Longevity Made Simple with Shad Marvasti, MD

\[00:00:00\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** When it comes to these chronic diseases over time—heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity—we're not fated to have them just because they run in our family. We actually have a choice. And what we do makes all the difference in the world in terms of whether or not we develop these conditions, whether they advance and progress, and the impact it has on our health and our lifespan.

 

\[00:00:24\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** This is *Next Level Health*. I'm your host, Dr. Melinda Ring, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University. On this show, we explore ways to take actionable steps toward optimizing our health with leaders in the integrative, functional and lifestyle medicine fields who believe in science-backed and time-tested approaches to well-being. Let's take your health to the next level.

 

\[00:00:56\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** When heart disease, cancer or diabetes runs in your family, it can feel like your health story has already been written. But my guest today says that story is far more flexible than many of us realize. Dr. Shad Marvasti is a practicing physician, a national leader in integrative and culinary medicine, the founding director of the culinary medicine program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix, and most recently the executive director of the Honor Health Whole Health Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's here today to talk about his new book, *Longevity Made Simple*, and the powerful science-based framework he calls the Dress Code: Diet, Relationships, Exercise, Stress and Sleep. These five everyday levers shape how our genes behave and how we age. Doctor, welcome. I am so glad to have you here.

 

\[00:01:50\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Thank you, Dr. Ring, great to be here.

 

\[00:01:52\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** So as we get started, just in a big-picture way, what do you wish that every person listening truly understood about how much power they have over their long-term health and longevity?

 

\[00:02:07\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** I want people to know that our genes are not our destiny. When it comes to these chronic diseases over time—heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity—we're not fated to have them just because they run in our family. We actually have a choice. And what we do makes all the difference in the world in terms of whether or not we develop these conditions, whether they advance and progress, and the impact it has on our health and our lifespan.

 

\[00:02:39\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** So we should not accept it. And we have the power. We have a lot of power, actually. The analogy you give is that DNA is like the hardware, but the lifestyle choices are the software. Can you explain that concept and the science of epigenetics, and how things like food and movement can actually influence what's happening?

 

\[00:03:04\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Absolutely. So everyone's heard about genetics and genes, and we inherit our genes from our biological parents. But a lot of folks don't know about this field of epigenetics. And "epi" basically means above and beyond our genes. So, more important than the genes that we inherit is actually what can turn those genes on or off. And there are various combinations of genes that can contribute to health or can increase our risk for certain diseases, like certain cancers, as an example. You could think about our genes like the hardware of a computer, the actual physical hardware. Epigenetics is the software. So, if you have a certain hardware, the software actually can be either upgraded or downgraded. And that's where the way we live our life and these different pillars and components of lifestyle, as you said, are actually what we would call epigenetic inputs, where they can either upgrade or downgrade our software. So, diet is a good example of that. If we are eating what is, unfortunately, the standard American diet, which you know is sad, is nearly 70% processed food or food-like substances—what I call "Franken foods"—then what we're doing is we're actually downgrading that software, so that becomes a negative epigenetic input. So, that actually contributes to turning on genes that increase our risk for insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. And on the other side of it, if we change our diet and we actually start eating real, nutrient-dense foods, avoiding the processed foods, and we get a variety of the plant foods—with every single color that has different nutrients, the phytonutrients, the healthy fats—then we're actually turning on genes that protect us from heart disease, genes that keep us from developing Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. And that actually doesn't take years. That's the other part of it, I think, which is really, really amazing. It doesn't take months; it actually just takes weeks. We actually see changes in thousands of genes—or gene expression as we say—being turned on or off in just a matter of weeks, and I think that's truly remarkable.

 

\[00:05:34\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Yeah, I agree. That's amazing. And in terms of those genes, there are studies now that have shown that those genes can turn on and off within a relatively fast period of time. Is there correlation then between that and longevity and disease risk, versus just the knowledge that they turn on and off?

