Dr. Fady Hannah-Shmouni says you either become the CEO of your health, or suffer the consequences of outdated “reactive” medicine.
“Twenty-five percent of US adults that make it to 50 will not make it beyond 75,” he warns. “And unless you undertake proactive screening, longevity, healthspan, and biohacking medical services, your chances decrease even further.”
The days of traditional medicine are over, Hannah-Shmouni says, where you get sick and they treat the symptom. “So is the empty idea of mere ‘lifespan,’ which simply measures how long you’re breathing.” Healthspan, he says, powered by new technologies, is the new measure and goal. What is healthspan? “I define it as the healthy years that we live within our lifespan through proactive practices like better sleep [and] regenerative medicines – including stem cells and other exciting therapies coming down the line.”
Being the CEO of your health starts with proactive screening. He recommends you do longevity assessments which dig far deeper into the fields of biological age and personalized medicine than traditional “physicals” can.
For example, a company called True Diagnostic will examine your epigenetic markers that are susceptible to lifestyle changes. “This test will help categorize your risk for mortality and chronic disease,” he says, “as well as uncover your biological age, which is your DNA age. They’ll measure your telomere lengths, etc. So for about four or five hundred bucks, you can get this epigenetic profiling to identify risk as part of your longevity assessment.”
Second, you can get a home screening in the United States through a company called Function Health for about $500. Function Health recently raised a Series A through Andreessen Horowitz, led by Mark Hyman and his team. “This screen can give you a baseline of where you might need supplementation, for example. You really should get a baseline before you can intelligently supplement.”
SUPPLEMENT SMARTLY
Most supplements, Hannah-Shmouni argues, are marketing scams: untested and unverified. He gives a list of the five supplements he considers most important:
#1: “Magnesium is probably the most important supplement you can take. I personally take about 500 milligrams of magnesium a day. If you choose to, take Magnesium L-Threonate for better sleep. Do take it at night.”
#2: “The second most important is Creatine, which supplies the brain with important energy and helps with cognition. I would take three to five grams of creatine monohydrate a day.”
#3: “The third important supplement would be calcium, which is important for bone health. You can get that from diet, so make sure you don't take excessive calcium, because that could lead to kidney stones and other deleterious effects, including high calcium levels in the blood.”
#4: “[Vitamin] B12 is essential for maintaining healthy nerve cells and producing DNA. It also plays a crucial role in red blood cell formation and preventing anemia.”
#5: “Vitamin D deficiency is very common, so again, first get measured and then optimize accordingly.”
As far as the cutting edge anti-aging experimentation made popular by David Sinclair, Hannah-Shmouni claims “there’s still a lot of noise and a lot of the data is just animal studies.” Stick with the above five supplements, he counsels, optimize your nutrition, get good sleep, build muscle, and be fit. That is the base of the pyramid.
“If you look at each individual's body, we've all got this similar base. We share the same genes, more or less, and have similar requirements in terms of supplements and the basic necessities of being alive. But then, as we get closer to the peak of the pyramid, we need more personalization. If we want to build more muscle or improve our VO2 Max [maximal oxygen consumption] – which is probably one of the most important subjective measures of fitness and longevity – we have to optimize accordingly. But if we want to prevent cancer or improve our cognition and executive function skills, that personalization plan would be different.”
MEANWHILE, ARE WE POISONING OURSELVES?
“I think the largest risk factor that's unseen in today's world are these endocrine disrupting chemicals or environmental toxins. There are over 80,000 toxins in our environment, and we have the ability to measure about a hundred to 150 of those 80,000 toxins from hair, blood, and urine samples.”
To get an accurate measurement of these toxins in your body, he recommends an American company called Mosaic.
“Especially concerning are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that act like our endogenous hormone molecules, including testosterone and estrogen. They bind to receptors and cause chemical changes in the body that may predispose us to cancer or hormonal changes.”
To reduce these chemicals, he says stop drinking water from plastic bottles. Plastic bottles contain over 300,000 microparticles of plastic. Use filtered water, whether it's through carbon filters, reverse osmosis or glass bottles. The problem is these substances “are all over the environment. We breathe them. They come through our skin. And certain common products like the chicken at Costco that comes in a plastic container – and actually all food wrapped in plastic and especially cooked or warmed in plastic – avoid them.”
The CDC has acknowledged that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are a large risk factor to our chronic diseases and are currently encouraging healthcare providers to test for them.
PERSONALIZED MEDICINE IS THE FUTURE – AND THE PRESENT
Dr. Hannah-Shmouni has developed a comprehensive longevity program in the UAE, which offers regenerative therapies, including exosomes and stem cells for regenerative medicines, as well as a comprehensive long-term longevity assessment program.
He is also developing lower-cost longevity assessments for the masses to adopt and scale globally. His company is repurposing spaces in clinics and hotels. “This way, we can bring in our own equipment, predictive analytic platforms and protocols and give consumers a low-cost, effective longevity assessment. Athens and Toronto are our first two hubs outside of Dubai.”
“In the end, today it’s really about personalization,” says Hannah-Shmouni. “It's such an exciting time to be in the healthcare field and to provide personalized insight through genetics, microbiome, and overall personalized data driven care.”
Hannah-Shmouni adds that he would love to work with his metal brothers at any of these clinics. “For proactive healthcare you don’t have to stay local. The globe is yours.”
Dr. Hannah-Shmouni can be reached through:
Written by Adam Gilad
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