Well, yeah. Let's, let's bring it down a little bit, but, you know, there's some key pieces. Like when, when I went through functional medicine training, we talked a lot about like when in, when in doubt, treat the gut.

So gut-brain health. We understand that connection. We've studied it quite a bit. And then we get down the road and then all of a sudden we talk about mitochondrial dysfunction.

Hemal: Yeah.

Josh: We talk about the root cause of everything, which is down to the energetics of it, like you said, and I didn't realize this till recently either.

Like, I had no idea. In all my years of training and all these different modalities, like, that mitochondria were a bacteria Yeah ... I, I had no, like, you don't talk about this in pharmacy school, functional medicine. They just- True. True ... say it's the powerhouse of the cells, and you do it, right?

Hemal: Yeah, and, and the [: 00:09:00

I mean, there is the gut to everything axis that people talk about, right? Um, there's papers that show your gut talks to your heart. Your bacteria can regulate. If you eat the right yogurt, your heart's gonna beat amazingly. If you eat the right yogurt, your brain-gut axis is gonna be primed. And you think about, "Well, what is that gut talking to?"

It's not talking to your neuron. It's talking to the mitochondria in your neuron.

Josh: Yeah.

Hemal: Like talks to like, right? Yeah. And so that's where that communication piece, I think, comes in.

Josh: Well, and that, that is like, that's what resonates. Like, to me, when you, when you made the analogy of, like, there's, like, I don't know how many trillion critters you talked about in there, but...

'Cause we talk about it in gut health, there's more of them than us, and now we're talking about mitochondria, and it's like there is a symbiotic component. I'm talking a lot about biorhythms lately and coherence and everything- Mm ... moving in this way-

Hemal: Yeah ...

h: rather than going against [: 00:10:00

So Shawn-

Hemal: Yeah ...

Sean: bring this down to the level where- ... maybe,

Josh: maybe most people can hear this, 'cause I love tracking you, Hemal, but I'm like, "Woo, what, what-" Yeah ... like, you, you're telling me a lot about... Like, people just don't know what, like, this thing called mitochondria and why it's so damn important.

Sean: Well, think about it, right?

I mean, go back to what Hemal said. The level of knowledge in the everyday person around the planet around mitochondria would be the powerhouse of the cell, right?

Josh: Yeah. It's what you learn in, like, second grade, and then- Yeah ... that's it.

Sean: Yeah.

Josh: And, and, and- It's like there's a lot of them, and the heart cell has a lot of them, and the brain cells have a lot of them, and then it's done, right?

Yeah. So enlighten us further, 'cause I think we've got a little bit further since second grade in our science.

valent of energy or ATP. And [: 00:11:00

So to reiterate some of Hemal's points, there's an estimated 37 trillion or so cells in the human body, give or take, right? Each of them will have between 500 and 5,000 mitochondria. So that's where Hemal gets the number of anywhere from 100 trillion to a gazillion of these things floating around in the body.

That is an unfathomable amount of, of, of knowledge that someone would have to dissect to understand the complexity of that, right? Every cell in your body has it but red blood cells, right? The human mitochondria contain 1,100 to 1,400 distinct proteins. Another crazy fact that, you know, just blows people away is unlike your nuclear DNA, right?

inherited directly from your [: 00:12:00

Josh: Yep.

Sean: Okay? Mitochondria produce 90% of the body's usable cellular energy. So that's, that's just saying that every day when you get up and you start your day, from the minute you start your day to the minute you end your day, 90% of that outlay of performance, of energy, of everything you're doing is mitochondrial or ATP generated, right?

The, the biggest, I think, knowledge base or gap that people, uh, have on this is all around chronic disease. You know, mitochondrial dysfunction is linked to nearly every major chronic disease on the planet, and chronic diseases would include things like neurodegeneration, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, Friedreich's ataxia, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, inflammation, fertility issues.

eople are finally opening up [: 00:13:00

Three key verticals. Everything around chronic disease, as I just mentioned, right? Then you have anti-aging. What is anti-aging? What's it tied to? It's tied to your mitochondria. Like, everything from going gray... By the way, I have a gray strip forming here, which is kind of funny. Everything from balding, from developing dad bod to- I love it

sue biopsy through the thigh.[: 00:14:00

It's a six-inch needle. They pull out muscle tissue, real live tissue. It feels like you have a charley horse for a month. Super painful, super expensive, and only a handful of labs that can even process that sample, and you need to be close in proximity to that lab to do that sample. Because the minute you pull out live human tissue, it degrades the integrity of that sample.

