"Parasite Cleanse," “Boosting,” and Other Health Buzzwords We Need to Retire

What We Discuss:

00:00 Intro & Tapeworm Humor
01:00 Welcome to the Smarter Not Harder Podcast
01:30 Setting the Stage: Reality as Consensual Hallucination
02:00 Warm-Up: Solstice Stories & Snuggie Culture
04:00 Parasite Cleanses: Why Jodi Wants This Phrase Banned
07:00 Social Media, Parasite Fads & Misinformation
10:40 Dr. Allen on “Boost” and Why It’s Misleading
13:40 “Root Cause” — Dr. Scott Challenges Functional Medicine
16:30 Foundational Health vs. Root Cause Thinking
18:30 Shortcuts & The Problem with Biohacking Culture
21:10 “Hack” Culture vs. Real Long-Term Adaptation
22:30 Dr. Ted on Pathogenesis vs. Salutogenesis
25:00 What Optimization Really Means
27:00 Ending on Wellness, Optimization, and Cognitive Biases
29:00 Outro & Faculty Wrap-Up
Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Boomer Anderson: Heard about these cleanses for a while, and I still haven't got one. 

[00:00:03] Dr. Allen Bookatz: We can, we can get you Boomer, one of those, uh, like tapeworm egg, you know, things you can take that they did for weight loss and that's it. 

[00:00:09] Boomer Anderson: Oh, that's perfect. So it's it's the, the new Ozempic. 

[00:00:12] Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. I love it. Mm-hmm. 

[00:00:13] Boomer Anderson: All right, thank you.

Yeah. 

[00:00:14] Dr. Scott Sherr: It's actually the original Ozempic Boomer, by the way. G Oog. Sorry, 

[00:00:18] Boomer Anderson: sorry, sorry. The OGO is there. Sorry guys. 

[00:00:22] Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah, we can name it. Boomer's Buddies. Yeah. 

[00:00:25] Dr. Ted Achacoso: It'll be the, what's called that. Tanya Appetite. 

[00:00:28] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. There we go.

Welcome back everybody to the Smarter Not Harder podcast. I'm joined here by a fabulous group of buy on hackers, some of which, uh, needed to be reminded so they wore the shirt. So, yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Alan, can you just get that a little bit up above the camera, just a little more? Oh, okay.

Thank you. [00:01:00] Um, well, he 

[00:01:00] Dr. Scott Sherr: was getting a little shy there. Unusual for Alan, but he was a little shy. 

[00:01:02] Boomer Anderson: Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I want to start our conversation tonight with a quote, what we call reality is consensual hallucination. Such a beautiful quote. To start on today's podcast, I wanna start with a little bit of fun topic.

These episodes are fun, we like to have a conversation. Sometimes they get clinical, sometimes they reveal a little bit about. Somebody's personality. And today, I suspect it'll be a little bit of both. Uh, the question that we have for all of you guys, what is one word in the health world that you think should be banned or canceled?

I wanna see what really grind your gears. I'm gonna give you a moment to think about that as we answer a first question. That's sort of a warmup. What did everybody here do on the summer solstice or winter solstice for those down under? Ooh. I snuggled up in my odie 'cause it's freezing. Wait, hold on. You, you're what?

I snuggled up in my odie. [00:02:00] There is an odie. Uh, is is 

[00:02:02] Dr. Scott Sherr: there an H in front of that or is there no H in front of that 

[00:02:04] Boomer Anderson: word? No, it's no h in front of it. It's an odie. Haven't you seen an odie? Is it, is an odie like a, a, a sweatshirt then? Because it doesn't have No, it's like, um, is it a snuggie, a blanket hoodie.

Oh, so it's not a onesie though, right. No, not quite a onesie. It's got the legs out. 

[00:02:23] Dr. Scott Sherr: It sounds like a suggy. You remember a Snuggy? Those commercials? 

[00:02:25] Boomer Anderson: Yeah, it's like that. It's like that, but we call 'em here. Yeah. So they're so, they're so snuggly. They're like wearing a blanket and you can put 'em over your knees and Yeah.

Ja. Jody's gonna be teaching 15 minutes of Australian every podcast episode going is a, it's a wearable blanket hoodie. Oh, that's, that's cool. There go, I, I, I want one. Jody. I, I really want one in this 38 degree Celsius heat we have going on right now. So sometimes feel bad for you and then you show me pictures of like Margaret River or whatever, and then I don't really feel bad for you.

