How to Make Aging Optional with Simple & Fundamental Health Truths | Dr. Steven Gabriel | Better Man Podcast Ep. 139

Dean Pohlman: Hey guys. It’s Dean, welcome to the Better Man Podcast. Today’s episode is an interview with Doctor Stephen Gabriel. He is a E.R. doctor who spent 20 years working in the emergency room. His background, his study especially, is in anti-aging and regenerative medicine. And in this episode we discuss the most important habits activities when it comes to living a longer, healthier life.

Dean Pohlman: And we start this from this framework of looking at people who are younger, people who have youth, and then examining what he sees. And he came up with this framework. It involves six different areas. We talk about that, and then we also talk about these two crucial areas. Outside of that, that you need to address, which are way more important than any of the, you know, things like red light therapy or sauna or cold exposure or all of these alternative emerging health practices, and that you really need to focus on the basics.

Dean Pohlman: So that’s where we’re going to get into here. I hope this is, helpful for you guys. I really enjoyed his explanations. He also does a really good, good job of explaining, cellular health and breaking it down in Nonscientific terms, which I really like. So, I hope you enjoyed this, guys, and I hope it inspires you to be a better man.

Dean Pohlman: Hey guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man Podcast. Today I have Doctor Stephen Gabriel here, and we’re going to be talking about the one thing that I think all of us have in common, which is how do we age as gracefully as possible? How do we maintain the ability to do what we want to physically do, make sure that we can remain independent for as long as possible?

Dean Pohlman: And ultimately spend more time with the people that we love and be able to support them the best that we can. So yeah. Doctor Gabriel, thank you for being here and having this conversation with us.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, thanks for having me. Dean. I’m excited to talk about this a little bit.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And you and I connected, last week to kind of go over some of the topics that we could potentially, you know, cover here. And I was really intrigued by this explanation of anti-aging, that you had and you, instead of framing it as, you know, what are the things that we can do to keep our selves as healthy as possible, which is, you know, I think that’s the most traditional way to look at anti-aging.

Dean Pohlman: Your paradigm was kind of to look at it through observing your kids and looking who are young and then thinking, how do we do what they’re doing so that we remain young? And that was really intriguing to me. So yeah, I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit more.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. I’d love to. So, you know, my, my background is I think we talked about this is that I’m an er doctor working in a busy emergency department for most of my life, and, I had a background in genetics before that. And really, you know, kind of realized in the emergency department that people coming in with whatever ailments that they had acutely at the time, you know, were things that had started when they were much, much younger.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So a person comes with a heart attack, started that that plaque in their artery started when they were 20 years old. The person you know comes in with the stroke. That plaque started when they’re 20. The dementia, all these different things. And so that kind of brought me to look at things from a different way and the different way was.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So now let me go back and look at people who are, let’s call it 15 to 25. And see what their lives are like at that time and what is kind of taken away over all of this gradual time and say, you know, besides what most people in this space talk about, which is, you know, I don’t want to get this sickness.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I want to be able to live to 100. I kind of looked at it from the other direction and said, what is it like to have a young, vital, healthy, I think we use the word before esthetic beautiful life. And if all the things that I’m doing or trying to recommend to my patients or friends or anyone who talks to me about this stuff, if what we’re doing, let’s say, for ourselves or our medical health isn’t getting us back to what our lives were like at 20, or at least trying to push us in that direction, then what was the purpose of it?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And to kind of simplify this, I had several observations. I have a 15 year old, an 18 year old, and I looked at them. I looked at their friends in high school. And this is kind of what I came up with. And I’ll elaborate a little bit if we want to after it. But it’s essentially I came up with these, what I call kind of the elements of life, which are sleep, sex, social, spiritual movement and nourishment.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And, you know, I don’t know if you want to interject here, you want me to kind of expand right now. I’m happy to.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. No, no, those are those are great. Let’s just keep going where you were going.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. So, so for when you think about it, when you think of sleep, the way I looked at that is my kids just fall asleep. They can have a really stressful day. Things can be hard, and they can just pass out. They can take a nap in the afternoon. They can turn it off. You know, this is without going too much down this rabbit hole.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: This is this incredible ability to move from sympathetic to parasympathetic so completely relaxed state, turn everything off. This is like real quality. If any of you remember this, or particularly if any of you have babies, you know what this is like. You’re kick is three years old. You can hold them up by the wrinkle and they can basically stay asleep.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: It’s kind of amazing. So that’s sleep then. Sex is not just, you know, the act of sex. There’s always this kind of sexual energy. There is a sexual tension. There’s, you know, a sexuality about youth in general. So, you know, I incorporated this as well. Social. If you think back to your life when you’re younger. Or like when I observe my kids, their lives were like, revolve around other people, whether it’s texting, Snapchat, I’ve got to get over to the mall, dad, to be with my friends.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Any positive thing that happens, any negative things that happen. There was this constant inter communication and shared in their social lives. And I think anybody who’s read anything on blue zones or like a lot of kind of the, you know, aging literature, one of the key elements is this social connection. This is very natural. When you’re in your younger just said, sleep sex.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So, so spiritual. Spiritual is kind of seeing a world outside of yourself. This is nature. This is God, whatever virgin that is for you. But there’s kind of something bigger than you. And this is also very natural when you’re younger. And then this kind of isolationism happens as you get older. And movement is this ability to move, right.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Like, you know, just highlight me using my hands right now. And if you watch kids, they’re they’re dancing, they’re moving, they’re talking, they’re playing sports. They’re lifting. They’re, you know, especially my teenage boy he’s tackling and punching. And all of this is extremely healthy and youthful and fun makes life fun. And then the last one I put in there is nourishment to kind of put this in.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: There is, you know, you’re eating you’re eating right foods. Your, you know, goldfish in this.