You can't ship it and transport it around. So I think, you know, when people think about cellular health, everything out there claims cellular health, right? Think about it. Y- I, I can Google cellular health products. Cold plunge, sauna, peptides, NAD, supplements, stem cells, exosomes, red light therapy, magnetic therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy The list just goes on and on.

re your mitochondrial health [: 00:15:00

And I think the challenge in health and wellness is that there's a lot of amazing things happening, right? Everything from meditation to, to breathwork, to all the things I just listed out, but it's an unregulated market with not a lot of scientific rigor. And so our goal is to help further the science and bridge the gap between Western medicine, 'cause there's a lot of great properties in Res- Western medicine, even though, you know, the pill-popping nation is not good.

But, but then how do you start to look at this Eastern and this wellness space and start to legitimize it through real data, real understanding, and root cause, which is what we're talking about, mitochondrial and cellular

Josh: health. Well, and, and that's, you know, where I think the, the essence of modern-day technology is supplanting itself now.

We're having conversations [: 00:16:00

But how does it heal? It needs energy. Everybody knows what a dead battery is. It's no good to anything, right? And that's what you said. If it's not... So we're getting down to that root, root cause. I just think it's a funny full-circle moment that most of the root cause isn't even our DNA. It's the bugs and the critters that are working for us.

are we here today? Like, we [: 00:17:00

Because you guys have this test and this lab, and we'll talk about it. But what, what have you discovered in this process that now can take people down actionable steps rather than just saying, "Low battery, not so much." You know, 'cause that's ambiguous. You can't do much with it. You talked about scientific rigor, Shawn.

So maybe Hemal, you can- I think it's

Sean: important for Hemal-- It's, I th- I think, I think it's important for Hemal to kind of walk through the history of that with NASA and how this all came about.

Josh: Yeah

mitochondrial health in your [: 00:18:00

How are you measuring it?" And most of them say, "Well, we just ask people if they feel better." So- That doesn't seem like a very-

Josh: Yes.

Hemal: Right? There's not a very objective... That doesn't sound very objective. And so there's lots of reasons why you may feel better, and that feeling may be just a sense of the mental state you're in at that particular moment.

There is no objective way to measure mitochondrial functionality. And so this is what we were trying to short-circuit and make easier, right? And so what Sean mentioned, the gold standard in this space is the muscle biopsy. It's your DNA, um, your mitochondria that we have in the lab that we can dissect into a thousand things and, and look at the functionality of mitochondria.

long the way. And so we were [: 00:19:00

UCSD was one of them. Uh, my good friend and colleague, Brenda Rana, was the site PI at UCSD. And it was this look at a human in space, the twins, right? So the, the Kelly twins, senator from Arizona who stayed on ground and his brother who went up into space. And the idea was, could you now look at ideal, same genetics?

They're monozygotic twins, and so what happens when the same genetics is put in two different environments? And they're extreme environments. The human body on Earth has had to adapt to everything, except when you put it in space, we've never had to adapt to microgravity. And so now you have to live in an environment where there's no gravity, and crazy weird crap happens to your body, right?

d after they go on a flight. [: 00:20:00

And so NASA knew that mitochondrial dysfunction happens in space. They just didn't know how, when, and which system would be impacted And so the challenge to our group that Brenda had known we were working in the mitochondrial space, so she's like, "I know a guy." And so I, I was brought in as the guy, right?

I'm always the guy. Um, and, and we do a lot of crazy amazing stuff in the lab, and so-- and people listen. And so Brenda brought us in, and the challenge was, "We can't give you tissue," which would've been great if we could've gotten tissue from Mark and Scott from different organs and done all the, the crazy stuff we do.

o to your doctor, one of the [: 00:21:00

Yeah. Plasma is a component of blood. It has factors in it, it has biomarkers and other things that give you a sense of what your health and disease status is by looking at specific things that track to disease. There are companies that have tried to identify biomarkers for mitochondrial dysfunction.

This is like, I don't, I don't know, basically taking a, a mechanic and saying, "There's something wrong with my car, but let me tie your hands behind your back, and all I'll do is open the hood and you can look around." Right? "Tell me what's wrong with it and fix it." Not gonna be able to do anything, 'cause we don't know what the actual biomarkers are that predict what that functional, dynamic mitochondria, that's trillions of them in your body, are actually doing.

ealth and disease status, so [: 00:22:00

It's a consequence of what your mitochondria are doing. It's a consequence of your gut microbiome. It's a consequence of the environment you're exposed in. The environment has a huge implication on what kind of metabolites and exosomes and proteins appear in our plasma. It's a consequence of your happy thoughts, your sad thoughts.

Everything you are gets captured in this. And so the thought I had is why limit, right? Why try to identify a handful of markers when we have the entire you? And in this case, we had NASA, Elon Musk was sending a rocket up every couple months. We had every three months, we had a blood sample capture from the guy up in space, and then we had an equivalent blood cap-capture from the guy on, on ground.

on captured in their plasma. [: 00:23:00

They exist. People have been studying cells as a way to study brain dysfunction, heart dysfunction, liver dysfunction. So you can get these quality controlled cells that you can grow, and you can literally build a human from the ground up on a plate. So we bought cells that were neuron in nature. We bought cells that represented the immune system.

