I’m super excited about today’s guest. In a lot of past episodes, we’ve talked about the importance of blood testing and regular checkups to make sure your health is on point. A lot of you have reached out to me and expressed confusion – what blood tests should people invest in? What should they be looking for? Why?

Well, today, we’re in for a special treat, because we have Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi, Medical Director of a company called Wellness FX. If you haven’t heard of Wellness FX, they’re a company that’s leading the industry in advanced, consumer-focused blood testing that helps you understand exactly what’s going on in your body, with sophisticated software and analytical tools. What 23 and Me is to genetic testing and uBiome is to gut testing, Wellness FX is to blood testing.

Dr. Khaleghi has had an extremely diverse career, from managing hospitals to McKinsey and much, much more. He’s published a number of books, from Healthiest You Ever to The Complete Idiots Guide to Boosting Your Immunity and The Everything Guide to preventing heart disease. He also holds a BS in Bioengineering, a medical degree, and an MBA.

In this episode, we talk about a lot of the different ways you can optimize and measure your health indicators, from blood testing to supplements and nutrition. We go into some nitty gritty details of what you need to look out for in your blood work, and what it might mean. If you visit the blog post, we’re also going to be listing out the 25 basic biomarkers that WellnessFX recommends getting tested, so make sure to check it out.

There’s a lot of great information and takeaway value here, so I’m very excited to introduce you to Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi.

This episode is brought to you by the all new SuperLearner Academy!

In this episode on blood testing, we discuss:

• Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi's path from medical school to Wellness FX
• What is WellnessFX, and how is it different from the blood testing your doctor might review?
• What does the term “biomarker” mean, exactly?
• What are the most important, emerging, and lesser-known markers that predict your health and vitality?
• What's wrong with traditional blood testing and the way people do or don't understand their results?
• A quick overview of the various service packages and costs of blood testing
• What are the obvious and less obvious things that we need to look out for in our blood testing results?
• What are some major misconceptions in blood testing where the common wisdom is leading us astray?
• What is the truth behind LDL and HDL cholesterol?
• Which biomarkers actually predict heart attacks and strokes?
• How often should you actually get blood testing done, and why?
• What is Hemoglobin A1C, and why is it so important to keep track of?
• What are the most impactful health changes that Dr. Khaleghi recommends making in your own life?
• What things did Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi learn in medical school that he discovered were wrong?
• What diet and exercise regimen does Dr. Khaleghi recommend based on the data he has seen?
• What supplements does Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi recommend, and which does he take himself?
• The benefits of probiotics throughout the body
• Fish Oil, Omega 6, and Omega 3's, and why they're important
• Who's work does Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi follow or admire?
• Convergence in nutrition information, specifically the “Paleo vs. Low Protein” debate, and how they're similar
• What would a $100 “quick start” kit by Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi look like?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi's 6 different books
• WellnessFX
• Our previous episode with Robb Wolf
• Our previous episode with Abel James
• Our previous episode with Dr. Loren Cordain
• Vitamin D3 Supplements
• Probiotic Supplements
• Kombucha (my personal probiotic source)
• Multivitamin supplements
• Fish Oil supplements (Robb Wolf's Recommended Brand)
• Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author of Eat to Live
• T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study and Whole

Favorite Quotes from Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host. Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by the all-new and very exciting. SuperLearner Academy. Now SuperLearner Academy is the home of my premium level content and masterclasses from my course on accelerated learning, speed, reading, and memory all the way to my course on productivity. Now in these Masterclasses, I go into the gritty detail that I just can't go into on the podcast or in the books, or in the other online courses.

I offer the worksheets and the homework and the types of individualized attention that can only happen on my own platform where I control the learning experience. So if you want to learn faster, if you want to remember more, if you want to read faster and you want to be able to do this all with a cohesive 10-week program, that's going to take you from wherever you are today, all the way to certifiable, SuperLearner status.

I want you to check out the exclusive discount that we're offering for podcast listeners only at jle.vi/learn. That's jle.vi/learn. 

Greetings Superfriends and welcome to this week's episode. You guys, I’m super excited about today’s guest. In a lot of past episodes, we’ve talked about the importance of blood testing and regular checkups to make sure your health is on point. A lot of you have reached out to me and expressed confusion – what blood tests should people invest in? What should they be looking for? Why?

Well, today, we’re in for a special treat, because we have Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi, Medical Director of a company called Wellness FX. If you haven’t heard of Wellness FX, they’re a company that’s leading the industry in advanced, consumer-focused blood testing that helps you understand exactly what’s going on in your body, with sophisticated software and analytical tools. What 23 and Me is to genetic testing and uBiome is to gut testing, Wellness FX is to blood testing.

