A New Approach to Health: Prevention Over Cure with Dr. Bastian
HOST: LISA KRZYZEWSKI
SEASON: 1
EPISODE: 1
Lisa Krzyzewski: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome to AEON first future health podcast where we talk about health optimization, longevity medicine and really get into what you need to know about health care in that space. In Canada Today I’ve got our medical director, dr Jonathan Bastion, with me and I’m just going to open it up, dr Bastion, with a question on what is longevity medicine?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 0:27
Sure great question. Longevity medicine is really a brand new and evolving field that is really focused on how to slow down aging on a cellular level, and it can incorporate really basic things like how to optimize your diet, nutrition and sleep, and then certainly more exciting fields about different supplements, nutrients, medications, technologies that can actually help either slow and then sometimes even reverse some of those aging processes.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 1:03
That’s a great explanation. I appreciate it. I want to know why I should care, because I hear all the time about functional medicine, personalized medicine, precision medicine, like why should I care about future longevity medicine?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 1:20
Sure. So I’ll start by saying that this field is really in its infancy and the amount of money and technology that is being applied to it means that the studies that we’re looking at today and the treatments that we have today are not the treatments we’re going to have in five, 10, 15, 20 years from now. I think by really focusing on how you can optimize your body today, that sets you up for success, especially as some of these technologies and research develop to put you in the best opportunity for health optimization in the future.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 2:00
Because most of us have issues already. I mean, that’s the reality, right?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 2:04
Of course, yeah.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 2:05
So what sorts of things do you see coming through our door? What kind of problems do you tend to tackle?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 2:13
It’s not just what problems we come in today, but what problems are we trying to prevent tomorrow?
Lisa Krzyzewski: 2:18
Good point yes.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 2:19
So when we think about what AEON does, our focus is really on evidence-based and evidence-informed treatments and technologies that we can apply today to give you the best health care possible. So when we think about our philosophy, really it comes down to a few key components. We want to address health at a cellular level get your systems that are working within the cell optimized. We want to look at your hormonal health to make sure that your hormones that act as the signaling system between cells optimized. And then we want to look at your system health right. So, whether that’s your gut health, your brain health, your cardiovascular health, and get those optimized as well. So people may walk through and they might have one issue related to gut or weight or hormones, but really, if you’re trying to treat the whole patient and give them great success for health optimization both today and into the future, you need kind of like a framework to work around to get there.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 3:26
I love that. I’m certainly your perfect patient. I mean, in fact, it’s 100%. Why we have AEON here is because I haven’t had the best health. I started with a health assessment. Maybe share a little bit about that and what kind of information you need and why we always started that health assessment.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 3:49
Yeah, of course. So you know, maybe I’ll even just back it up one step further when we’re thinking about like conventional medicine. They’re really good at treating patients once they already have an issue, right, yeah? There’s great evidence for it. It’s the way the system’s built. Okay, if you’re trying to really get the root of the problem and also focus on health optimization, you need a much broader base of understanding. So our initial health intake always starts with a conversation with one of our physicians, follows up with a detailed lab assessment, including, like a 3D body scan and a strength test, because that really sets the foundation for where you’re at today. Okay, you then do a detailed intake with one of our naturopathic doctors and they uncover so many things in like a very detailed hour long intake. And then, by the time that they get to the physician, after that, again, you’ve got a really clear understanding of what the patients are, of who they are, what their issues are, what drives them, and then you have a very clear pathway to understand which levers you can pull on to give them the greatest benefit in the shortest amount of time.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 5:10
Yeah, I mean that’s like you mentioned. Let’s back it up and talk about the conventional system and I know we’re both big fans because you still work in urgent care yeah. A lot of us have had family members work in some of the great centers we have in Canada or been in emergency for umpteen things and it’s top notch care, but it’s really not focused on prevention. It’s focused on treating disease. Totally yeah, and so you know, if we want to avoid being in that conventional system, we really have to take the steps that you’re talking about and understand the little things that are bugging us right now and what they might turn into in the future, right?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 5:54
