Welcome to the inaugural episode of Peak Health with Dr Gupta podcast. This series is dedicated to physical health, mental health, and overall well-being. As I mentioned before, this is my first podcast and I just want to explain to you why I'm doing what I'm doing there are pivotal moments in life that shape who you are for me it was a culmination of Life Experiences passions beliefs which led to this show and to my practice at peakwellnesshealth.com. I will share some of these experiences with you today in the hopes that maybe you will gain some inspiration or gain some insights that help you to achieve your goals and also you will see what we have to offer on this series moving forward. So starting with my personal Journey growing up, I grew up in an immigrant family that moved around a lot, initially was born in Massachusetts, moved to New Jersey, then Florida, moved to Texas, I moved to Northern Virginia where I eventually settled down after moving, sometime after that, so a lot of moving and during that time when I was younger, it was difficult for me to make friends with all the transitions and I was insecure, I was shy, I was introverted, so it was a difficult period growing up and when I went on to college at the University of Virginia, I experienced different challenges, no longer with my family unit, I was on my own and it was quite a difficult start but I made a friend there who was very much into weightlifting and he wanted me to join him at the gym, and that's when I really started getting into physical training, And at first, obviously, very difficult for me, I would walk home tremendously sore after, you know I worked out, but over time and continuing this process, I ended up gaining about 40 pounds of muscle in the span of four years which was pretty phenomenal because I felt great, you know, I looked good aesthetically, but not just superficially, I had this Inner Strength, this self-confidence, this sense of accomplishment, which comes with that type of training. And I realized that was one of the reasons that I started blossoming and becoming the person I transformed into after coming out of my shell, because of that experience. As I got older, however, I noticed my muscle mass started decreasing, my body fat started increasing, and I thought this was just a consequence of old age and didn't think more of it than that, until at one point, I really started trying to build some of that physique back, more exercise, actually went to a personal trainer, did "Beach body" type workouts like P90x and those types of things, nothing seemed to really be working and I wasn't sure where I was going wrong... Ended up talking to some friends and searching the internet, did all those types of things, nothing worked until I really delved into the science of muscle building and focused on what was needed to create that hypertrophy and also at the same time re-composition of your body so that you're losing fat and building muscle, and I finally found out how, and in that process I ended up losing about 20 pounds of fat, gaining 10 pounds of muscle over this past year, and it was phenomenal! I'm starting to feel that same vitality and inner strength and sense of accomplishment that I felt back when I was in college. So part of this podcast series is talking you through that process and helping you understand how to do this yourself! A big way and a quick way to do it, is to go to peakwellnesshealth.com and and check out the Body Optimization program, which is called Phase Two, which describes exactly that, but before I get into that, I want to continue on with my experiences which really shaped me and shaped my practice, and well, build this podcast! The next one was a trip via National Geographic... I was a resident at the University of North Carolina and during that time, we had an elective month where we could choose really to do anything we wanted, and luckily, there was an opportunity that arose where I could be the physician on call for a group traversing the United States longitudinally from the North to the South on all of the public lands, and that this was under the guise of National Geographic, so it was phenomenal, great experience! I was outdoors, I was enjoying nature, I really could sense the the beauty and the harmony of Nature and how it felt to live outside for over a month. And I also spoke with people that were obviously had similar passions of being outdoors and I learned so much, and after that experience, it really transformed my thought process to focus on nature and your surrounding environment to bring in health and well-being into your life! And currently, with thoughts of climate change and you know, all the the mono-cropping and Industrial farming, and concentrated animal feeding operations, clear cutting forests, and all those things that are happening which are completely destroying the environment, destroying our world, we are experiencing consequences of that. We're living in an environment that's toxic, that doesn't support us naturally. I mean, through Millennia, you know, we have evolved as a species to to live in harmony with nature, and currently we are not. So what I am focusing in my practice and in this podcast series, is to promote that type of lifestyle, where you are living in harmony with nature, you're benefiting from nature. In fact, an example this is the sun, which is not just a source of light for us and heat, but it's actually a medicine. Interestingly, light is medicine! So when you go outside, the sun's rays hit your skin and produce vitamin D, the sun hit's your eyes and entrains your circadian rhythm, resets your melatonin cycle, you know, the Sun also stimulates a mitochondria, and has an antioxidant effect. Infrared light of the sun does this, so that's one example of many, where just being in a natural environment has health benefits. So that is something that I will stress. One of the next experiences in my life, was when I started working as a inpatient hospitalist at a local hospital system, and I worked there for 20 years before I left and started the practice of Peak Health and Wellness, but in the practice I saw the revolving door of chronic illness, I saw patients coming in with baseline chronic disease, being hospitalized, we help them, treat them, they would leave, and they come right back in with exacerbations, and in my mind, I was thinking there had to be a better way to to treat these people. There had to be a better way to treat the underlying disease, and I remember a colleague of mine, who I very much respected, told me chronic disease always progresses, that is the nature of chronic disease, and what I realized as I was learning natural medicine, is that completely false! You can reverse chronic disease, and really, the way it starts, is to change your lifestyle, change your habits, and understand the root cause of his chronic disease. And that's