 

\[00:05:58\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Well, what we see is that they're turning on genes that contribute to either disease or premature death, or the other way around, right? The genes that protect us and are contributing to longevity. Various markers for longevity and health, and markers for inflammation, have also been shown to be impacted during, again, a relatively short period of time. Other markers, for example. A lot of this research that's been done, and that's been really helpful for this, has been twin studies, right? Because identical twins, they're genetically identical. So any intervention you do for one twin versus the other, you know that that intervention—whatever it is, whether you're changing their diet or they're doing a certain exercise routine or they're doing some kind of mindfulness-based meditation practice—whatever you're seeing in terms of changes of gene expression really has to do with that. And it doesn't have to do with their genes because they have the same genes. And one recent study that was actually done by one of my mentors at Stanford, where I trained, by Christopher Gardner, was a twin study, and it's actually a Netflix documentary that talks about this study called *You Are What You Eat*. And in this study, they looked at various metrics, but they had twins go through either a whole-food, plant-based diet or an omnivore diet. And the twin that actually ate the whole-food, plant-based diet, after eight weeks, there were changes in telomere length. So telomeres are at the tips of our chromosomes, and over time, as we age, the telomeres start to shorten because our cells divide, and we grow, and we go through the different phases of life. That's part of the aging process. As the telomeres shorten, and ultimately when we get closer to death, we basically have nothing left in the telomeres. And so, things that can help to increase telomere length are directly linked to longevity. And in this study, they found that the twin that actually ate the whole-food, plant-based diet, the length of their telomere increased, while the other twin's telomere decreased. And that was only in eight weeks.

 

So that was pretty remarkable to see that much of a change that's significant in terms of our longevity at the cellular level. Right? So from the inside. I think it's really fascinating. And particularly for those of us, I think, like yourself and I, who are in integrative medicine, a lot of times we're trying to really put a spotlight on a lot of traditional healing practices, right? Like traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda. Practices like yoga or tai chi and acupuncture have been around for thousands of years. We're now seeing through the science of epigenetics how these practices actually, at the molecular level, change gene expression. And so, it's really interesting to kind of see that blend of age-old practices, which have been passed down from generation to generation and we know work, but now actually seeing why they work and being able to explain that from this whole epigenetic model.

 

\[00:09:11\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Now you bring up a very interesting thing, and this we can pivot to the Dress Code that you introduced: Diet, Relationships, Exercise, Stress, and Sleep. But let's jump in because you were mentioning it with "D"—the diet—because you write that what we eat may be the single biggest contributor to longevity. And I'm bringing this up in the context of the study you just mentioned from Dr. Chris Gardner, this twin study on Netflix, which featured the whole-food, plant-based diet. And with the newest 2025 guidelines, we're seeing not a dismissal of plant-based foods—certainly plants are still included as proteins. And yes, it still says eat a lot of vegetables, says eat real food, like lots of good things there, but it's no longer saying eat plants. And it's emphasizing more of animal-based proteins. So what do you recommend? How does this new guideline interplay with those recommendations? And what are you going to be telling patients who are looking at that and maybe are getting confused by the mixed messages?

 

\[00:10:17\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Well, actually, I think one of the things that the new dietary guidelines get right is their emphasis on real food and the concept of real food and avoidance of processed foods. As I mentioned earlier, nearly 70% of the standard American diet is processed foods, and we're now seeing much more data where these processed foods are contributing to these chronic diseases of our time. There are a lot of associations that we're now seeing. Just a 10% increase of processed food consumption is aligned with a 10% increase of prostate and breast cancer. We're seeing associations with other forms of cancer like ovarian cancer, which we have not well understood as a cancer model, that there's a very strong association now with processed food consumption. These processed foods also tend to be low in nutrients, but very high in excess sodium, which contributes to higher blood pressure and risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and heart attacks, as well as excess sugar and refined carbs, which contributes to insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. So I think that part of the dietary guidelines where they really talk about processed food and they also talk about avoiding added sugar, I think they get that part right. Because that's a big part of our diet. We're getting a lot of refined carbs, excess added sugar, and a lot of these processed foods. And so, one of my first pieces of advice, and I talk about it in the book as well, is recognizing the difference between real food and a "Franken food." That's usually the first thing. As an integrative and lifestyle medicine doctor, I give food prescriptions routinely to my patients, and the first step is for them to identify what is a real food versus this "Franken food." Obviously, there are a lot of different ways of looking at it. But one of the simple ways is: if it has multiple ingredients and it's packaged, and you can't pronounce these ingredients or recognize the ingredients as whole, real foods, then it's likely to be a processed food, as opposed to just having real, whole ingredients, like less than five ingredients for a given product. And I think that once you get that distinction going, then the next step is to say, "Okay, now how much of this should be vegetables and whole fruits versus meat and dairy and things like that?" And I think that's where the new guidelines kind of emphasize more protein consumption. And I think one of the parts where they miss the mark is that we actually get more protein than we already need. Most Americans get a lot of protein. What we don't get is fiber; less than 10% of us actually don't get the fiber that we need. And the fiber is actually pretty critical to the microbiome. So, I would rather have seen more of an emphasis on whole vegetables and fruits as a primary focus so that we could get more fiber and less of a big emphasis on just increasing your protein consumption, because I think for most of us, we need to increase whole vegetables and fruits to get the fiber as opposed to adding another source of protein on there.