Yeah, for sure. I mean, look the I’ll say this again, our whole framework around how medicine has been structured everything from the research that we do to how that information gets disseminated to patients, physicians and patients alike is all based on reactionary care. Once you have a disease, how do you treat that disease? Okay, if you really want to be preventative and sort of proactive about your own health, conventional medicine is a great starting point, but it may not be sufficient to really take you to that next level, and I think that our process is quite diligent at picking out the pieces of evidence and information which is like critical to your health and then applying it in a very systematic and evidence-based way to get you there. So, just as a simple example right, we know vitamin D is critical for immune health. We know that appropriate levels of vitamin D can decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, different types of cancers. We know there’s a general sentiment that you should take it, but we never test for it and unless you test for it and understand how you absorb it, whether or not you need more or less, you’re sort of left shooting in the dark. And while that’s a great place to start, it’s not necessarily the most optimal way to go.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 7:31
And I think we’ve really done a good job combining supplements and lifestyle interventions with medications pharmaceuticals. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like, especially as a medical doctor working in a co-care model?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 7:49
So I think perhaps the most enlightening thing is actually when I sort of Let me back this up Emergency medicine is like the most conventional care model ever. Okay, you don’t want. If you’re having a heart attack or a stroke, you don’t want a physician coming to your clinic and being like well, you know, maybe we’ll do this, maybe we’ll do that. No, you want a physician who’s like look, we need to give you these different types of anticoagulants, we need to call cardiology right away. We need to get you to the cath lab, right. So most of conventional medicine follows into that category. But what that limits you to is it limits you to evidence that is really focused around very strict medications. And when you bridge past that which is what I did when I transferred here to AEON you get a clear understanding that naturopathic doctors have a very different lens in terms of preventative care. But it doesn’t mean that it’s less evidence-based. It just means that their lens for which they view care is in a slightly different role. And, of course, my overall impression is there’s room for both and you probably should have both in most patients.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 9:05
And why? Why should you have both really Well, I?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 9:08
think when you’re talking about they’re just molecules. These are things that help your body function at the cellular level, and 20, 30 years ago we didn’t have the same evidence for vitamin D or omega 3 or creatine like standard, extremely evidence-based treatment options that have minimal side effects and really great upside. We didn’t have that, and some of that stigma I think is sort of carried through to today. But on the flip side, there’s a wealth of evidence and research that’s been coming in to support these, and I think one of the things that makes our clinic unique is really just the fact that I think we probably adopted those maybe earlier than other physicians. Well, but I suspect, just given the quantity of research that’s come out, we’re going to see more and more of that within the conventional field as well.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 10:04
And I mean there’s new longevity molecules showing up all the time. How are you incorporating some of that new research into what we’re doing here in Canada, because in Canada we seem to be kind of slow to the table a lot of times.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 10:21
Look, the nuance of this is there’s a ton of things that are exciting about longevity medicine and there’s a ton of things that are carry promise. How do you differentiate those things that carry promise but don’t have any literature at all versus the things that you think might really have some benefit and perhaps have evidence? That’s a little bit further down the road. So I love the idea of incorporating technology and incorporating supplements and longevity molecules into our programs, but I think the key is to really focus on things that we have strong evidence for, things that have very little downside, and then also things that we think are going to leverage your health the most.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 11:15
Well, we have a pretty robust program when people come into the facility and it’s very unlike what most have ever seen, because we leverage some of the technology you’re talking about. Can you share a little bit about how you’re putting those programs together for the patients that come through?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 11:32
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think each patient is a complete individual and so every program is unique. But let me give you an example. So we know that exercise is critical to our health. We know that we lose 1% to 2% of our muscle mass starting at age 50. And over time, as that compounds, that is the thing that eventually leads us to have a weakness in our balance, have a fall, end up with a hip fracture, those kind of things down the pipeline. And so one of the things that we use is called the ARX machine. It’s focused on adaptive resistance training and it essentially allows you to push to failure on both your concentric and eccentric loading, which really just means that you create muscle more quickly. And when you are focused on either weight loss or strength or optimization, that’s such a critical part of your health plan. And if you can kind of understand how that technology which you’re not going to find in a gym, you’re not going to find in a physician’s office, can help with your care to health optimization, you can extrapolate that to a few of our other treatments. You can quickly see that the treatment programs end up being, I think, quite robust.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 12:56