All [00:03:00] right. Um, Mr. La boy, we have another doctor, la boy who went to University of California, Los Angeles for his undergrad. Uh, Dr. Scott, uh, what did you do for your summer solstice? 

[00:03:11] Dr. Scott Sherr: Well. I traveled to New York for a funeral. 

[00:03:16] Boomer Anderson: Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's okay. 

[00:03:18] Dr. Scott Sherr: But it was beautiful day. I had Thai food with my parents and my brother, just the four of us.

And that was the first time that the four of us had had dinner without children in, since I was probably in college. So it was, it was fun actually. It was very sweet. Then I buried my grandmother, but no big deal. Well, yeah, 

[00:03:34] Boomer Anderson: I don't know how to recover from that one. Sorry. I should just, uh, I'm just gonna roll with the punches.

All right, Dr. Kosso. 

[00:03:41] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well as the longest day of the year, you know, it ought to be celebrated with a longer walk at noontime and get some extra vitamin D. I mean, come on. Of course. You know, I, I, I am not as stark as I would like to be between noon and two o'clock in the afternoon. 

[00:03:59] Boomer Anderson: The, the walk [00:04:00] sounds lovely.

[00:04:00] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You're sweating and all, but hey. 

[00:04:02] Boomer Anderson: Yeah, walk Vitamin D, sauna Dr. Ettes, what did you do on summer solstice? 

[00:04:08] Dr. Allen Bookatz: Well, if you can see, I got a little bit of a pink tint. So out here on the, on the West Coast, the UB index was like 10 all the way through the early. Kind of early evening, so misjudged the solar callus that I thought I'd built up.

[00:04:22] Jodi Duval: All right, let's go back to the original question. Oh, a little ma cruise there, which is, what one word in the health world do you think should be banned? We have to go to Jodi, and since we just learned that Jodi was professional, dressage person, at some point, I'm, I'm sure this is gonna be a great answer.

I have to say it's two words, but parasite cleans is mine. Um. Detox, we might be able to hyphen the behind it, hyphenate it, depending on what state in the union you are in, but that's okay. Yeah. Okay. Parasite cleanse. All right, cool. So yeah, I, I do get quite a lot of clients coming to me saying, please, I need to do a parasite cleanse.

Um, [00:05:00] and so my question to them is, which parasite? Um, so it's always. It's always really funny too, and there's so much that circulated within the fads of removals. Um, and those who think they have these incredible tape worms or things that are impacting their joints, they're gonna come out and they're gonna have these incredible long, um.

You know, not mucoid plaques, but they, they are the parasites apparently, um, coming through into their, into their toilet bowl. And so they're, they're aiming for these all the time. 

[00:05:37] Dr. Scott Sherr: They always say that they can find like a parasite in their stool because of these, like, I saw this huge, long thing and I'm like.

Dude, I, I'm still 

[00:05:45] Boomer Anderson: waiting for this thing. So like, I, I've, you know, I've heard about these cleanses for a while and I still haven't got one. 

[00:05:51] Dr. Allen Bookatz: We can, we can get you boomer, one of those, uh, like tapeworm egg, you know, things you can take that they did for weight loss and Oh, 

[00:05:57] Jodi Duval: that's perfect. So yeah, it's, and it's the, [00:06:00] the Ozempic.

Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:01] Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. 

[00:06:01] Jodi Duval: All right. Thank you. 

[00:06:03] Dr. Scott Sherr: That's actually the original Ozempic Boomer, by the way. GOG. Sorry, 

[00:06:07] Boomer Anderson: sorry, sorry. The OG Ozempic. Sorry guys. 

[00:06:11] Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah, we can name boomer's buddies. Get yourself, but yeah, where? There we 

[00:06:15] Dr. Ted Achacoso: go. I'm ready. Go. Yeah. Uh, what's called that? Tan Zide. 

[00:06:21] Boomer Anderson: Yeah. There we go. Nice. Oh, that was a high, that was a highbrow joke.

Okay, explain that. Explain 

[00:06:29] Dr. Allen Bookatz: that Ted. Right. 

[00:06:32] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Podcast. Well there the tapeworm scientific names are Tan and Tanya Soum from Pig. So the joke was, uh, you know, thing's appetite. So yeah. This is 

[00:06:43] Dr. Allen Bookatz: why folks do not eat Underequipped Pig. Pork from any country? 

