A Clinician’s Insight into Epigenetic Informed Medicine

Transcript:

hannah_went:
All right, welcome to the Everything Epigenetics podcast. Dr. Habib, we’re really excited to have you

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Well,

hannah_went:
today.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
I really appreciate having me. I’m excited to have a good conversation.

hannah_went:
Yeah, absolutely. So I gave all of our listeners an introduction to you before we started talking. And we know that you now practice integrative and regenerative medicine in Virginia. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your journey? What have been the true key turning points to where you are today?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
It’s very interesting. I’ll try not to make it too long. You know, it was an adventure getting into medical school. I have to admit I wasn’t that passionate. Both my parents were kind of in the medical field. I couldn’t think of anything better. Doesn’t sound very exciting or confidence inducing. However, I found my stride when I opened my own practice. And having gone through the academic system in UK and done the residence in the USA. It was nice to see both sides of the Atlantic in how they practice medicine, very much traditional. So when I opened my own practice, it was the fitness medical nutrition center.

That should tell you that it’s a little different. But nevertheless, the urgent care, I kept on seeing the same patients with the same kind of problems. Long story short, it seemed like what I was taught wasn’t actually fixing anything, so I just started to kind of… keep my ears open about what was out there. And some of it seemed a little cuckoo, you know, arginine and a Lyme disease was a big thing, certainly in our neck of the woods. But once I attended some of those conferences, I was very open-minded. I found that because I was open-minded, half of it made sense because

hannah_went:
Yeah, definitely.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
it led to the parts of my education that didn’t solve those chronic problems where I couldn’t fix the problems. Anyway, so that’s kind of the journey. So really, I took it very personal when I opened my own practice because I wanted to be the best possible doctor for my patients or clients. And that wasn’t happening, and that’s why I was open to learning, and that’s where I found functional.

hannah_went:
Absolutely. When I was reading through your biography, it was so interesting. You have a great history of how you’ve come to where you are today. So tell us your practice name again and then explain how long you’ve been there, how long that’s been

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah,

hannah_went:
open.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
it’s Next Health and Next Health is all about rethinking medicine. So ideally, we like to predict and prevent and extend your life. But of course, as a functional doctor, I like complicated cases. You know, it’s a funny thing when a doctor says, hmm, that’s interesting. Or, you know, because what’s interesting to us means it’s very complicated for the patient, and that’s not always the best place to be.

hannah_went:
Hahaha

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
But nevertheless, we are excited. when we find something that’s not cookie cutter, whereas traditional doctors get baffled that it doesn’t follow the algorithm, the medicine doesn’t seem to be the right fit, the diagnosis does not seem to fit the labs. They get very ruffled with that. And I tell people, first of all, I’m an MD. So it’s not that I’m a different species. I’m the same doctor as you are. It’s just that you never decided to get to the root of the things that frustrated you. Everything is not in the nice, nice box. So you have to go develop and find out what are the techniques to be able to best answer the problem. And that will never end because we’re going to get to better and better and deeper and deeper into the origins of where the disease process starts.

hannah_went:
Exactly, and I think a lot of people really struggle with that, right? They want to follow the rules. They want to stay in the lines. They’re scared to cross certain boundaries, but I think it’s super important to start asking questions and crossing those boundaries, especially if you can’t find the answer to the problem, right? You have to push those boundaries. So what really led you from the traditional medicine route then to the functional medicine route? What was that? Do you remember that turning point in your

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah,

hannah_went:
career?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
it really is. Open my own practice, it’s personal, and I had to do justice to my patients. And so it’s never, there’s no end to functional medicine. That means that every year I’m making improvements, and my clients love that. You don’t even have to say it, they can feel it. It’s innovation, and the beauty is that the risks are low, because as you correctly said, doctors are fearful of stepping. of the regular path because of liability, but that’s because of drugs and their side effects and these diagnoses. But if you truly optimize function, you actually can reverse disease, not only prevent, you can actually reverse disease. There is no downside, there is no risk. The risk is the patient is going to be extra happy. That’s the

hannah_went:
Yeah.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
idea.