Dean Pohlman: Process and yes mean all.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You know when you read it. It really it’s there’s so much caloric need that that is why like this, you know, even though a lot of times they don’t eat well, the caloric demand trumps everything. Once you’ve reached adulthood, the caloric demand really isn’t there. Now you really need to transition to not just caloric, but like what is healthy and kind of slowing the aging process.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So anyway, that’s kind of my big picture view. And then I go and look, because I am very science minded. You know, my background before medicine was all genetics. And so then I look at it and say, now, if I’m gonna optimize cells and all the different ways that I’m going to do that, do those thing lead to the macro of those elements of like, are they getting me back to am I moving better or do I feel like a little bit more, you know, sexual in terms of my energy?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Do I want to hang out with friends more? And my fallen asleep better because of the things that I’m doing at the cellular level, aren’t getting me back to this stuff. Then I’m looking at it and saying kind of, what am I doing here? So that’s kind of a long story to explain my philosophy and all this.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So what is. So I’ve heard this phrase a lot. And you know, if you’re in, if you’re in biohacking world, you’ve probably heard like optimization of cells or like, you know, on a cellular level. And I always hear that phrase and I’m like, but like what? Like of course it’s on. Everything is on a cellular level, isn’t it?

Dean Pohlman: So when you say optimize cells, what do you what do you mean by that.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: This is a great question. And I’m going to try to because this is easy for people in this world. To one, it’s very cliche and sounds good. Yeah. Right. And I will.

Dean Pohlman: Optimize.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Cells. Yes. I mean it’s fantastic, right? It’s a great like marketing term. But it is actually true. But it’s kind of also wastebasket in terms of it means everything. And everybody’s like, yeah, I want to do that. And then like you said, you walk away and you say, do. What does that mean? I’m exercising. I’m sleeping under a red light.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Does that mean I’m sleeping eight hours? That means I’m sleeping five hours. Does that mean I’m fasting? Does that mean I’m eating all vegetables? Does it like what? Like what am I doing to optimize cells? So I will I will try to simplify this as best as I can. So optimizing cells so you have trillions of cells in your body.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: The cells are organized into organ systems. I think we’ll leave that part of there. Then the next layer of that is at the you know, if anyone’s taken any basic biology, you have the cell, it has a bunch of little organelles inside there. And then at the very heart in the nucleus is the DNA, the DNA codes for proteins.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I will stop it at that. Proteins are machines that have functions in the cells. Okay. The function. Think about them like trucks and electrical wiring, things that are functional inside the cells. What happens over time is that the DNA, which codes for the machines that are going to do work in the cells, that then the cells all work together as organs over time.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And think about it, kind of like a record that starts off really fresh and can play the music perfectly. And over time, the record is getting scratched up and now the music is getting less and less good. So that means that the machines are getting less and less good, and some of the songs now can’t even play. And over time this is happening and this is happening.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And then I’ll get to what we can do about it through. And I’m going to say some big words right now, but I think words everyone’s heard about through inflammation, oxidation, glycation, sugars on top of toxins, chronic infections, and then then the other things that are aging. You unlike a global level, are poor or lack of sleep poor or lack of exercise poor diet.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And then on top of this thing taking place overall, God bless you, by the way.

Dean Pohlman: Oh thank you.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And then all of this on top of what they call telomere shortening, which is basically your DNA is literally shortening at the ends to tell your cells to get older and eventually die. And this supposedly or the hypothesized reason is because for an evolutionary standpoint, to protect this species, we are supposed to die and have our offspring take over in a new environment.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So we’ll kind of leave that one to the side. Although it’s a big focus of my work, we can talk about some of those other ones, but all of those things that I just talked about are overall wood or damaging your cells and then doing this thing that I’m talking about, scratching the record information becomes less and less quality.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: The cells are functions worse and worse over time because they can’t make the machines right. That I’m talking about that support the cells which subsequently support the organs. And this is this slow process over time that is declining your health. This is the bottom line. This is why people they eat antioxidants, sleep better, do good exercise. This is the reason to take care of the cells.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: This is the reason.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. That’s one of, you know, that’s probably one of the best explanations I’ve heard. Just because it was it was straightforward, like, I, you know, I and I, you know, I if I hear if very in-depth in the weeds explanation, my eyes just start to gloss over and I’m like, I lost you like five minutes ago.