[00:06:47] Jodi Duval: No. No. Mm. No. All right. So parasite cleanse, Jody. Parasite cleanse.

Um, so yeah, so my answer to them is, is what parasite or what is going on, and I will not treat them and will not [00:07:00] give them anything until they've done some sort of, of a GI of effects or a microbiome mapping. So we actually do know what is going on and in all of those clients who have asked me that, and I have persisted with a microbiome mapping, then they've done that and there's no parasite and it's just been a really.

Poor balance. It's a dysbiotic gut and it's just they need to actually work hard on it to fix it and change their diet, change their lifestyle. So it's not as easy as they thought it might've been the magic wand of, um, removal of a parasite to fix everything. So, but then, yeah, a lot of these clients will have already tried previously and they're taking really high dose antimicrobials, antiparasitics, and the herbs are nasty, nasty.

And so then like all of their microbiome is messed up because of the years of trying to do a parasite cleanse to get rid of the non-existent parasite and then messing up their guts in the process. So, um, test first people. Test first. 

[00:07:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: Jody, where do you think people get this [00:08:00] idea that they need to do a parasite cleanse?

Where is it coming from? Is it just like social media? Social media, or is it mostly social media? 

[00:08:05] Jodi Duval: Just so, I mean, it's a great. It's a great top of funnel entry point, right? Like people just sell their little specific cleanse, like, follow me because I have a cleanse, and yeah, yeah, you can do it for 21 days and everybody thinks they're gonna feel better.

And they, they sometimes do feel better short term 'cause they're removing some of the, maybe the bacterias that are causing dysbiosis. They feel lighter, they feel less inflamed. Some of the um, you know, anti, it might in effect like cause them to pay attention to their diet a little bit too. Yeah. Yeah. If they're saying like, I'm gonna engage in this so maybe I should do other healthy things.

That's right. And normally berberine's a big part of some of the antimicrobials and antiparasitics, so sometimes berberine can actually make you feel better for a short term. Um, you know, help control blood glucose and help inflammation drop and, and long time. There's a, there's a lot of things that come up there.

[00:08:54] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Well, or, or the opposite effect, you know, they see this long thing coming out of their asses and they say, [00:09:00] oh, it's ready out. You, I can, I can start my dirty lifestyle all over again. 

[00:09:04] Jodi Duval: So, yeah. Give that, gimme that cheesecake baby. Gimme that, gimme that. Cheesecake Street food. 

[00:09:10] Dr. Scott Sherr: Boomer. You like street food. I know, I've heard, yeah, I 

[00:09:11] Jodi Duval: do though.

I do like street food, but I, I have in effect had. And in fact had parasites before. Not the kind that everybody talks about. I'm still waiting for those, but you know, I've had other types of parasites. You're still yelling. See, you 

[00:09:25] Dr. Ted Achacoso: know, the sad effect for me of, uh, living in the United States for so long is that when you go back, you know, like when I go back to Manila, I can't take street food anymore.

I get diarrhea. And before when I, you know, from, you know, I would enjoy. Delicious, uh, thigh Street food. And now it's like, yeah, just like coming from here and then going to Bangkok and it's just like diarrhea, uh, galore. No ta ta don't tell me this, please. My American microbiota, you know, 

[00:09:56] Jodi Duval: Sima Sima, this be your best friend for a while.

[00:10:00] Um, so, so Jody, Jody doesn't like the parasite cleanse and we can all understand why it's a little bit of. Overhyped. Uh, it's also just wrong. You know, people, people, people oftentimes just need to do a lot of work in order to fix their gut. Uh, and they're not testing. So they wanna do these cleanses without testing, which I think that might be a recurring theme for a lot of this conversation.

Uh, I'm gonna volley it over to. Doctor Beverly Hills, not in Beverly Hills himself. Um, Alan Boo Katz here, like the, uh, what's your, what's your favorite or your sort of word that should be banned? 

[00:10:40] Dr. Allen Bookatz: It's funny that my, my practice is like the farthest thing away from Beverly Hills. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

[00:10:47] Jodi Duval: Um, I didn't wanna, I, I'm trying to just, I'm trying to hide your location for you.

That's all right. Because I know you're gonna have a fan base after this, and we wanna make sure that like, they don't know where to find you. 