hannah_went:
Yeah, exactly. So I want to be a patient of yours now. I can just see how passionate you are about the subject. So it makes me really happy. Again, that people are out there really putting in the work to, again, find that root cause, find out why people are not feeling so great. And again, like you said, the only risk is the patient feeling so much better. Patients are going to be happy in return. They’re going to feel better. They’re going to look better. So tell me a little bit more about that. What kind of patients do you treat? You know, when someone walks in your door, what is that typical avatar?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah, so look, I’m a medical doctor. People come with a range of problems. It could be just waking up tired, difficulty losing weight, aches and pains, or much, much worse. My job is to get to the root of the problem, not only fix their problem, but make them feel young and healthy.

hannah_went:
Yeah, definitely. And when, do patients, do you have more of the membership models that people have to join in your practice, these programs, or can people walk in and just really request to see you for any

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
It

hannah_went:
issue?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
always starts with a consultation. You know, first we meet the individual and get a sense of what’s going on before we can,

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
you know, ascertain whether we can help them. Of course, most of the time we can help them. But it starts with a consultation. There is no there’s no fear of any long winded approach. But if people ask me, what is that? I do once I figure out what’s going on, I’m going to offer two types of services. One is like an annual physical a a a a a thorough workup. And the more thorough makes it easier for me and the individual, particularly for the client, because they can see what I’m talking about. I’ve been a physician for so long. It’s like, once I hear a few words, I kind of get 80% of the diagnosis right there. Right. But

hannah_went:
Like, yeah,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
yeah.

hannah_went:
boom.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
But the thing is that, look, I can talk all day long. It’s not about what I want to say. It’s can I help you picture what’s going on? Because if I can put that picture into your mind and then give you the tools so you have the steering wheel, Now you’re in charge of your health and not the other

hannah_went:
Yep.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
way around.

hannah_went:
Yeah, you’re in the driver’s seat now, right? Where you can control for some of those lifestyle factors and then work on the advice that you’re giving to them,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah.

hannah_went:
right, from, I don’t know, lifestyle supplement medication procedural-based level, and they’re gonna feel better in return, so there’s nothing better than that.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Well, I just want to add a little something. That

hannah_went:
Yeah.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
consultation is really the most important part. You’re building a relationship. And if you can

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
build that trust, the patient is half cured already because the power of belief is so powerful. That means that the individual has willed themselves to believe. So it’s important for the doctor to be number one, credible. Number two, be caring about the patient genuinely and then of course the knowledge is the least of our I mean that’s that’s for granted every doctor should be passionate about learning which you know I have reservations about some of them but that’s okay that’s okay so so you know half the cure is the relationship and I just can’t understand why doctors just give that up or don’t take advantage of it

hannah_went:
Yeah, I love that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard, and mind you, I talk to six to seven healthcare providers in our space every single day. I don’t think I’ve heard any one of them really talk about that relationship building with their patient. It’s hard, it’s human nature for people to not open up, right, and not trust. You decide in like one second when you meet the person how comfortable you feel with them, if you like them, if you’re gonna be a little bit more hesitant, so. I think talking about that patient-doctor relationship where you’re going to gain the trust of the patients is very important.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
100%. Even as you embark on that journey, so you said, what do I do? I do executive physical, that’s like A to

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Z. It’s higher level than the traditional physical that looks to make the diagnosis once a disease has already occurred. What I tell people is that there are five stages of cell decline. Most doctors diagnose at stage four or five. The problem is, as the function goes down, it comes before disease and we can not only measure those, people are actually feeling it. That’s why it’s so good to have functional testing because they’re feeling it and you’re matching it with data. And that’s one of the things I do. And then the next part is embark on a plan. I’ve got the information. I’m going to give you a strategy and that goes from month to month, whether it’s a membership or some kind of arrangement that I and the client will have.

hannah_went:
So definitely data driven, right?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Has to

hannah_went:
You’re

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
be,

hannah_went:
seeing

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
yeah.