We bought cells that were muscle, heart, liver, kidney, all of the endothelium.

Sean: And Josh, believe it or not, they bought all those from me. My cells are perfect. They, they decided to take all of my cells to run the analysis.

Josh: I love it. You know, that, that's how it works, right? Yeah. You just happen to be the perfect specimen there.

Sean: That's right. Far from it, but yeah, it's, it's a crazy technology.

at multiple time points. So [: 00:24:00

So now what we can do as a human on a plate, we have the entire body captured. We can now transfer the whole person onto each one of those cells and see how f- um, ground blood samples impact mitochondrial functionality, and we can see how different time kinetics in space alter the, the functionality of mitochondria in a brain cell, in a heart cell, in a kidney cell.

And so we could now predict based on all of the stuff that an individual is making, which organ was gonna dysfunction at which time. The other cool thing about this study is we weren't just doing my mitochondrial study, they were doing 10 other studies that looked at every other system in this body.

g on this crazy test. And so [: 00:25:00

And so this was the, the early start of a MeScreen. Problem with this still is you, you need an Elon Musk, and in this case, you need someone to leave their house, go to a, a company like Quest or LabCorp, and have someone take some blood out of their, their body, uh, process that blood, put it in a, a dry ice pack, and then ship it to our lab to do the assays.

There's a lot of barriers still, right? And so could we miniaturize this technology so you eliminate all of those barriers? And so we essentially, I should have these around on my desk, but we basically have this bilayer blood card. It's a, um, a, a serum separator. So essentially it can get sent to your home.

erum into this second space. [: 00:26:00

Um, but then basically this card comes to us into the lab. We basically take a punch of that serum. We've got the entire you captured from a biochemical perspective, your metabolites, your exosomes, your proteins, everything, your environment, your thoughts, your DNA, your microbiome, all of that stuff that you're making, we have it captured on this card that can come from anywhere in the world, and we essentially run the NASA type assay, but we've optimized this for a muscle cell.

of energy, and so it becomes [: 00:27:00

And the test gives you deep insights, right? Mitochondria do a lot of things. They function, they move electrons, um, through this gradient to, to create this hydrogen gradient to make energy.

Josh: Yep.

Hemal: They make reactive oxygen species, right? And so if you're n- only measuring how the electrons are moving and you're not measuring reactive species, you don't know if it's a functional or dysfunctional regulation of energetics.

into the car, turn that car [: 00:28:00

He's gonna be able to diagnose what's wrong with that car other than those biomarker things that are just predicting something that may or may not be. And so this is where I think this, this is really gonna lead to this transformation, moving beyond do you feel better as a way to track your mitochondrial health to here's a blood sample, and this is actually what my mitochondria are doing.

It's gonna give you insights beyond what you can expect and ever wanted or thought existed, right? And this is gonna give you a way to really tweak mitochondrial health in an optimized kind of way. The test gives you four parameters that really allow you to look at core features of how your cell is dynamically shaping, shifting, and working.

st vital sign that gives you [: 00:29:00

Josh: And that, that is kind of like, that's to me, like, the, the aha here. Like, the-- We haven't been able- To see in real time, you know, when you're saying like, like there's a snapshot here. It's just like a balance sheet on your, you know, pro- if you're a, an entrepreneur, you've got different types of financial snapshots that you need.

One's a moment in time, and then what, what are the predictors along the way? Like, what can we see from if, if this, then that? And you- Yeah ... what you're describing to me feels very much into the space of, like, if we're, if we're saying that root cause is coming from here, but then we're seeing it in real time rather than a provider just saying, "How are you feeling?

How's your en- like your energy?" Right? And it's like- Yeah ... oh, it's literally there. Yeah. And so now what have you seen coming from that, Shawn?

I mean, just a quick note on [: 00:30:00

It gives them a blueprint of how to navigate out of that.

Josh: Well, that's- Well- ... that's the- Yeah ... piece, though. Like, personalization is where we're at. This is why Amazon, big pharma, and all these things, they can't get down to the person, and now we're getting down into the mitochondria of the person. And-

Sean: Yeah, but to Hemal's point, though, it's not all, it's, it's, it's not all roses for a lot of people, right?

Josh: Right. It's- Well, that's what we're saying. Like, you might feel on the outside or look like you're in optimal health, and then you're going down... Like, I know a ton of biohackers and a ton of people on everything that they're ever doing, and it's like, they might look good, but inside they are a wreck. Yeah.

e's one, this is one way to, [: 00:31:00

So Shawn, I want you to speak to that because- Yeah ... you have a lot of experience, and there's a lot of different ways that you guys are researching the actionable results out of this.

