149: Question Everything in the Sick Care Matrix – with Dr. Igor Gary Shlifer

From Russia with Love

This episode’s guest is Dr. Gary Shlifer. Born in the former Soviet Union, Dr. Gary emigrated at age three to the United States with his parents, who somehow escaped the totalitarian communism embedded in the country at that time. His parents fell in love with America right away, finding a haven for liberty, free speech, and an environment that fostered new ideas. 

Not only are Dr. Gary’s parents politically brave – but they are also intellectually brave. Both were already physicians when they left Russia, and both of their healing careers greatly influenced Dr. Gary. They started teaching Gary at an early age to “question everything,” which is what Gary proceeded to do as he entered medical school. 

A story Dr. Gary shares here is how he won the award for “the biggest complainer” towards the end of his medical residency. Why? Because Gary questioned everything. He asked a lot of “why” questions, and sadly, the medical “powers that be” labeled him a “complainer.” 

His commitment to living life questioning everything is why Gary became a D.O instead of an M.D. If you don’t know what studies are required to become a Doctor of Osteopathy, listen to this episode. As someone who questions everything, Gary forsakes the group-think, herd mentality of the allopathic healthcare industry. Instead, he carves out a more individualistic, unconventional, preventative-focused medical practice. Becoming a D.O. is a crucial part of his journey.  

Early in his training, Dr. Gary displayed a gift for making personal connections with patients. His bedside manner is top-notch, which also makes him a fun and informative podcast guest.

Dr. Gary is a board-certified internal medicine physician specializing in preventative care, nutrition, metabolism, and anti-aging medicine.  

He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where he now practices medicine today. Through his companies and community outreach, Dr. Gary promotes healthy living, eating, and lifestyle practices. 

In this podcast, we cover:

• Dr. Gary’s fascinating journey to becoming a doctor
• “Sick Care” vs. “Health Care”
• D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy) vs. M.D. (Medical Doctor)
• Some of the unhealthy practices still being done in traditional medicine
• What is “ancestral healthcare” and how it can improve your health
• Dr. Shlifer’s views on the mRNA “vaccine” and Dr. Fauci
• The tests Dr. Shlifer uses to find out what is going on with a patient
• How we can take technology and evolve healthily instead of devolving into further illness

Why D.O.’s bring more to the patient’s table

Dr. Gary attended the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine in Glendale. He looks back now on his training and realizes that particular schooling opened his mind to things like meditation, manipulative medicine, and herbal medicine – many different modalities he includes in his patient care today. 

Dr. Gary says, “That made me more open-minded, and I think it (D.O. training) makes osteopathic physicians more open-minded. Some of the stuff that’s considered fringe or “woo-woo” or whatever you want to call it is actually a part of our training. Some doctors end up going that path. There’s a lot of functional medicine doctors that are osteopaths.” 

Sometimes a doctor with D.O. training ends up following a traditional M.D. path. Dr. Gary says, “that’s okay.” He elaborates, “We need doctors and more healthcare providers. It’s not about poo-pooing one or the other. It’s just about understanding that there is a system in place. And this system is driven to make doctors into employees that follow rules that make money for insurance companies and other big corporations.”

“And then there are a few of us that are like, ‘let me do it my way.’” 

Dr. Gary’s Covid Treatment 

During the pandemic, Dr. Gary has been out there promoting the well-known preventative supplementation that many allopathic care professionals have downplayed or flat-out ignored: vitamin D3 with K2 along with Zinc supplements. 

Vitamin C is also one of Dr. Gary’s main recommendations for Covid. 

Together, these protocols have proven to be effective for his patients. On the podcast, he says, “It’s been overwhelmingly proven that if your Vitamin D is greater than 30 or even closer to like a physiological level of 45, you don’t go to the hospital.”

Dr. Gary tells our host Wade Lightheart that these supplements are not promoted because they are incredibly cheap. In other words – there’s no money to be made in promoting them or drugs like Ivermectin (which is also cheap).  

“What we’re talking about here cuts into that bottom line,” said Dr. Gary. He didn’t hold back, going on to say, “That’s why Dr. Fauci doesn’t want to talk about it because it gets in the way of his money-making.” 

You can tell Dr. Gary truly cares about his patients. He’s a maverick in the medical field, not afraid to speak his mind AND question everything. That’s why you don’t want to miss this episode. Biohackers, alternative medicine geeks, and people fed up with traditional medicine should tune in because Dr. Gary has a lot to say about finding real, lasting health and wellness. Stop managing your symptoms and listen to what Dr. Gary has to offer!

Check out this episode – questioning the healthcare system could change your life!

Episode Resources: 
Check out more about Dr. Gary
Sapien.org
The Sapien Podcast
Dr. Gary on Instagram
Evolve Healthcare on Instagram

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. Wade T. Lightheart here from BiOptimizers with another edition of the awesome health podcast and Live YouTube station. We're really excited about This because we have Dr. Gary Shifler. There We go. Dr. Gary Shifler is here.

 Wade Lightheart: I'm going to read his credentials for us. He's a board certified internal medicine physician. We're gonna talk about what that means. Specializing in preventative care, nutrition and metabolism and anti-aging medicine. Dr. Shifler is the founder of Evolve health care In Los Angeles, a multi speciality integrated medicine clinic focused on disease prevention and lifestyle optimization. He's the co-founder of Sapien and organized focused whoop Susan, an organization focused on promoting health education and advancing health information technology. After immigrating to America from Russia at the age of three, Dr. Shifler grew up in the San Fernando valley where he returned after his medical training to build his practice through his companies and community outreach. The doctor works to promote his message of healthy living, eating, and lifestyle practices while developing into a leader in his community. Gary, welcome to the show.

 New Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I love it. That sounds pretty good, huh? I always find it

 Wade Lightheart: Funny because like we get these little readouts here and, and you know, you go, I always read through them and I try to be as radio show announcer as I possibly can, but it's so interesting to compress one's lifetime of work into three paragraphs where you're trying to hit these bullet points and it never tells the real story I'd like to, before we get into everything that you're doing today is to kind of get into and we'll can drop this to get into how you went from an immigrant, from Russia to a doctor, traveling around trans forming people's lives from a preventative and optimization kind of program. I mean,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I have to credit my parents. I mean, look, my parents grew up in a, like, as, as difficult as this world and this country is right now to live in. And I do think it's becoming increasingly challenging that world that they came from is horrifying. You know, and I grew up hearing the stories of communism the stories of the USSR and, and, you know, my mom was one of the few physicians in Russia and she was Jewish. Like there was few Jewish physicians and there were few females and my grandfather was very instrumental in getting her into medical school there and she's a natural healer. And I think I really I got that from her, like naturally you know what, they moved two little kids to Russia. I mean, from Russia to America, she went back to school to become a podiatrist for a number of years. [inaudible] Yeah, my dad was born in Uzbekistan. My mom was born in Moscow after he served in the army. He moved to Moscow. They met, you know, back then. And probably even now, you know, it was very important to, for Jewish affluent families to marry together to keep that so that they got connected you know, and they had an opportunity to immigrate it was part of we actually political refugees. It was part A time where we were getting Jews out of out of Russia. Did you go through the Israel route? We did it. We went through the Italy route. So there, yeah,

 Wade Lightheart: I've got a number of Russian friends. I've got actually a long list of Russian friends for whatever reason. I get connected with the Russians. And I know there's a couple of routes that people were using to get out of the political situation. And I'm a big fan of reading the Gulag archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And I think for anyone who thinks that this experiment in socialism going to communism and this whole prospect of being woke of where this goes, this already existed. This happened at the Bolshevik revolution and Salto Nissen, who was part of what we would call the woke group, ends up in prison after fighting in the war, getting things and loses horrific life and comes to the realization. He's actually put himself into this situation. What's it like before you get into, like, from what your parents told you and stuff, what is it like working under a totalitarian regime and then what's it like to kind of escape to, to have an opportunity where you can speak your mind? You can say what's not [inaudible] and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. For them like, yeah. I mean, these stories are probably in embedded into your upbringing that led to you also becoming a doctor. That's

 Dr. Gary Shifler: The whole story. I mean, my parents, my parents just always questioned everything. For them it was, it was a dream to come to America. It was a dream to be able to like raise their kids, to do what they wanted to do. What's scary now is I grew up with hearing about it, right. I grew up and I think to get to your first question, like, why am I doing what I'm doing? Cause they told me to do. They told me you're smart, Gary, you can figure it out. You don't need to be told what to do, go get your education, learn what's out there. Take it seriously, but never let someone tell you what to do because you're at, if what they're saying makes sense to it. Wonder if there's a question it, so that, that's where I come from. I, I guess my, my wife always says like I have like a punk rock attitude about it.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Like I do what makes sense to me. And I consider myself smart enough to integrate what I've learned and apply it now. But I, to answer your other question, it's, it's really scary for my parents to watch this unfold. And I, a lot of immigrant patients from, you know, from Armenia and from her and from Iran and from Georgia and from all these other countries and the young people that don't know the history whose parents weren't able to sort of re like put it in their brain, where they came from, whether they were too young or the parents are busy, whatever those people are following this woke attitude. And this is a tough topic to talk about, but like, it's scary for my parents to watch the society. They came to love and found success in and raise their kids and going back to where they Left. They're like, why did we leave? What are we right Here for the freedom? We're here to be able to stand next to someone and disagree about a political view. And it's like, cool. And like, let's go have a coffee, right.

