Dr. Vishal Patel
Appearances
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
There's a lot. Okay, we have time. Is there, yeah, what's your favorite topic or disease or supplement at the moment?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Well, you know, I mean, our partners are our hotels, Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton. I think the one that I get the biggest kick out of are the IV drips at the pool. Yeah. They look sexy and it, and I think there's a fascination with pumping your body full of stuff, but there's no evidence that it works.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
You know, my team of scientists and researchers, we've poured over the literature, trying to find some, some kernel of truth for why that might make someone feel better. And our best, most informed conclusion is it's because you're well hydrated. afterwards. You got pumped full of a liter of water and of course you're going to feel better.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But there's no evidence that being injected with B12 is necessary or beneficial for most people. So that's one. Another one where I'm really skeptical are peptide injections. And I don't know if you've turned around your cosmetics over the past couple of years, but most cosmetics nowadays have proprietary peptides.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Peptides are short chain amino acids, you know, some building blocks of any protein. And on one hand, they're being studied as a new type of drug, as a vehicle for delivering drugs because they're so powerful and so potent. And on the other hand, labs are whipping this stuff up. Cosmetic companies are whipping this stuff up in the lab. I can't find a toxicology report online.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And then they put this and they bottle up in a cream and you can put it on your face. And yes, you have outcomes. It will reduce your wrinkles, but at what cost? And that's what concerns me, is that in the pursuit of, call it anti-aging or looking younger or living longer, we're willing to make... sacrifices where we don't know the full cost of it. And again, my background was in proteomics.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I studied proteins, peptides and amino acids and all the things that they do in the human body. And they're so powerful. So the way that a peptide works is it triggers so many cellular pathways that we scientists don't even understand what cellular pathways and signaling pathways have been triggered by the peptide. It's a little bit of magic at the moment and not entirely scientific.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah. And plus many of them are proprietary. So in Sensei's work, as we look at skincare and try to find evidence-based skincare products for our customers, there's been so many brands we've said no to because they concocted this chemical in their lab. There's no published peer-reviewed toxicology report that we can stand behind, that we can believe in. And Yeah, and I think that's unfortunate.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But on the other hand, I feel like the consumer, maybe because of podcasts like this, I think consumers are becoming more informed and discerning. They're looking for transparency in ingredients and manufacturing and quality. And I feel like that's part of Sensei's mission is to keep educating and informing our listeners so that they can make more informed choices.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Oh, sure. To describe what it is, it's a wellness retreat, but even that doesn't do justice to the place and the experience. It was a vision that our co-founders, Larry Ellison and David Agus, had. It was the passing of a close friend, Steve Jobs, that really made them realize that the world needs...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Thank you. I think that may be a bug, might be an error.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Cause no, so if you, you have one, so, you know, and, um, and I appreciate you bringing that up to me and, uh, it's silly, but not really.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
No, it's important to understand that. Yeah. And it's so, you know, one point where you're correct, it, it doesn't, saunas don't raise your core body temperature. Actually our core body temperature doesn't change unless you have an infection or there's something really dire happening. But when you take a cold plunge or you're in a sauna, it's, it is peripheral temperature.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
It's skin temperature that's being modulated. So I think that's with infrared radiation, it is true that infrared radiation from an infrared sauna does penetrate below the skin, but it is inconclusive if that's why it's beneficial for your health. or more or less beneficial than traditional sauna.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Again, from the science and evidence, I think it's just a different mechanism of heat and radiant heat production. A little less air pollution in an infrared sauna versus a traditional charcoal sauna. But you're absolutely right. It needs to get you hot and you need to be sweating and you need to do it for 15 minutes so that your heart rate is pounding.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And I like to be a little dizzy by the time I step out of a sauna.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
It's not as efficient. Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
You're not wrong on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out actually. And it's important.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
spaces where even the best and brightest can feel safe and get trusted, vetted advice about their health and wellness. And I think that's probably what you experienced at Lanai, that it feels like a place where you can let your guard down, where you can You, you can, you can feel safe.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Gosh, yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. So I'll give you just like some fresh hot takes, I guess, because I'm here in Cabo, like, you know, we just opened our operation. I'm literally testing some of the equipment on myself yesterday. So there's some fascinating, maybe we can talk about thermography.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, it's fascinating. I don't know if you've ever seen a thermal image or a heat map, but a thermal camera has a special type of infrared sensor. And so it detects infrared radiation. You know, they use it in, gosh, I mean, in home construction. So they can look behind, like through the wall in a way and identify leaks or, you know, gaps in insulation.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But when you point an infrared sensor at the human body, what you're looking at in that heat map of the human body is heat dissipation from the skin. which is an indicator of differences in circulation. So you see hotspots, which could mean vasodilation. There's more blood in those areas and you see cold spots.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