Sean: Yeah. I mean, it's twofold, right? You, you go back to what Hemal was saying. You know, people, they could be professional athletes, right?

But they could be a UFC fighter. They could be working out every day, seven days a week, looking like they're, you know, in unbelievable shape. But the truth is, at that moment in time, they, they also could be rotting away inside or hurting themselves inside. So being over-trained, overworking, overstressing your cells can create problems, right?

And so, [: 00:32:00

looking at how people are during training or during preseason, postseason, UFC is a perfect example. These guys are the toughest guys on the planet, right? They, they'll, you know, beat anyone to a pulp, but at the end of the day, look at what they're doing to themselves. They're overstressing their body.

They're dropping weight to make a fight. Like, there's a lot of stress that goes on in there. And so what we're finding is that, you know, outside aesthetics, the way people look versus aging on the inside are two very different things. And so when you look at how to best explain this in layman's terms to individuals, think of us like a bullshit detector.

Is what you're [: 00:33:00

Did I hit delta? What, what's going on? Why did I sleep bad? What can I do to help correct that?" Well, think of yourselves as the same. We are simply measuring whatever you're doing in your life. Our job is not necessarily to determine what you should do, even though over time we were gonna get smarter and smarter and smarter to give you an actionable plan that makes sense based on what you're experiencing or how you score.

ng you whether or not that's [: 00:34:00

And so when you look at our test, it is meant to be a repeat test. Based on your baseline score, how are you doing today, you know, at your age, your current situation? And let's assess that again over maybe 90, 120, maybe every six months, and look at what interventions you're doing and if they're working for you or, or if they're not, right?

And simply put, if your mitochondria are performing bad or you have issues in your mitochondria, you're not healthy in certain respects. If your mitochondria perform exceptional and you're on one of the higher profiles of our test, you're healthy. Keep doing what you're doing, right? And keep it optimized And so they can tell a lot about the individual.

ut a year ago that it really [: 00:35:00

Because of the environmental conditions or the stressors that you put in place prior to doing that test. That's why when you get blood work, you're supposed to be fasted for what? 12 hours. Nothing but, but water before you take the test because they're trying to get you leveled out to get the most accurate reading of your blood.

Honestly, if you're gonna get blood work, you should get blood work probably done three times in the course of a week to, to run a comparative to make sure that you're seeing, you know, an equal result across the three. With our test, that is not the case. Function testing does not fluctuate hour to hour, day to day.

e test, right? A blood sugar [: 00:36:00

Hemal: Yeah.

Sean: Your cells take time to shift, and that's why, you know, I look on supplement companies on Amazon, and someone will write a bad review on a supplement a week later after receiving the product. I'm like, "That doesn't make any sense." How could you possibly state whether that product worked for that individual after one week of usage?

And so I go back to the bullshitter, bullshit detector concept, which is we're simply telling you over time how you're fairing in your overall cellular and mitochondrial health. And so really people should get this done the minute they're born as a baseline establishment and look at it over time. But back to what Hemal had said a year ago.

ou're born to the minute you [: 00:37:00

What is the one thing in your life that changes every second of every day from the minute you're born to the minute you die? It's your metabolism, your metabolic health. It's constantly changing and evolving, right? And we are looking at real time assessment of where you are today. That's function testing.

And so there, the key to this future of health and wellness is all gonna be around biometric data. Mm-hmm. And it's not just our test, right? Our test coupled alongside a full blood panel Coupled alongside of gut health and microbiome testing, coupled alongside of a genetic test, right? There's no reason that people shouldn't get one test, but you don't need to do it repeatedly.

rounded biometric assessment [: 00:38:00

Let's look at baseline data, do interventions, and then assess whether they're effective or not, and if they are effective, keep doing those interventions to continue to optimize your overall health and wellness. That's where this whole thing goes in the longevity space.

Josh: Well, and I'm glad you're bringing light to that because I, I have a lot of conversations around this too, is we're not talking about deficiencies.

r you're seeing in real time [: 00:39:00

And that's so critical in this day and age, not because it's personalized, but because when people see it in action, they're more apt to doing it anyway or not doing it based on the results. 100% of the time- Well, well- ... when I do a lab and somebody sees it, like gluten, like, "Hey, look, it's bad for you. Stop eating gluten."

They're like, "Okay, cool." Otherwise, it's like, "Gluten's bad for you over here. Let's stop," and then y- the brain doesn't think that way. So y- I love that this lab and this test gives us that measurable result to give us the actionable items, but also allows us to understand it's working

Sean: or not working. But think of it like this.

king peptides or supplements [: 00:40:00

And it's like, no, no, no, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not doing something positive to you down at the cellular level. And I'm gonna use a very basic example to try to connect with people on this. If I go and eat seven bananas right now, okay? I don't jump up and down and say, "Oh my gosh, this potassium feels so good going through my body."