[00:10:56] Dr. Allen Bookatz: You don't want to come find me. Um, although we do have [00:11:00] amazing, uh, street tacos that you can guarantee that meat is not domestic based. So, um, I think the word that bothers me the most is like.

The term like boost, you know, it's like, oh, this like will boost your immune system, right? Or this will like boost your fat burning ability. And I'm always like, okay, well that is like very vague and reductionist and like. If we're boosting the immune system, like how do you know the immune system needs to be boosted?

Right? Maybe the immune system is the, the actual problem here. 'cause it's like overactive because you're putting a bunch of crap in your body, right? And you have leaky gut. Wait, what 

[00:11:39] Dr. Ted Achacoso: don't you like about, about boost your breast ties or boost your Es? 

[00:11:44] Jodi Duval: Wasn't just the name of like perhaps Beverly Fast kind of drink for a while too.

The 

[00:11:48] Dr. Allen Bookatz: boo. Yeah, the, the Boost Protein shakes. He's the name of the drink. Yeah, that's even, yeah. And I don't think I ever tried one of those, but. They're horrible. So disgusting. I have, I 

[00:11:56] Jodi Duval: I, I have a case sitting under my desk right now. They're so disgusting 

[00:11:59] Dr. Scott Sherr: right [00:12:00] now. 

[00:12:00] Jodi Duval: Oh, they're delicious. We have boost maybe chain surgery.

You, you have boost What? We have like boost smoothies, which are like a chain of, of smoothie. Yeah. Yeah. That's a chain of smoothies. I think that's also in Southeast Asia too. Yeah. Okay. So Alan's really gonna love going to Southeast Asia and Australia. 

[00:12:18] Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah. So say, say something intelligent, like, you know, if we're gonna boost energy, we're, you know, enhancing mitochondrial output, right?

Or we're modulating immune system signaling. For example, Corti seven, right? Oh, we're stimulating leukocyte Chemotaxis. Ooh, there you go. Right? Have some specificity here, right? Keep going, keep going. You get better. Keep going. For my, for my, for my patients on methamphetamine, you know, like it doesn't. Boost their overall sense of euphoria.

Right. It, it, uh, it upregulates their catecholamine system. Right. He'd be such a good marketer. I, I can easily 

[00:12:57] Jodi Duval: and 

[00:12:58] Dr. Scott Sherr: just Do they have meth commercials? Maybe. [00:13:00] Maybe. Yeah. Transient. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:13:02] Jodi Duval: Yeah. It's actually transient commercials, transient metabolism. Right. It's no longer got milk, it's got meth. Um, oh yeah, exactly.

So you create these words that nobody understands, but they sound sexual. Mm-hmm. So it's great. Perfect. Yeah. Just say what it does. Okay. So Boost. Boost. So watch, you'll see 

[00:13:22] Dr. Allen Bookatz: everywhere you look like, oh, boost this and boost that. So, 

[00:13:25] Jodi Duval: yeah. And now that I'm walking around, because you, you'll see it, think elephant in it.

Mm-hmm. You're gonna totally, I'm gonna be boosting all day long. Mm-hmm. Um. Dr. Scott, 

[00:13:35] Dr. Scott Sherr: so mine's gonna be a similar, uh, maybe hyphenated word, one word, two words. Okay. Depends on what 

[00:13:41] Jodi Duval: state in the y we're 

[00:13:42] Dr. Scott Sherr: in. 

[00:13:42] Jodi Duval: Right? 

[00:13:43] Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay. And this one's gonna be a little bit more controversial. It's, uh, root cause. Ooh. Oh, oh.

Let's go into that. Let's go into that. Okay. So I have a lot of friends that are functional medicine doctors, and I respect very much what they do, [00:14:00] and I think root cause medicine as it's now defined. Is much better than looking at things purely from a conventional perspective. There's no doubt about it.

However, the, the challenge with root cause medicine is that oftentimes, oftentimes becomes myopic in the way that you're focused on a very specific problem without understanding that there needs to be more of a foundational, or like, dare I say it, which is kind of another word that's played out, holistic solution in the sense that when we're looking for root cause of an issue, oftentimes.