What's fascinating is that we're beginning to correlate those hotspots and cold spots to muscular imbalances and asymmetries. So the muscles that you overuse and overused muscles can be because either you're working out too hard or you're holding a lot of stress or tension in a certain muscle.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
you know so for instance i mean what's a good example so hamstrings and runners are a good example of an underused muscle they tend to be kind of chronically shortened right even in most of us as we're sitting all day so we have um kind of that they call that superior cross body position where our pectoral pectoralis and our chest muscles are tightened and constricted our backs are extended
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
You can have space to wander and you have experts, which are really hidden gems that a lot of people don't expect, but we have brilliant, brilliant minds and hearts on Lanai that can guide our guests to greater wellbeing. It's, it's something special.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But when we start looking at the thermography data, we can start seeing that. And I saw it in myself. So my sternocleidomastoid on my right side was flaming red, like hotter than on my left side. And because there's no normative data on thermography, there's not like age and gender databases of thermal data. We have to use internal control. So we compare left and right sides to figure out
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Well, what's happening on the right side of your skin versus your left side? So my right sternocleidomastoid was incredibly tight, which was, it was incredibly hot. So it indicated either there was some inflammation or a lot of tension that is holding here. Then the exercise physiologist guide here, Brenda, she took me through a functional movement screen.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And in the functional movement screen, as I was trying to touch my hands behind my back, I know she noticed that there was asymmetries in my ability to reach behind my back. And then we noticed some hot spots in my deltoids. And so through that kind of working through the data, what we identified is that
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
there are some opportunities, let's call them opportunities in the way that I'm exercising in the gym. And again, this is one of those things where it's like, okay, I know a lot. I think I know how to exercise and yet maybe I'm overdoing it. Maybe there isn't enough variety in my routine because I'm developing tension in muscles that you don't want tension in.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Tension in your sternocleidomastoid is gonna extend up into my jaw. Like in a week, I'll probably get cracking in my jaw from all that tension. And I'm really happy I caught it early.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But now I need to spend a little bit more time with a coach to figure out how do I introduce some more variety and more balance into my workout routine and maybe change the ergonomics of my desk setup at home so I'm not holding so much tension there.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Then that's human nature. We just avoid them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
That's right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Absolutely. I'm like you. So I wore the whoop for a year, took it off, lived without it for without anything for a while, then tried the aura for a while, took that off. Now I've got an Apple watch, but I'm not using it for health tracking. Yeah. Yeah. I just use it. You know, I do look at my heart rate when I'm in the gym to make sure I'm hitting certain zones, but that's about it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
We are now three as of last week. Yeah, we just opened our first international location in Cabo with the Ritz Carlton Reserve in Mexico.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I think data and wearables feels like a, what's the word, like training wheels in a way to notice parts of your lifestyle and behavior that you may not have noticed before. But the reason that it becomes, we fixate it, fixate on it when we start wearing it, I think is because of how partly it's a little bit of the, maybe the shock and the awe of
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Like you don't realize that you're sleeping poorly until you start measuring it. Or you don't realize that maybe you're not pushing yourself as hard in your runs until you start measuring your heart rate and you realize, oh, you have some room to go. That's what it was like for me. But then that initial moment of awareness, it does turn into a fixation.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And again, from the psychology of wellbeing, we know that external locus of control isn't good for you in the long run. That ultimately needs to be an internal locus of control that you need to, want to go to sleep on time and wake up early because you want to, not because you're feeling guilty of not hitting a certain recovery score or strain score on your device.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But the journey starts with that. It starts with kind of that emotional kind of gamification, like learning about the data, gamifying it for yourself. But what we notice and what the wearable companies have told us is eventually everyone takes it off and everyone switches because each wearable is right for a person at a certain point in their life.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And then they learn how to live life, you know, informed by the data and then they take it off and then maybe they live without it and they move to the next thing and, and then life changes. And so sometimes the wearables come back. Sometimes the data comes back in a, probably when you least expect it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
That's right. And I mean, the CGMs, they have like a half-life, you know, you only keep them on for a week or two and then you got to switch it out. And so like naturally after a couple of weeks, if you're switching it out, maybe you get tired of it and just keep it off.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But what I've observed is like, yeah, even with CGMs, there's that moment initially where you're suddenly measuring or suddenly, you know, the glycemic index is brought to life because you're noticing the spike in your blood sugar after eating a apple or a cookie or whatever it is. And so I think that's, I almost feel like that's enough.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Like that, that emotional moment of like shock and awe when you see your glucose, like that's enough to open your eyes and you start shifting your behavior. And then eventually I don't think you need the data for very long.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I know what you're talking about. So it's plasmapheresis, right? So they take your plasma, they filter it all out and then put it back inside of you or they give it to you so you can hang it on an IV at some point.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, I think, so this is another interesting one where there's some science and there's some voodoo to plasmapheresis. So the science is that our plasma does become chock full of antibodies to all the things that we're exposed to. So I have a friend that works and is developing some technology based off of that principle, that because of all of those antibodies floating around in your plasma,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
