Kyle Holbert on Heavy Metals, Missed Diagnoses and Making Longevity Medicine More Accessible

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign. Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves.

Speaker B: 00:00:16

Most of us assume that if something is seriously wrong with our health, the healthcare system will eventually find it. But what happens when it doesn't?

My guest today is Kyle Holbert, chief operating officer and co founder of the Longevity Centers of America, an organization focused on integrative and longevity medicine. Kyle did not come into this field through a conventional route.

He was a successful young athlete, studying business and preparing to join the family business when his health began to unravel.

Despite sleeping well, Kyle exercising, eating well, and doing many of the things we are told should keep us healthy, he found himself struggling with fatigue, anxiety, depression, brain fog, joint pain, gut problems, and a growing list of other unexplained symptoms. In this conversation, we discuss Kyle's search for answers, what he believes was missed, and how that experience led him into longevity medicine. We.

We also get into heavy metals, detoxification, hormone testing, functional and integrative medicine, and the bigger question of how many people are being told they are fine when they know something is wrong. It is a fascinating and very human conversation about health prevention, root causes, and the parts of medicine that can still.

Speaker A: 00:01:47

Fall through the cracks. Hi, Kyle. Welcome to Beyond Longevity.

Before we get into heavy metals, detoxification, and longevity and all the other topics that you can speak to at length, I think we need to start with your own story, because it is the reason you are doing what you're doing today. Take us back to who you were before all of that. What was your background? What was your childhood like? What were you studying?

And what did you think your life was going to look like? How. How did it change? And why?

Speaker C: 00:02:23

Yeah, that's a. That's a great question. You know, growing up, I grew up in a pretty normal American family.

My parents owned a construction business, built custom homes. And so, you know, with that came the thought that I would always, when I grew up, run the family business.

Um, it was kind of the logical path for me, you know, and growing up, I got exposed to the ebbs and flows of that business and, you know, the positives and the downsides.

mic cycles, but in, you know,: 2005

And then: 2009

And so we went from, you know, top of the world to, oh, my gosh, we are living in a house that's literally like 10% of the size of the house we were living in a year and a half ago. So I saw the ebbs and flows in that. And part of, like, why I wanted to get into my family company was that I wanted to.

I wanted to optimize it for sustainability. I called it sustainability at the time.

But really, to me, that meant I want to help make my family business work in a down cycle and an up cycle whenever I want longevity for the family business. So I have always, even as a kid, been focused on efficiency optimization, longevity.

Not necessarily like, human longevity, but just how do we make things work better for longer? So that was the path, right? I was going to go to business school. I was going to get a business degree.

My dad never quite finished college and he started his business, so he says he sent me to college to learn all the things he didn't so I could help run the business. And I was gonna go join them. And I actually did. Things started to change for me in undergrad.

It's where I first had kind of the slipping of my health happen.

And it was strange to see my friends who were going out, were partying, were drinking, they were staying up till 2am they would go crash for four hours of sleep. They would wake back up, cram for the final, and then go out and party after the final again. And they all seemed to have more energy than I did.

And I was like, what is going on? Because I sleep eight to nine hours a night. I'm a varsity athlete. I train, I eat well, I drink filtered water. I don't drink, I don't party.

Like, what is going on? Why do my friends have more energy than I do? And I'm falling asleep in class and, like, what is going on?

Doing this whole, like, thing that was, like, the first inkling that something was off. And then towards the end of my undergrad, you know, my mental health started to slip a little bit.

Some ups and downs and some emotional dysregulation and things that, like, honestly, I was in a couple relationships at the time, and I was kind of, like, mad at myself because I couldn't emotionally regulate myself. She would do something that I didn't like And I'd be upset about it and then be grumpy and not talk to her and all that stuff.

And it was weird because, like, I. I didn't have control over it. Some anxiety started creeping in, a little bit of depression. And then from there, when I graduated, I went to my master's degree.