Okay? But you know you're getting optimum levels of potassium when eating those bananas for your daily intake, and so your cells are the same. You may not be physically feeling any different when taking something, whether it's NAD supplements- Go doing red light, doing hyperbaric oxygen, but it could be working for you down at the cellular level in a favorable way.

, adhering to that protocol. [: 00:41:00

Your health and your wellness and your wellbeing is mind, it's body, and it's spirit, right? It's all three. It's connecting all three. And Hemal mentioned this in the beginning of this interview, in this discussion around what is the core essence of your biochemistry and your, your proteins, your enzymes, everything about you.

It's also how you feel. That's captured in your serum. That's really powerful because at the end of the day, stress plays a critical role in a lot of things. We all know that, right? Anxiety, depression, if you just lost a loved one, like there's things going on in people's day-to-day lives that drastically impact their overall health and wellness.

not gonna name individuals, [: 00:42:00

Josh: Body. It's body. A lot of people look at body only It's the body. It's body. No, I get it. Yeah. And that's why I, I'm, I've been drawn to mind-body medicine, to energetics in different ways. I've studied with indigenous tribes and the people that are doing it in modern day, is what you said, Shawn, is holistic health.

It's like if you're looking at it from all those angles, but then I, what I love about how that interplay works is it all goes, it goes both ways. It's, it's bi-directional, right? But like if you have a peak emotional experience that's causing you to have something, it's going to show in a lab that's supportive of your cellular health.

happen in a millisecond that [: 00:43:00

Hemal: Yeah. We, we did a, a funny story. So we did a, a pilot study on ayahuasca where we were capturing people before their journey, midweek, and then at the end of the week. And ayahuasca, I mean, the literature reports that it should have dynamic, dramatic effects on mitochondria. We saw that. With the ME screen you can see this insane rise in mitochondrial ATP- Um, it crashes eventually, so it's something that you gotta keep doing.

But one of the things that we noticed when these cards came into the lab, um, it must mess with your coordination, right? There's a, a box that you have to get the blood into. I swear there are so many cards where they got blood everywhere except the box they were supposed to put it into. Yes. Um,

Sean: [: 00:44:00

Josh: There, there is definitely for sure. Uh- Yeah ... my trip in, in Shipibo Healers in Peru, like, uh, the coordination part, I can't imagine trying to figure out blood stains.

Sean: But, but in all seriousness, right? We're talking about, you know, health and wellness, and we're talking about, you know, Western medicine and chronic disease, but this movement with psilocybin, with psychedelics, with ibogaine, with ayahuasca, with dietas, just eating raw plant from the, the jungle, there's real, real science behind this.

Yeah. I mean, even the fact of what just was released with the government and the, um, the Trump administration removing, uh, cannabis, right? And marijuana. Now it's a Schedule 3, I believe, right? So the research can start to prevail in a big way, and I, you know, I am seeing unbelievable... A lot of this is anecdotal.

that have gone through these [: 00:45:00

This is real stuff. So I think what Hemal is, and I have been talking about is how do we start to enter that space? And even though we've done these smaller studies with ayahuasca, I mean, and they're doing amazing things on meditation, let's look at the long haul of that, right? Like if you're- Yeah ... you do a week retreat, where is the end point of that?

any days a week do you go in [: 00:46:00

Everybody's claiming this whole cellular health thing. It's like, let's start to tone that down and hone in as to what is the right dosing, what is the right, uh, usage, right? How often, how long do you have to do these things? So I think the science is gonna prevail, and, and I think health and wellness is gonna become a really amazing field once stuff starts to get more and more legitimized and we start to actually incorporate some of the Western- strategies, which is looking at dosing, looking at efficacy, looking at compliance, right?

Making sure things are safe. I mean, the, the amount of peptides that people are ordering online, I mean, you have no idea what's in it, right? It's crazy.

Josh: Yeah. I'm, I'm- So I just think that it's gonna evolve ... I'm the compounder that's in the middle of it too, like looking at it from, you know, research-based, all, like this whole health and wellness and, and longevity like realm is...

s very Wild West. And I know [: 00:47:00

You know, we, we talk in functional upstream/downstream a lot, right? We're-- But in this case, downstream is what we're seeing. We're seeing like, what do these interventions do for your cellular health in real time? And that's super important and critical, and where I think we're gonna start catching up in the, the space of instead of removing some sickness, is restoring some balance and then seeing what that quantitatively looks like from a subjective point of view and an objective point of

Sean: view.

ht? Yeah. This is a, I think [: 00:48:00

And so it's moving in a way that when utilized correctly, I think it's gonna further the science a- across everything health, uh, including chronic disease and root cause research to help solve real problems. And so, you know, we're doing some amazing things. Uh, we just had a study that was accepted, uh, for a major, uh, conference in hematology with the leading cancer institution in the world, MD Anderson, looking at rare leukemias.

se, things like Alzheimer's, [: 00:49:00

Living with someone with Alzheimer's, ask any caretaker, family member, loved one. It, it is detrimental to the family. And if you can start to solve these problems and figure out how to- slow the progression or the onset of chronic disease, or maintain it or minimize it while you're living so you have a better quality of life and you're not shaking when you have Parkinson's, and you could go play with your kids instead.