hannah_went:
the metrics, you’re making outcomes based on that data. There’s no guesswork. Guesswork is completely taken out. So I think that’s a great program. I’m going to switch gears a little bit. We’re going to talk about one of the biomarkers that you use and why I wanted you on this podcast, Everything Epigenetics, right? So you’re one of the healthcare providers I’ve known for quite some time now. And you are one of the largest users, I would say, of epigenetic methylation testing that I know. So on your website, you even talk about making your patient’s DNA biologically younger. I think that’s very, very powerful. And you even say we reverse aging. Reversing the aging process is critical to preventing disease. So what does that mean? Can you just explain that a little bit further?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah, look, I mean, so I’ll tell you, you know, aging is the biggest driver for disease.

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
And disease accelerates aging. And that can take years of your life. But let me just tell you a little story about where I came from. You know, I worked hard. I’ve been a physician for almost 30 years. And like many of our audience, I found myself waking up tired. coffee in the afternoons. I found that in the morning I wasn’t the morning person that I usually am. One occasion I made a really nice dish for my mom and I was excited to give it to her.

I ran up the flight of stairs to her townhouse, knocked on the door and my knuckles hurt. It’s like wow, I mean those I was too young for osteoarthritis. And you know, all these things were happening to me. Even in the morning I woke up and I look in the mirror and I see these pigmentation. They were like age spots, wrinkles. So I was looking tired, feeling tired, but really I was feeling old. And that’s now go back to what I just said.

Most diseases are age related diseases. So like diabetes type 2. High blood pressure. cardiac blockages, cardiovascular strokes or dementia, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis. These are age-related diseases. So really aging, the parameter that we’re going to be talking about, it’s not superfluous. It’s not just for conversation. It’s trackable and it’s very much paralleled the two biggest components of aging. So aging is as the blood flow goes down in a very simple way. because everything has blood flow. The number two is very interesting, the buildup of old zombie cells like senescent cells. And yet we know that the senescent cells is at the early stages, emerging signs, but it’s very, very convincing.

And we have examples of both, right? As blood vessels, as blood flow goes down and senescent cells go up, that’s part of the aging process. So we have so many functional ways to look at that. And now… because of the epigenetic age technology, we have something reproducible, we have something that’s fairly accurate. And you don’t have to just rely on that because there is no one number that trumps everything. It’s building a picture.

But the simple equation would be the biological age is associated with a decline in blood flow and a buildup of the sense of cells. And it’s just a quick, simple one before we go into deeper, is that even a skin biopsy. will prove the same thing. The aging skin, less blood vessels, less blood flow, increased sense and cell. And you’ll find that in the brain, you’ll find that in the joints and so forth.

hannah_went:
Yeah, wow, a lot of take in there. I agree with everything you just said. We always preach that aging is that number one risk factor for most chronic disease and death, period. So like you said, aging is really an outwards projection of all of these other types of diseases. So what happens is if we can identify that acceleration of that biological aging by looking at the epigenetic methylation markers, we can prevent. And I always say when I talk to all these healthcare providers, it is a lot easier to

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yep.

hannah_went:
prevent rather than intervene when the disease diagnosis already happened, right? When you get a prognosis or a diagnosis and you’re starting to see even organ failure or failure

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yes.

hannah_went:
at the tissue level, the cell level, then it is… really hard to reverse that completely. So again, just trying to identify early, prevent, prevent, prevent, know when the markers are off or out

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
No.

hannah_went:
of range, take the guesswork out of it, get this testing done to be able to make changes because these methylation markers are changeable. That’s the key too. You want to be able to shift them in your

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah.

hannah_went:
favor.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
And you know, so the both the measure, everything’s measurable. That’s the beauty of it. And I think that what we are, our pattern recognizers, right? You know, there are really smart people who developed like Dr. Harvath, Dr. Sinclair, many of these really smart people. They gave us the information, the tools. But we’re the practitioners. We have to know how to use them, not be told what to do. We have our own brain. And that’s the other thing that. Doctors have got so trained by pharmaceuticals that this is the indication and this is what you do.