And we have, in addition to that, some of these call it recovery or performance supporting technologies. So some Bouncer Pro lymphatic drainage, red light therapies, therapies for stress management what are some of your favorite technology on the recovery side? Sure.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 13:17
Yeah, I mean I love the sauna. I feel like, yeah.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 13:22
Yes.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 13:23
I think that’s another great example, because the sauna’s got tremendous evidence most of it’s from Finnish wet saunas that we sort of transferred over and what they noticed is that amongst that population their risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke was lower. And after doing a really deep dive into sort of what might be causing that, what they found was that saunas actually are just a huge part of their culture. Like they’re in it, many of those patients are going to be in it many times a day, or many times a week at least. And when you go into a sauna of any kind, especially if it gets hot enough, you activate these proteins called heat shock proteins. Those heat shock proteins help to stabilize the plaque in your arteries, which then prevent a heart attack from occurring. So that’s the evidence that like and it’s a dramatic improvement Like if you go, the evidence suggests that if you’re in a sauna four times a week or more, you can decrease your risk of heart attack by 52% to 56%, and that’s just on the cardiovascular profile. It doesn’t address the fact that it helps you sleep better, it doesn’t address the fact that it improves your stress and anxiety, and so, again, it’s like just one more piece of technology. When you incorporate it as a whole, you can begin to see how these things begin to layer on top of each other and you can really reach a level of health that I think is hard to do with sort of a regular gym or regular clinic.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 15:02
Absolutely, and it was set up for the professional or the time crunched individuals right, because these are short exercises it’s 15 minutes on the ARX, it’s eight minutes on a carol bike, it’s 20 minutes to 30 minutes in a sauna or 45 minutes in a balancer pro, so people can absolutely fit this into their day and then keep going, and so there’s quite a bit that people can do outside of our clinic as well. I know we give recommendations, nutritional support. Can you share a little bit about some of the things that you’ve really seen working in and out of the facility for people on the program?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 15:45
Yeah, of course. So let’s talk about nutrition, because I think that was important. The evidence really suggests that it does not like. The reason that we don’t have a great structure for nutrition is because the evidence is out on which diet is the best.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 16:03
Thank you. There is no magic bullet. Is there no magic bullet?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 16:06
But what we do know is that any kind of if you’re trying to lose weight, any kind of restriction that you can actually maintain is the key right. So, instead of handing you a vegan diet or a carnivore diet or a keto diet, something that is they all have merits in their own way and they can all be used, as long as you understand the risks and benefits, the diet that is going to fit your lifestyle is going to be the one that gives you the best results. And so, if you can incorporate those things which we do with our virtual nutritionists, some of the supplements that we use, things like that that can have a huge impact on your overall life. And then, second to that, like, yeah, I get it, I’m getting down to a clinic to work out if you live on the other side of town can be really hard, so we’ve set up different programs that you can actually do remotely that are completely personalized for you. That, again, I think, with enough encouragement and a little bit of accountability, can make a huge difference to your overall strength and functional muscular health. I’m going to call it that.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 17:19
OK. So I have to ask you this one because it’s near and dear to me. But when we first opened AEON, I thought, oh, this is going to be a hit with the baby boomers, right, because they’re at that age where they have time to invest in their health. They want to stay as healthy and vital as long as possible. No-transcript jumping on the on our approach. We’re younger. And I think it’s because you know people my age people your age we were listening to the podcast or following the new research we want to do. We kind of know, like what worked before and didn’t give us good results isn’t going to magically just start working again. So we’ve ended up seeing a lot of people like me who are at that tipping point of well, I’m not that old, I’m not in menopause and need all this help, but I don’t feel the same as I used to, and so I’ve really appreciated our approach to hormones and I don’t feel like we can leave the conversation today without talking about hormones. But tell us a bit about how important it is to maintain good hormone optimization for for life.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 18:35
Man, we’re going to need like another two hours to go to do this in detail.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 18:40
Just the sound bites.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 18:42