This is where this goes. And I think when we have a conversation five years from now, 10 years from now, it's a whole new world that we're living in, and science is gonna prevail alongside of these new wellness types of things. I am a firm believer that peptides are a game changer, right? There is no doubt that there is a ton of utility in peptides.

t? Let's look at more of the [: 00:50:00

I think it's gonna be really exciting. We wanna be a part of that. Think of us like Switzerland. We're not here to do anything but provide insights and actionable insights for the individual, for research and academic institutions, and for all those wellness products out there and services out there that are trying to validate that their product or service is showing a physiological benefit down at the cellular level.

We're here to help them and support them to generate that data. We do all sorts of research on outcomes and effectiveness research. We do academic institutional research, and we provide this, this assessment tool for clinics and for consumers and patients directly.

Josh: I love it. So that was a question I have.

mation when they do the lab? [: 00:51:00

Sean: Nothing. No, I'm kidding.

Josh: What insights are they getting?

Sean: I'm kidding. No, a lot. Yeah, a lot. And it's getting smarter, right? That's the whole-

Josh: Stuff ... point. Yeah. What kind of stuff can we talk about here?

Hemal: So, I mean, it- Make sure-

y- like I mentioned, right, it's four parts of a, of a mitochondrial core understanding. And so the first part are mitochondria have a multi-membrane system. Inside the inner membrane are these complexes of proteins that form what's called the electron transport chain.

Sean: Yeah.

Hemal: Scientists are pretty dumb at naming things, so it transports electrons, so let's call it the electron transport chain.

It's a chain of proteins. And so it moves electrons, um, through this, um, complex of proteins, and it- what it does is it creates a hydrogen gradient. And so in order to understand mitochondrial functionality, you have to know how this hydrogen gradient is created, how the electrons are moving, which complexes- Yeah

are feeding into this And so you have to be able to functionally look at that element,

Josh: right? You can't look at

and say, "Well, complex one [: 00:52:00

So you have to know functionally how things are dynamically moving through that system. And so the first part of our test is essentially a mitochondrial stress test that we do. So we put someone's basic, uh, them onto the cell, and we see how the, the basal respiration, so mitochondria respire because they're breathing oxygen, right?

This was the early source of how oxygen's handled. And so as they're respiring and breathing this oxygen, you can see how there's an upper downward shift in mitochondrial functionality. So if there's something hyper-activating in someone's biochemistry that turns mitochondria on, we'll see this baseline respiration move from even keel to higher.

ff, but they're taking a lot [: 00:53:00

Sean: Tends to be seen up a lot, right, Hemal? They'll-

Hemal: Yeah ...

Sean: they'll get on something and then get on another thing or, you know- Sure

there's too much going on without staying

Josh: to the- The soup du jour.

Sean: Yeah.

Hemal: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and when I, when I notice it's high, I'll always ask, "So let me guess, you're on like 20 supplements. You take about 15, 30 pills a day?" You're spot on, right? Most of them are, are really heavy into this thing. Um, if you need that many things to balance your body, go do something else.

Just go stand in the sun for half an hour, right? That may do a lot of those other things. Um, so that's where the test starts. Are you up or down? If you're down, that could be a good thing, right? One of the things we're seeing is that hyper-optimized individuals actually shut all of their energy down when they don't need it, and so they actually become energy sort of compromising, right, in this situation.

u're struggling with chronic [: 00:54:00

So the next part of the test, then we start probing different enzymes within the mitochondrion. So could you block a, a particular enzyme that makes ATP to test the efficiency of the mitochondrion? So we have an efficiency test that we do. And this gives you some idea of whether the structure is competent, whether everything's being coupled and tightly regulated or not, and it gives you insights into cell biology that you may not completely infer from functionality of mitochondria Leaky mitochondria could suggest that there's some dysfunction happening in membranes and other systems downstream or foundational that you haven't thought about.

, right? And so we basically [: 00:55:00

It gives you-- you may also see a rise and you say, "Wow, this is amazing," but then until you look at some dysfunctional element, you don't know if that's actually making energy or if it's making reactive species that then start damaging your cells, and so you have to have other components to the test.