Dr. Khaleghi has had an extremely diverse career, from managing hospitals to McKinsey and much, much more. He’s published a number of books, from Healthiest You Ever to The Complete Idiots Guide to Boosting Your Immunity and The Everything Guide to preventing heart disease. He also holds a BS in Bioengineering, a medical degree, and an MBA.

In this episode, we talk about a lot of the different ways you can optimize and measure your health indicators, from blood testing to supplements and nutrition. We go into some nitty gritty details of what you need to look out for in your blood work, and what it might mean. If you visit the blog post, we’re also going to be listing out the 25 basic biomarkers that WellnessFX recommends getting tested, so make sure to check it out.

There’s a lot of great information and takeaway value here, so I’m very excited to introduce you to Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi. Welcome to the show. We are super excited to have you here today.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Oh, thanks so much for having me. 

Jonathan Levi: So I have actually been hearing a ton about wellness effects. I know Tim Ferriss is a big. Fan of you guys, he's a customer he's I think also an investor. And so he's been ranting and raving about how amazing the service is on his podcast.

And so I knew we had to get you on and I had to figure it out, you know, what you guys do and why it's so important. 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Yeah. Tim's been a great advocate for us as have a lot of health advocates like Tim Ferris, Dave Asprey, and so many more. And we're lucky to have so many people that have found meaningful use with Wellness, FX, and been able to make their lives better.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. And I definitely want to get into that at length though. I feel like I tried to summarize your bio a little bit in the intro and I found it really, really difficult. So maybe first we could kind of trace through your path and figure out how you got to where you are today and what you're working on.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Certainly. So I'm actually lucky that Wellness FX was the perfect destination for me on a path I'd been on for more than 10 years. And it all started back in medical school. I did a lot of research in healthcare and medicine, really focusing on. Prevention. And my explicit focus was cardiovascular disease and cholesterol and looking at the cost-effectiveness of various interventions to try and improve life.

Not only the quantity of life, but we actually studied the quality of life as well. And we found a lot of. Fascinating information. And as you, you might expect as, as intuitive, but we really found in the data is that oftentimes prevention is so much more cost-effective than trying to treat the disease after people develop it.

Absolutely. Then I went on to go through my clinical training, my residency, and one of the challenges of it was I kept seeing people very late stage after they were having their heart attack after they were having their strokes. And I remember thinking, wow, we have all this great research. We have all this great data on how to prevent disease and the value of preventing disease, but we're not doing it.

So then I thought, okay, what's the glitch here? What's the barrier from actually putting all this research into practice. I was fortunate to, in addition to having a medical background, having an engineering background, that's actually what I studied in college. And I knew technology would be a valuable tool to help people get healthier and to empower people.

But I wasn't quite sure how yet, how do you communicate to people? What do they need to know? And so I started writing. And I ended up writing a few different books written for people without a lot of health knowledge to make them more knowledgeable with my goal being well, maybe if people understand how to improve their health and it's written at their level and they feel empowered, maybe they would take action.

And I ended up writing a half dozen books that reached a lot of people. And recognized, okay, this is what I need to do. I need to make health information more accessible and the timing then became perfect with my technology interest. As we move more and more to web-based services and people were doing more at home, they were.

Booking their travel at home. They were doing their banking online at home and they had more and more access. And I thought, well, maybe we can use this greater access that's happening in so many industries for health. And I was fortunate to then intersect with Wellness FX, where wellness effects his goal was to help people use technology and web-based services.

To take control of their health, to understand their health and to optimize their health. And that's what we try to do at Wellness FX. And it's been a pretty good model. It's worked really well. 

Jonathan Levi: Well, I love it because it shows just what a perfect guest you are for the show, because you just summed up just about everything we're about on the becoming superhuman podcast.

So my first question there is. What exactly does Wellness FX do for those who are completely unfamiliar? And how are the services that you guys offer different from say, the blood testing that I might get done at my doctor.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Absolutely, wellness effects in one line helps you take control of your health.

Now, what that means specifically is if you were too. Go to the Wellness FX website, you have the ability to access various types of blood tests, and they'll speak in more detail about what those blood tests are. And what you do is you order the tests that you think might be appropriate for you and a doctor reviews the order and you get the lab requisition.

You take it to, uh, One of the many thousands of sites that can draw your blood, the blood gets tested, and then you get conveniently sent your results where you can access from any web-based device, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But not only do you get these results, but you get them delivered in a way that you can understand them and they become meaningful to you.

So it's not just these. Random numbers that you say, okay, these are high, these are low, but you start to understand, okay, this is high. This is what that means for me. And this is what I can do about improving that number. In addition to offering blood testing services, we combine it with a telemedicine component.