 

\[00:13:35\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I remember reading that one of the statements and it was like, "We're stopping the vilification of protein," and I'm like, I have not seen that happening. I mean, certainly I would say the vast majority of my patients are seeing on social media and in other places—health influencers and other kinds of things—that they need to eat a lot of protein. So, and like you said, when we look at the NHANES study, the National Health survey that goes out and surveys Americans, protein consumption as a whole is exceeding that guideline as a population. It's just the quality of it may not be the quality proteins that we need to be eating. So I think there...

 

\[00:14:26\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Yeah. The only other thing I'll call out from the guidelines is that they do talk about not demonizing fat. And I think that part of it is also a part that they get right, because we do need healthy fat, right? For many decades, we had kind of a war on fat where you saw the food industry come out with a lot of low-fat products, and what they replaced the fat with were excess sugar and a lot of other chemical additives that we don't need. So, I think the nuance there, though, is: What is a healthy fat? The data shows that the healthiest fats are really monounsaturated fats. When you're looking at cardiovascular disease or dementia, that comes from high-quality extra-virgin olive oil, almonds, pecans, and avocados. And then, from there, I think you look at polyunsaturated fats and specifically omega-3s, which come from plant sources like flax seeds and walnuts. But you get more bioavailability from wild, fatty fish sources—omega-3s like cold-water fish. Those are the fats that we all need every day. So, I think making sure that everyone's getting healthy fat is another component that's important, in addition to the whole vegetables and fruits that give you the fiber that we need.

 

\[00:15:48\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Yeah, I think the biggest confusion that we're going to be seeing this year is a discussion around saturated fats and what role that's going to play, because that, in recent years, has been really from a cardiology standpoint: "Okay, cut back on the saturated fat." And here we're seeing more liberalization of beef tallow and other sorts of sources that may be rich in saturated fats. So, we'll see. I think that's, you know, again, it's always a conversation. Science is always evolving. Hopefully, we can just continue to have good conversations and evolve the science about it. But bring it back to the patients that are the listeners here. In the book, you talk about committing to these dietary changes for at least 28 days. So why 28 days? Why is that a magic number for somebody to commit to?

 

\[00:16:44\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** The reason why I go to 28 days specifically is because that's the time that it takes for our taste buds to turn over. Part of what's going on here is we've got a hijacking of our taste buds by these processed foods and "Franken foods." So, one of the things that happened in the 1960s through gas chromatography—and I believe Frito-Lay's was the first company to do this—is they were able to separate flavors from nutrients. If you look at real foods in nature, and animals in the wild, for example, when they're looking for different foods, they have cravings just like we have cravings. But when they satisfy those cravings, they're satisfying them with real foods in the wild. And there may be like a sweet herb or a bitter herb or something. They're craving these flavors, but each of those flavors is always connected with a nutrient. So when they're getting that flavor satisfaction, their body's actually getting the nutrient that's connected with that flavor. Whereas now, because of these "Franken foods" that are so widely available, we're getting flavors without nutrients. So, as an example, let's say if you're craving a Dorito-type chip that's like a tomato and bean flavor. Your body actually wants the lycopene and the antioxidants from a tomato, and it wants the fiber and the protein from the bean, but you're just getting the flavor without getting those actual nutrients that your body actually wants, and it creates this endless cycle of craving without actually getting satisfaction, which contributes to overeating, eating disorders, and really has hijacked our taste buds. So, 28 days is how long it takes for those taste buds to turn over. So if we can stop these "Franken foods" and actually start eating whole-food versions. So I'll tell a patient, let's say if you have a sweet tooth: satisfy that sweet-tooth craving with whole fruits. You know, eat dates, for example. Dates are very sugary, but they're also very fibrous. And actually, studies have shown that people with pre-diabetes or diabetes who eat dates, their blood sugar actually doesn't go up, and in some cases actually comes down, which is not intuitive. I remember when I just recently finished residency, nearly 15 years ago, I had a patient who was a gestational diabetic—so, in pregnancy, basically being diagnosed with diabetes—and they saw a dietician who told them, "You need to avoid all fruit, because that's going to raise your blood sugar." And I said, "No, you need fruit because the antioxidants in fruits are so important. You need to avoid juice, but you can eat whole fruit and you can have a handful of nuts with it and then check your blood sugar." I advised her to do that, and then within like a day, she called me, was so excited and said, "I can't believe it. I ate a whole fruit and I had a little handful of nuts and seeds and my blood sugar didn't go up." And I said, "Yeah, it doesn't go up. You don't need that." And so, I think that's where, if you can keep that diet for 28 days, then when you go back—let's say you were eating candy bars and soda, but now you're just focusing on whole fruits—if you go back and you have a candy bar or soda after that 28-day period, it just tastes like pure sugar. That's kind of overwhelming and a little bit gross tasting, because your taste buds have changed, turned over. The other exciting part of it is that in those same 28 days, thousands of genes can be turned on and off, again, back through the epigenetics, by you changing your diet just for that limited period of time.