 Wade Lightheart: And let's have a discussion and let's, let's throw things. It's okay if we don't agree or we have a different perspective. And that's what makes a free speech being a free society. And now we have what I call. I wrote a book about this a number of years ago called it's called the rise of the digital Republic. And I was a, kind of a traveling nomad, digital nomad, running my online business for 10 for like until a few years ago, when it came down here, I traveled the world for 10 years, lived all around the world and, and dealt with people from all different types of cultures. We'd sit down, there'd be any given time. There'd be 20 people from different cultures. And now I would hear the stories. I would find out what it was like and why they moved and why they took this.

 Wade Lightheart: And what I recognized is that in today's world, we went from, you know, tribal life, which was filled with warfare disease and destruction. Then we moved into kind of city states, which was filled with now cities going against each other, like, you know Troy and Athens or Sparta and Athens, there are all these historical things that kind of in this vagueness we don't get. And then it moved into the nation states, which up, and all of these things are just bored for years. And then, oh, and then the great empires of, you know, Rome and the Ottoman empire or the tar tar. So the Russian empire, all of these things, you know, you can go to the Portuguese, the Spanish, you could go down to south America, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Maya, all these different warring nations and tribal aspects. But then most of those were determined by language culture and, you know, natural barriers, oceans, rivers, mountains, land masses, but what's emerged in this incredible digital technology world. As I said, this is a rise of the digital public. So it would be talking to some of my younger, more digitally savvy friends who are grown up with the iPhones and grown up on pads and grow up in the world of www. If they don't know what it's like, not to have the internet and, and all its benefits generation right after me. Yes. We're the last of the Mohicans. Right. And what's fascinating is we're I know we're kind of off topic, but we might as well get on it. Anyways.

 Wade Lightheart: I saw that my younger, more digital savvy friends knew all the rules of Amazon or how the YouTube Agra algorithm worked or how to get more likes on Instagram or Facebooks or these types of things. But they didn't know what was going on politically. They didn't know what was happening GOP. They didn't know about the historical and the really dark aspects of humanity in the world. And not, not as a discharging effect, but without knowing that you now potentially become victim of what I call these digital republics, these super states like Google and Facebook and Amazon and YouTube, which now transcends all boundaries. And at the flip of the switch, the CEO now becomes the new digital tyrant that can control the narrative and control these type of conversations. And so when I look to someone like you, for example, who's grown up and developed a level of professionalism.

 Wade Lightheart: You know, becoming a doctor is very difficult. It's a very long arduous process. It's very specific. You've got to understand how to interpret data and information and studies and what's valid and what's not valid. And you get into this world trying to help people, obviously, because it's a very noble profession. One of the most noble professions we strive for it to be yet, once again, who gives you the education? What's the research information that education, is it scientific education or is it a marketing flooded through a scientific edge? What's your opinion on that? Because you've kind of broken away from the traditional side. Yeah. I, I thought, I mean,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Going okay. So I started residency in medical school, pretty naive. And even though my parents were doctors, they opened, they really, they said, do it and we'll help you to through. And they've been so instrumental in helping me kind of break away from those traditional Western medicine ideas, but going into it, I was like trying to learn. I was just trying to learn. I thought, I thought I was naive. I was like, oh, they're just teaching me science. You know, I bought it all. I learned all the recommendations, oh, you have this diagnosis, you do ABCD. You know, and immediately once I started practicing, which is first year of residency, I started realizing it's all a manipulation to promote either one kind of food system, mostly to push drugs, drugs, drugs, and procedures. And I wanted to become a specialist. I was really interested in GI.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I really, really interested in hepatology. And after like six months, I was like, this isn't, this, isn't what I expected. You're you're making me memorize recommendations. When I bring to my attending, like, Hey, this is the person in front of me. I think we should do this other treatment course. Cause mentally and spiritually, they're not, they're not going to respond to this series of treatments summit and they're going to do poorly. And it was always like, shut up. You know, I got, even in residency, I got a little bit of a you know, like when I graduated residency residency, I got an award for most likely to complain. And I looked up and I looked at, everyone's like, complain, you guys just shut your mouth and do what you're told. I'm just asking why the heck are we doing what you're like, why am I doing this?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I'm not complaining. I'm asking why. And when it comes to dealing with sick people. So as an internal medicine doctor, I'm trained to manage sick people, sick adults, specifically, right. And more specifically to be a hospitalist because the system needs doctors in the hospital getting people admitted, getting them discharged within the three-day limit or whatever the codes justify, how many days only using the resources that are needed and not overdoing it. And that's like, what? They're training you. They don't tell you that. They tell you, oh, for this, this is the recommendation for this heart disease. We do a, B, C, D. Then they get this procedure and then they get discharged. But slowly, what you realize is they're just pandering to

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Drug companies, insurance companies,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: The bottom line bill that the, that whoever has to incur it. And the idea is train you to get paid a pretty decent salary, but we're going to bill twice or three times as much and make our money on you. And as I was like training, I was like, hold on a second. I'm not here to be the bottom of the barrel. I'm not here to be told what to do and then not get paid and then catch heat on my notes or catch heat on how, if I kept a patient for an extra day in the hospital, or, Hey, I did an advanced care planning discussion where I talked about what happens at the end of life with an 80 year old. And they're like, why are you doing that? We want to do a cardiac cath. I'm like, they're dying. That's why I did that. And then we're in, we're in a conflict because I'm trying to do thoughtful human caring and not just push a machine down the road. Right. So I really found my niche in end of life care because in the hospital system and in the, in the sick care system, that's where I was able to step in and say, let's do what makes sense.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Let's not do what we're told. Let's do. What makes sense. I can have the tough conversation with the family about, should we, should we make them a, do not resuscitate, do not intubate. Should we make them just comfort care? Should we do dialysis? Is that really a good idea? Because the outcomes aren't going to be so good here, a patient doesn't want it. Why are you pushing it on them? So I started asking those questions that started doing that. And that's where I got a lot of love. That's where the attendings in the palliative care and hospice service are like, oh, this guy's good at this. Like, he, he gets it. And it was really just a lifestyle medicine. It was just the end of life. Right? And so what we do is how to be held, how to maintain your health, how to, when I say anti-aging medicine, I mean, I want to be healthy and thrive as long as I can. I want my patients to live a beautiful life. And then when it's time, they dropped dead. That's a good life, not rot in a nursing home and then get 20 procedures that go in and out of the hospital. And then someone finally says, enough is enough. No, let's be thoughtful. Let's make a good plan for what that looks like, so that they could have quality of life and not just circle the drain, as I say.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: So I almost Went into hospice, palliative care. UI did that like a lot. I did a lot of rotations. I did extra training and I, by the end of it, I was like, I can, I don't need to do a fellowship again. They're just going to use an abuse me for a year, pay me 50 grand a year to build $500,000 on my hours and effort and documentation and orders and all that. Like I'm already doing it the way they're doing it. I don't need it. So I bailed, I finished my internal medicine training. I got my,uboard certification. I was very by then, I was very sour. I was like, this is what you taught Me. I Had to go get a job. I got a job in the hospital, but I did not sign up for like these content. What they try to do is they get the young doctor lock in three to five years. We're going to give you a bonus. We're going to give you this insurance, that insurance. And I looked at it and I'm like, if you just paid me a fair amount, compared to the billing I'm doing, I don't need any of these benefits. I just need my money. Like, I'll take care of it. I'm okay. Uthey didn't like that. So I'm like, all right, I'll work nights for a year or two, no contract, just pay me my money. I don't want any of your nonsense. And that's what I did. I worked nights and I immediately opened up health healthcare, and I would like work all night and I'd show up. I'd have like one or two patients I'd see them. And then I go to sleep. And so my shift in the morning, and that was a good year and a half, two years of bootstrapping of all time healthcare.

 Wade Lightheart: There's so many things to unpack in that story. And thank you for sharing because there's a couple of things. And there's some concordance that I think we've come to some similar conclusions. My background, of course, when I was people know this, I talk about it in a lot of my interviews when I was 15, my sister got diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease cancer, the lymph nodes. And I watched her, she was four years, my senior. And over the next four years, I watched her go through the medical model until she died at the age of 22. Oh my God. And so, yeah, so that impact on me though, as a teenager in a formative year is like, oh, wait a second. Your health, isn't a guarantee in your life. Isn't a guarantee. And so that set me up to start exploring first high performance. And you went to university and studied exercise physiology and things like that.