They’re not they they they’ve been almost brainwashed into thinking that that’s the two dimensional medicine you must practice. But as we all know, the human body is three dimensional and there are so many signals in the body and they’re all sort of communicating with each other. And so when we talk about the blood vessels and the blood flow going down, you can be sure that the same factors like inflammation that’s affecting that. is also causing inflammation aging and your aging biomarkers, the methylation patterns on your epigenes are also being influenced in the same way.

hannah_went:
Right, like that domino effect, right? One thing gets better, then it’s kind of sending signals or different, I would say, mechanisms of actions or pathways to other things downstream that are also going to have a benefit. So it’s really identifying that root cause. And epigenetic methylation isn’t just biological age testing, right? You can get all of these other outcomes from epigenetic methylation testing. There’s a lot of different biological ages, paces of aging, your… telomere length age through epigenetic methylation. So it’s nice to understand that aging is this multimodality approach where you’re looking at all of the outcomes synergistically in a blended methodology approach to really come up with a protocol that works for that specific person. Because it’s really end of one precision based medicine is what you’re doing,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Huh.

hannah_went:
right?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yes.

hannah_went:
Yeah. And I think that’s really special. So Can you give a couple tips or, you know, from without giving your entire secrets, you know, your secret sauce away, what are some things that you would do if the biological age, if some of these markers are looking to be increased compared to their chronological age or just out of range, not in their favor?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
So listen, I’m going to try to keep it simple because growth is great when you’re young. But the pathways that lead to growth and excessive growth can lead to cancer and accelerate aging. So the growth pathways are nutrient sensing pathways. So when you’re eating protein, you’re activating mTOR. That’s great to activate that when you’re young and healthy and adolescent and young adult. When you eat… carbohydrates, you activate the IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor, or insulin itself. Those are growth factors.

So the things that are beneficial when we’re younger can become a problem if we don’t appreciate that there’s a time to grow and a time to not grow. This is the part I’m gonna explain right now. So the things that accelerate aging, are excessive growth through the nutrient-sensitive pathways. If you block those pathways temporarily, and I will explain how you get about that, you get rejuvenation. You’re slowing down the growth, because those were growth pathways, you just stopped it, through fasting or fasting-mimicking diet, caloric restriction or caloric restriction mimetics, that means to mimic.

You almost make the body believe it’s a state of fasting without starving yourself. You can make your body feel. like state of caloric restriction, and you can mimic that. And all that does is slows down the growth, but it’s actually more powerful because the things that slow down those growth pathways can also activate autophagy.

So when you’re building up all these old cells, that’s excessive old cells is one of the markers, one of the biggest markers, and it’s going to be found to be the thing that’s… clogging up the proteins in the Alzheimer’s, the things that are clogging up the osteoarthritis, the neurodegenerative. If you can bring that back down, so the things that make you grow, slow that down.

Eat fewer of those refined stuff, right? But also stop eating. Fast. Or find a way to mimic it. Because not everybody has the ability to fast. It’s a little, they’re uncomfortable. But then these autophagy things, these things that tell the… body I mean temporary stress you’re not putting food in temporary stress you use heat temporary stress like a sauna you use high-intensity interval training temporary stress I sound like a broken record just two more temporary stress cryotherapy like ice bath cold and and the hyperbaric oxygen chamber some of these things can activate recycling autophagy means self-eating.

So you’re growing all this stuff and if it’s accelerated it’s just crud that’s going to block up the cerebral vascular system, block up the cardiovascular system, clog up the joints. You can’t just change your lifestyle. You’ve got to try to recycle some of those and you can do it with all the modalities I just said. But when we engage with a real client, we try to find out what are the drivers, identify them, and then then find tools to reverse some of those processes.

hannah_went:
Absolutely, no, that’s great. That was the perfect answer. I think that gives people idea of the pathway to take where they can start evaluating their own health, right, if they have these stressors, or they just don’t feel right. Like you gave the example of everything you went to. through when you saw age spots or your hands felt sore. So if anyone is listening and they have those same factors or you just know when you feel a little bit old or you’re stretching and it doesn’t feel quite right. So definitely listen to that advice. Maybe that’s something you can look into to address again the root