Dean Pohlman: But that explanation to me made a lot of sense and helped me understand. Oh, okay. So we’re doing all these things because we want to maintain the quality of our DNA so that we can continue to rebuild ourselves or express our genes in the way, the the best way that they can. So we can have the highest level of function.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yes, that’s exactly it, Dean. That’s exactly right.

Dean Pohlman: Yay! A-plus for me.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: A-plus for me.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So. Okay, cool. Go ahead.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. So what I’m saying is, I think for a lot of us and I know everyone listening is of varying ages or across this spectrum, if you think about, you know, where you started at, you know, as a cute little baby, you, And then you went through this life, right? That is, you know, depending on how you want to look at it.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: But you went through this life in this curve that is, let’s say, at will make my arm age. As time goes on, all of these things happen to you over time, right? Like you got sick that one time you were hospitalized. That one time you got hammered drunk. You know, on all these nights in college, you, you know, didn’t sleep well for all this time.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You were really stressed out. These family events happen, and so what happens? You know, you eat junk food, you look down gummy bears and pizza with Coca-Cola, right? Or whatever it is. What what happens over that time, if you think about this, is that there is these based on these things you can do with yourself. You could have this version of you in your life that is one tier up.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: That is, you skipped out on all those drinking nights, right? And move the whole curve up or, you know, you were actually doing crack or had cancer for five years, in this and it moved this whole line down here. And so you have this kind of adjustment, right where you can be in any one of these ranges, depending on the choices that you make and the choices that you make here really change so that this is in a different spot later on.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So the decisions you’re making today is taking care of the future version of you. Like you can make choices today that take care of the future version of you. And I’m going to go full circle here. Back to so that sleep sex social spiritual movement are all better for you each year that it goes on. So you are actually making the healthiest version of you today, so that the version of you later is even better.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: That that’s really the concept here.

Dean Pohlman: Okay. And so so what you do early in your life sets you on a certain trajectory. Can you I mean, knowing that now there’s only so much that we can, you know, there’s only nothing that we can do about what’s already past, right?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. So you can do that. But but everything in this place is really irrelevant, right? Because.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And, and this stuff, the decisions you make today can significantly change who you are tomorrow. And maybe we should talk about those things.

Dean Pohlman: Well I guess it just makes me think that, you know I think I heard that and I thought about and you and you, you called me out specifically all those nights that I got drunk in college. So I was like, oh, great. Well, what do I even do? I even bother attempting to, you know, undo the damage that I did to myself.

Dean Pohlman: And, you know, I’m hoping that the answer is yes, because I know that everyone listening here has some sort of, you know, damage as a result of, you know, things that either happened to you or things that you decided to do. You know, maybe it’s, maybe it’s maybe it’s genetics, maybe it’s decisions that you made. But, you know, all of us are probably worse off than we would have hoped for.

Dean Pohlman: And what do we do now, I guess?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. So there’s lots we can do now. That’s really cool about this. And I will say, absolutely. You can change all of this significantly. And, you know, I think we’ve all observed this in our lives, like with people who, you know, unfortunately, it’s not as common probably as we’d like, but we’ve all met the person who said, hey, I’m going to start eating healthy, which I’m talk about what that is.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I’m going to start eating healthy. I’m going to start working out. I’m going to start going to bed on time and seeing this dramatic change. So one, you do get some extra repair of your old damage. So absolutely, you do get some extra pair of your old damaged because by just not contributing to the stress of your body, you allow it some extra healing.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: If that makes okay. Right? Because of all you have to do. If your body just has to deal with new stressors, it can’t take care of any old stuff, right? So you get some benefit there and and the decisions that you make from today significantly slow your aging going forward. And that effect compounds over time. So now let’s talk about what some of those things might be.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And this gamut is big. And I think when we talked before I mentioned to you an analogy. And then I do for everyone want to get into some details of things that we can do that are high for the back. But again, a lot of this is understanding the big picture first, so that when we talk about details, you understand where those fit into the bigger puzzle.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So the analogy that I use to aging is if you were a sailboat and, you know, over time there is you know, a hole in the sail, the captain now can only see out of one eye and has a patch, has a peg leg. The mast is half broken. Two of the crew members have died. There’s a hole underneath with water coming in and some termites in your low on food.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And, I guess I’ll say rum in the case of, sailors, but, in the setting of this, if you think about all these things that are happening to the boat, and then people come to me as a physician and say, I’ll just make the analogy for you. Hey, do I just need to fix my testosterone?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: That is the same thing of saying to me, if we just sew up the mast, is the boat perfect? Again? Is the boat perfect? Yep. And I think when I put it in that context, it makes sense that people know it’s not. There is lots of different things going on. And so I’m going to talk. So the question is what do you what’s my biggest bang for the buck.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Should I replace the captain or should I fix the whole should I add some crew members. Where do I go? All of it’s great. All of it’s great. But I think we all know it’s also hard to do all of it. So let’s talk about some kind of easy things. So I think, bang for your buck. And then there’s the super biohacking things which I am into, I can talk about maybe I’m into the podcast, but let’s say, bang for your buck.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I feel like there’s something so something I wanted to say or.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I think and this is what we talked about because initially we were kind of brainstorming like, well, should we talk about should talk about sauna? Should we talk about like, cold plunging? Should we talk about, you know, using red light therapy and, you know, the thing is that if you’re not doing the basic things, which we’re going to talk about right now, then it doesn’t it doesn’t matter if you could do doing all the all the extra biohacking, like all the extra new health stuff, technology in the world.