 Wade Lightheart: And to try and become quote unquote, the healthiest version, which was more of a physical outline. And later on it, that that became more sophisticated and started learning the internal side of it and spiritual. Yeah. I made all these mistakes along that way. But recognizing that your life isn't a guarantee, I think is such a powerful thing this weekend. I am literally, after this episode, we're doing tomorrow. I'm going out to visit a friend who's 80 years old, he's terminally ill. He called me up a few weeks ago. He says, Hey, I ain't got much time to given me. I told him, give me whatever drugs I need to stay upright for the next 30, 40 days or whatever I'm going to get. I'm throwing a party on my birthday. I love it. This is life. That's the deal. I'm going out like a warrior.

 Wade Lightheart: And I think in the west, we've, we've, we've kind of sanitized death in a way that it's something that you don't see it's put away. And everybody just leaves in the back of their kind of sh you know, back of their mind. And we don't deal with that. And if we deal with it upfront, there's a freedom that comes with it. And what it is is not that if I'm going to die or when that is, because you can't always control that, it's more about how am I going to live? Like, how am I going to live with the very limited time that we get here? And, you know, your work, I think is a real Testament to kind of, you know, going right to the worst case scenario and just having those hard conversations. And I had those conversations with my sister, cause everybody was walking around with the eggshells and you had that bond and we'd go, we'd go someplace when she was feeling good.

 Wade Lightheart: And I'd say, okay, when, when she got the terminal thing, I was like, what's that like, like, how do you feel about this? You know, there was anger and there was frustration. And, but the part that she said was the worst, was everybody acting like it wasn't going to happen. That was the one smiles. And oh, when you know, things get better. And she goes, that was the part that was the hardest to deal with because her friends, family members they're going to, they were all acting like everything was going to be better. And it wasn't. And I always remembered that. And I've always been very straight and very blunt and to a fault, I make all my hikes and I make lots of errors, but at least people know where they stand and how they go. And we w we work from there. How did you make that transition into the, kind of the work that you're doing, where you're, you know, like you're going around and seeing people, but you're also into this whole health optimization pro hacking kind of world. You want to call that? I don't know what the proper terminology

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I, to, to add to what you're saying. Like, I think that we have completely divorced ourselves from The reality of life. Like these digital republics, like you're discussing, they don't, they're not, yes, it's real. It's, it's in the digital, but there is real life. There is reality. And I think that, you know, 80 years ago something like 20% of people would die in a hospital and 80% would die at home. And people understood death. They, they understood that they saw it. It was a part of their life. And they understood that life is finite. And the choices you make have real consequences. And sometimes it's not even the choices happens. And you get really sick, Like chance who Knows, right. Accidents, accidents, I mean, Anything could happen. And, and I think thatuh I vote

 Dr. Gary Shifler: From the beginning. I was connected with that reality. And I felt that just like you're saying, people were not honest with patients, they were not honest with themselves. It was all about what you can do to preserve every second of life at the cost of life, cost of quality of life. And I just couldn't understand it. I didn't understand how these people, everyone in this training environment were so fixated on getting the diagnosis, managing the numbers. What do I do the next day? When this number goes up or down, what do I do when this symptom presents itself? And it's like, You're missing the point. Like this person In front of you is dying. We shouldn't be having a lot of like, the majority of the care should be focused on what is going to happen and how can we give this person a beautiful end and not pretend that it's not going to happen. And I found that Basically what

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I was trained to do. And the majority of medical care is after you get sick and before you die, and that's what they're interested in, sick care. I'm not the first person to say it, but like, that's what I saw. It's just sick care. And when it talked about health care or preventative care, it was give them three months of lifestyle modifications. I can't tell you how many questions I answered on board exams or whatever. The first, the answer was always, if that was an option ABCD three month lifestyle modifications and then meds, that was the answer. But what three months, first of all, three months, what are you talking about? But morally more. So like what, what, they wouldn't teach me that it was Mediterranean diet, pescatarian, diet, exercise, fiber, but that was it. It was like the same superficial recommendations that you can find on, you know, Medline or whatever.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Like you could just Google it. And the first thing that comes up, that's what we're teaching doctors. When it comes to, before they get sick. The only thing that they're interested in teaching is what happens when you get sick, what drug do you order? What specialists do you refer to? What procedures, how do you make the diagnosis? That was it. And then when it was time to let tell the person that there's no more options, they wouldn't say that they would offer stuff like feeding tubes or chemo or intubation. That was never going to change. The course. Everyone knew it, but no one wanted to acknowledge it. And then I became the guy that was always like consult palliative care console. Like, what are you talking about? You know? And those people would come in and do the meaningful care. So that's where I connected with it.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: When I started my primary care practice, I had, I was telling you earlier, before we started that, like, I didn't know what it was going to look like, because they didn't teach me how to do preventative care. They didn't really teach me. I had two half days of clinic a week doing primary care in like a resident clinic. My attending was amazing. She was this really great. She was just like one of these people that like, just, I'm so sorry, but you just talk to her and you feel better. Right. And we had that. And so we connected and she, she would always tell me, like, your patients are going to be so lucky to have you, but I had no idea what she was talking about. Cause I was just like, I don't know what hypertension, what's the next drug. I don't know, like, what do I need to check?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: What, what side effect do I need to be worried about? Cause that's what was being covered into my brain. That's what I was going to be tested on. There was no test to say, oh, he's really good with his patients. They really trust and care for him. And he cares and trust for them. So they're more likely to be compliant. They're more likely to listen to recommendations. The real intervention is that it's the humanistic part. It's the part where you're looking at someone in the eye and they feel you and you feel them. And you're like, this is a meaningful recommendation for you. Not just what's on the list. So then over time I started questioning what I was taught. I was like, well, what are my tools here in the primary care setting? What can I offer people? And that's when I started looking into nutrition and frankly it started with an argument, Brian Sanders he's my business partner in CEPI.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: And he's a, you know, influencer guy, we're making a documentary called food lies. We went on a snowboarding trip and we got in an argument about food. It was just an argument and he's a brilliant guy. He's an engineer. And he was just going down this rabbit hole of, you know, reading books and podcasts and just like, holy cow, you know, his family got really sick his parents. And he started trying to figure out what was going on. And he landed on this nutrition thing and that conversation, it was like five years ago. And it just changed my life because I, that was where I was. Oh, there is a whole, there is a whole world out there, biohacking, ancestral health, whatever lifestyle medicine, functional medicine, integrate, whatever you want to call it. It's people saying, okay, sick care model. Cool, you got that.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: But we're going to take care of people and try to keep them out of your hands. We're going to keep them out of the hospital. And that's my whole thing. Now is I have a nutrition approach to nutrition. That's sort of an integration of different ideas in our space. I started really talking about like acute versus chronic stress, leveraging high intensity interval, training, cold therapy, heat therapy, deep breathing, strategies, meditation. And it's just, I've been teaching myself like I have now my community, me and Brian are on the phone like multiple times a week. Our other business partner you need we're just is in it. And I'm just learning. And every month when my patients come back to me, I've got something new. I've got, I've got another idea. And maybe it works for them. Maybe it doesn't. But my whole thing is I thought I was trained to be a scientist.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I thought scientists question everything and come up with novel ideas. I did a lot of I did neuroscience before I went to medical school and I published a bunch of stuff and it really made me question, question, question, and think for myself. And that's now what I do. And now I've embraced it. At first. I was scared at first I was like, oh my God, I'm going to give a recommendation for someone that against the American heart association and the American diabetes association or whatever this guru is talking about. And I was nervous. I was like, oh man, are they going to come after me? And then I realized, no, no, I'm a doctor. It's the art of medicine I get to use my brain. That's how this whole thing is. We're still live in a free country.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: You know, we still get to follow Our, you know, our spirit, our passion. That's why my parents brought me to America. And so I've leaned into it. I've leaned into it and the outcomes and with my patients, the response in the community the support I get from our community, like we were talking about, it's incredible. It's transformed my practice. I brought other providers in that are learning and are, you could just see the excitement and the passion. And it's like, you don't see that when you're in the hospital, you don't see that in these general primary care clinics, when you're just pumping recommendations. It's it's frankly demoralizing. It's, it's dehumanizing to physicians to be like, here's 20 patients. You've got 15 minutes and don't step out of bounds. The don't step out of bounds or else we're coming after you. Right? Tory box here, 15 years of training, 20 years of training for you to tell me what to do, who administrator, lady that like makes all the money, but has no idea what, what I'm doing.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: You could feel my frustrations with that. But like, that's where I'm coming from. I'm like, I don't claim to know all the answers. I'm here to learn from you. Like I'm here to learn every day. I learned from everyone I'm around. I learned from my patients, my patients come to me having listened to my podcast. Like, have you heard about this guy? Have you heard about this book? No, let's go. Let's go. I'm first to admit, I don't know. I'm learning more about magnesium every day. Like I'm, I'm learning and learning and learning. And I, that's what I challenged my patients to do. I'm like, I can counsel you. We can do a more intense counseling and more frequent, but in the end of the day, it's on you. Like you go home and get loaded every day. Don't exercise, watch TV, let that poison from the TV mess with your brain, break you down. Then you don't Sleep. I can't help you. Right. But if you want some real life changing stuff, I'm ready to give you guidance. You know,

 Wade Lightheart: It's funny. You should say that we were talking earlier with Brent Pella and JP Sears who we sponsor their messages. And they just released a video called the fitness passport. Is it kind of a juxtaposition of the vaccine passport, which coming up, but you bring up a couple of interesting points there. Number one, your history, your, your family wanted to get out of a place where you, they were controlled to come over. Here, you go into a very noble profession. Find that there's control parameters in there. Your parents teach you not to, to, to question things. You question things don't like the answers recognize that benefits sold to you, or often the golden handcuffs that keep you locked into something, go off into your own care. Starting a business out of an argument, which is very similar to Matt and myself is fascinating.