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah,

hannah_went:
cause.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
so I’ll just give some quick examples. You know, the one of the biggest drivers for growth, we said, it was that pathway called IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor or insulin itself. And carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates. So if the viewers want one thing that they could invest in and try because that 10 percent of that one thing might go much further than applying yourself to many other facts, that one thing is glucose. because glucose as redundant and so ubiquitous and so generic as it sounds, it’s really the driver for not only inflammation, but aging because the more glucose that’s circulating, even if you’re not diabetic, if you have insulin resistance, you can have even more circulating glucose.

They stick to proteins. We call that glycosylation. Proteins are three dimensional structures. I know everybody thinks of them as just the solid blobs of muscle and stuff. They’re actually very functional. All these enzymes, the muscle fibers going back and forth, these are proteins. The thing in your mitochondria that gives you energy, the ATP, is a turbine, a three-dimensional protein. So what we’re saying here is that those things need to be taken care of. And when you have glycosylation, that’s glucose molecules stuck on the proteins, the proteins after a while become dysfunctional and just. accumulate a little bit like senescent cells but this is a separate category of glycosylation of the proteins we call them AGE’s advanced glycated end products. Did I say glycosylation? glycation. AGE stands for which is perfect age advanced

hannah_went:
Yeah,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
they

hannah_went:
there

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
are

hannah_went:
you

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
glycated

hannah_went:
go.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
end points so the accumulation of all of these advanced and glycated end points is dysfunctional proteins accumulating. And that’s again, another mark for aging. So glucose not only builds up these kind of old cells or dysfunctional cells to be more precise, but it also turns on a switch that turns on inflammation that’s called NFKB. And inflammation damages everything, especially chronic inflammation. So if you have damage, you have to have more cell turnover. You have to have cells to repair. And guess what happens? at some point it comes through cell arrest. They can’t keep growing.

Hopefully not because too much growth is cancer. But the accumulation of all this cell turnover is another reason why you build up these old senescent cells. So literally that’s aging, it’s building up of all this stuff and people just think that I want the best vitamin, I just want the best food and that there’s nothing wrong with that because there are vitamins too. activate senescent to break down senescent cells. We call them senolytics. So, you know, for maybe not this occasion, we can dive into senolytics later on. But the lifestyle, you know, the things that drive it is that glu… I’m talking a lot, sorry. I’ll come to a stop in like two minutes. Is that the drive

hannah_went:
Now

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
is

hannah_went:
you’re

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
the glucose

hannah_went:
ready.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
and all other refined foods. So just… make a little change. I’m talking to the average person, you know, it’s better to start with one step than second step, a journey of a thousand miles off with one step, you know. So the next part is let’s try to reverse, recycle. And I’m telling you, this heat and sauna is no joke. Not only is there Finland studies to show that if you use the sauna four times or more, get almost a 50% reduction in cardiovascular risk.

If you use the sauna two to four times, I know this is like a cliche, everyone’s saying it, but I’ll tell you the mechanism. That the sauna activates heat shock proteins. All stressors actually activate heat shock proteins, but it’s nice because heat shock proteins recycle protein. So more and growth is not always a good thing, not in your stocks, because stocks go up and down like this. Your body cannot have unchecked growth. It needs a little bit of checks and balances. And that’s autophagy. That’s recycling. Recycling is gonna be the new buzzword.

hannah_went:
Yeah, definitely. And that was great. That was a great answer. So to circle back there, remember, what we’re putting into our bodies is going to either cause damage and harm, or we can treat that food as medicine. We need to give ourselves the correct nutrients to help build them, make them stronger. We do not want those senescent cells.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
I’m going to go ahead and start the presentation.

hannah_went:
Those senescent cells are going to

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
I’m going to start with the presentation of the

hannah_went:
be zombie cells, like you mentioned, Dr. Habib.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
They are going to cause

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
oxidative stress. They are going