Dean Pohlman: But if you’re not doing these basic things, it doesn’t it doesn’t matter. So focusing on the basics first is what we need to do.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yes. And just remember those things are all very cool and I love them. But the reason why those things are out there is because they can be sold, right? And if I start talking about the basics, they can’t. So let’s talk about those. So the basics are let’s let’s start with this. So the easiest one I’m going to well I’m actually going to say the biggest bang for your buck in my opinion, as a physician who’s had more than 20 years in the emergency department, I did a fellowship in anti-aging and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Is exercise. And then we’ll talk a bit about that, depending on how far you want to discuss this. But there is no doubt there is no pill, there is no food, there’s no supplement, there’s no medication, there’s nothing that seems to slow aging. That means slow progression of disease increase what I call the elements sleep, sex, social movement.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Right. These type, these types of things. Better than exercise. And the reason for that is going back to what we talked about before, which is cellular health is critical and nothing seems to help the vibrancy of cells more than exercise. Now, I feel like the natural question from here is, okay, soon as you say exercise. Are you talking about strength?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Are you talking about cardio? I talked about zones. Zone two, zone five. Like right. Like this goes endless, right? So I would, in my opinion, as much as as guys, we all love working out and doing muscles. And I am saying working out and doing muscles is great. But the first one to do is, cardio. And there’s been a lot of data on this with longevity.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: There is some very cool work. On VO2 Max, there’s really nothing that seems to go more with health than VO2 max in terms of also slowing the progression of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, you know, prevention of cancer. And in terms of just how you feel. But I’m going to go to another level also has incredible benefits on what I love talking about DNA health.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: When I touched on telomeres and just the function of the cell and what gets that up and there’s some you probably know this thing, there’s some there’s conflicting stuff. But I personally do hit. So I do hit. And do you know, stuff that really pushes VO2 max. You know, or basically oxygenation, the ability of your, cells to efficiently handle oxygen, and oxidizing glucose, which is essentially the energy of your cell, is really pushed with high intensity exercise.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So for me, just about every day, I almost consider it like a medicine. Yeah. At the very least 10 to 15 minutes I’m doing hit and probably 4 to 5 days a week. I am doing some zone two as well, which is the kind of level of exercise where you are going for longer distances, like 45 minutes to an hour at a level that is just barely at the level where you could kind of have a bit of a conversation that does some different things.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And there’s some argument in the medical literature on, oh, this one’s better, this one’s better. I’ve kind of landed on they’re both great, they’re both great. And so, you know, when I don’t really have time to work out or don’t feel it, I do. Just getting my ten minutes of it. And then on a weekend or something where I have more time, I try to get in that 45 minutes of a light jog or, you know, I have a peloton bike or whatever you like rowing, swimming, you know, pick your soup to your I don’t think you have to get any more sophisticated than that, to be honest with you.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I did a little post recently on just, you know, in terms of hit the way I really say it, because people love to get into the science of it, that the science of it is just get breathless, get breathless every day, one time a day, or at least five times a week is about what I do. So I say every day to make it simpler.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: But about five times a week, you know you’re doing it right when you’re breathless. And I’ll take a pause there in case you want to discuss this a little bit more.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I guess I’m just, you know, I’m looking through my notes and I’m just tying everything back. So if we’re looking at the goal of anti-aging as maintaining the integrity of telomeres, part of that being these certain things that degrade quality of telomeres over time being oxidation. So if we can do exercise that gets our cells to be as efficient as possible.

Dean Pohlman: With, Antioch’s or I don’t know what. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Like the health and yeah use of energy. Let’s just call the efficiency of the machine or the engine, let’s say.