Second part of the test looks at two basic things. We make energy with glycolysis or we make it with mitochondria. What's your balance of the two? Are you making more with mitochondria, more with glycolysis? Is it shifting? Is it dynamically shaping? Majority of the individuals are fuel flexible and they can make equal energy through both.

cause their mitochondria are [: 00:56:00

Your mitochondria are handling oxygen. Oxygen is a reactive molecule. If it's not handled the right way, um, electrons will slough off and you make free radicals. You make superoxide, which will then make superoxide, um, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl. There's a lot of nitric oxide in your mitochondria, so you make peroxynitrite.

All of these things travel very short distances and they start damaging your lipids, your proteins, your DNA, your RNA, and mitochondria everywhere in your cell. And so if you have dysfunctional mitochondria and you're getting this burst of reactive species, they're causing a lot of accumulated damage over time.

then you start going sort of [: 00:57:00

And the stress condition is the working stressed mitochondria. And so this allows you to see the two situations. When you're resting, are you truly resting or are you bleeding off some of these things that will cause damage? And then when you're challenged, are you creating more of this load or is your system optimized where it buffers all of this, this oxidant potential?

ochondrial network lights up.[: 00:58:00

When we adopt your biochemistry onto that cell, we can see how this network is dynamically shaping and shifting. And so the AI will give you basically a predictive network dynamic stability score. So is your network being stable, or is it falling apart and not responding the right way to stressors? If you look at every mitochondria in the endpoint cell of an individual that has chronic disease, non-communicable chronic disease, heart disease, um, neurodegeneration, one of the hallmark features you see is the mitochondria become isolated.

They become separated from the rest of the network. When they're separated, they're no longer around their symbiotic relationship that they have internally as well. They're no longer on their social dynamic network, and they can't buffer toxins and stressors, and this is a way to suggest that your network is not behaving the way it should.

mic structural elements that [: 00:59:00

Um, I think very basic about cell biology. There's, there-- The first thing you have to fix in most chronic diseases, I think, is the membrane.

Sean: Mm.

Hemal: Um, I think every disease is a membrane disease which ultimately manifests in an energetic compromise, right? But, but we can't measure membranes. We can measure energy, and so membranes become sort of this, this lost thing.

And so I really think that foundational to chronic disease is supporting your membrane. You know, I, I've talked to people, what's the most long-lived organism on planet Earth? Any ideas?

Josh: Hmm. In

Hemal: the ocean.

Josh: Okay. Sounds

years old, and [: 01:00:00

It has this really hard shell. The ability of it to retain an inside that's perfectly clear versus what's on the outside, all the stressors, all the pressures, all the environmental stressors that come into the system, that thing never sees it 'cause it doesn't open that giant shell to survive, right? It, it has a limited capacity.

Our membranes are the same thing. Unfortunately, we're not a hard shell. We're a soft membrane that has it. But once those membranes start to decline- Your inside starts to see the outside, and it starts to react in a negative kind of way. The longer you keep that barrier functionality, the longer you're gonna live, the longer you're gonna have this longevity resilience phenotype.

s and [: 01:01:00

You need those things to build bulk. The fancy stuff can come later once you're optimized and you need fancy lipids to, to do crazy signaling kinds of things. Once you have that foundational support, the next thing that most people struggle with if that doesn't fix the problem is death, dying, decay.

These things build up in our cells, and they gunk up the, the system that needs to, to digest and eat and transform and reutilize. And so as we get older, as we have chronic diseases, autophagy, mitophagy pathways get deactivated, and this leads to this muck up in the system. So you have to do things that turn these pathways back on.

tta get that, that autophagy [: 01:02:00

One of the things we live and die with is this really high oxygen-rich environment. It creates molecular fire in our cells. We have to be able to balance this. Most of us have endogenous antioxidant systems that can keep all the free radicals at bay. Sometimes you don't, and so you need exogenous support to then balance the antioxidant, um, system that may be lacking.

And so membrane, mitophagy, autophagy, um, reactive species, you can fix those three things, I think you optimize health in a dynamic, unique kind of way. And it all starts with understanding your mitochondria, 'cause our test gives you elements of all three of those components.

lams, and you should be good?[: 01:03:00

Hemal: Or just surround yourself in a giant

Josh: clam shell. Don't, just get, get the, get the... Yeah, or just, just close your shell and be in a bubble for the rest of the world- That's, that's right ... and none of this toxic environment will ever hurt you.

Sean: Yeah, but that is an interesting fact, right? To think that the clam, it can live that long.

That's nuts.

Hemal: It's crazy.

Sean: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: Well, this has been... Where can people learn more about- the test and we're gonna give access to people in our community how we can get this test, how we can look at this, how we- they can get structured, guided support, 'cause I think that's important.

Sean: Sure.

Josh: Yeah, no- Love- I loved how you got, Hemal, you got down to, like, there's leaky everything these days, right?