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
to cause inflammation. They’re going to cause

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
osteoporosis glaucoma

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
neurodegeneration they’re going to cause type 2

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
diabetes. They’re going to affect the microbiome.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
They can have you know cancer

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
causing abilities So it’s this downstream

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
effect that starts

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
with really what

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
you’re eating and and remember when we do

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
first item, the

hannah_went:
have those senescent cells even Even when you know at any point we want to make sure that we’re recycling like you said the big buzzword that’s coming next And we can recycle through things like the sauna. And all you’re doing is sitting

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
That’s

hannah_went:
in a

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
right.

hannah_went:
sauna. It may be a little bit uncomfortable, you know, with those higher temperatures, but start slow. Change one thing, you know, start at a more of a, maybe a comfortable temperature that you can get used to, and then you can work your way up in that temperature

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah.

hannah_went:
as well.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
That’s it. And then synergy synergy means when you do individual things separately, there’s benefit, but together there’s synergy. And there’s a lot of good science behind that. But on a practical level, when I’ve done my workout, my muscles have already created heat as well as nitric oxide and lots of other helpful chemicals in the body. But then I go into the sauna directly after that. So generally in the sauna, you only have to be at that target temperature of around a regular sauna is about 170 degrees Fahrenheit, a infrared sauna.

You can get to a feeling really nice and hot at 130, 140, right? It’s it’s not about just the temperatures. What is he doing with the heat inside the body? So if you’ve exercised those muscles, that’s actually pretty deep inside the body, which is generated heat. Then you go into the sauna so you can get that synergy. And you only have to be in the sauna for 20 minutes. And with exercise, maybe you can get by with even less than 20 minutes and get that synergistic benefit.

hannah_went:
Right, more of the compounded benefit, right? You’re putting in the work. So let’s just go a little bit farther to get even a greater outcome.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Well, I just want to

hannah_went:
Definitely.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
mention from a very medical point of view, a lot of people know a lot about inflammation. They know about the foods that drive it. They know about the foods that are helpful and that they know how to nourish the microbiome and they take the supplements. But one thing I find and this is not a disrespect. In fact, practitioners can take some heat in what I’m about to say, because it took me some time to figure it out, is that you could be on the right path. You’re taking the right stuff. but you didn’t take enough of it. That’s what makes the

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
medicine a little bit of an art because no matter how much science we have, there’ll be so much we still don’t know. So you have to have a sense of, so one is that not taking it strong enough and the other is long enough duration. And you could just be at the top of the hill, but if you don’t know you’re near the top and you give up, it didn’t work. One month, it didn’t work.

Two months, it didn’t work. You know, sometimes when I have things like psoriasis. It takes me months to even see the beginning of the improvement, but once the beginning of the improvement starts, then it’s a steady improvement. I couldn’t believe with my eyes how psoriasis can actually totally disappear, how thyroid can be completely gone, but you have to use the right amount and for long enough I just got to slip in my trademark. It’s the right It’s got to be the right treatment for the right patient at the right time, the art of medicine.

hannah_went:
There you go. Yeah, I can’t say it any more plainly than that. No, that’s great. So kind of, I guess, going off of that last point, I know you said when we were talking before we filmed the session, that a lot of your patients ask, or the most popular question is, how do I get off my meds? Right, so how, you know, why do people ask that? How do you help? How does that affect their epigenetic methylation and their biological

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Oh look,

hannah_went:
aging?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
so this is it. All these things are communicating. Let’s just keep it simple. As the function goes down, the blood flow goes down. So the function of your blood vessel. So for example, men that have erectile problems, 40% of men who are 40 years old have erectile problems. 50% of men who are 50 years old have erectile problems. That’s a way of looking at blood flow going down. I’ll just give you another example. A diabetic that has neuropathy, they lose the sensation on the nerves. It’s not the nerve problem. They don’t have blood flow to the tips of the nerves. So the nerves are starved of nutrients, and then the nerve die. It’s all down to the blood flow. So as function goes down, you can engage with how you feel.