 Wade Lightheart: Because I think there's polarities interesting. I'll to echo your point. So it was over to see a friend of mine the other night who just had knee surgery or great medical care, knee surgery, awesome jobs. Great job. So I'm over there sitting, just not far from here, named the hospital. So the nurses come in and you know, they're, they're, they're doling out you know how many perks he gets in the milligram dose that your cheese like, oh yeah, I'm in pain. And they're like, okay, we can give you this much. It's been this much time. And then it's like, oh, would you like anything to eat? And, and they're, they're offering what we've got jello, we've got ice cream. And I'm like, where's the science in jello as a recovery product. I mean, you know, like, come on, man, like we're, we're talking state-of-the-art technology. They use some lasers to like go into his knee. They got these super cameras. They've got the oldest McCain, like does unbelievable tech and they're serving them jello and ice cream as a recovery. I'm like, this is insane. This is absolutely he's ordering food and He's ordering food and from a health Facility. So, cause he can't eat the food. He's he's I wouldn't say it's the healthiest guy, but he's healthy. He understands, I can't, this is not going to help me here. This is going to have sugar is not going to help me. Right. So really quick. Yes.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: One of my most sour points about the hospital system is they, they literally are poisoning their patients. It's a strong word, but when you provide really crappy food food, when you call a high carb diet, a heart-healthy diet, when you are serving juices, that aren't even like real juices is they're

 Wade Lightheart: Like constant concentrated, garbage fructose. And so, so I am

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Like, okay, quick story. Cause I want you to keep going. But like, cause I'm, I'm in my third year of residency and I'm starting to, the gears are starting to turn. I have this patient, who's a diabetic. His foot is rotting off. I'm trying to get them to surgery. Surgeon's not interested. He's just like get them to surgery. What are the parameters? I gotta like do a bunch of stuffs that he saved to go under anesthesia. Sugar's like three or 400. It's not going to take him to surgery with that. I go in I'm like, what are you doing? Like I keep turning off the insulin. How is your sugar still 400. I'm I'm, I've doubled the insulin over two days. This is impossible. And he's like, I'm just eating what they give me. So I'm like, okay, interesting. Bring the dietician in and the nurse.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: And I'm like, well, what are you guys doing? She was like, well, we're just feeding him off the carb controlled diet. And I was like, so what is that? He's like, well, whatever they order on this diet, we add more insulin to compensate. And I'm like, okay, what's for lunch. Cause I'm like, this guy's gonna die. He's septic. I have him on IV antibiotics. He needs to go to surgery. They won't take them if you don't listen to me. So they bring him in and, and, and I'm like, okay, so what's the lunch. I timed it. So it would be lunch. They bring in a hamburger, full bun, action, baked potato, full, huge, big potato action, orange Juice. And I'm like, What are you people doing? This is disgusting. This is not going to get him into surgery. He needs a very, very low carb diet. I didn't even know what a low carb diet was. I just,

 Wade Lightheart: You can't give all the sugar to someone with diabetes, a whole

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Big potato and sugar and a bond. So I got in it and you know what? The dietician said, this is a car you're wrong. This is what we do. This is the right thing. My son is a hospitalist. I know what I'm talking about. I'm like, no, you don't and your patient's going to die. And I'm going to document this conversation that you're telling me that this diet is appropriate. When I went from 10 to 25 units and his sugar went up, that means you're giving him more food. That means you're letting him sneak food. And I talked to him about that, which whatever, I can't blame the dietician, but it's just this whole idea that, oh, you could eat whatever you want. We're just going to like control it with more insulin. No, that's how you die. And you become dependent on this hormone that you don't really need to pump into people if they're not eating crap, but you want to keep feeding them crap because you want to pretend that that crap is acceptable.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: It's not acceptable. If I, if it was now, it would have been very, very bad because I have a lot more information and knowledge and experience and it wouldn't have gone well because I would have been much more aggressive to protect my patient. I don't care about my intellectual reality. It's about the patient. This guy was literally dying. That's why it's such a memorable story is this whole conversation is happening in the context of a guy who was hypotensive, low blood pressure. TAQA a high heart rate, pumping fluids, pumping antibiotics into him and you're feeding him a hamburger. What are you talking about right now? So that issue of food in the healthcare centers is one that's like very personal to me. And I've been trying through our safety and platform to promote bringing in bone broth, like a boosted bone broth the bone broth with some collagen, with some vitamins to replace glue CRNA or these like basically protein, sugar drinks that all the old people. And some people get that don't help promote healing. And I'm like, you need to promote healing with protein and healthy fat. And you know how hard it is to have that conversation. Cause they're like, well, the glue certain is 20 cents a bottle. And your bone broth is like $2 a bottle. We can't afford that. And I'm like, Why are you talking? Like your patients are dying. So anyway, just

 Wade Lightheart: Set. Okay. Talk about sapiens and how this emerged out of this frustration. And I always say that the challenges that anybody faces in life is often an invitation to, to find your greatest skills and abilities. And sometimes we need a punch in the head or a really tough obstacle. Sounds like you found it. Talk a bit about Sapient. Is this platform CEPI? And like,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: It was just an idea. It was just like, wow, we want to ancestral medicine and sexual health. We want to let's let's

 Wade Lightheart: Let's, let's unplug that for unpack that a little. What is ancestral medicine from your different? From

 Dr. Gary Shifler: My definition, it's looking at the past and, and starting with this premise, we were, we are very successful creature. We dominated the planet. We continued to grow and grow and grow as hunter gatherers. We were very good at surviving. Yes. There were things that killed us infections accidents. But we knew how to eat. Our bodies are very adapted to survive and be happy. I don't believe in that idea of the caveman. That's like miserable and everyone's dying. No, like we, we, we are very, very adapted at survival. We're adopted at eating and then not eating were adopted at different climates. We know how we have thousands and thousands of years of success as a human species. And then you start with agriculture and then you start with Western medicine and the quality of life goes down and kind of what you were alluding to the quality of life of the average person goes down.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: They might live longer, but it's not a better life. And the further down we go, this path, you get further disconnected from your, from your actual biology. So now we live lives that are very disconnected from our biology. We don't, we don't, we're not connected with our environments. We're not following the patterns of light and sun, and we're not understanding our food system. We're not connecting with the dying process and the birth process and everything that goes in between. We're sort of living in these insular experiences. And, and I think that's where the problem lies. So when I started thinking about all this stuff, the way I was able to separate my education, my Western medicine education from these new ideas where all these new ideas were old ideas, they were things my dad and his dad and his dad's dad did to be healthy.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Right. it was so like what my great grandmother would feed me. I grew up eating liver and onions. I grew up eating fish row. I grew up eating fermented veggies. These were parts of my traditional food system. And then I look back and I'm like, oh, well, all the, all the traditional food systems had this because we knew we instinct. We evolved with our planet. And so that's what it is to me. So sapiens is our version of trying to educate people about this perspective on health. It's a platform for us to get different influencers and ideas different doctors just people in our space to connect. We started a tribe cause there's lots of folks that follow us and they want more access. So we do zoom calls and we connect with people that way and give them access to me and Brian and our whole team.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Our podcasts wanted a platform to live so that like the peak human podcast and the Sapient podcast, they're all coming from the same place. So they from sapiens and we thought that that word really, we were surprised that no one had used it in this space because it really just, it just says it all right. It's like what we needed. Remember you are a homosapien. That is what you are. You've been that for hundreds of thousands of years. And it evolved over millions of years. And that's where you need to look to understand. And that's, again, the idea there too with Sapient is it's not to throw away Western medicine. It's not to say like we're not.