And what I mean by that is we provide a lot of information. To make your health numbers more understandable and more accessible and you can get smarter. But we also recognize that however smart you can get about. Optimizing and influencing your biomarkers. There are people in the world that have had years and tens of thousands of hours in training in this.

And the analogy I like to draw is it's like trying to fix your car. You can read the manual and you can fix some things it might take you a while and hopefully, you get it right. But for a lot of people, they find it's just smarter to hire a mechanic. Right? And so what we do is we provide a telemedicine consultation for people that want it, where they can access again from the convenience of their home and the convenience of their schedule, a physician.

Nurse practitioner, nutritionist, dietician, pharmacist, whoever they think might be the most appropriate to help advise them on how to optimize their biomarkers. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I just want to ask for those who aren't familiar with when you use the term biomarkers, is that something like your glucose and your hemoglobin, or does that term mean something else?

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Exactly. I mean, the blood testing that they. Done and performing, you asked what kind of blood tests people might get and how that may differ from what their physician orders. So, one challenge I've found in healthcare is we vary significantly in terms of how medicines practice, and I understand that medicine and.

Many ways it's as much as art as it is science, but there are certain absolutes. And one of those absolutes is that a lot of health risks can be identified in your blood. But if you don't have that information and you don't understand that information, then how can you. Act to improve that. So what we do is we offer a various selection of blood testing and in terms of how that might vary or differ from what a doctor may order is we provide the information at various levels.

So you mentioned a couple of very basic blood tests that are sometimes performed by a physician like blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C, or there's cholesterol. But we provide a lot of other blood tests that also identify health risks, whether they be other cholesterol and lipid markers like Apple lipoprotein, a or lipoprotein a, or apolipoprotein B, which I know many people probably haven't heard of them, but they become emerging markets.

In terms of identifying health risks as have many others, like high sensitivity C-reactive protein, HS, and CRP, which is a marker of inflammation or vitamin D deficiency correlates to many health risks. And many of us are vitamin D deficient because our primary source of vitamin D is the sunlight.

Right. But we don't even know that we're vitamin D deficient. So how can we improve on that? So we offer a whole range of markers of various steps based on what people think might be appropriate for them. I love that we do too. I mean, we're just really excited about what we can offer and we can offer it at the most basic level for people who want to start at that, or for people who've become really knowledgeable, really advanced, want to take a deep dive.

We offer that level as well. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. And what I love about it is, I mean, yeah, I've gone to my doctor many times and I give her a laundry list because you know, I'm a speed reader. I do a lot of reading. I read about the C-reactive protein. I read about that LDL particle size. And I asked for this laundry list, but when it comes back, I don't really have context.

I'm being compared to the normal lab values of everyone else. Who's gotten their blood tests there. And a lot of times it's like, great, I've done the reading, but I just want someone to explain it to me. And my physician is like, yeah, yeah, you're in the normal range, which, you know, doesn't help me. 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: You know, one thing we found one challenge in the traditional way that this information is delivered is.

It's very difficult to access in what I mean by that is how people typically get their blood tested while they have to go to their physician, which means booking an appointment, taking a half-day off work, going to the doctor's office waiting. And then finally seeing the doctor briefly. Getting a lab requisition, then getting your blood tested, then going back to the doctor.

So having to take the time off and waiting again, and then you only have 10 or 15 minutes with your physician for them to try and explain the results. And since they only have 10 or 15 minutes, they're going to do it in the most succinct way possible, which is to say this is high. This is what you need to do.

What we found is if you are able to increase the time allotted and the way we do that is by people being able to access their information on their own. Then you can take advantage of having more time to explain what those results mean. For example, if someone were to get a certain marker, perhaps there.

LDL cholesterol tested the physician. Doesn't have very long to explain what that means, but when we have time for people to access our dashboard and be able to read through the various parts, so they become smarter. Well, we can start at the basics and we can start by saying what your heart and brain rely on oxygen and oxygen is carried in the blood, but that blood foe can be constricted when there are plaques in arteries that feed.

Blood and oxygen to organs and what causes this constriction is high cholesterol, and there are various types of high cholesterol. You see, what I'm doing is I'm going to various stages of depth and I can go further and further and further to people really understand what their biomarkers mean physiologically, and therefore they be, feel empowered and want to act to improve them.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I'm going to go back to interviewing you in a second. I promise, but I do want to ask too buying questions cause I'm sure our audience like myself is wondering how much does all of this cost through the various packages. And is this something that's only available in the US? 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: So currently we're only available in the US but we have had so much international interest.

We're definitely looking at expansion because we want everyone to be able to access their health information or anyone that wants to, in terms of costs. One of the reasons we've created a range of packages is because we recognize costs can be a barrier for some people. So our simplest package a will that checks still more than 25 biomarkers, including your basic blood counts, your thyroid function, your blood sugar, and your cholesterol is $78 while our most advanced.