All these symptoms I said, you’ll wake up with energy or you don’t. You have energy throughout the day or it’s up and down. You feel aches and pains and stiffness. Your brain, you walk into a room and you kind of forget why you entered. These are all function going down. And if you can objectively look at that and improve that, not only will you see your biological age improve, but so you can match up the function going down with the aging process. And in the same way, you can see the function going up and the reversal of the biological age. So I think it’s very important for people to understand it’s not like a different field. Functional medicine is not different to regular medicine.

As your function goes down, it’s not that doctors shouldn’t help you. They should be versed in understanding function going down. That’s called functional medicine. And then disease is what we as an MBA trained in, but it’s not, in my opinion, good enough to know disease. Because if you don’t know what causes function to go down, how can you ever cure the problem? So when you know the drive is like inflammation, you turn it off, that’s one way. When you know how to get the blood flow back, that’s the other way. So nitric oxide is in there, inflammation is in there. You have to understand these things. If you don’t know how things went down, how can you get them back up or reverse?

hannah_went:
Correct. And there’s so many minuscule relationships within that answer, right? When you look at some of those biological aging outcomes, when people have these faster paces of aging, guess what? They have worse balance. They have weaker

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yes.

hannah_went:
grip strength. They have more cognitive decline. They even have faces which are rated as older looking compared to people of their same chronological age. So those things I just named and some things that you were talking about, Dr. Habib, are what… health care providers used at the beginning of medicine to assess how healthy

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Yeah.

hannah_went:
people were. So if you noticed, you know, your balance is off or your grip strength or like you said, you walk into a room and you’re not sure why you’re there, that is decline. That is a decline in function and something is wrong. That is your trigger.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
And

hannah_went:
So.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
blood vessel is such

hannah_went:
So,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
a critical part because there’s no organ in the body that does not have a blood circulation. So assessing the blood vessels is a really good way of looking at overall impact. So when I look at the blood pressure, I don’t look at the pressure on the arm alone. That’s called the brachial. We look at the central arterial pressure using a computer. We look at the waveform of the arterial profile because that gives us an idea of stiffness. Stiff blood vessels have low nitric oxide. So when we look at brain scans, we’re actually able to measure the voltage and indirectly the blood flow. So when people have depression, low blood flow.

When they have anxiety, low blood flow. When they have insomnia, low blood flow. And obviously if you have a stroke or neurodegenerative, so blood flow is at the root of everything, whether it’s the brain and of course blood flow, you know, when your blood vessels get stiff and the high blood pressure goes up, the blood flow goes down, then you can build a plaque, which is cardiovascular or… atherosclerosis. There’s a science to this madness and we should not wait until the stress test is positive. We should not wait until you have symptoms.

You can actually see the function going down or find a doctor that can measure the functional assessment. So measuring the softness of the blood vessels to me is one of the easiest way. When I see inflammation, I see stiff blood vessels. Even if they don’t have high blood pressure, that’s the thing. You can pick up very early.

hannah_went:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Identify, identify, identify. I know you say here, predict, prevent, and prolong. I love it. So how do you think this will change medicine in the future? So not just functional medicine, but even traditional medicine in return, right? We want to almost merge traditional and functional medicine so we can move more towards that functional path. But what is the best way to do that? So I’m going to go back to the question that I was asking about the traditional and functional medicine. How do you think epigenetic methylation testing is actually going to be translated in traditional medicine or all the things that you’re doing, all of that,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Well,

hannah_went:
the more functional

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
this is

hannah_went:
test?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
after all America. It’s a capitalistic country. It is going to be the dollar. It’s very expensive with disease management because it’s not going down. It’s probably going to exceed the defense in the percentage of GDP expenditure. So the point we’re trying to make is that the disease model is so expensive. The last two years of people’s lives, in the last two years, they use up 80% of the health care dollars. Treating sickness is very, very expensive, not only financial, for the individual. That is not a good state to be in where you’re suffering a prolonged decline. Well, functional medicine keeps you at your peak.