Dean Pohlman: So. So us getting breathless maintain or improves the, the the efficiency of our ability to handle oxygen. So that’s that satisfying one of those big things with this concept of getting breathless.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yes. If you just you said it perfectly. If you just think about everything, think about your car. Everything requires either the battery or the engine to do anything, to move the car, to stop the car, to play the radio, to do the AC. Energy is the baseline of everything without any energy, like nothing’s happening right in the world.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: There’s this entire system of life is based on like energy, right? And in the most basic way, the way I explain it to my kids all the time is the way, you know, the way energy, the way your body gets energy is you oxidize glucose or an even simpler way you oxidize sugar. That that’s the whole system. You bring oxygen into your lungs, oxygen gets into your bloodstream.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Oxygen gets to all the cells in your body where they have food. Hopefully, this is why glucose levels are always maintaining your bloodstream. You know, from being an emergency department, you can imagine you’ve probably seen people are diabetic. Or if you are one, glucose, if it gets too low, you pass out because energy is. Or if you have no oxygen, you pass out because every cell in the body needs a constant stream of oxygen and glucose.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: That’s it. You oxidize glucose, you break it up, turns into CO2, you spit it out, your mouth when you breathe out. That’s the whole system. The more efficiently you can do that, the better your body is at everything. And part of the reason for it, and I’ll relate back to the car, is there is a byproduct of using energy.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So in the car that’s the exhaust in the body there’s all kinds of waste products. One of them is CO2 that goes out. You have another exit that we all know about. You have another exit through the kidneys that is getting rid of all this stuff. But just like we know, exhaust causes damage to the environment, we also know that all these waste products from oxidizing sugar is causing damage through oxidation, glycation and inflammation through the body.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So if you think about it, the more efficiently you do this process, the the better it is on damage everywhere else and how little you need to produce it. Anybody on here who’s, you know, into sports or something like the cyclists are one of the best examples of this. You know, if you read about like Lance Armstrong or something, it is like the efficiency of what his body does with, you know, way less oxygen and way less food and sugar in terms of the output is it’s amazing.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And this helps every system in your body that’s bottom line helps every system in the body. So that’s number one. Like you’ll get more bang for your buck than anything. And then I’m going to say this even simpler. Just get breathless. You you don’t need to train it right away. You need to walk out your front door and move that going from nothing to something.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You just you just got 95% of the benefit. All the guys at gym training, optimizing that is for your already at the 95%. You think this stuff is fun, you love it. And so you’re trying to optimize the inner part of it. You get more than 90% just doing it, just doing anything. We don’t have to talk about which exercise is the best one.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Doesn’t matter. Do the one you like. That’s the best one.

Dean Pohlman: Cool. All right. So and then I’m assuming moving off from exercise. The next thing is this to discuss nutrition. And this is always interesting because you know everyone always has different. There’s so many different things. Right. Okay I should eat all vegetables. No you should eat all meat. No. You should you to blend. No you should you should not have carbs.

