Welcome to Medicine Redefined

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha Shah, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined, a podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. All right, what is going on everybody, welcome to Medicine Redefined, a podcast where we honestly explore a whole different type of medicine out there that we're really looking to get into. So, I'm Dr. Shah, and with me I got my co-host Dr. Altamash Raja, so Dr. Alt, if you want to go ahead and kind of just explain a little bit about yourself, and what our mission here is really. Yeah, I'm obviously excited to be here, excited to start this project with you, man. Yeah, just a little bit about myself, I've been an athlete my whole life, and I think that's kind of what got me started in this journey of health, and ultimately a lot of injuries let me down to pursue the field of medicine, and now sports medicine, and before that I'm kind of wrapping up my training in physical medicine or rehab, but along the way what I've learned is that the current medical model, it's not really focusing as much on and health, but more so on disease, you know, we're going to see the doctors oftentimes when the don't want to say it's too late, but really it's, you know, things were kind of just simmering before they got there, and when you get there it's like, okay, what could we have done to prevent even getting there? So it's more of like a preventative mindset, and it's crazy because a lot of people talk about preventative medicine, but they don't truly practice preventative medicine. It's much of it's because like you and I've talked about so much offline is, it's, you know, people are kind of practicing with their at least one hand tied behind their back. So we're obviously super young in our career, and we're still learning, but what we've learned that there's better ways to do it, and both you and I are fortunate enough that we've have mentors who are doing it a better way. Absolutely. And so, you know, for me, some of those better ways are to going back to those roots, right? Focusing on nutrition, focusing on exercise, focusing on sleep, focusing on some of supplementation, and just, you know, different types of maybe a blend of Eastern Western, different types of medication is not just looking at how in the traditional model of medical school teaches us, and the one thing that's crazy is, you know, most of the things that I'm truly passionate about and I'm truly interested in, I've had to learn on my own. And it's because, you know, that's just not what the focus is on. And so, you know, my hope is that there is more and more people that are going to be like us, and we're going to meet some of the experts in this field and bring them on, we'll learn about their journey of how they got into what they're doing and how they're able to become successful. And so, that's what we're hoping for this. Yeah, absolutely, man. I could not agree more. And, you know, for the listeners out there, I'm also a physician in physical medicine rehab. And same story with me, I mean, growing up as an athlete, you know, it's always about how can I be better than my opponent? And sometimes it's what you do off the field, right? And oftentimes it is what you do off the field. And, you know, for me, it all came down optimization. What strengths can I double down on? What are the weaknesses I can focus on? And when you look at that from a health perspective, that's exactly what preventative medicine is. It's looking at what you can do daily so that in long term, you're, you know, you're going to feel a lot better. And I look at my own family and I have two grandmothers that are still alive. My paternal grandmother is 106 years old and my maternal grandmother is 89. And they're both like, you know, my maternal grandmother is an amazing shape. She can still out like flex me. She can read her toes and everything. And I look back and I ask, why? Why is it that, you know, growing up in India where it's a lot of pollution, a lot of poverty, things like that, they're still able to outlive most of the people here in America with the technology that we have. And it comes down to the food they ate, the amount they move. She can still squat. She does her own laundry. Like these are the basic, as we say, the fundamentals, the foundations that really lead to this longevity, this long life that we all kind of wish for, you know, with health. So, you know, I was fortunate to shadow in functional medicine as a fourth year medical student. And one of the functional medicine doctors told me that 90% of the disease that we see today in healthcare is chronic. And I think the biggest issue is when you turn a hospital medicine, it's very acute, right? So a lot of the way we're judged as physicians is how quickly can we get that patient out of the hospital? How quickly can we get those symptoms to go away? And oftentimes we have to treat chronic and fight that chronic with chronic treatment. And so I think, you know, I'm so excited to get a lot of these guests in the fields of cardiovascular disease, gut health, water, nutrition, rehab, OMM, and just optimization. And really learning about these outside the box ideas and outside the box ways, especially as medicine starts to become more individualized, right? We're starting to see genetic testing on the rise. We're starting to understand research a little bit, a little bit better born individual and not necessarily for the masses. So yeah, that's exactly what we mean by the title of this podcast is, you know, medicine redefined. We really, you know, want to redefine what medicine is for the next generation of physicians that also come up. But also the physicians that are currently practicing right now, you know, there's a huge case of burnout. And I think a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that we don't see patients as healthy as we'd like to. Dude, that's crazy. I actually didn't know that your paternal grandmother was 106. That's some good genes, man. I love that. You definitely picked your grandparents wisely. I did. Yeah. And the only thing I want to add on to that is, you know, everything that Tara said, it was amazing. And you know, somewhere along the line, these things like sleep and nutrition and gut health that he's talking about, somewhere along the line, these things became complementary alternative medicine, right? And both you and I don't look at them as complementary, right? We look at them as the core components of it. And I think a lot of our colleagues do as well. But like we said, you know, we're going to try to figure that out how we can do that. And most importantly, we're going to learn. And we're hoping you guys will learn with us and you'll join on this journey to kind of learn from thought leaders in the fields and, you know, just ultimately try to strive for optimal health for yourself and your patients. And we're excited. Yeah, absolutely. Let's get it rolling.