, this is a practical way to [: 01:04:00

So I love that, 'cause it d- takes away the ambiguous nature of what we talk about when we talk about these, these processes. Yeah. You're actually seeing it, so I, I really appreciate

Sean: that.

Josh: Yeah. So Shawn, where, where do people go to, to learn more about screen and Versa-

Sean: Yeah. I mean, me- mescreen.com. Me, like for mitochondrial efficiency, screen.com.

Mescreen.com can give you a lot of education. We come from the Western medicine education world. We believe that we have to continue to relay that message and teach everyone the importance of cellular health and mitochondrial health. The good news is it's happening, right? The, the conversations are happening everywhere I turn.

odcaster's talking about it, [: 01:05:00

Look, there are 8.2 billion people on the planet, okay? Give or take. Every single one of us are different. The way our DNA, the way we metabolize, our enzymes, our proteins, we're all different. This whole blanket selling and blanket marketing that, "You should do this. You should do that," no. H- how do you know that I need that, right?

So why don't we understand you as the individual? So this test is being offered all through clinics around the world. Anyone around the world can get it. They can order it from us directly, and we can ship it to them globally because the sample lasts for 90-plus days. So once it dries out, you then send it back to our lab.

We take pride in that. It's [: 01:06:00

We have PhDs and lab technicians and a great team behind this. We're furthering the science, and we're working with clinics, so longevity clinics, biohacking clinics, med spas, functional medicine, integrative medicine- And we're working directly with patients, and then we also have the research arm. So anybody that wants to further assess their product or service, we assist them in getting that done as well.

Josh: Yeah. I love, I love that you're backing this by science and research, right? It's not just a direct to consumer, "This is good for you," like thing. It's like we're really building this for the way and manner in which we need to adopt it into our scientific space. I onboarded as a provider not... just recently, and so the onboarding process was smooth.

r team is great. Like, so we [: 01:07:00

These are the things that are important for the community to, for people to be able to take action items on their own health and get it down to that personalized. We went all the way down to the microscopic spot, the cellular health. But not just saying it as health, like we can see it. So thank you for enlightening the process, your story.

uch more affordable, so much [: 01:08:00

Like there's no six-inch needle in your thigh. You gotta go to the clinic, spend $20,000 to figure this out. They're a couple hundred bucks, gets people to the next step, which is actionable. And I think, to me, that is the true measure of where we're going with the future of medicine, which is personalized and which is moving towards actionable things we can do to heal the body, not just mask the symptom of what's underneath.

So this has been amazing conversation. If... I'm gonna ask you both one rapid fire question, and maybe you can just come with whatever the top, top of your mind. Uh, we'll start with Shawn first. Shawn, what do you want people to know coming out of this conversation?

Sean: Embrace change. Embrace yourself to, to get a new metric, a new data set.

't know what microbiome was. [: 01:09:00

So if you're gonna take your health and wellness serious, you should really invest in it, and you invest in it through getting- The testing, the, the data done, and then doing interventions and measuring it from there. So just take the leap of faith and, and get into health and wellness if you're always on the fence or not sure.

Start with testing.

Josh: And I, I totally see what you said as what I've been also k- teaching for a very long time, is health is your greatest investment, right? And so what Virgil said it, like the best wealth is your health. Mm-hmm. And so you gotta t- y- y- the insurance does not pay for this because it's paying for you to be less sick.

h. So thank you for bringing [: 01:10:00

Hemal: Yeah, I mean, one of the things we're thinking is a, um, a, a next phase of this, and we're looking at non-dilutable funding to do this, is could this actually start predicting early disease, right?

So could you take this test as a way to know if you're gonna get Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, other things that are mitochondrial-driven in the future? And I think there's a path to this. If energetics becomes the key and linchpin to all of this, understanding this early could be a very unique indicator of how you progress down from a health to a diseased state.

And if you could know this and time this, you could prevent that progression from health to a diseased state.

e're truly trying to get to, [: 01:11:00

If you do something, this is what you'll be like, you know, and looking at that. Amazing. Thank you, guys.

Sean: Cool. Thank you. It's

Josh: been an amazing conversation. I appreciate you both being on. I can't wait to, uh, have a round two at some point when we start talking about the research and what it's showing and how we're moving this forward.

So thank you guys both for showing up in the world in the way and manner in which you do. Um, we'll, we'll be putting all the links in our resources so we can actually get people to see this for themselves. So I appreciate you both. This has been an amazing, amazing episode. I'm so grateful and happy for you both for being able to be on the show.

Appreciate you both. Thanks. Appreciate it. All right, guys, this one's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed. Till next time, stay well

Sean: Thanks for joining me today on

million [: 01:12:00

Whether you're a practitioner or someone ready to reclaim your health, visit rxtowellness.com for free resources to begin your journey. Together, let's go beyond the pills and co-create a world of vibrant health and true healing. Until next time, live better and stay well