We can filter out the ones we don't need, so potentially reducing autoimmune responses. Alternatively, you can introduce antibodies and things into the plasma that could be good for you. So there is some science and merit to that. I don't think that the technology and the intervention, however, is there yet for mass consumption, like plasmapheresis in the MediSpa. I don't trust that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
You know, with every intravenous procedure, there are some risks and side effects. I think what I'm more worried about is a quality control in the medispas and clinics that are running this procedure.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I haven't, and again, I haven't personally looked at the equipment and the technology and the manufacturers and the protocols, but as a scientist and physician, that would be my foremost concern is the quality control on the stuff that you're putting directly into my system. And again, so they're saying they're filtering your plasma, but where's the QC?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Where's the guarantee that you've taken out what you're saying you're taking out and you're really putting in what you're saying you're putting in? So it's an unregulated protocol, kind of an unregulated industry. So that's what makes me concerned.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Of course I forgive you. Yeah, I am, like Isaiah said, I got my, you know, I have a love of data and technology. And so I'm much more forgiving of IT challenges because I live with many of them and I handle many of them. But Jennifer, this was a pleasure. It was great to chat with you. Always a pleasure to chat with a guest.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I'm so glad that you had the good fortune of visiting Lanai and that you got to experience that for yourself.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
program, we try to keep that mostly the same, you know, so the evidence-based principles, being data-driven, focusing on movement, nourishment, and the rest. But then as you probably noticed, each place has its own charm, its own energy, its own culture. And that, I think that, you know, adds some variety to the different locations. You'll have to come visit us in Mexico.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I think we've got a really special place and a really special team here.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
My pleasure, Jennifer.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, we call it the Optimal Wellbeing Program.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, we often describe it as like a prescription or a bootcamp or a regimen. I know I'm really familiar with, you know, maybe like the ranch in Malibu and places like that where it can feel a little, yeah, very restrictive. Yes, that's right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
That's right.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Oh, absolutely.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah. And in a nutshell, it's because the scientific evidence doesn't support rules for living life. So when we looked at the scientific literature, my, my team and our co-founders for what results in say healthy eating, just as one example, you know, we focus on movement, rest, but just taking food and nourishment.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But when you take a rules-based approach to eating, where there's a certain list of foods you can eat and then a very long list of foods you can't eat, in the psychology literature, what happens inevitably with every cohort, every population, is that as soon as you're given that naughty list of foods, your mind very naturally starts wanting to eat those things.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
So then you start feeling these cravings and this desire that has an emotional impact. You start feeling guilty for wanting those things. You start punishing yourself for avoiding those things. And then in a few weeks to months, you fall off the wagon. So with every diet, paleo, keto, anything that's considered healthy,
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
a diet where you're following a set of rules, you end up having this yo-yo behavior where people end up latching onto a diet thinking it's going to be the end all be all. They fall off and then they revert back to their old ways and old habits. And then they find the next fad diet and then they latch onto that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
and so sensei didn't want to perpetuate that not only is it an unsustainable approach to living it's not good for you you end up with a slightly disordered relationship with food where you use food as punishment and reward it's it's not healthy for us in the long run and so that's why it's open-ended it's kind of more like a choose your own adventure rather than a boot camp where we're going to tell you what to do
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And I know what you mean. We get a lot of guests that show up and say, okay, so tell me what to eat. Tell me when to wake up. Tell me when to sleep. Where are my supplements? Just tell me what to do. But longevity and wellness don't work like that. It's about the choices you make and learning to teach yourself to be more intentional with those choices.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And so that's why Sensei was designed in that way.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I'm with you. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of almost food as medicine. I studied Ayurvedic medicine in India, which is, you know, that's kind of a central tenet of that system of thought. But on the flip side, telling someone what to eat removes the joy out of food, removes the sensory appreciation from food.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And what we recognize is that, no, the sensory aspect of eating is just as important as the macronutrients on your plate. It has to look pretty. It has to be presented beautifully. There's a certain pace to eating that needs to be synchronized with your gastronomy. So you actually are salivating before you eat.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And so we take all that into consideration to introduce a more intentional approach to eating.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, so that sounds like Eduardo.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