 Wade Lightheart: And so sort like acute care it's it's yeah, incredible.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: That's where it came from. Right? World war one, people were coming back, they were dying from injuries. They didn't have good sanitation practices. They didn't know how to use the antibiotics. They had infections

 Wade Lightheart: And all that stuff, emergency

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Stuff that we now associate with emergency medicine essentially. And that's where a Western medicine was formed. And that's where the double blind placebo control study comes from is trying to understand how to best utilize these tools, especially medicines, but a hundred years later, we think that that is all that healthcare is. And we train doctors to think that, which I think is hurting people by not giving them. And so I'm a doctor of osteopathic medicine. I fell into osteopathic medicine.

 Wade Lightheart: Can you explain the osteopathic medicine?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Most people know a medical doctor MD very, very, very competitive to get to MD programs. About 80 years ago, this guy, 80 stills, he was an MD and he was like, well, I don't want to give everyone arsenic. I think that if I manipulate people's bodies and I do different modalities I can help the body come into its own homeostasis. And that's one of the principles of osteopathic medicine is your body wants to go to homeostasis. Your body wants to be healthy. It's not trying to be correct.

 Wade Lightheart: It's, it's genetically evolutionary designed to produce health provided you, provide the circumstances and materials and afford it, the right inputs. So that's where

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Osteopathic medicine came from. Then there was something that happened called the Flexner reports. And basically they tried to started cause there was also a lot of like voodoo doctors. There was just, it was like a free for all when it came to medicine, right? So there is the government got involved appropriately. So I think, and started weeding out like this isn't a medical school. This is like, this is crazy. But it was very, very, very biased towards the medic, the Western medicine profession, because that was evidence-based. I think it was again, reasonably. So at that time, and it puts osteopathic schools which were popping up, which were, again, it was medical training, plus some of these alternative treatments and that's what it still is today, but it really pushed it to the fringes. Then come seventies, eighties and nineties, it's very expensive to make medical schools.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: MD programs are very competitive and we needed more doctors. So the osteopathic profession was able to train more doctors and literally in the last five years there's been a merging of the two. So nowadays M D D O it's an equivalent degree in America. And in many, many countries around the world, the training is equivalent. It used to be that there was like an MD internal medicine residency, which is actually what I did. And then there's like a D oh osteopathic versus allopathic, which is MD. And now they're all governed by the same body because we need doctors. Like we need to train doctors. It's very expensive. And these, this is a way to kind of bring the two together. I came into osteopathic medicine frankly, because I was not trying to be a doctor. I did music. I tried, I did neuroscience research.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I was in a lab at university of UCLA psychology department that I did some great work at. And so coming into the application process, there's like 45 things you've got to check off. And they're really looking for those people that are like committed to medicine from the beginning. And I've done everything. I think that trains very inexperienced people that end up being doctors that have a hard time connecting with people, whatever, that's my personal experience. We shouldn't go there because that's different. But I ended up in an osteopathic program because I was this well-rounded guy. I had a good cat score and they're like, ah, you have a good personality. You could be a good doctor. Then they brought me in Arizona college of osteopathic medicine, medicine in Glendale. And I had, I actually was like biased towards it too. I was like, I just want to be a doctor. Like, I don't know about this stuff. But look at me now, like all of this training opening me up to meditation, opening me up to manipulative medicine, opening me up to herbal medicine all sorts of different modalities that I integrate. Now. We got like touches of it, but just A little bit, but it was part of my training.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Right. And that made me more open-minded and I think it makes osteopathic physicians more open-minded because some of this stuff that's considered fringe or Woohoo or whatever you want to call. It is actually part of our training. And so some doctors end up going that path. There's a lot of functional medicine doctors that are osteopaths. And sometimes some doctors don't, they ended up going and doing traditional stuff and that's okay too. We need doctors like we need healthcare providers. So it's not about poo-pooing one or the other. It's just about understanding that there's a system in place. And it's really driven at making doctors that are employees that follow the rules that make money for insurance companies and big companies. And then there's a few of us that are like, Hm, let me do it on my own

 Wade Lightheart: Couple of things. You, when you refer to safety and I always think of the great book sapiens by Yuval, Noah was inspired and

 Speaker 4: Beautiful. He's written three incredible

 Wade Lightheart: Homo Deus, and then a 21 lessons for the 21st century. And he's a very deep thinker and here we are as sapiens. And he kind of gets into this in homo Deus, which is we're at a, an evolutionary cruxed. And so we've now become so technologically advanced, we have two branches which are really emerging and we don't know what's happening. And that is we have do we come homo digitalis essentially, which is kind of the Elon Musk version where we become fused with artificial intelligence so much that we actually don't know where the AI begins and the human ends, they become the singularity as Ray Kurzwell says. And then we have this other area when you start getting into a genetic manipulation CRISPR genes. And so if you're a, if you're a historian, you understand that there was these various different types of hominid species, upright species, you know, most famous might be the Neanderthals, but there's homo Florentines and these other rectus. Yeah. Yeah. So there was these different seasons that competed and then homosapien came out and, you know, we still have bits of genetics from these other areas, but for the most part like Neanderthal, I think is like 2% of the population,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Oh, that's new evidence. That's new evidence that Neanderthals Are in, I think 80% Of people carry some percent of their DNA and we thought they were separate species that didn't intermingle. And now I was listening to you all talking recently was like making the sapiens the book like like a graphic novel is what they're

 Wade Lightheart: Making. Well, there's a great book by called clan of the cave bear, which was a writer, a French writer Xian and Ooh. And she actually wrote a historical interaction between homosapiens in Neanderthals in a really cool story about how this a woman, I read it as a kid. And it was, it was a fascinating way to learn about history was told as a story, but it was this girl whose family was killed in an, in an earthquake. And she was picked up by a Neanderthal tribe and integrated with this Neanderthal tribe and then was cast out of the Neanderthal tribe because the way they process their brain, their memories and emotions were different than her. She went on this, hold your hands. It's a really

 Wade Lightheart: Out of its time, way ahead of its time. So it's a very interesting thing, but going back to my point as a bodybuilder, my, my, my background was in bodybuilding and I say, we were the original biohackers because bodybuilder is fighting evolutionary by biology. You do not want to build extraordinary levels of muscularity. You do not want to have super physiological levels of body fat, which is the tenants of performance in that sport. And to do that, you have genetic limiters that hold back, that you have to overcome through training and diamond population and all these kinds of practices, these hacks, these experiments, and you run experiments. So you persistently started doing that. And then now we've evolved with, okay, now people are coming up with disease states from the modern world variances within their genetics and epigenetics, they're in a situation and they're going okay, well, I need to find this balance between maybe what's right for my ancestry, which was based in my genetics and epigenetic responses.

 Wade Lightheart: What is my toxic level because of the modern world and the dysfunction that I'm currently living because of, you know, just going along with the world and then these new emerging sciences of you know, digital information, whether it's feedback loops or neurofeedback, which can enhance cognitive capabilities and overcome all sorts of psychic psychological illnesses, or we go, we now have in particularly in the bodybuilding world and also in the Olympic level with a lot of countries, we're getting into full on genetic manipulation. Wow. Really? Yeah. So right now there is a group of bodybuilders out of the middle east, which have gotten CRISPR genes and they've changed. They've turned off the limiters for muscle growth and stuff like, like, and now you can download this stuff on the internet for 150 bucks and start playing with bearings. And so we're heading into the mutant land.

 Wade Lightheart: The mutants are coming, and that's what homo Deus is talking about. Well, yeah. And we're, so we're right on the crux. And I believe that there's going to be a variety of experiments that go wrong, that people will, you know, exit out as a medical doctor. Who's on the bleeding edge of people who want to live their best life, maybe extend their life with certainly optimize it. How do you navigate this milieux of possibilities and opportunities? Do you have a process where you kind of find out where the person is and take them forward? Do you just deal with that individual person? Do you have a philosophy, like kind of unpack that for me, because I'm curious about where do we go from here as someone that like, I'm sitting there going, okay, I'm coming into 50, you know, when do I hit testosterone replacement therapy for you? And I'm not lower I'm twenties. I haven't hit that button yet. My, my business partner has many of the people in the hacking community. What does a person use Metformin or not? Good question. Okay. Neurofeedback. I had extraordinary results on neurofeedback. I think it's, I think it's the tech of the,

 Wade Lightheart: And I've seen some people fall apart and end up in ward. That's correct. Because I've seen the research on that, that some people have seen it. We S we see also with plant medicines, so can medicine, psychedelic medicines, we know that have profound effects, but we also know that there is a major shift in personality for some people particularly in openness that for some types, like the neurotic types can be devastating for their, for their lives. And then we have these digital integrations and genetic manipulations. And you know, now they're talking about nanobots and machines and stuff like that. And here we are in the world where we are now. The government is basically forcing people through social conditioning to take on a new type of quote unquote vaccine that has no legal consequences if it fails because Mr and a DNA and people are being shamed into doing this, or to get back the quality of life that I want, so I can travel or do this or being that way. So I just opened up eight different loops. I call her just feel free to kind of unload as a, as a doctor in this world where you're trying to help people live a better