Package that checks all of those biomarkers, but many, many more, almost a hundred biomarkers, including various hormones and taking a really deep dive into your cholesterol and lipids and fatty acids is. Approximately a thousand dollars. And so we have packages at various levels between that to general packages, but we also offer specialty packages.

In case you might be interested in a certain specific thing. For example, we offer a thyroid package that looks at. Many types of thyroid biomarkers, or we offer a women's health package that really focuses on women's hormones, like estrogen, progesterone, FSH, LSH, uh, we offer Omega fatty acid testing for people that have an interest in looking at their fatty acids.

So we offer those general packages at a range of depth and pricing, but we also try to specialize it for people interested in those specialties.

Jonathan Levi:  I love that. And you just want to make sure our audience knows that. Wellness affects in no way as sponsored this episode or anything like that. I'm just very curious, as my audience knows, I'm a huge advocate of blood testing.

A lot of our guests have recommended you guys. So check that out, guys. It sounds like an amazing thing. If you are based in the US, Dr. Collegia. I want to ask what are some of the things both obvious and not so obvious that people should be looking out when they get their blood testing done, which is to say.

Whether they get this report through wellness effects, or maybe it's not available where they live, what are the things that they need to be looking at that they might not be aware of in their blood testing?

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: I think the most important thing to be aware of is, is that it's not just about the basic biomarkers that people may have heard of the more common ones.

I think most people have heard of their general blood sugar or just their cholesterol, but that. Risks can be found in many other areas, whether that be looking at their various types of cholesterol because we now know there's healthier types of cholesterol and less healthy types of cholesterol. And you can have total cholesterol.

That's fine, but find that it's mainly the less healthy type and there's actually some risks there, but there's lots of. Other biomarkers that can show health risks as well. I mentioned a couple of them earlier, like markers around inflammation or markers around nutrition, like vitamin D, but that there's many other potential health risks.

For example, with thyroid function, not many people know that almost 10%. Oh, society has dysfunction in their thyroid and that can affect their metabolism and their energy, and their weight. But it's estimated approximately half of those people aren't currently diagnosed. So they're walking around with thyroid dysfunction.

So that means about 5% of society, which in the US alone would be about 15 million people. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's incredible. Dr. Khaleghi. I wanted to ask also, I know that recently, a lot of forward-thinking medical professionals they've started deemphasizing, just like you said, things like total cholesterol, and they're looking at the overall balance, but I wanted to ask maybe what are some other misconceptions, like you mentioned where, you know, people think that cholesterol is such an important thing.

And in fact, it turns out it's much more complicated. Are there other things like that that we should look for in our blood that may be the common wisdom is mistaken? 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Well, I think you nailed down the most common misconception and that's, it's not just all about cholesterol. And pecifically, there are two main types of cholesterol, LDL, the less healthy type of cholesterol, which stands for low density, lipoprotein and HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, which is considered the healthier cholesterol.

And what I often see is. Someone will come to me and say, Oh, I had my total cholesterol checked and it was elevated. And this person's an athlete that eats really healthy. And they're thinking about going on cholesterol, drugs because they're want to address this total cholesterol. And then you take a deeper look and you find that their cholesterol is almost all the healthy type of cholesterol that can actually help clear arteries and blood vessels.

And that's the type of cholesterol you don't want to lower, you don't want to mess with. And you certainly don't want to start taking expensive pharmaceuticals with side effects and people don't realize, okay, it's about more than their total cholesterol. And having certain types of cholesterol are good while other types are less healthy.

But if you actually take a deeper look at, for example, cholesterol, one thing we know is. Yes, having elevated cholesterol or unhealthy cholesterol specifically can increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke. But what not a lot of people know is they've done tests on people who have had heart attacks and strokes and found a significant portion of that.

Um, about half I've actually have normal cholesterol. And so, okay. If you address high cholesterol, you might reduce your risk for a heart attack and stroke. But what about all these people with normal cholesterol that are still having cardiovascular disease or heart attacks and strokes? And what we've found is that there's other risks.

And I briefly mentioned a couple earlier in the cast, which was apolipoprotein B. And lipoprotein little, an Apple lipoprotein. B's actually a little biomarker on unhealthy cholesterol particles that can help those particles attach themselves to blood vessels. And cause some of that clogging a process known as atherosclerosis, which can contribute to cardiovascular disease.

Okay. And apolipoprotein B is not only on general LDL cholesterol, but it's on other types of cholesterol particles that aren't usually tested for. So by testing, apolipoprotein B you can identify these other particles that might be causing atherosclerosis and increasing your risk of a heart attack and stroke LP, little, a similar biomarker that can, can contribute to cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis.