 

\[00:20:29\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** You and I share this passion for culinary medicine. We can't just tell people what to eat or not eat, but actually need to support them in knowing how to make real food, because so many people didn't learn how to cook. They didn't—they grew up in a generation where processed foods were the norm, pre-packaged foods. Do you have simple cooking strategies that people can start using right away to enhance longevity?

 

\[00:20:52\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Right.

 

\[00:20:53\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** I think some of the most simple things is having frozen veggies in your freezer at all times. Because having peas and any mixture of any frozen vegetables—they retain the same nutrient density and sometimes more, because they're frozen fresh. And you can just sauté that with some extra-virgin olive oil, some spices like turmeric, garlic powder, onion, pepper. And it's a very quick and easy thing. The other thing is with meal prep: If you want to make rice, brown rice or any kind of whole-grain pasta, it's always good to make a batch of it and then reheat it through the week, which you could have it with the vegetables as an example. Because when you reheat that, it becomes a resistant starch, so it doesn't raise your blood sugar as much as when you first cook and eat it. That combination is a real quick one where you have some pasta that you have, and then you get the vegetables, you sauté them. If you want to add a sauce, you can do that, or you can mix it up with some rice. I think that's a really quick thing you can do. Another thing is just having on hand raw nuts and seeds through the day. In terms of snacking, that's the preferred snack, right? Tree nuts are the best: almonds, pecans, walnuts, pistachios, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. They're giving you a variety of minerals, healthy fats and healthy proteins. They keep you full, prevent overeating, and really give your body what it needs.

 

\[00:22:23\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Another thing is when we cook, a lot of times we cook together, like people grow up cooking with families—that maybe not so much anymore. And you talk about the concept of the social genome, and I think most people don't think of their friendships—or their mahjong group or reading club—as a medical factor. But that's something that you really emphasize in the book as part of longevity. So what is the science telling us about social connection, loneliness, and health outcomes?

 

\[00:22:56\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Yeah, so the "R" in the Dress Code is relationships. And those relationships actually are very powerful. There was a big study out of Harvard where they looked at over 50 years of different factors for graduates in terms of what would be main determinants of health and happiness later in life. And they looked at things like their cholesterol level, they looked at their bank account, how they're doing financially, their social status, all that kind of stuff. And the single best contributor to health and happiness was whether or not they had authentic, meaningful relationships in their lives—a better predictor than even their cholesterol level. And we see this in places like the Blue Zones, right? Where people live healthier for longer. For example, in Okinawa, Japan, you have these MOIs, which are groups of friends that develop in childhood and then go on through life. And then even as they become elderly, when there's an illness or a challenge, they pull their resources together and help each other out, seeing each other regularly. So, these relationships don't have to be romantic relationships, but the science shows us that the vulnerability and the connection actually is really, really important in terms of turning on genes that protect us and keep us healthy for longer. On the flip side of that, we saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic: Loneliness and isolation is actually a killer—very similar to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Being socially isolated, not having those connections, is a big part of advancing toward cognitive decline and dementia in the elderly if they're more isolated. And so, loneliness is a big, big problem on the flip side of it. And so that's where you can think about the epigenetic input. So, loneliness is kind of the negative epigenetic input, what's downgrading your software, versus those social connections, whether you're getting together to prepare meals and cook together or you're playing sports together. That's a great one because it combines two different—and we haven't started talking about the other Dress Code element: exercise, right? But if you can combine exercise with a sport like pickleball, where you actually have a team and people getting together, those things are also protective because you're developing community. And people who are part of a community, whether it's a cultural practice, whether they're part of a religious community, that's also shown to actually improve longevity and health. Just by being an active member of a faith community, as an example, by itself is actually protective, again, turning on those genes that keep us healthier for longer.