That's exactly right. So that's, I think you hit on the science actually, and that's what we've tried to incorporate. And Eduardo does it with such warmth. He's really disarming, but he has a way of like cutting right to the heart of the problem. Yeah. But yeah, what we notice, you know, with these, with our retreats, they're built very intentionally for high performers.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And as a high performer, you know, and your audience probably knows, that you're so focused on a goal, performing, whether it's in the gym, on the field, in a sport, whatever your arena of performance is.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
You're focused on the result. And you learn over time to be more resilient, more tolerant of the pain of the, you know, the aches and complaints and whether that's in the workplace or in the gym, right? But what our retreats do is create some space in your mind so you can start noticing that all those little things that you might have overlooked in your pursuit of that goal.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
So maybe it was your footwear. Maybe you were wearing shoes that were a little too tight. Maybe you didn't really think about your footfall while running, and that might be why you're having the knee pain. Maybe there is a lot of tension in your jaw that stems from your ergonomics in your workplace.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But all of these small details are really almost imperceptible in our day-to-day life because we build our environments in pursuit of a vision, in pursuit of a goal, because we're trying to achieve something.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
But to be able to do that for the long haul, like you said, longevity for a longer, healthier life, you do need occasional resets or retreats where you can take a more mindful approach at things like your footwear or the type of pillow that you sleep on. Maybe the pillow is contributing to your neck pain.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
There's all of these subtle factors in our environment and our habits, but it really does take stepping away from it all to get that perspective.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, happy to. I trained as a physician. I got my PhD in genetics, both from Case Western Reserve in Ohio. Oddly enough, and I know we were having some IT challenges at the beginning of the call, so maybe you'll find this amusing, but the reason I got into Sensei was because of technology and data of all things.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
My background, my research was in the same field of research as Dr. Agus, our co-founder, which was proteomics and genomics. And it was the data and...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
The intention was to think about human beings on the inside, as well as on the outside as complex systems that maybe we don't understand how everything works, but maybe if we measure more of it, we can start painting a more complete picture of how human beings work. And that was really what motivated me. And when I came to Sensei, it was the same vision that I
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Yeah, our guests as high performers, we're all hell bent on figuring out how this world works and making it better in some form or fashion. And we're really analytical. We like to measure everything around us so that we can perform better, faster, harder. And the thought was, well, why don't we take that language of data that really speaks to us and to our guests
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
and use it as almost like a mirror to turn that lens inward. Say, why don't we measure you? Why don't we shed some light on how you're doing? So some of the initial data that we were collecting, basic things like blood pressure and lipid panels that were just surprising, but our guests hadn't had that measured in a while.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
We had a partnership with Whoop, which was tremendous, because then we started collecting real life, real world data. you know, our guests in the wild and their home environments. And we get to see how they're doing and whether they're doing well or not so well. And then there's some real exciting innovations that Sensei has incubated. One that I'm passionate about is around thermography.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And we're using thermal cameras that are used in like home construction and defense. But again, we're taking that lens and pointing it at the human being and saying, well, why don't we look at your thermal patterns and thermal signatures? Why don't we try to understand skin temperature as a biomarker and to tell us, to try and figure out what does that tell us about what's happening inside of you?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And it's really exciting. And so, again, I think for me being at Sensei, it feels like a culmination of my love of data and technology. But I also get to blend the East and the West. So I studied Ayurveda. I have a deep appreciation for traditions and culture and history. And that has a really important place. It always has and always will in how human beings understand their health and wellness.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
Here in Mexico now, there's an indigenous system of medicine here in Mexico.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
There are traditional ways that people have thought about health and food and diet, and you have to take those into consideration when you're trying to shift perceptions and minds, when you're trying to introduce healthier eating patterns, when you're trying to incorporate more physical activity, you do have to be considerate of how people grew up and where they came from.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
And so I enjoy bringing that understanding of Eastern traditions and culture as well as biomedicine into my work at Sensei. And again, before we started, I mentioned we don't diagnose and treat at our retreats. And so sometimes people wonder, it's like, yeah, well, why do you need a doctor at the helm? It's actually because we say no to a lot of things.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 455: Dr. Vishal Patel: Why Your Feet Control Your Longevity and Most Wellness Tech Is Wrong
I mean, there's just a lot of clinical things in the wellness world that don't have evidence. And it's important that we steer people clear of magic bullets and gimmicks that don't work, that aren't proven, that may have some toxicity, that may have side effects, that may not be beneficial for you in the long run. And so that's how I incorporate my medical background here.