And so by testing these other biomarkers, you can identify risks that aren't on the usual cholesterol screen. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Okay. So that's just the complexity there alone is really probably the best advertisement for getting this done in a way that it's going to be explained to you in plain English because I mean, there's probably a ton of things like this that are so overwhelmingly complex and not part of the common wisdom.

The next thing I wanted to ask that I actually forgot to mention before is how often do you advocate that most people should get their blood tested? I'm sure there's such a thing as too much. And there's definitely such a thing as too little.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: We often get asked that question because some people want to test themselves as much as possible while others try to avoid a blood draw as much as they can.

And the answer we commonly give is you want to increase the frequency when you're attempting in a new intervention and you want to assess the impact of that intervention. And the reason I say that is a lot of people. Do various interventions to try and improve their health, but they really don't know if the action they're taking, whether it be an adjustment in their diet or a new supplement, or sometimes even a prescription drug is having their intended impact.

And so by using something like Wellness, FX, and actually seeing how your interventions. Are impacting your biomarkers. You can understand if that intervention is actually worthwhile in terms of frequency. We usually recommend waiting about four months after starting a specific intervention, whether it be a new exercise regimen or a new diet.

And the reason we recommend four months is that's roughly the time it takes for your body to fully recycle all of your blood. It takes about 120 days for your entire blood supply to get replaced. And what I mean is your blood is constantly in your body being broken down and being replaced. New blood cells are being formed and it's a constant recycling process.

And through that recycling process, it's about 120 days or four months till you've recycled all of your blood. To give you an example of why that might be a good duration is one of our common biomarkers, hemoglobin A1C, which is a marker for your average blood sugar over time. A lot of people like that marker better than just looking at.

A single blood sugar value, which can go up or down for various reasons. You didn't sleep well the night before, or you had to walk a half-mile to work, or for whatever reason, it may be artificially elevated or may be elevated just in that moment. And so by looking at your hemoglobin A1C, you can look at your average blood sugar over time.

And the way that biomarker works is. When your blood sugar is elevated, little sugar molecules, stick to your blood cells. And so the hemoglobin A1C actually looks at your blood cell and it looks at how much of those sugar molecules are stuck to your blood cell to see how elevated your blood sugar has been over the last four months.

And the reason it tells you four months of information is because that's how long it's taken for your blood to be replaced, or the blood cell you're looking at. That's how long it's been in existence, roughly four months. 

Jonathan Levi: Got it. Okay. So I want to try for gears a little bit change gears because as you mentioned, you've written about half a dozen books on immunity, cholesterol, heart disease, and so much more.

So I would feel remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to kind of pick your brain on kind of the health optimization side of it, the things that you want to do. Before you get to the blood testing to make sure that the blood testing results come out well. So I guess I'll ask a very broad question and then we can kind of drill in what are some of the more impactful health changes that you advocate for across your half a dozen books?

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Sure. And I will admit that. What I've advocated for. What I feel might be an optimal plan has evolved over years, partly through my own experience with wellness effects and seeing thousands of other people go through Wellness FX. And I've been surprised at what I found specifically. I can share that. I thought I was doing all the right things for years and years, and it was all the things I learned going through medical school and my clinical training.

And. I was eating a really low-fat diet and I was exercising really intensely. I was going to the gym regularly doing these long two-hour workouts and I'd go for eight-mile runs before work. And I thought I was the picture of health and from an. Outside perspective. I was, I mean, my body weight was reasonable.

I maybe didn't have as much muscle as I would have liked because I was doing so much cardiovascular exercise, but I looked very healthy then. One thing that surprised me is I was getting my biomarkers tested and I wasn't seeing the picture of health that I thought I was on the outside. My LDL cholesterol was creeping up.

That's the less healthy type of cholesterol, my HDL cholesterol, my healthy cholesterol wasn't that high. And some of those other biomarkers I mentioned or suboptimal as well, including my blood sugar creeping up and other health concerns. And this was right around the time that there was becoming more and more literature and more advocacy of maybe going a low-fat diet.

And therefore a lot of people make up those calories with just a high carbohydrate diet. Wasn't always the best thing. And so I made some adjustments in my own life and I started eating more healthy fats, more on unsaturated fats like that you'd find in nuts and seeds and avocados and less simple carbohydrates, and really started focusing on what was the most nutritious diet I could eat.

What would get me the most nutrients per calorie, a lot of fruits, and vegetables? And like I mentioned, those unsaturated fats. Okay. And instead of doing just those long cardiovascular workouts that I was doing, I was really focusing on doing more focused muscle-building activities, more high-intensity interval training, and lo and behold what started happening?