 

\[00:25:49\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** So what I'm hearing is there's not necessarily a certain number of relationships you need to have or a certain scope, but that there are many different ways you can develop these authentic, meaningful connections that can directly impact things like our immune system and our telomeres and inflammatory markers in our lifespan.

 

\[00:26:15\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Absolutely.

 

\[00:26:16\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Thinking of that as an important medical factor is such a shift, I think, for many people. Yeah.

 

\[00:26:23\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Definitely. Right? Because people think about things that are like, "Oh, diet's very tangible," or "exercise." But no, this other piece of it actually is equally important.

 

\[00:26:35\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** So let's talk about those final pillars: Exercise, Stress, and Sleep. I think those are areas where people feel a lot of pressure to be perfect. And when we think about exercise and sleep, I think that's interesting in comparison to what we were just talking about with relationships because there are now exercise prescriptions: "You should be getting this many minutes of this type of exercise weekly and this of this type," and sleep: "We have the sleep association recommends that you should be getting at least seven hours of sleep a day." And we have Oura Rings to monitor it and everything. Stress is a little bit different, right? Tell me a little bit about how you think about this when you're talking to your patients: What is the right stress? Is there a "stress prescription" that you're giving them at this point? And how are you actually telling people...

 

\[00:27:34\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** Stress is really a double-edged sword. On the one side, short-term stress can actually be very beneficial. It helps us focus if you're getting ready for a presentation or for a deadline. It's that chronic simmering stress that actually contributes to chronic inflammation. So, over time, that irritation—you can kind of think of it as like a low-level stress that continues over time. And usually, it's related to other things, right? If you're not physically active, which helps to boost your mood, or you're not getting enough sleep, you have a lower threshold for being more irritable, and that chronic stress is very, very toxic. On the other hand, there are forms of stressing your body that actually can be healthy. One example of that is, for example, going in a sauna. We have a lot of these studies from the Scandinavian countries and places like Finland where people sauna regularly, and regular saunas have actually shown to have a significant risk reduction for heart attacks and strokes. We now know heat shock proteins—resistant proteins in your body—actually help to make you more "hearty" and improve your vasculature, right? Again, at the cellular level, changing gene expression as well. Similar kind of science with this concept of cold plunges. Again, with both of these, you want to be careful. If you have any other preexisting conditions or take medications, you should obviously talk to your doctor about it and make sure you're healthy enough to try some of this. But even something as simple as turning on the cold water in your shower when you're taking a shower for two minutes and kind of going back and forth, that stress, that acute stress, actually helps to circulate your lymph nodes, for example, which basically are your immune cells that go and track potential pathogens and dangers, and you're actually able to do a better job of boosting your immunity. Then on the other side of it is managing this chronic stress, right? So what are practices that give us the perspective that we need so that we're not just reactive to what happens to us—like someone cuts you off in traffic or something happens—because nobody can predict that stuff. Every day something happens, right? The difference is how we respond to it. Practices like mindfulness-based meditation, for example. I talk about the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, which Dr. John Kabat-Zinn was one of the real founders and pioneers in this space. And this eight-week course of mindfulness-based stress reduction actually changes brain structure. It actually thickens the prefrontal cortex, down-regulates the amygdala, and actually allows us to have better emotional regulation after just eight weeks. So that's a really great tool for stress management, to be able to tap into something like that, which is just like a very simple practice, and it actually helps you be more calm and have a more pleasant disposition for life in general. And again, yoga and tai chi are a good example. These are mind-body practices that connect the mind with the body together and help improve our heartiness for stress. The other one that we see in places like the Blue Zones again is a sense of meaning and purpose, and they also can cultivate that as well. In Japan, they call it your *ikigai*—having a sense of purpose, right? And that's one of the things that happens. Unfortunately, if someone retires, a lot of times people get sick and then they start to kind of wither and shut down and decline because they're losing that sense of purpose. So what can we do even post-retirement? It's a different phase of life. And how do we culturally still have a sense of purpose and meaning? Because that's what drives you to stay alive. And that really also blends into how we handle the stressors of life.