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Way. Yeah. I mean, to start with, I think the majority of my recommendations are more focused on these ancestral hacks. So behaviors and changes to your day to day life that actually bring you closer to your ancestral roots. So that's a little different, I think, than the biohacking and, and the, the, the bodybuilders and the high performance athletes. I think that's not really my thing yet. Although I keep learning and keep adding, and I do like IV therapy. I'm a big fan of NAD plus therapy. I'm sure that's across your space.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Do you like the multiple days of the fast bites after, or do you just do the little bit at a time?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I keep adding to it. So one of when it comes to biohacking stuff, because there's not a lot of evidence and you kind of have to pick and choose it's experimented,

 Wade Lightheart: Let's face it. We're, we're running for Sherman. That's why I compared it to the bodybuilders. We, the bodybuilders were running experiments. They said steroids didn't work for 20 or 30 years. The medical as such, meanwhile guys are breaking Records and running. It's like, no, they work. They definitely work. They got consequences, but they work. I think for me

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I do it myself. Like I'm, I'm a person that experiences life. And so when it comes to things like NAD, plus I never put it on my menu. I learned about it. I did a program on it. I then did it myself. I then did it with my, like some of my doctor friends that were into this biohacking stuff. And I was like, oh, this is very clearly a powerful intervention figured out, okay. These are the kinds of patients I would offer it to. And that's what I do. So that's kind of become a new addition to my practice doctor Conover, like you were mentioning he's way down that rabbit hole. And he has so much more experience. So he has different protocols. And I love that. And when I have more time, I would love to learn more. And maybe just through osmosis and time, I will learn more. I do things like vitamin C infusions, glutathione infusion. So anyway, that's that, that's that thing, but

 Wade Lightheart: Powerful immune boosters, which during this whole thing, we haven't, what part and really annoys me is they haven't shared with the population, the things that bolster our natural immune system response and the data's pretty evident, you know, vitamin D vitamin D. If you're, you know, the people who suffer the most are people who have low vitamin DS and are obese. Those are the numbers. These are the, the biggest co-morbidities about this stuff. And there's no information in the public within the public domain. And most of the, this is relatively inexpensive. It's very

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Cheap, but that's why they're not promoting it. Correct. Right. So from the beginning, the data was really obvious and I was already on my vitamin D three K two kick. Like I figured that out through a Dr. Joel Gould is a brilliant guy that I've had on my podcast. He's a dentist actually. And he considered himself anyway, but he put me on that. I learned about it. I read all the papers and then COVID comes. And it's like, overwhelmingly that if your vitamin D is greater than 30 and even closer to more like a physiological level, 45, you don't go to the hospital. My patients didn't go to the hospital. Like I started them on sync. So the way I think about it as control, what you can control, like there are a bunch of things you can do for free essentially, or very cheap to modify your risk factors.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: You can lose weight and drop your sugar intake and your carbohydrate intake and drop your hyperinsulinemia lose weight. You're no longer a high risk patient. You can take your vitamin D three K2 or spend healthy amounts of time in the sun, thoughtfully understanding how to do that. Get your vitamin D that way you can exercise a bunch of papers just came out, showing that just a little bit of exercise every week, your risk goes down like crazy, all free, essentially free life cost, lifestyle modifications that similar to the supplements, like your zinc, and course sit-in and vitamin C and vitamin D very, very cheap, not owned by a company's weaken. I have my own vitamin D that I get from a supplier that's really lovely. And we sell it on our sapiens platform. I can do that. You can do that. It's not a big deal. You can go buy it in a drug store, but you got to make sure there's no vegetable oil in

 Dr. Gary Shifler: The idea being as here's our cheap interventions that aren't, that are going to, they were, I think they don't promote it because it cuts into the vaccine game. I think promoting this vaccine is very important for a million reasons where you don't need to get into, but that's the goal here. Get everyone vaccinated. So I think promoting what we're talking about here cuts into that bottom line. And that's why, you know, like Dr. Fowchee doesn't want to talk about it because it gets in the way of his money making. So I don't like that guy moving on. 

 Wade Lightheart: He's not, he's, he's not I don't have any posters on my wall of darker, like them from day one while I go talk to his history and his results with HIV and AZT and th th the whole thing. And then some of the people that he associates with it, the vaccinations in Ethiopia and things with the world health organization, and then his questionable funding of the actual gain of function research after that in the last administration or not the last mission, they administrate the Obama administration and then continuing forward. And then flip-flopping, I think he should be the number one poster boy for a flip-flop advertisement. Cause I think he's the best flip. I don't understand how everyone's not irate this guy. I mean, I rate it's crazy. And I think that's the big thing is I have a naturopathic function research

 Dr. Gary Shifler: That was so obvious. Sorry, not to interrupt you, but I just want people to understand that if you go and you listen to people that understand about virology, understand about the genomics of these viruses and how these things come to be in our society. It is not a question I've been saying this for months and months and months, and months and everyone in our community. It has because when you listen to the virologists, it's very clear that this was a multiple gain of functions that would never be possible in a natural biological environment, wet market or not. Yes. It was always manufactured in a lab. Like there is no question About it. And the fact that it's been a year and a half, and we're finally seeing someone going, oh, we shouldn't explore the Wu Han, what are You talking about? This is lies. This is not a question It's obvious. It's the only possible exponent. It's the only plausible explanation period. And this guy straight up lied to everyone. He got their trust and now he split flopping. And instead of being like this, guy's a liar. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Everyone's just like, oh, okay, Come on, everyone. Let's be more upset.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, let's, let's hold someone with that much light, an unelected official who happens to be the highest paid government official there is who may be incentivized to protect what he was doing on the sly. I know there's an congressional investigation going on. I've been watching some of the stuff and you see, you don't see this on the mainstream news. You don't see this in those channels. And then the people who are talking about oftentimes get taken off, but we kind of, we, we kind of went down, we kind of went down a rat hole there, let's get down to my approach, your approach, and in the world today, how do people be healthy? What are the decisions and how I'd also like to know how, how do they leverage someone like yourself in their life to provide that voice of reason? And that voice of experience who can actually look through a series of study or research or information, or make critical analysis. Because critical analysis is, is, is it's very hard to overcome your biases, that most people don't even know that they have biases. Yeah. I mean, my approach,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: My personal approach with, with, with every patient and what do I introduce to them, do it. I introduce intermittent fasting or some of these biohacking things is I meet people where they're at. And that's how I trained my nurse practitioners. And not any student that's with me. If you walk in there with an agenda like, oh, I see an A1C, a blood sugar, that's super high. I'm going to go in there and treat their diabetes. And you walk into this person and they like do not care. You're not going to make a meaningful intervention. So part of it is you have to spend a few minutes, get a feel for what, where is this person in their healthcare journey and meet them there. You can't pull someone to the healthy side or whatever, by whatever side you cannot do that. That is you don't have enough time. And even if you had a bunch of time, you'll have to show people a path and let them find their way. So number one, meet them where they're at. If they want to talk about food, I'll talk about food. If they're here to get prescribed four drugs and get the refills and they don't care about lifestyle intervention, fine. Maybe I start there and maybe at some point I can get through to them that like, Hey, we can get you off some of these drugs, if you just do a couple of things. Some people Come to me ready to do like 45 things. And I'm like, okay, let's, let's cool. Let's start with a couple and let's work our way Into there. So I think number one is meeting people where they're at. I can't stress that enough. And that requires a personality and a skill with people that should be selected for when you're picking doctors and not just intellectual ability, but interpersonal skills. 

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I think that would probably be the main thing. And then as far as introducing people to other stuff, for me, it always starts with the basics. Like if you're, if you're not eating correctly, you're not going to succeed with working out. If you're not sleeping, you're not going to succeed with eating, right. Because you're going to be stressed out. So I really start with like my five basic principles, which is nothing novel here, but it's sun sleep, movement, stress and food. Like, that's it. If you're, if you Haven't addressed those five things, what are you doing? Even getting an NAD plus drip, you need to like, do the basics and then layer up. Well,

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Cause I think that's another thing. I think a lot of people think they can, they can bio hack their way out of bad lifestyle choices. And I think it's easy to kind of fall into that trap because you're just actually taking what we've learned in kind of a medical model and applying it, quote unquote to a biomedical lot. Well, you know what, Hey, like crap today. But you know, I went out partying all night, but I can go down and I can do some NAD drifts and pounce of vitamin C and hooked myself into a hyperbaric chamber for an hour. And I'll feel great again, but we're not monitoring. We're not monitoring, maybe the cellular damage in it. Hey, I'm all for, Hey, I blew the system out and getting these hacks, but foundational components is, is different with evolve health as one of the components, because I think we're kind of getting into this thing is, is evolve health. What is that about? And how does it connect to the things that you're doing around ancestral health and safety and these sort of stuff?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: So Sapien is a education platform. And our dream is to have a facility like yours, where people could come and enjoy themselves. We're making a documentary called food lies. It's about getting my name out there and getting me to help. Cause if I'm going to help the most amount of people, it's going to be on podcasts on TV, writing a book, something like where you can really, as many people as possible with education and evolve is my clinical practice. It's where I actually have patients. And I execute my recommendations. It started as a very traditional,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I take insurance. I, you know, have my medical assistants, All the basic things. But over the last few years, it's developed into this sort of ancestral lifestyle medicine approach. It's increasingly getting busy and I still invite everyone who's listening. You can make an appointment with me or my nurse practitioner still under insurance, if you're in the Los Angeles area. But what I'm working towards is actually moving towards a model where see, like it's very hard. Like I said, you meet people where they're at, right? So especially after the pandemic, people are really, really struggling. And I spend the vast minimal, what are they struggling with? Mental health, mental health.