Yeah, let me. Let me sort of give you just an understanding of this. So up until the early 1900s, our life expectancy was 50 years. That was the average, and our bodies are really not generated to live forever. We’re evolutionarily it’s to procreate and then, after that sort of whatever happens happens. So when we’re talking about our hormone health, you see this natural decline, and I think it’s of course it’s stark in women, and I think the treatment for perimenopause and menopause is critical to everything from bone health to improved Alzheimer’s outcomes, to improved cardiovascular health, to, not to mention, managing the actual symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. But it’s also present in men, and so you see this very gradual decline of testosterone, as it happens, and that leads to a lot of things too. It can be associated with low mood, it can be associated with weak bones, it can be associated with decreased sexual health, worsening libido, weaker erections. All of those things, on both the male and the female side, are important not for just how you feel today, but also set you up for success, how you’re going to feel 10, 20, 30 years from now. And so I think that hormones are a critical piece of this whole puzzle. But I also want to be careful of saying look, there’s also a lot of other things that overlay on top of hormones that can affect them. If you’re chronically stressed and you’re not sleeping in men and in women your testosterone goes down and so you have to address. If your vitamin D is really low, it’s going to affect your testosterone as well, and then, of course, this isn’t even touching on cortisol and thyroid and insulin, but, needless to say, it’s a really important part in terms of managing health at that cellular level and at that hormonal level, which then gives you like the overarching thing for each functional organ and then ultimately like your functional health overall.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 21:15
Yeah, we’re definitely doing another podcast on hormones. We could probably do one just on testosterone, because I know everyone listening out there was like, oh, it affects libido, I want to know more. So we’ll pause on that one, but I guess, just maybe to wrap us up a little bit, what’s the best time to come see us in life? Like, when do you want to start seeing a patient? When can you have the highest impact on their lives, on their future health?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 21:48
Yeah well, I mean, look at every point how you start today sets you up for success, how you are five or 10 years down the road. So if we can get you into your healthiest system at 30, that sets you up for how you feel at 40. I mean, it sets you up for 40, it’s 50, right Now. I do think there’s some critical years between 40 and, let’s say, 55 to 60 for women, especially because that’s when we want to catch you, at a time where we can look at some of those hormonal pieces in more detail. But I also think that for some of the most critical functions, it can be anywhere in your mid 30s up until your mid 80s. I mean, it really just depends on where you start. But I do think that the key is to start, because then you can get your baseline, you have a clear understanding of what you need, how things look today, which also gives you some metrics to follow along with to see how things change over time 100%.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 22:55
I mean I love that you just need to start and we invest so much in everything else and so little in our health because, as long as it feels OK, probably not paying that much attention to it. Are there any signs to watch for that you like to remind people of?
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 23:12
Yeah, I think, as opposed to diving into individual signs, here’s what I would say Just because you go to your family physician and your labs check out but you’re feeling kind of crummy, or just because you were making it by, does not mean that it’s as good as it could be. And I feel like what we’re discovering with especially some of our new treatments, like our gut health program, we’ve had so many people who are just living with chronic diarrhea or constipation or bloating and they just assume that it’s a normal part of living. So I think, as opposed to just going under the assumption that that is a normal thing and you just have to grit down and bear it forever, I definitely think it’s worth getting some baseline testing to see if there’s anything that can help tweak whatever it is that’s, you know, causing that, causing you to feel, maybe not a hundred percent.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 24:13
And I’ll do that extra call out for women, because we are notorious for looking after the family, and yeah for sure. I mean, I we’ve been told for years that the hot flashes are fine, it’s just part of aging, and that the sleepless nights and, oh, the extra anxiety, that’s, that’s just part of the aging process. And you know, the crazy thing is we can fix that, we can support that. We don’t have to live with that anymore.
Dr. Jonathan Bastian, MD: 24:39
And I’m constantly telling all my friends this is normal, isn’t normal like don’t settle for normal, go for optimized totally and and like it’s not just the symptoms like those symptoms are horrible and debilitating and you know they they suck, I’m gonna get that but also like, if you catch your health at the right window, some of that hormone health, like those are, those are critical years to start implementing things, because it really has a huge impact on your long-term health. So, yeah, I mean coming back to this. Yeah, I’m a huge advocate for Not just hormone health but also, you know, getting a full assessment done and getting a clear understanding of where you sit 100% and we have a lot more to talk about.
Lisa Krzyzewski: 25:28
Really appreciate you taking the time today and, you know, open to questions, so we’re gonna be Available. Send us some questions. I’m gonna grab dr Bastion whenever I can. We’ve got some Phenomenal female doctors working with us to that sometimes take a different angle on things so we might grab them and we’re just happy to have you with us. Have a great day you.