Dean Pohlman: So, in the last week, you know, you and I were talking and you said my, my brother, he eats too much meat. I don’t think you should eat that much meat. And so, yeah, I’m like, okay, well, what do we what do we do? What’s the, you know, what’s the, what’s your advice as as the physician, as the anti-aging and regenerative medicine expert?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. So this this is a great, a great question because there is, like you said, so many out there, right? There’s so many different ways it out there. And then we go to weight loss world. Then there’s a whole nother world of all the different ways you should do that. So going with, you know, I’m stacking because I think the most important thing to share with everyone is your own.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You know, people don’t do things unless you kind of have some understanding. The why is critical. The why is what pulls us. So I’m going to give you like a paradigm that I hope kind of answers the why of it. And that is just like I talked about with the exhaust from the car. I’m going to start off and say this kind of blasphemous line that food is bad for you, food is bad for you.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: That’s like saying gas for the car is bad for it, and it is because if I run the car over time, the car will break down, right? It produces all this exhaust oil needs to be changed. There’s all kinds of costs to running the car. Yet at the same time, the car cannot run without gasoline. This is the same concept for the human body.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: The problem with not eating is that you cease to exist, and that is not where we want to go with this. The then the counter to this is then eating causes damage to our body. So now let’s talk about what the happy medium is. So the happy medium is we want to eat in the most efficient and clean way possible, that we can go back to the elements that I talked about the sleep, sex, social, spiritual movement because we want to do all these things because we want this vibrant, young, healthy life.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So we do need food for this, but we’re also trying to slow down the damage that’s happening from eating and the waste products that come from it. So I think we all know right now I’m going to start to just make this simple, because this is about us being able to make choices, because this is not about being rigid.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: This is about there’s a cost to everything. If you think about what I just said, there’s a cost to it. Right? We talked about my brother eating a lot of meat. We can look at my kid eating chicken strips, right. Anybody has kids knows that this is the staple of the young person’s diet. Right. So and so we’re going to like talk a bit about those things.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So this is why the intermittent fasting has become popular, because the truth of the matter is giving your body a break from food is good. Having the constant stressor of food processing food, the toxic ingredients that are associated with most food that we eat is hard on our body and a lot of work, and I think a lot of us know this.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: We eat when we get tired, right? That’s because all the energy is going to deal with this at this moment. So this is why I would say that as a first step, I do think picking out a certain number of hours in the day that you’re going to eat, we heard all these variations right? There’s people who say, I do three day fast, Holy cow, five day fat.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Then there’s people who say, no, no, no, you just need to intermittent fast. And that just means I only six hours a day. I’ll need eight hours a day. I only for ten hours a day. I’m going to go. I like to make this stuff simple, because my whole life doesn’t revolve on this stuff. And is it probably better if you could do pick a day and do six hours?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yes, but maybe a lot of times I kind of choose in my day, knowing my day how stressful my day might be, and I’ll say, hey, I’m going to do ten hours, I’m going to eat in this ten hour window today. I’m going to pick that, and I kind of just pick a number that I know I can do, because the most important thing with all this stuff is that you can actually execute it.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And making stuff too hard is a fail. And like I said, with the exercise, just doing some version of it is a huge benefit. I will tell you that a long time ago, you know what is a long time ago? My son says before Pac-Man is that the olden days? That’s what he references. But I’m going to go back and say, 100 years ago there wasn’t food all the time.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: There certainly wasn’t animal protein all the time. And so this was, you know, you know, part of it, like you maybe had some grains or these certain eating times because you were working all the time. This it does look like to be healthier. It manages your insulin level better. It manages sugar spikes better. It keeps visceral fat off you, which I’m just going to tell you.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You don’t want fat like fat is not good for you. That I think that’s very clear at this point. But in terms of overall stressing your body and the things we’re talking about, some form of intermittent fasting is good for you. We can talk another podcast about benefits of three day fast, five day fast. There certainly are benefits that are unique, but picking some window of time seems to be right.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So I’ll start with that. Now I’ll talk about what do you eat in those times right. And this is a trade off too. And I’m going to do another kind of story about this. If you went to someone and said, hey, this guy person A is going to eat French fries every day, person B is going to have a bowl of broccoli, okay, I think we all know.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And this is why I like common sense things that on day one when we both do this, as a matter of fact, day, week one, there would be no real difference. You will not really see a difference. And I think we also both know that in a year, the broccoli person will be in different shape than the guy who eat French fries every day.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I think that that’s kind of obvious to most people over time. So one of the things about this that makes it hard in terms of eating is that this is the you doing things today to take care of your future self, and there’s not an immediate thing that happens. This is a stacking thing that happens over time. And so in terms of food, I’m going to start again with kind of a basic approach.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And the basic approach is things that are come from a box or a bag. I want you, for the most part to assume they have caloric benefit, but for the most part no nutritional benefit. So this is cereals, cookies, crackers, all this stuff in your pantry that is meant to have a shelf life longer than God, so that it can be sold for a long time.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And I know we all like it. I like it too, by the way. You know why we all like it? It was designed to be liked in a ways that you can’t imagine in a lab. And all this stuff has some nutritional and some, sorry, some caloric benefit, but no nutritional benefit. And for the most part, this is the stuff that I would say is hugely damaging at the DNA cellular level, producing lots and lots of information producing, you know, adding lots of trans fats, which, by the way, your body has no system to remove.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And essentially just get plugged into cells and you keep them for the rest of your life and impair function. That stuff is stacked over your lifetime. So all of this kind of stuff I really try to avoid as much as possible. Can I avoid it all the time? No, but just knowing the why of this will help you avoid it.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So then in that case, you’re trying to maximize, I will tell you. Plant based type stuff. So fruits, vegetables there’s no doubt, seem to have the most nutritional benefit from all these things. When I talked about inflammation, oxidation, glycation. All of the natural things that come from the ground. Let’s talk about berries. Let’s talk about green stuff. Vegetables all seem to have lots of cool.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You know, when you hear about polyphenols, flavonoids that are stopping those things. So these are things that are doing repair. Decrease in oxidation decreasing inflammation decrease in the formation of cancers stopping plaque backing of the artery. These are reverse aging with caloric benefit right. And then you go to the other category which are the proteins which I know is the most popular thing right now.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And I want to put some perspective on this with the world, which is, you know, for those of you, however many years you’ve been around, you know that there was a big period of, oh my God, don’t eat fat, right? And don’t eat sugar. Oh, we should have fat. Oh my God, we should be maximizing protein. That’s the right answer.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Right? That that’s got to be the one right. The one we’re in right now is always the right one. So this story has been made. And I’m not saying the protein is bad for you. Protein is good for you. The problem is a lot of protein probably isn’t needed. I would say that plant based protein. Yes, there are several amino acids in animal protein that actually increase cell turnover cause increased growth.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: This is why people like it, right? For muscle growth, which is a benefit of it. And it is important because I said movement is important, but maybe not to the extreme level that it has gone to. Unless you’re powerless out there and really require it for that reason. So if if you think about it this way, I’m just going back to the basics, because that’s what we’re talking about, right?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Dean is the basics here in food. And I just want people not to feel rigid and have to be afraid of things. Your plate should really more look like, let’s call it lots of plants. Legumes are okay as well. So beans. So you’re talking about green. So lettuce, carrots, ripe berries and then the protein instead of like the way the plate looks for most people, which is a big hunk of protein with their potatoes and their little token green on the side.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: The plate really should be greens with the token protein. This is my view of kind of more ideal way to be eating. I will pause there. So if you have some questions. This is kind of a big picture.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. No, I think we’ve covered a lot of stuff so far. And we’re going to do another. Oh, I’m making you agree now. But we already talked about it. So hopefully you’ll come on again and do another conversation on this. But yeah I do want to kind of, I guess just, reflect back what I’m hearing on protein intake, because, you know, as a guy who’s, you know, pretty interested in building muscle.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: And from my personal experience, I’ve really only been successful with building muscle and, like, adding on more muscle and not just adding more fat when I am consuming a lot of protein. So it sounds like the ideal way to get, yeah, adequate protein intake, which, you know, is it do you think it’s 0.8, grams per lean muscle mass or is it like what’s what’s your ratio.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, yeah. No no no. And I don’t have the exact number. And what I will say. Yeah. You are actually trying to build what I would say is kind of do a step wise for yourself. Hey, I’m going to, you know, eat some lean meat with this, you know, have whatever my protein bar shape, whatever I prefer actually through natural food.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. And see in my growing the way that I think so we’re not always in the growing phase, you know, for like working out. I think a lot of us kind of get to, like, a spot where we’re good and then keep working out, and then you can kind of back off a bit. If you’ve ever seen the movie Game Changers, have you ever seen this fan ever do it?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, yeah. Fantastic movie. Talking about muscle growth in high performance athletes who go to all plant based diets and performance metrics that went up. I encourage anyone to watch this because lots of pro athletes have gone all plant protein and actually exceeded the results of with an amputee. So it’s still kind of a high protein, but plant based.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I’m not that you have to do that. The counter is what I said before is there’s a cost to everything. And one thing that tends to happen with too much animal protein is you do get more rapid muscle growth at the cost of increased cell turnover and scratching the record of the DNA. More. So this is and we can talk about this stuff more.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: All of this stuff, just like when I’m talking about eating, is a balance of benefits. You’re trying to get at the least cost possible. So, you know, I’ll kind of leave it there. And this is what we’re talking about when we talk about my brother who’s like, I am a heavy meat eater and I love meat, and that’s how I want to live.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And that’s okay, too. And we can talk about that on the next thing. But I’m going to just touch on one other thing. And that’s in terms of your drinking and drinking. I do want to get out because it goes with food. In general. Water should be the staple. In general, water should be the staple. All the drinks that are sold for the most part are sold.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Because I was going to say you can’t charge a lot for water, but evidently you can now. But for the most part, clean water should be the staple. Natural food should be the staple. Set hours that you’re going to eat. And if you’re on a day that you can do like six hours, I would say that’s even better.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And getting some exercise and we haven’t talked about sleep and the rest of it. And then, you know, the biohacking is how do you move your line from here to here doing the healthy things. And then biohacking is, you know, kind of going to what can’t be done with just the natural. But if you’re not doing this stuff, you don’t need to spend money on stuff.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Focus on this stuff. Focus on this stuff. And it’s actually kind of simpler. I think that most people make it out to be. But if we do this, you really can be as healthy as possible today. Push away diseases that are being developed. So it’s not about longevity. It’s about being as healthy as possible today because that takes care of you later.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And this the very first step of this is exercise, eating sleep, clean water. And you stick there and you took care of I’d say 80 or 90% of this. Honestly.