 Wade Lightheart: Cause you're, you've done a lot of experience in this. What are the kinds of things that people are suffering from mental health wise? 

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I, you know, I look at depression and anxiety as the spectrum of the same thing. It just depends on how you process it. Some people are future thinkers. They, they worry about the future. That's anxiety. Some people are looking at the past and questioning what they've done and that's depression. You know, when you think about like Eastern medicine and Eastern religious philosophy, it's about finding that balance, right? You're you're, you know, about the past, you can be a little sad about it. You know, you can worry and plan, but like you should try to live in the middle of find that balance. So I think what it's done is it's ripped people to the sides. People are incredibly anxious. I've never seen more. People have panic attacks. I've never had to prescribe drugs because when you can't control some of these lifestyle things, when you have a terrible financial situation, when you have a relationship that's falling apart because of the circumstances, sometimes you need a benzo to relax and get in a good night's sleep.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Sometimes you need to start a sleep aid like you it's okay. It's okay to use those drugs sometimes thoughtfully. So what I've just seen people as really having nervous breakdowns, panic attacks, I've seen people who were on the cusp of like being depressed, just completely lose it. People that were following with me, exercising, doing their sun exposure, afraid to go outside. So their depression runs crazy and there's no drug that's gonna put them at pull them out of that. And it it's, it's terrible to watch. It's incredibly taxing as a healthcare provider because every visit becomes these heavy visits where often there is no solution. It's just like realize where you're at and start working towards the light. You know I can only tell people to like spend time in the sun and run outside and like stop being afraid of each other so much.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: So it's been really tough year from that standpoint. I'm starting to think about working at least part of my schedule towards people that are able to, that are interested in what I'm doing coming in and spending more time. So like a different motto where there's like a cash model where I can spend an hour or two with one patient that's really ready to go to these next levels and dive into everything I can offer. You know, my whole philosophy has always been the most access that I can offer people. But what's, what's becoming unfortunate is that as the reimbursement from our insurances are so low that I have to see so many patients to even just break, even that it's becoming really, really difficult. So I'm trying to do where I have a physician extenders, like nurse practitioners that I've trained in my safety and approach and my approach to medicine to be able to take care of more of those people and give myself access to people that are like ready to go deeper because so much sometimes I'll get all fired up, like with you here.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: And I'll talk to a patient for 45 minutes and lose, you know, get behind in the day. And then I look at them and they haven't really they're either overwhelmed or they haven't really processed that. And I'm like, like it's kind of a waste. You know? So as I go deeper and I learn more and I get more confident with what I'm doing, I'm trying to create it where I can really get to those people that are ready to go there, but still offer a really meaningful experience with the rest of the practice. It's just ever evolving. It's changing like day to day. You can ask my staff every day, I'm trying to figure out how I can reach more people and do a better job.

 Wade Lightheart: Is the profile, would you say of someone who is successful working with you versus someone who isn't? I think that's like, I always like, you know, I would always look at studies and I'm a contrarian thinker and a hyper optimist, and that's gotten me into a lot of trouble. It's a, it's an interesting combination. So people would say, well, there's a 98% chance that you are going to fail at this thing. And I'm like, okay, well, who are the 2% that succeeded? And what did that 2% do? And can I replicate that on some level? Because we sometimes look at numbers as static figures and we defer to the statistics. And you know, if you look at a bell curve of distribution of everything, there are commonalities in that top of the bell curve, as well as the bottom of the bell curve. And I've always been interested in that particular point, what are the practices?

 Wade Lightheart: What are they doing? How do they learn? Who are they listening to? What are the, what's their psychology, what's their genetic what's, what is their dietary practice? What are they doing in a hat? Like to me, it's, uncoding that to be what we call biological optimization, to live at our best level, right. To, to have the properties in our body and the flowing in the right qualities and quantities so that I can express this genetic wonder. I mean, the human body is born and you got 80 years of just fixes itself. Like, you know, it's really incredible what, what you found that people that really get it, what is the key element?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: So a bunch of stuff, I would say the number one thing is being open-minded right, like myself. I think you have to, you have, this is the thing I said, you have to accept that 90% of what you were taught about health is bunk, right? You have to accept that breakfast is the most important meal of the day was made up by a food company and isn't a marketing campaign. And just because you've had 10 doctors reiterate that does not make it science or meaningful or a good idea, and then accepting that so much of what you've been programmed is just nonsense. So that's step one. That's really, really challenging. The next step is cut out the noise. So, so many people they'll hear me, but then they'll go home and they'll talk to their family or loved ones. And they're like, no, mom, my doctor says, you have to be on a stat into, on your LDL has to be this low or else.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: You're going to die from a heart attack. You gotta cut that out. When I tell you your HDL is 85 and I don't care what your LDL is. And your triglyceride HDL ratio is beautiful. You're not at risk and you don't need this drug that has side effects, like real side effects. You got to block out that noise, you got to move forward into your own health journey and that's going to be tough. It's tough. Like it was tough for me to go out on my own and like, tell my doctor, friends, sorry, guys. Like, I don't agree with this anymore except or not. I'm moving on. So, but the patient has to do that. And then most people that really, really, really change their lives have had something happen that I've pushed them over the line. Like they've seen the Western medicine model destroy one of their family's existence.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: They've seen their own health problems and how like inept and unable to change it or someone inspired them. So then there's also these guys like yourself, like some of the people we've mentioned that are just inspirational people that are like, there's another way. And then they come to me because someone touched them. There's this really amazing guy, Dr. Bill Schindler. He's an anthropology, PhD, anthropologist of Maryland. And he basically talks about our ancestry homo habilis homo, erectus, how we evolved and how, what we eat and how we should eat is very clear in our, in our history that our scientific history and that we don't need all these double blind placebo controlled studies to tell you that eating a bunch of sugar and vegetable oils is bad for you. And, and so he's a guy who inspires people the way he talks, the way he communicates.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I try to replicate him in a lot of ways or learn from him. And so guys like that, they inspire people. They turn their light on and then they're open. And then like, bill will say, go see Dr. Gary he'll, he'll help you now go to the next level. So I have a lot of people that come from from that, from those kinds of people. Even Brent, you know, we'll send me folks along that, you know so I think those are the three main things you got, you got to open your mind and, and drop the, the old ideas. You got to block out the noise, the stuff that you're getting blessed in, in social media, the family, the friends that are like trying to slow you down. And then you gotta be inspired that inspiration comes from a multitude of things. Maybe it's this podcast for some people or maybe it's an experience like you had in your childhood, right. Where you, you saw these problems. And then you're like, oh, I needed to find some kind of find a solution. So I think that's probably the majority of people. Yeah, it's fun.

 Wade Lightheart: As far as a profiling, people confirm an optimal health thing. Is there any particular tests or modalities that you're like, w what are the things that you would, that you like to rely on to determine, Hey, you know what? You need to make some lifestyle challenges who changed it here, or what might those challenges or changes might entail be based on the data that you are able to grab.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: So, first and fourth, almost most before even any data, someone feels like, there's something. So not that complicated, right? Like they know. Right. Another thing is I try to teach people to expect yourself to thrive, not just survive, right? So like, you know, realize how beautiful this body and this mind is and your spirit, and that you can really feel great all the time. And if you're not, that's where we can do better. But then some more technical stuff. So, you know, other than looking at the basic metabolic markers, I really like fasting insulin levels as a marker of metabolic health.