 

\[00:31:37\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Yeah, and I remember talking with Dr. Ben Kler on a previous podcast about a study at the VA. The vets' self-reported sense of meaning and purpose in their life correlated significantly to their health outcomes. So it is one of those things that, again, we don't learn in medical school yet, but is one of the most powerful things that we should actually be helping our patients with. Now, speaking of whole-health sorts of things, you have fairly recently started and are leading this exciting initiative with Honor Health as a new Whole Health Institute focused on prevention and healing, whole-person care. What is your vision for that Institute, and do you see this whole-health model as a representation of what we're hoping for the future of health care?

 

\[00:32:31\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** The concept's been around for a long time in the field of integrative medicine, more recently in the field of lifestyle medicine. It's really approaching the whole person and recognizing that disease and health don't happen in a doctor's office or in a hospital, but it's all the different things, right? The social, behavioral and lifestyle determinants—all the different things we've talked about, the Dress Code elements—and actually addressing not just the biology, but addressing our emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual health, as all the different contributors to whole health—the whole person. And so, with the Whole Health Institute, our goal is really to clinically translate this into care models that actually allow us to be able to prescribe these lifestyle interventions in a way that's sustainable and actually practical in a health care setting. And I think that's what's exciting about Honor Health. The main sponsor for the Blue Zones Community Project in Scottsdale. So, really the mission of Honor Health is actually to enhance the health and well-being of the communities we serve. And our CEO really takes that to heart. He's very public about having survived a heart attack and how he made major lifestyle changes to stay healthy after that, and it was a very transformative experience. And so, not only do we want to be a destination for people when they're sick, but really be able to help move the needle on helping to keep people healthy. And so, as part of this Institute, we're expanding clinical services. Beyond having an integrated medicine consultation, we're going to be starting a lifestyle medicine primary care. We will be expanding mental health and developing a center around sleep and cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction. We're going to be building a teaching kitchen and incorporating a center for Culinary Medicine to teach people how to use food as medicine. And a lot of these things will be insurance-based, so it's accessible to many people. Some things will be membership-based, like a medical fitness program. So you can think about it as like a gym with medical oversight and guidance in terms of setting goals and assessing your biometrics and looking at your body composition, and then kind of moving the needle on targeted exercise therapies. We'll develop a program around longevity, and then also want to be able to engage the community. So, we had piloted a produce prescription program. We recently received a USDA GusNIP award to expand our produce prescription program with Desert Mission, which is our food bank, to get fresh produce to people who need it most, who are food insecure or have these diet-sensitive conditions. And the way that we're going to do it is actually by doing shared medical visits or group visits and expanding it across 10 clinics over the next three years at Honor Health. And then we also have a partnership with Arizona State University, which is one of our public universities that's starting a new medical school. And the new medical school is a little bit interesting because it has a different focus: medical school and medical engineering. So the students will actually get an MD and a Master's in medical engineering. And so there'll be a lot of incorporating of AI and wearable technologies, which we want to integrate into our Institute to help people make those lifestyle changes by getting real-time data and utilizing AI bots and other things to help people make those lifestyle changes and make it impactful. So, we're really excited about all the different pieces that we're putting together here.

 

\[00:36:10\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Yeah, I can't wait to see where this flows. It sounds like such an amazing resource, both for the local community, but then as a model of what can be done at other health institutions and programs across the country. And they have the right person at the helm. So, I'm really excited to see where it goes. As we wrap up, I just love to ask you one last opportunity to share a piece of personal wisdom that you would want to share to help our listeners take their own health to the next level, as we say on the podcast.

 

\[00:36:49\] **Dr. Shad Marvasti:** In the book, I really try to give practical tips. At the end of the book, I have a chapter that really focuses on just very specific things in each of these categories of diet, relationships, exercise, stress and sleep that you can just start, and you can pick one or two of these to just focus on and then kind of help to refine those. And that by itself can make a huge difference in terms of how you feel, how much energy you have. We have more power than we think we have for our health and our happiness, and we just have to kind of tap into that and keep going and be consistent and be hopeful.

 

\[00:37:29\] **Dr. Melinda Ring:** Thank you. Thanks for that hopeful message. And Dr. Marvasti, thank you for joining me for this conversation. And your book, the work makes that science feel really accessible and empowering and deeply human. Thank you for joining us, and until next time, keep taking steps toward your next level of health. Thank you for joining me on this episode of *Next Level Health*. I hope you found some inspiration and practical insights to enhance your wellness journey. Don't forget to leave a comment on YouTube or a review on Apple Podcasts. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for future topics or speakers. Be sure to follow *Next Level Health* with me, Dr. Melinda Ring, as we continue exploring the path to healthier, happier lives together.