The best way forward, and this is something that I've learned and I know many of you have learned from Dr. Ted, is to actually look at how the system remains healthy and optimized and working on foundational biomarkers that we do in our nonprofit and health optimization medicine and practice. Because if you look at things more foundationally, look at how you're keeping your cells, your gut, your neurotransmitters, your hormones, healthy and optimizing all of those.[00:15:00] 

Oftentimes what happens as a. As we often say as a beneficial side effect of health optimization is that all these other, you know, quote unquote issues seem to magically go away without addressing the quote unquote root cause. And I think what people love. Is identifying with a disease or a process like I have fibromyalgia.

No. If, I mean people do have these, I don't, I, I'm not saying that people don't have these conditions, but by identifying with the condition, you become that condition and you become that disease and you become that illness and you have these symptoms because you, as you have X, Y, and Z and it becomes like this whole sort of spiral psychological death trap or just death spiral of some sort of being very difficult to heal from it.

So. My sense is that if we can reframe it as at least root cause health is what we do at health optimization medicine. But even further than that, what I typically say is creating foundational health in our patients and clients setting the disease and the root causes aside, [00:16:00] which still may need to be addressed.

I mean, I have patients that have bad Lyme disease or bad, you know, a bad mold exposure, and these patients do need their Lyme and mold addressed. However, if you start doing that without first optimizing antioxidant status, their gut, um, we're at least working on some hormonal balance. Like what's going to happen is that you're gonna find these people do not tolerate the kinds of treatment that these functional or other docs, integrative docs will be doing.

So my pet peeve would be, uh, getting rid or at least understanding that there's a better way of expressing the ideas behind root cause medicine. Instead focusing on foundational health instead. 

[00:16:42] Jodi Duval: Boom. Ooh, that was a mic drop moment. Yeah. I don't know if anybody, I don't know if I can follow that. Dr. Tech definitely went up, man.

I know, I know, I know. 

[00:16:51] Dr. Ted Achacoso: He stole what I was gonna say, so. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that. I was just 

[00:16:55] Jodi Duval: listening. I was like, wow, I've heard this before. Where have I heard this? Oh my gosh. [00:17:00] Uh, but anyway, uh, I'll let, I'll interject with sort of like a. A b moment before we go from an A to B, we'll go A to B to A. Okay.

So, uh, I'll interject with mine and then we can do sort of the BS too with, with Ted on the dismount. So, um, mine is, uh. So, just to give everybody a sense when we're talking about a podcast, usually we send out, uh, an idea for a podcast episode a couple of days before. Um, Jodi seems to be the queen, captain of the podcast titles, and we kind of debate back and forth, you know, is it a good podcast title?

And I think in this case, um, the, the podcast. Title went out and it was like, what word should be banned? And I, my answer was, people, um, and or, or like, what, what people can I ban? Um, that's a much easier thing for me to answer than, than the, uh, the actual word. So I'm gonna take, okay, who would you ban?

Boomer? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. That, that [00:18:00] seems, that seems a little risky in this current environment to offend people. So, uh, let's, let's go down the line of. Just more of an approach that I would love to see banned. And Scott, you might recall this time where I called you and it was, uh, a client of mine who, uh, this is just after the Israeli hyperbaric, um, study came out and I'm, I'm gonna call this, uh, approach 60% of the time.

It works all the time, right? And, uh, and the guy called me, or I called Scott and I'm like, Hey, Scott, you know, I got this question. About this, you know, study and you know, somebody's asking like, how do I get double the effects with half the amount of time? And uh, you know, I appreciate the spirit of this question and I think.

As a person who generally tries to be efficient, uh, generally appreciate the spirit of the question, but in certain cases it's appropriate [00:19:00] to read the study. And, uh, in this case, your answer was again, a mic drop moment where you're like, just follow the, the protocol of the study and you'll get the biological age drop that you wanted.

Uh, or you should. Get the biological age drop we wanted. So, um, for, you know, the people out there that are kind of looking at studies and stuff and saying, I want to do this in sort of half the amount of time. Oftentimes it's, if it's studied, that's gonna be the answer that we point to, right? Because it's evidence informed.

But anyway, um, that was my 60% of the time. It works all the time moment, and now I'll pass it over. 

[00:19:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: I think that's an important one though, boomer, because um, everybody's always looking for shortcuts, you know, and I think that, you know, the other thing we always talk about at home Hope is that, you know, you took you, and this is something Ted says as well, Dr.