Dean Pohlman: Got it. Cool. Well, thanks for getting that conversation started. And yeah, I’m looking forward to bringing you back and talking more about some of the other stuff, maybe getting into a bit more details here. Yeah, I guess what I was finishing up, when I, when I brought up, you know, animal protein verse verse not was, I guess trying to.

Dean Pohlman: So if the goal is to, you know, make sure that you’re getting enough protein then yeah, some of that can be some of that can be animal protein. But I guess not trying to not trying to make up all of your protein needs with animal protein. Sounds like it might be. Yes. Better way to do it.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. And I would just like step it up. We all know when working out hard to build, you know at that time you do need some. It’s kind of like talking about when I talked about the kids and I said they just need calories, right? Like when you’re really pushing to build, you need more protein. Absolutely. Yeah. But that’s not all of our lives all the time.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: You’re not building compounding muscle. There would be somebody whose bicep would be bigger than my room if they were building their whole life, right. You know? Yeah. Yeah, you get my point.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And then so also, you know, doing things that can help to minimize stress from food, which means, okay, you can maybe get away with eating more protein, but one way to offset that would be by intermittent fasting and trying to, you know, maybe you start with the ten hour window. So for example, that would be only eating from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. and then over time, maybe you get better at that.

Dean Pohlman: You improve. Maybe it goes from like, you know, nine to 9 to 5, and then it’s yeah, 9 to 5 and then it’s like then it’s like 10 to 4, right?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Or like and I’m pretty personally pretty forgiving with this. I vary based on day because I think we all know that eating like, if you can have a stressful day, it’s very hard to stay disciplined with stuff. So yeah, if I know that at the beginning of the day, I’m going to be like, hey, I’m going to, you know, I’m just going to make sure I stop eating at 8 p.m. tonight, that that’s where I mean, I’m going to make this easy for me.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Just I’m going to stop eating at eight because that adds to benefits of sleep and all the other stuff. So that’s kind of how I look at it now. Another day where I may have like a Saturday. I’m feeling good, I slept great, I’m planning on doing Healthy Day, I’m going to the gym. It’s going to be a light day.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I’m like, on a day like this, it I might have my first meal at 3:00 and then go out to dinner. And that’s my that’s how I did that day. So it really varies based on what I know about the day or I’m just, you know, going to make sure, you know, have some snacks out of them, be stressful because I think we all know we tend to go for junk food when we’re really stressed out or tired.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah. And so I’ll kind of gear up and be like, you know, you got to kind of plant this in your head at a time. I’m going to do celery and peanut butter when I get stressed out today. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna make some for my fridge. And even though it’s hard because I have it in there and I designated out my head, I’ll just go for that, you know what I mean?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Or I’m going to go for bananas. Is my sugar sauce or something like that, but you kind of got to prep for it a little bit, you know? Okay, cool.