My blood sugar started going down. My HDL cholesterol started improving my LDL cholesterol started going down. My triglycerides dropped by two-thirds. Triglycerides are the type of fatty acid in your blood that can contribute to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. And mine dropped significantly not to two-thirds of what they were, but by two-thirds.

And so my point is using Wellness FX. I was able to assess for myself what adjustments I needed to make in my life to get healthier. And that's how I found that my initial interventions that I thought were so healthy, weren't maybe the best ones and that by making some adjustments, I was able to improve and find what works best for me.

Now I talked about what interventions work best for me. Witching to less carbohydrates and more healthy fats and focusing on nutrients and adjusting my exercise regimen. And while I do think that's probably a good general healthy plan, um, focusing on maximizing nutrients and not. Overloading on carbohydrates and having some unhealthy fats in the diet.

I also recognize that that might not be the exact plan for everyone. Exactly what I did, I'm saying. And so that's why with something like wellness effects, not only do you get to take a deep dive, but you really get to. Practice a bit of personalized medicine in that you can see, okay. Here's what works best for me.

And here's what optimizes a mile biomarkers because we do all have some genetic variation. We're not all 100% the same. And so people can find really what works best for them. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. I love that. And you know, it just goes to show and I want to point out to our audience that there's a lot of agreement between a lot of the experts we've had on the show, whether it's Rob Wolf or the fat-burning man, Abel James, it seems like there's so much consensus between.

Most of the forward-thinking medical professionals or kind of health experts that we talk to that, you know, it's a high saturated, fat diet, it's an intense exercise, not running three hours a day. It's cutting back on carbohydrates. So I'm really glad to see that from the perspective of someone who looks at blood and blood work, you know, as a living, not that you're actually analyzing the blood work, but from looking at it from a different perspective that it's all in accordance, it's all the same advice.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Pretty much. It's gotten surprisingly consistent over the last really just five to 10 years. You know, it's been a real departure from where we were the prior 20 years, but it's exciting that we're now developing this consistency and this knowledge, and hopefully, we can translate this knowledge to actual practice. Like we started talking about at the beginning. 

Jonathan Levi: Exactly.  And you make a good point, you know, that. Pretty much, it's all starting to converge. And we had Loren Cordain on the show, the founder of the paleo diet, or kind of the father of the paleo diet if you will. And you know, he just kept coming back to let's let the data speak for itself, let the data speak for itself.

Like, don't take my word, just get your blood work done. Let's let the data speak for itself. And I'm really glad that today we get to let the data speak for itself on the paleo diet, which it sounds like from your description is more or less kind of the diet that you're advocating. 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: It's more in that direction. Some people might still differ on, you know, I said, I focus a lot on nutrients per calorie. Some people might debate on certain meats, et cetera, but that didn't really start to get into the, some of the details. Cause as you mentioned that the overarching principles are similar. And so I agree with Dr. Cordain and yourself. I think people should do what they think might be optimal and get themselves tested and let the data speak for itself. 

Jonathan Levi: I love that on that note of nutrition, I wanted to ask what your thoughts are on supplements. I know you mentioned that we're all pretty much vitamin D three deficient, but are there any other supplements that you recommend taking?

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Yeah. With vitamin D. I'll just expand a bit on vitamin D for a moment. Vitamin D has been shown to correlate with so many health effects on the body. It's now known that if you're deficient in vitamin D you have increased inflammation, which we've talked about, but inflammation is actually can affect various body systems.

It can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. It can increase your risk of other long-term chronic diseases like cancer or dementia. And so vitamin D can have tremendous long-term impacts and yes, since the primary source of vitamin D is the sun and we don't get nearly as much sun as our ancestors do.

Cause we're not outdoors nearly as often. Many of us are vitamin D deficient. And so yes, I am an advocate for vitamin D supplements, especially for those that find they're significantly deficient when they test their biomarkers. Other supplements that I think are interesting. I'll tell you, I take a probiotic every day and as I've become more and more interested in health and biomarkers, I've found that probiotics, which are basically the opposite of antibiotics, your antibiotics kill bacteria in your body.

Probiotics are actually bacteria that you can supply your gut with. Many people don't realize that they've put millions to trillions of bacterial cells and strains living in their gut and in various other areas of their body. And much of this bacteria is healthy. It's well known that if you take Antabuse for a long time, you actually increase your risk of certain diseases and certain types of infections.

And that's because of you. You also lose protective, healthy bacteria that can fight some of these less healthy types of bacteria. That becomes stronger when you take antibiotics because they're resistant to the antibiotics you take. And so I've taken probiotics for years. They were actually first recommended to me in medical school by, uh, Professor who said, when I recommend people take probiotics, I just see a lot of positive health effects in terms of they get sick less and they feel better.

