The longevity industry, comprised of businesses invested in promoting longer, healthier lives, is growing at an accelerating rate, with an influx of biotechnology startups and longevity centers. One of the industry’s early pioneers is YPO member, Next Health Founder and Medical Director, Dr. Darshan Shah.
For the past 10 years, the surgeon-turned-longevity entrepreneur has moved from traditional Western medicine with its disease-focused paradigm to a more preventive and personal approach. He explains, ”I want to get people healthy, not just treat people with surgery and pills.” As a world-renowned international speaker on the topics of health, wellness and longevity, Shah has shared his message with celebrities, athletes as well as many business leaders, including YPO members, who might not prioritize their health until it’s too late.
The health risks of managerial stress
Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows that managerial stress can take years off the lives of CEOs. After 30 years of practicing surgery and setting up medical and surgical centers throughout California, Shah experienced firsthand the health risks of managerial stress. He earned his medical degree at the age of 21, becoming one of the youngest doctors in the United States. But in his words, by the time he was 40, he was a “sick doctor.”
He says he was about 50 pounds overweight, on three blood pressure medications, suffered from joint pain and slept 3-4 hours a night. His son was just turning two and his wife was pregnant with their daughter.
“I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘You know the way you’re headed Darshan, you’re not going to survive to see these kids graduate from high school.’ I thought to myself, I have to make a change.”
Moving health to the next level
With its focus on disease, Western medicine was not the solution, Shah realized. In 2016, he took a year off to learn an approach to health and wellness different from his medical training. He attended nutrition and functional medicine conferences and even became a personal trainer.
It took about eight months, Shah says, but he completely turned his health around, losing the weight, eliminating his medications and, he says, regaining his energy.
“I also realized this is the business that I needed to be in,” Shah says.
By the end of that year, he opened the first Next Health center in West Hollywood, California, USA. “I left surgery to blaze into this blue ocean, a new category of medicine that I called health optimization and longevity, adding health span in lifespan,” says Shah, adding that the pandemic accelerated growth as more people had the time and resources to investigate health, with YPO members among the early adopters.
Today, Next Health has five centers in the U.S. and is expanding globally. But for Shah, it remains above all a passion project. “We are on a mission to help people get healthy, stay alive longer and enjoy the years in their life. Over the past 100 years, humanity has been able to extend lifespan. But what we’ve become bad at is increasing our healthspan. We’re adding years to our life, but we’re not adding health to those years.”
Essential health KPIs
For Shah, it is important to set the foundation of good health before introducing someone to more advanced longevity treatments, such as therapeutic plasma exchange or ozone therapy. “If you don’t change basic habits, like optimizing sleep, nothing else will matter. So, the first thing is to become the CEO of your own health and fix your health habits.” He adds that “once you get those aspects set, then you can start talking about longevity, anti-aging and looking younger.”
To start, he recommends regular blood tests of essential indicators. “When running your own businesses, you use key performance indicators to check how your business is doing,” Shah says. “All of us have KPIs for our own body, and these are called biomarkers.” But, Shah adds, most people “outsource their health” to a primary care physician who checks the results of limited blood tests once a year, missing an opportunity to go deeper and identify for the potential for disease.
Here are the essential KPIs Shah recommends for monitoring 2-4 times a year:
- Blood tests:
- HbA1c – A measure of your average glucose level over the last three months; an indicator of insulin resistance.
- Triglycerides – A marker of overall metabolic health.
- APOb – A measure of all of the cholesterol that puts you at a higher risk of heart attack.
- hsCRP – A measure of systemic inflammation.
- Vitamin D – A critical vitamin that is deficient in most people.
- TSH – A measure of thyroid function.
- Testosterone – A critical hormone can become deficient in men and women.
- Estradiol – A critical hormone that affects the health of men and women.
- ALT – A measure of liver health, often elevated with fatty liver disease or by too much alcohol consumption.
- From a bioimpedance scale
- Skeletal muscle mass.
- Total body fat percentage.
- Blood pressure
The 80/20 rule for overall wellness
It would be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information you get by following your health KPIs. To help simplify the process, Shah relies on the Pareto principle, focusing on the 20% of information that gives 80% of the result. Using this approach, he developed “The Wellness Wheel,” a tool for measuring and improving overall wellness. “By breaking down health optimization into its various components, this tool empowers you to focus on specific areas that need improvement to achieve a more balanced and fulfilling life,” says Shah.
He identifies three pillars of health — nutrition, movement and sleep. His top tips include:
Nutrition – Avoid processed food and sugar; try intermittent fasting; stick to organic as much as possible. Sugar is particularly harmful. It causes diabetes and directly poisons your cells by damaging cellular pathways while destroying your gut bacteria and causing your immune system to fail.
Movement – If you have limited time, strength training is your No. 1 priority. But don’t overdo it. Too much exercise can lead to inflammation and joint damage. The minimum effective amount of exercise is 45-90 minutes a week.
Sleep – Track the quality of sleep for early detection of issues such as possible sleep apnea. Upon awakening, physically step outside and look out at the sky to set your circadian rhythm.
As Shah continues to monitor the pathways of cellular aging and test leading-edge technologies in longevity, he stresses that everyone, no matter their age, can take an active role in their wellness journey starting with improving their health routine and proactively diagnosing potential disease by tracking key biomarkers.
“It is never too late. Many people, especially business leaders, are sick and tired of being sick and tired. A lot of times, the science seems too overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be. Start with introducing small changes, even the smallest adjustments can create a ripple effect of positive change so you can take control of your health.”