So when you’re at an advanced age, whatever that is, you should be on no medication. You should be able to spring off the chair. Your mind should be sharp. You should be able to play golf. You should have great physical performance in the gym. The great… intimacy with your partner because it’s all down to function. And and that’s the most economic way that unfortunately we’re going to have to find the hard way because they’re going to go keep on getting more and more bankrupt. And when you’re functional, then you prevent the disease.

Disease is the most important way. And then eventually they’ll see that, oh, we have a way to track this aging process. That’s when you’ll find that it’ll be like a new vital sign. Right. A vital sign is the blood pressure. A vital is your temperature. is the vital is knowing how fast you’re aging. Look, it’s not about we’re going to predict exactly when you’re going to die. In fact, we probably can’t because you could make changes in 30 days and all of a sudden your epigenetics changes.

But it’s more that it’s going to be validated because it’s already paralleling function going down. It’s already paralleling the onset of early disease. People like myself, we’ve met MDs, functional. We’re putting it together. So it’s only a matter of time that we will bring the data to show, look, of these thousand patients, we just prevented or reversed the blood brain. Of these thousand patients, we just reversed their diabetes. And that’s the power of epigenetics because then we can say, well, we don’t have to measure all these things. We can just look at this and kind of look at the direction it’s going.

hannah_went:
Right, again, helps with your precision of care. So, and I don’t think, you know, even though most functional healthcare providers, I’m not speaking for everyone out there, I’m not even sure about you, Dr. Habib, even though a lot of them are just cash pay and they don’t take insurance, they are saving you money. I promise you, I guarantee it 100%. Because again, they’re identifying early. If those diseases aren’t identified early, you’re going to be in the sick care model and then you are gonna develop disease and you’re going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars later. So it’s either start now and again, pay a little bit of money to get very, very great precision-based treatment or suffer the disease at an early age and pay a lot of money trying to fix

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
But it’s

hannah_went:
it.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
never

hannah_went:
So never

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
too late. It’s never too late.

hannah_went:
too late.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
So mere absence of disease doesn’t make you normal because before disease, you have dysfunction. So function has like four stages, three stages. And as that goes down, it becomes dysfunction. And then it becomes disease. It never skips. It always goes down like that.

hannah_went:
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s been great. Well, Dr. Habib, I have one last question for you. This is a curve ball. I’m asking it to everyone at the end of my podcast. If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be and why?

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Wow, that is a curve ball. I have to think about that. If I could be any animal, why would it be? You know, I’m just gonna give you the quick answer. I own a cat, I see the cat, and you know what? They don’t say very much. They’re watching everything.

hannah_went:
Mm-hmm.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
And then, you know, sometimes you come out the room and it’s like, they were right there, but just a little bit. So, you know, I think that, that’s like, to me, the analogy would be like a Buddhist. They say, you know, they’re sitting on the top of a hill. and to watch the world go by. And that seems like a great aspiration. It’s like, well, I may never be a real high level Buddhist with all these abilities to control thermal temperature, but I can act like a cat.

hannah_went:
There you go. That’s the next best thing, I think, right? Well, no, I love it. First thing to come to mind and then you had some reasoning behind it too, so it makes sense. Well, Dr. Beebe, thank you so much for joining the Everything Epigenetics podcast. You are a really unique guest because you’re an MD. Most of the people we have on this podcast are doing research in the epigenetic methylation space, so I think a lot of people are going to be excited to hear more about how you can use this testing in a clinical

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Well,

hannah_went:
setting.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
I really appreciate inviting me. And if it wasn’t for those smart people, we wouldn’t have the tools. So it’s good to collaborate that you’ve given me these tools. And this is what I found. And this I mixed it up.

hannah_went:
Absolutely.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
You know, this is a constant learning.

hannah_went:
They’re giving you the tools in the toolbox and you’re making them practical, you’re making them clinical. So

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Thank

hannah_went:
thanks

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
you

hannah_went:
again,

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
so

hannah_went:
Dr.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
much.

hannah_went:
Habib.

Mahsin Habib, M. D:
Take care. Thank you.