And now there's a lot of data to back that up. It's been fairly well demonstrated in the literature that certain types of probiotics can stimulate immunity. The healthy bacteria being exposed to the immune tissue in your gut, and they stimulate immunity throughout the body. There's actually a lot of literature now suggesting that probiotics can reduce inflammation and lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, and improve cholesterol.

And again, this varies for every individual and depends on the nature of probiotics, but I'm a fan of probiotics. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. I'm glad to hear you say that because I'm a big fan of kombucha, which isn't necessary fairly, exactly the same as a probiotic, but it is a probiotic food, and I've definitely felt a lot of, uh, added health benefits from that.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: And that's what I consistently hear from people. A couple of other supplements that might be worth considering is I still take a daily multivitamin each day now, hopefully, because I consume a fair amount of produce. Hopefully, I'm getting all the nutrients I need, but you know, I'm still a pretty active guy.

You know, we talked about the value of exercise and especially doing that high-intensity type training. And so. For people like that, there's some literature saying, okay, it increased amount of certain types of vitamins might be needed to supply what you need to be able to sustain that level of training.

So for example, B vitamins are known to be helpful in exercise. So I still take, uh, a multivitamin daily, and then another supplement that people might consider is. Well, mega fatty acids. You know, we've come to understand that Omega fatty acids, especially Omega three fatty acids can have positive health effects on the body.

And many of us might be more deficient in Omega threes than again, our ancestors like vitamin D because a lot of our ancestors. Tended to live near the water, tend to consume a lot of fish, which Fisher, probably the richest source of Omega three fatty acids. So most of us don't have as many omega-3 fatty acids in the blood, as we used to.

And on the other hand, omega-3 fatty acids compete with another type of fatty acid for many of our receptors in the body. And they compete with Omega six fatty acids, which are. Another type of important fatty acid or essential fatty acid for our bodies to consume. But with Omega six fatty acids, we actually rather than be deficient like Omega threes.

Most of us tend to have an excess of Omega six fatty acids because they're very prevalent in many foods, especially oils. And so you have Omega six and Omega three is trying to balance each other out kind of like LDL and HDL cholesterol. But for most of us, that balance is very high on Omega six and very low on omega-3.

So by taking an omega-3 supplement, you might be able to equilibrate that balance if you can't do so by making the necessary adjustments in your diet. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. Absolutely. I know. That's why Rob Wolf is such a huge advocate of fish oil and actually a lot of people in his position or are taking daily supplements official.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Yeah, exactly. Which is essentially an omega-3 supplement. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So I feel like I'm right on point, I'm taking my fish oil, I'm getting my sunlight. I'm doing a form of probiotics. So I'm feeling pretty good that I'm in line with the advice.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: It certainly sounds like you are. And of course, though, the way to always make sure is by checking your biomarkers and making sure it's having the intended impact that you want to.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I want to do that. I'm going to try and figure out a way to maybe like do a Wellness FX test while I'm in the States for a couple of days this month. So we'll see how it goes. I'll see if I can find somewhere near the airport. 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: We have thousands of laboratory locations. So hopefully there would be a location pretty close to where you are.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. I wanted to ask, speaking of, you know, Rob Wolf and we've talked about Loren Cordain as well. What are some folks in the field whose work you admire? 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Well, I've definitely, you know, you mentioned a couple of great voices and who I think have some really positive ideas. A couple of other people I'm fans of is one person is Dr. Mark Fuhrman. That's FUHRMAN I believe, and he's written many books, probably his most popular is called eat to live. And it really focuses on this concept that we've talked a little bit about during this show. And that's maximizing the nutrients you get per calorie you consume, and basically almost.

Advocating that food can be medicine. If you're eating food, that's loaded with various nutrients because nutrients in food, not just the classic nutrients, we know like vitamins AVC, but also a lot of phytonutrients, meaning nutrients found in produce like vegetables and fruits. A lot of phytonutrients have many positive health effects, whether it be reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer, or dementia.

But we don't fully understand some of these nutrients while others were beginning to understand. And sort of, if you can maximize the amount of nutrients you consume, you get the maximum number of health benefits and the specific way he phrases it is. An equation that we briefly kind of talked about and that's that your health is proportional to your nutrients per calorie, and you can only consume so many calories or at least in a healthful way.

And so if you can maximize the amount of nutrition you get per the calories you consume, you maximize the positive health effects. And he gives a lot of great case studies and a lot of reasons why. This works. So not only, it's not just theoretical. He backs it up with a lot of cases in literature and studies to show that this may be an optimal plan.