where functional medicine comes in! It really tackles the root cause of disease! There are five main pillars, there's diet, nutrition, sleep, exercise, there's relationships and there's exposures and allergens. So if you really look at these five pillars of functional medicine, you you will discover that a lot of disease stems from these places and that is going to be the focus on this podcast series and a practice. Moving on to the next experience in life, I co-founded an equity Investment Company with a friend of mine called Viking Capital Investments now completely separate from medicine, not related, but what is similar is that I started this company and had to maintain profit, obviously, just as the hospital system has to maintain profit or a or any other Medical Practice has to maintain profit what I saw as I was operating this company as I currently am, is that a lot of other companies including Hospital Systems, including medical practices, prioritize profit over everything else. And when you talk to people that are in the know, you know, Physicians that have admin level experience in Hospital systems, or people that run their own practice, that's the name of the game, they're like "oh I'm getting profits from here profit from there", but they don't prioritize people above that profit, and as a company owner, I saw that first thing, and I saw many many companies that really didn't care any about anything other than the bottom line, and the way I operate Viking Capital, the way I operate Peak Health and Wellness, is very different... I operate based on the triple bottom line, which is People, Planet, Profit, and in that order, exactly! So people come first, you have to take care of people, you gotta take care of the planet, because if you don't care for the planet there's not going to be any resources left to take care of you or your family, or the next generations. And then profit comes last, then you have to have profits, obviously, to maintain a system, you have to have profits, but it comes after people and the planet. And that's one of the lessons that I learned from starting my own company, and one of the lessons that also helped me realize how these Hospital systems and these Medical Systems, were not operating properly, because I've seen many examples where there could be changes in a system, but it will require extra expense, and because these expenses were not reimbursed by insurance, or because certain medications were not reimbursed by insurance, patients were not able to take advantage of those. Okay, so moving forward to the next experience of mine, it was as many parents can relate to, is having kids, right? Having kids is such a phenomenal thing in life, you experience unconditional love, which really you can't explain to anyone who is not a parent, it's just impossible to explain, it also comes with its own trials and tribulations and frustrations, obviously, but what you realize in having kids, is that you want to support them to be the best people they can be, to deliver a happy successful feeling, and you do anything you can for them in that regard, and this project that I'm doing currently in the podcast series and my practice is for them. I want them to have a resource that they can turn to when they are in need of it, so that's part of the reason I'm doing this as well. And also I'm going to share with you all in the podcast series, experts that take care of kids psychologically, health-wise, wellness wise, so you can learn how to take better care of your kids. So finally, putting it all together, my functional medicine clinic and practice and podcast series incorporates all the lessons that I have learned and offers two basic programs, the first is Phase One, which is the Body Reset Program, which teaches you the healing power of eating healthy and finding your body's baseline, when you are eating healthy, living healthy, your mind is in the right place, your stress level is low, you're sleeping well, so it teaches you all the basic tenets of proper living, so that when you can do that on a consistent basis, you will see tremendous benefits. That's Phase One, Phase Two is called Body Optimization or Body Transformation, and it teaches you how to build muscle and lose fat, and once you have gained enough muscle, you gain this physique in a healthy way, and a lot of people, a lot of bodybuilders, do it in a way which is unfortunate, but if you do it in a healthy way, you can sometimes delve into fruits and you know have some desserts here and there, and splurge in certain ways, and it's okay, because you have developed the metabolism, you've developed a fundamental system that can protect you from these types of mild transgressions. And I I do that now, I can you know, have some desserts, I can eat things that I couldn't necessarily eat before, without feeling kind of sick, but I don't do a lot of it, just maintain small portions, but still you can still do it and live a very healthy happy life. The next thing, prioritize environmental stewardship above all else, because I really feel that, you know, this is ultimately important in how we live, so recommending high quality environmentally friendly products, minimizing our carbon footprint, also trying to help with relationships as well, I mean, we all have our trials and tribulations in our own relationships, so that is one of the fundamental root causes of disease, is having bad relationships. In fact, there's a great Tedx talk by a Harvard researcher, if you just Google that, Harvard researcher Tedx talk - relationships, it'll pop up, but the talk actually describes over any biomarker or other metric that you can measure, relationships has the most impact on your health and well-being, very interesting Ted talk, but that's one of the things we're gonna focus on in this podcast series. All this information in this series is free to you if you sign up on peakwellnesshealth.com, I'm also going to give webinars which are free to you, and the programs that I describe, Phase One and Phase Two, there's a minimal cost to. You can also do one-on-one consultations with me if you have any issues that you really want to delve into, I can help you with that. So, I'm excited and dedicated to sharing my knowledge and helping you achieve your Peak Health and Wellness, thank you! I hope you enjoyed this podcast and if you did please make sure to hit the Subscribe and the like button and leave a comment about what you'd like to see on our future episodes just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only it is not substitute for Professional Care nor does it constitute medical or other professional advice or Services if you're looking for medical care please seek a qualified doctor or medical professional for more information or if you'd like to check out our programs please visit our website peakwellnesshealth.com that's peakwellnesshealth.com