Ted, is that it took you x amount of years to get to where you are. Right? And you can't expect that tomorrow you're gonna feel like you won you like you did when you did when you were 20 years old or something like that. So we do have some [00:20:00] cheat codes and short codes, you know, that can be helpful in some ways, but you know, you still gotta do the work.

[00:20:06] Jodi Duval: A good, good way to round that out. Right? Like you, you can't outs supplement a bad diet. You know, there's certain things that you can't just shortcut completely. And while I appreciate the spirit of the question, sometimes you do have to do work to unwind the 40 or 50 years of stuff you've done to your body.

[00:20:26] Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah. You can't, it's like you can't, and to your point, you can't. One of my words was gonna be actually hack, you know, like biohack, but then I realized like actual Totally. So keep it, you know, below the line right here. Yeah. Um, but like, to your point, right? I mean, a hack, like, what does a hack suggest, right?

It, a hack suggests that it's, it's a workaround, right? It, it bypasses learning. It bypasses intuition. It, you know, rather, rather than, oh, this is a nervous system hack. It's like, well, let's train your nervous system. Or this is a metabolic hack or a glucose hack. It's like, no, [00:21:00] let's, let's, uh, you know, restore, uh, insulin sensitivity or circadian alignment, all tenets that we talked about in health optimization.

[00:21:10] Jodi Duval: So one of the things that I, I just wanna add to it is that. Oftentimes in the spirit of hacking, we do a very short-term adjustment for a goal, um, and don't really carry on what should be a long-term lifestyle modification. Right. And I, I, look, I love hacking as much as anybody else, but oftentimes what you want to put in place is sort of steps that lead towards a long-term adaptation.

Because you've seen that all the time with weight loss. You know, people lose 10 pounds or whatever, and then they, yo-yo back. So, um, cool. All right, Dr. Kosso, sir. 

[00:21:53] Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, um, Scott said. Mostly, um, uh, everything that I wanted to say, but, [00:22:00] you know, um, what I actually, uh, uh, you know, cringe is when I hear words like quantum nutrition or, you know, um, clean eating.

It's like, but, but anyway, um, uh, you know, Scott said what I originally wanted to say, which is, um, actually. Uh, you know, root causes of disease, uh, which translate to pathogenesis when you're thinking about health. Then talk about health. Don't talk about disease, right? So, illness, medicine belongs to illness, medicine, and health optimization.

Medicine belongs to health optimization medicine. And so. The, you know, the shift from pathogenesis, which is the word, that word should be banned from the, the health optimization field. Basic, that's, that belongs to the realm of disease, right? Because there, the view is that signs and symptoms are actually, um.

Signs and symptoms of disease. Whereas, um, uh, uh, the, uh, signs and symptoms that we [00:23:00] refer to in health, these are actually the body's way of actually trying to balance itself. That's e evolutionarily derived, right? Uh, that's the evolutionary way of, uh, balancing and healing itself. So we don't look at them as signs and symptoms.

Um, so that's, uh, though it's time to look at cellgene, however. Okay. Uh, given that, uh, what I don't actually, I love people to say optimization if they actually know what it means. And it's sort of like, you know, uh, uh, frustrates the, the hell out of me. When people keep on saying, optimize, optimize, optimize.

You're not really knowing what optimize really means. Right. So, um, you know, sounds 

[00:23:39] Jodi Duval: like we need to optimize the definition of optimizing. Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:44] Dr. Ted Achacoso: You know, somebody who can do that. No. No. And, and, and, you know. Uh, you know, optimization means that it's like, uh, you know, there are several solutions and for each context there are several solutions.

And if this a [00:24:00] problem, originate, originate, or, uh, originated from, um, as a mathematical problem, right? And then, which translated a computational problem, uh, the classic, um. Traveling salesman problem, which has, you know, a very complex issue, uh, that has actually no one fixed solution. And it's very simple.

The problem is very simple. You know, you basically tell the salesman, okay, you must hit all of these, these cities that are in this particular, uh, uh, you know, geography and, you know, you have to have, if I have the follow constraints. You have to follow the shortest distance between two cities. You have to get at least, you know, two disciples per city, and you have to, you know, uh, keep your gasoline bills, bills if you're driving to this.

And, and so, so you have all of this, uh, uh, constraints, right? But then you also have, uh, what's called, you know, what, what parameters are you optimizing for now in health optimization medicine, we basically have this range of value. Right. Uh, that, uh, were [00:25:00] optimal for you in evolution, which is age 21 to 30 or evolutionarily derived values, right?