And he certainly has a lot of evidence to support that. Another person I'm a fan of his, I believe his name is Dr. Colin Campbell. He's written a few books as well, including a book called Hole. And he was the lead researcher on a pretty famous study of nutrition called the China Study, which found that many people in China, despite lower living conditions over the last 30 years, uh, or just starting to get to more first-world living conditions.

But over the last 30 years, despite having these quote-unquote lower living conditions, they were living healthier, longer lives with less prevalence of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

And why was that? And so he examined the nutrition. How have these cultures? And what was impressive about this study is it took place again over 30 years, which you just don't get that a lot in science. You just don't get these little sorts of long-term studies that can follow people. So most scientific studies take place over a short time.

And so a lot of the health effects that are proposed or long-term health effects that are proposed have to be theoretical because you just can't study people for that long. But the China study is probably the largest long-term study. And it had a very similar philosophy to a lot of the philosophies that we've discussed.

And that's in general looking at nutrition and maximizing nutrition. So eating a lot of just. Foods that are more loaded with nutrients, fruits, vegetables, avoiding, you know, low nutrient foods like sweets, grains, processed foods. And then, you know, if you're going to consume meat, having more fish, which will have those Omega-three fatty acids.

So I'm impressed with both of these Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Mark Fuhrman because they have amazing amounts of literature and case studies to back up some of their philosophies. And that's what you want. You want the data, and these studies have just vast amounts of data that you can then correlate to your personal data. If you try one of these, uh, philosophies or interventions, and then get yourself tested. 

Jonathan Levi: That's interesting. I'm really surprised to hear you at least to cite, uh, Dr. Colin Campbell, because typically he's kind of picked it up as, you know, the anti paleo, the kind of opposite to Dr. Loren Cordain. And I think it's interesting and really insightful that you were able to kind of weed through the whole low protein thing and look at some of the other stuff in the data, which you really agree with, you know, the reduction of carbs and things like that.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Exactly. You know, we talked a bit earlier about convergence and I do see a lot of convergence even between these voices that may seem different. I just see them differing in certain subsets of what they're talking about. For example, you know, paleo or Dr.Colin Campbell, both are actually quite consistent in their advocacy of eating more healthy fruits and vegetables and consuming more nutritious foods.

Both are even consistent in that. You know, probably the healthiest types of meats are fish that has those omega-3 fatty acids in their fish oil. And then where they differ is they start to different some of the details about, you know, chicken or beef. And so I look at that convergence and think, okay, there's a lot of studies agreeing there.

And then with some of those details, well, that's where I want to make a personal decision. You know, I might try each and see how I feel, get my biomarkers tested and figure out what's right for me. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Okay, cool. So the last question, I guess I want to ask, because we actually covered what books you read recommended is if you had to create a $100 a quick start kit for optimizing health, what do you think would you include in that kit?

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Sure. I think I'd probably include a combination of getting an initial set of biomarkers tested and some supplements to get you started on a path and. When we were talking about various Wellness FX packages, I said the least expensive package, which still tests over 25 biomarkers is $78. So that'll give you a start on your cholesterol and blood sugar and thyroid and cell counts.

And then I think with the remaining amount of money, I'd use that to start myself on certain supplements. So I would take a vitamin D supplement, probiotic supplement, and I might consider a multivitamin and, or omega-3 fatty acids supplement as well. And then. That gives you the opportunity to one, identify your risks in your biomarkers, to start yourself on a plan with supplements, and then you can make whatever other adjustments in your diet or exercise activity, or other aspects of your lifestyle that you choose to.

And that starts you on a pretty good path. And then you can decide later if you want to get. Tested again to make sure your interventions are having their intended impact. If you want to continue certain supplements because you like how they're making you feel, or you like the impact they're making on your biomarkers, but with a hundred dollars, I'd probably start on basic tests and basic supplements.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. That is really good. Kind of take-home homework as well for our audience, Dr. Carnegie. I really want to thank you for your time today. And I want to share with our audience, if they want to get in touch with you or learn more about what you're doing, where should we send them? 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: I would go straight to wellness effects, which is incredibly easy.

You just go to wellnessfx.com. We make it really, really easy to get in touch with us via email, phone, live chat. And if you want to ever talk to me personally, are in touch with the people at Wellness FX. You can ask them specific questions, and if it's a question that they can pose to me, they'll send it to me and you'll have an answer.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. That's very generous of you. We do appreciate it. Again, Dr. Khaleghi, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you today. You certainly answered some of my long-standing questions and I do hope we keep in touch.

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Well, thank you so much, Jonathan. It was great being on your show. I love what you're trying to do and helping people improve their health. So, uh, so keep on doing it. That's fine. 

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Thank you so much. Take care Dr. Khaleghi. 

Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi: Thanks, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Levi: All right. Superfriends. That's it. For this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email or email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.