 Wade Lightheart: Do you do like homo IRR or anything?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I sometimes, yeah. I, again, I think

 Dr. Gary Shifler: As I move more towards the cash model and more towards people that are ready to go, I'll move into some of the more interesting labs, the more extensive lipid panels, for example, and looking some of those patterns, but you can gather so much information from us, CBC, a blood count, a CNP liver, kidneys an A1C still pretty good test. I get a CRP on most patients cause that inflammatory markers is really meaningful and tells us way more than just cardiovascular risk or infection. Sometimes they get an ESR sedimentation rate. That's also an inflammatory marker that sends me down one path or another, a fasting insulin, which is somebody doctors refuse to order. But the more I learn about it, it's the earliest marker of metabolic problems. And so we know even from COVID that it's, hyperinsulinemia, that's the problem, right? So before your A1C, your blood sugars are high. You can have high insulin and I can intervene at that point before you're medically sick or, you know, diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes. So that's a really interesting marker. I look at other things in like the CBC, like the RDW, which is a marker of your red blood cell health. And that can tell you that we have some work to do here or there. I always look at vitamin D. I've been doing this for years now. It's so important. And you just see,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Like, I kind of look at someone they're like a man or a hormone, which would you call it hormone? It's a hormone

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I'm done trying to convince everyone to call it hormone. D it's vitamin D vitamin D. But I always emphasize like vitamin D three and it has to go with K2 and you have to understand that the B vitamins play a role and magnesium is so important in our food system is depleted in it and we have to supplement these things. And so a lot of people and are in my nutrition space. Like you don't need supplements if you eat right. I'm like, if you live on a different planet, if you live in Los Angeles and you're, even if you're going to Erewhon or some of the fancier places you have to supplement, you really do unless you're living your whole life and you're rich, and you can just live your whole life to feed your body and spirit or mind, but most people don't have that freedom. So supplementation is really, really, really important. I

 Wade Lightheart: Always invite people to take a SpectraCell task spec just to get, you know, and Hey, look, they're already there. It's going to reveal what, what sup were, what vitamins and minerals that you may be deficient on, or have a hard time absorbing and start there. And almost always, and I'm, and I hate to use the word always, but almost everyone will have a deficiency somewhere, even if they're supplementing and when you expose it, and then you addressed that systematically, there is very often to the poem was almost a hundred percent. There are improvements in the function of that person's life and the quality of their life. And that, to me, I always like that starts to trigger this, right? Yeah. But again, in

 Dr. Gary Shifler: My practice so far because I don't go that deep and people are trying to use insurance. One thing is interesting as quest started doing some of the questions that insurance allowed and they started doing SpectraCell Stipe study SpectraCell is actually declining their options because these bigger labs are starting to bring it in because I think people are getting wise to how these labs can help you. But I mean, I also think like most, if not everyone should be on a nice, be 100, be complete, like a really clean B-vitamin. Everyone should be on a vitamin D three K2, a good magnesium complete multiple magnesium salts. We have one of those I know. And it's fantastic.

 Wade Lightheart: I love it. I really do.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I replaced my old one from Clare labs with yours, and I love it. Thank you for that. B D with K magnesium some people, especially with low HDLs, I put on fish oil, especially if I can't push them to change like their omega-3 fatty acid intake through diet diet. Yeah. Those are kind of the main ones. I also, I'm a huge fan of vitamin C. I have this supplement that's vitamin C with CBD, with like a really great, it's a really great anti-inflammatory,

 Wade Lightheart: He's such a great delivery system. Right? That's what I think, I think where the CBD as a, as a delivery item item for everything else, because of the endocannabinoid system I had Len may in here recently where we did genetic overlays with the endocannabinoid system to determine which CBDs, cause there's a V now we're finding there's families of them are actually right for you. And when you stack those and I I'm, I have various CBDs that I'll use to drive my vitamin supplementation and I can feel the difference when I do that. It's like, okay, it's not just about the product it's about, can you digest, absorb and deliver it to the cells, the target where you need to. And of course, I think, I think there's going to be a lot more to learn about the drug. Yeah, it's really, really cool. I would let Maggie, Scott's called the I'll give you the research's endo-cannabinoid tasks. So forget what the name of the test is, but if you need us to overlay it with your genetic testing and then it can reveal all this stuff. I like

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Just to comment on that I've been a proponent of marijuana as a tool for people to use forever. How has, how do you have a medical system that is ignored an entire hormone system that affects every part of your body? Yes. And completely ignored it until a few years ago. Even though we've known it can help with mood, it can help with seizures. It can help with so many things just to name a few that most people will know about. How did we vilify that plant and then not research the endocannabinoid system, even though we knew there was meaningful medical intervention, like that concept alone is so alarming to me. And then when you extend that into the world of psychedelic medicine, where you have these powerful tools that yes, you have to be careful with, but the power of psilocybin is overwhelmingly beneficial and the evidence is coming and it's getting decriminalized and it's changing people's lives. And then there's some synthetic compounds like ketamine and MTMA, that can be, so

 Wade Lightheart: He has work around that stuff so much such a powerful,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Powerful modality, if you put it like for the psychedelic medicine. And I would include marijuana in that space or alternative drug medicine, I don't know. But because why, because we want to sell a pill that you have to take every day, that it suppresses your mood and numbs you, and that's better than healing you. Correct. So that's my whole stance on the mental health sphere is not only are we dropping the ball by not having a focus on therapy and a focus on real interpersonal experiences and like building that community for people to have outreach, but the real powerful healing medicines, they're only coming now. They're only starting. I, a lot of it was driven by the VA who, who just

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Watched people dying and themselves. And they're like, we got to do something, I guess we're going to study MTMA because there's some great research from Israel that suggests that it could really help these soldiers. Okay.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: And now it's overwhelmingly evident that that is a great option for these guys and so many people. And now after COVID, you're going to have so many people suffering PTSD, like symptoms, syndromes, because they've been stuck in the house for a year and a half, give them a meaningful tool. Like, let's go, let's let go of this archaic idea of medicine or of using medicines. And let's bring in the ancient ideas of medicines. You know what I mean? I always

 Wade Lightheart: Had this thought, if that we, we enforce that anyone who is going to dictate our society need to experiment with plant medicines themselves. I think we'd run into far less of the troubles that we have to get a more expansive view. That being said we always with the caveat set setting quality of the practitioner quality of the product, unfortunately, when a lot of this stuff has been pushed underground. Now you get the variants with case that the new drug dealers are Sharman. Now, you know, where it's gone away from maybe traditional south American or someone would recognize they had capabilities. And from a young childhood would study and learn to Plaza. He listened to the historical aspects of the Shapebos people and their cultural understanding of plants and herbs. And you see these documentaries with the Pygmies, for example, and the average, which you're living in a prehistoric type existence, but that pygmy guy can recognize 10,000 different types of plants and their nuances and what they're for, where we wouldn't even know anything. And we would not survive one week in the environment that they thrive in because of their understanding and integration with nature. So I think to bring it full circle, you're talking about this, the void or this kind of separation that we've created with the digital world. How do you feel the answer moving forward is on that? How do we take the advantages of the modern world that we have today integrated with technology ancestral health and evolve as a species in this new world?

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Yeah, I think because of our progression with technology and us increasingly moving into the metaverse and people, you know, as the population grows and there's more and more of these pandemics that this isn't the last, this is not the first and not the last and people are going to be, it's going to be weird. It's going to be tough with this kind of population. So I think more and more that's where we have to incorporate the ancient ideas. So I think, you know, using words like Sapient and evolve healthcare, it's really let's evolve our current thinking about health by going back and understanding our hunter gather homosapien origins. So, and I think it's the most critical to do that now as the diseases of modern society be that metabolic disease or infectious disease that will become increasingly more difficult to manage, be that mental health issues that will be Potentially worse Because of the digital digitization of our experience. I think that's where going back and looking at our past and integrating that with Western medicine and with modern medicine to then give a better quality of life for people. And what does that, what does that take? That takes an an acceptance that we do not know everything from modern science that we have ancient wisdom, humanistic wisdom, wisdom, like these Pygmies have understanding our biological world. And by integrating those together, we can be happier and healthier. It's that simple. And that's what sapiens about teaching people about our ancient techniques and evolve is about integrating those techniques with modern medicine in a clinical setting, Dr.

 Wade Lightheart: Shifler, you want to share how people can reach you follow you, find out more about your message and all, all, all the please shameless self promotion, no promotion.

 Dr. Gary Shifler: Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm most active on my Instagram. D R Gary evolve evolve health care.com is my website where you can learn about my practice and where it's always changing. And then sapien.org is our Sapien organization where you can join the tribe, start a program, connect with us. We do meetups, all sorts of things. And

 Dr. Gary Shifler: If you want to hear me ramble on more about the stuff,

 Dr. Gary Shifler: I have a podcast podcast called the Sapien podcast. And it's really like a passion of mine. And I try to bring in like all sorts of different thinkers and doctors and people in my world. And that's a great place to, to listen and learn more about me. So

 Wade Lightheart: You've been a fascinating guest as in informative, and I appreciate and wish you the best in your work moving forward. And I hope we'll get you back to the bio home for some more fun stuff real soon. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much. All right, brother. Appreciate it.