Dean Pohlman: All right. Well, getting getting close to the, time here, I want to try to get these shorter for these this, this season of the podcast. So. Yeah. Yeah, this is great, though. Thank you for coming.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Oh. That’s helpful. Hopefully it’s.

Dean Pohlman: Helpful. Oh it is, it’s really good information. And again, I really appreciated the explanations. Like I think that’s the way that you explained it helped me understand it instead of like a super dense like biohacking, you know, like, you know, like I think that audience really does enjoy the in-depth explanations, but oh, it’s great. I’m just like, get to the point.

Dean Pohlman: Tell me what I need to do to live, you know, with a higher quality of life. So.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I mean, and in this, like we said, is is the baker is the basic and I’ll do the shameless plug I because people always ask me, what stuff do you use? All this stuff that I use and I could walk you over in my cabinet right now is all my biohacking stuff. For the most part, I. And it’s not all even doesn’t even all come from me because there’s people who yeah, I have on my website the like, I don’t know if you want to see my website, but yeah, I yeah, it’s dressed for Doctor Stephen Gabriel.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I don’t know how does someone start chanting that at one of my talks one time? And I’d say, oh yeah, we’ll use that. Dot yo, it’s not.com, it’s echo. Okay. Quite by the.com. So, it’s that’s. Yeah. And all the stuff I use is on there, but I have to be honest, like, I’m really not all about like, hey, yeah, buy all my stuff.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: It’s all my cool, like, biohacking stuff that I do or intake. And we can talk about some of those things on another podcast and why I use some of those things. But do this stuff first. I mean, do the separate at first and then even on the next one, if somebody has some questions like why do you have 265?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Why do you have marks on there? Why do you have this device for vagal nerve stimulation? You know, someone wants to, you know, send you questions or whatever. I’ll explain why kind of use those things and why I think they’re useful. But if you’re not doing this stuff, you don’t need to spend money. Like, truthfully, yeah, you’re not doing this stuff.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Don’t spend money. Let’s go until psych and ask me something you’re interested in. Like, I really want these supplements. I really want to. The vagal nerve simulator. I’m interested in red light because I’m interested in my skin. Like, start with, like, something that’s important to you. Because ultimately, all of this stuff is a choice on the piece that you’re interested in.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And some people are interested in multiple pieces, but ultimately it’s all to go back to those elements. Because if the quality of your life isn’t improving, like, who cares if I can say, don’t my skin cells look pretty? Like you know what I mean?

Dean Pohlman: You know, some people care more about that than when I just talk. It’s like.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: I’m not bragging on it. I’m not on it. I’m just saying, like, if I can’t sing and dance and jump in a puddle and laugh at something and you know, hang out with my friends and feel good, like that’s what you’re trying to get to. And believe it or not, the pathway to that is through the health of your body.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: It is through the health of your body.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So what are some of the how can people follow you? How can people see your work?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, that’s actually a great question. So, I actually just started posting stuff on my my Instagram is Doctor Steven Gabriel. I think that’s what the Dr.. That’s how good I know the stuff I’m posting on my website is Dr.. Sgt SEO, on my Instagram we do some like simple pose little videos once in a while. I’m going to start just video.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: And whenever I have a thought just to kind of pass some of these little tidbits off as I do.

Dean Pohlman: That’s what I do.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, I’m pretty new to this stuff. I’ll tell everyone that, because most people just want to know these little blurbs like, hey, I’m thinking, this is why I’m doing this right now. And, and then my website. The main reason I made that is because people are always asking me, what do you take? What brand do you take?

Dr. Steven Gabriel: What supplements do you take? What this is so literally, some of the stuff I got from other places, I just did the links on my website so I could say this is what I use. I don’t have to tell you, you don’t have to write them down. You can just go there, and get it. And that’s basically it.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: So that’s cool.

Dean Pohlman: All right. Well, thanks for coming on again. After searching forward to our next interview.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah, it was great.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Great information guys, listening in. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope inspires you to be a better man. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Dr. Steven Gabriel: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, this is from Doctor Steven Gabriel, anti-aging and regenerative medicine specialist. Doctor. And, yeah, I really like the way that he explained things on this episode. I think he did a great job. We’re going to have him come back. So if you’re not already, make sure you subscribe to, the podcast.

Dean Pohlman: You can do that on any platform. We also have video versions of the podcast, you know, watch them on YouTube, on the Better Man Podcast YouTube channel or in the members area. If you are already a member and you’re part of the man for yoga community, I want to say thank you guys for being here. I hope you guys are enjoying this podcast.

Dean Pohlman: It’s really made for you guys. And if you’re not already a member, you can get started with a free seven day trial. And get into the mental yoga workouts and programs at Mansell yoga.com/join. I really see the Better Man podcast as a complement to what I do with the mental yoga workouts and programs. If the workouts and programs are the physical side of your health, the Better Man podcast is really a reflection of our overall mental, emotional, holistic well-being, and that’s what a lot of members use it for as well.

Dean Pohlman: If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave a review if you can. You can do that wherever the podcast is. On Apple Podcast on Spotify. And yeah, guys, I hope you’re enjoying this. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. And as always, I hope this inspires you to be a better man.

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