So like for vitamin D. So these are the optimal levels for which we, we buy metabolomics, uh, you know, bring your val values back to, or optimize. And that's our objective way of saying. You know, when, when people in another, another very vague word is, oh, I, he, it's like, I hate it when people call me a wellness doctor.

I'm not, you know, I'm health optimization doctor. It's like, what? What the fuck is wellness? You know, I'm not a mass. So, uh, so anyway, you know, it's been co-opted by all of these massage partners. You don't even know which wellness is where. Uh, uh, so if you're going to, you know, I don't want to ban the word, but if you're going to use the word optimization, then please know the definition of optimization.

Uh, uh, and the [00:26:00] big, the big thing for us is, you know, uh, and I, I, I tell this to all students, is that before you use a word and actually push it out there and say it, make sure that, uh, you know exactly. What it means, right? Uh, same, same, same way as, you know, what's, what pathogenesis means, which is root cause of disease.

You know what pathogenesis means? This is the root causes of health, right? Even Robert Navia doesn't use pathogenesis. He uses oogenesis, right? Which is a return from a disease state to, um, to a healthy state, right? So, so, uh, e even his technique has actually a difference, right? Uh, because again. He is after disease.

So you, you could see all of these, uh, differences in terminology does make a difference in terms of the understanding and where we wanna bring health, um, you know, as a, uh, to the, to the forefront instead of just disease. So. You know, uh, from, from, uh, you know, in health we have to forget pathogenesis. We have to deal with, [00:27:00] uh, pathogenesis, uh, root causes of health, and we must know what optimization means in terms of health, right?

It is not just you're feeling better, which is like super fucking annoying for lifestyle medicine. People's like, oh, you know, I feel well. It's like, holy fuck, you know, where's your, where's your objective measure of that? So it, you know, uh, those are my, my 2 cents when it comes to words that should be dropped out of the health world and words that should be, uh, emphasized.

But you must know the definition of before using it. 

[00:27:33] Jodi Duval: All right? So as, as expected, the, the dismount. It was pretty damn good, Scott. I think you would've had it if you added just a couple more fucks and into your explanation. 

[00:27:45] Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, but I knew that I was kind of treading on Dr. Ted's toes here, but I, I did it slightly purpose.

I, I think, I think it was 

[00:27:53] Jodi Duval: more of a setup, right? It was exactly, it was a setup. If my 

[00:27:55] Dr. Scott Sherr: setup was that I, I wanted to, I wanted to see where he would take [00:28:00] the additional. Piece here. 'cause I knew there was a bigger piece than that I was saying. So thank you Ted, for always doing the, the drop set spike as usual as, as Boomer would say.

[00:28:09] Jodi Duval: Yeah, so I, I give it a 9.9 out of 10. Um, you know, just because I don't want, I wanna see what a perfect 10 is in the future and keep people to tuned into the show. Gotta keep talking to motivated. Oh, by the 

[00:28:20] Dr. Ted Achacoso: way, I would like to just leave a little hanger here just, just for, for, you know, for those who do epistemic foraging as their hobby.

Um, my favorite thing to do, boomer Boomer said something earlier, uh, which is. Oh, you pink elephant me. You are, you know? Uh, yeah. Yeah. And there's a cognitive bias actually called the frequency illusion, right? When you, when you see, you know, when you, when you're going to buy a car for say, a Volvo, and then suddenly see Volvos everywhere, right?

So it's, it's called the Frequency Illusion or the Bayer Meyerhoff illusion. Right? Uh, and it's very common, so. You know, and, and [00:29:00] that's, you know, the, the, the, the actual formal name of the, uh, uh, cognitive, uh, bias, uh, of, uh, pink elephant in someone. Okay. 

[00:29:10] Jodi Duval: Anyway, so I'm gonna go get my Ducati Black, my black Ducati monster, uh, downstairs, and we'll, we'll go see.

Everybody's gonna see Ducati Monsters tomorrow. All right. Um, thank you everybody for playing this fun round of the Smarter Not Harder podcast. And thank you for everybody tuning into Smarter, hard, harder podcast where we give you 1 cent solutions to all of life's problems, uh, in this case. But, uh. Thank you gents.

Have a wonderful day. 

[00:29:38] Dr. Scott Sherr: Take care everybody. Bye.