I did a master's degree where I rotated through portions in San Francisco, Dubai, and Boston, which really cool experience, by the way. And I got the fittest I had ever been during my master's degree because all I did was school and I read books and I worked out. It was all I did.

And even though I was, quote, unquote, the healthiest I had ever been, I was the leanest of the strongest. My mental health, my energy just tanked, got horrible. I had depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts.

I had fatigue, joint pain, gut problems, allergies that popped up out of nowhere. I was allergic to, like, everything that wasn't meat. And just all of these symptoms. It seems like a little bit of everything.

And I was like, what is going on? Like, this is crazy. So I started going doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor.

I saw about six doctors, and half of them said they couldn't find anything. Half of them said I was making it up. I was like, I am not making this up. I live a clean lifestyle.

I work out, I eat well, I drink good water, I get lots of sleep, and I'm young. This is not in my head. I'm doing the foundations correct. So what is going on here?

And that kind of led me to diving into some of the biohacking world.

Speaker A: 00:07:13

Must have been terribly frustrating to go to all these different doctors and tell your story and sort of to be rebuffed. What doctors did you even go to because your symptoms were so broad from sort of mental issues and real deep depression. I mean, suicidal thoughts.

That's not. Oh, I don't feel like, you know, waking up or, you know, going to the gym today to sort of these physical issues. So there was such a broad spectrum.

What doctors did you even go to?

Speaker C: 00:07:44

Yeah, I went to a bunch of different, basically, GPs, general practitioners, because I didn't have any answers. So I didn't know that I probably needed an endocrinologist. I didn't know that I probably needed a rheumatologist.

I didn't know that I needed mainly integrative medicine. Integrative and functional medicine is what I really needed. Went to a bunch of counselors, too. Therapists, man.

Well, I had one experience with one of them that was like, okay, we're gonna learn breathing techniques. And I was like, I could write a book on breathing techniques. I know more breathing techniques than you, Mr. Therapist.

Do not tell me about a box breath. That's not gonna solve my problems right now. It's not a stress thing where my thoughts are spiraling. This is something completely different.

We need to dive into my history, trauma, stuff like that. And he was just like, no answer for that. So basically a constellation of general practitioners who, none of which referred me to any specialist.

They just said, I think you're fine.

Speaker A: 00:08:44

It's mind boggling because I do understand sometimes you go to one doctor and the doctor tells you you're fine and you just go home and that's it. But you've really tried, you've really tried all you can to find someone to help you.

And I just find it mind boggling that with all these different types of doctor, no one could help you.

Okay, I can get that if they were not specialized and whatever, but that they were not even able to relate to your issues and sen maybe on the right path and all that. Why do you think that was the case? Do you think that they were just ignorant or they didn't have enough time to really listen to you?

And why do you think that was?

Speaker C: 00:09:25

I think it was a little bit of both of those things. The education for general practitioners in America, the continuing education is really not great.

So they learn what they learned in med school and then kind of don't read any more research after that. So there's usually, if you're an older general practitioner, you usually have 20 to 40 years of stuff you've just missed, you just don't know about.

And the other thing is too, like the way the insurance system works and seeing people visits. You only get 15, 20 minutes with a doctor and this usually causes not enough time for them to listen, to understand.

And also you think about the kind of patients they're seeing. I'm a low 20s person who objectively on the outside looks fit and healthy. They're not concerned about me, they don't care.

They have patients that have obesity, they have patients that have diabetes, they have patients that have Alzheimer's, they have patients that are sick and I was sick, but you couldn't visibly see it on the outside. And so I think that's why with a 15 minute appointment, you look fine, you know, your labs are good enough. We'll see you later.

No reason to investigate on their end.

Speaker A: 00:10:35

Fair enough, fair enough for what it is with the system. But the Fact that they then didn't even pass you on to someone else, that I find incredulous, that, to me, is yet another level.

Speaker C: 00:10:48

Yeah. At a minimum, I would have expected a referral.

Now, knowing what I know, a referral to an endocrinologist would have been the easiest thing for them to do. Been like, here, go check your hormones.

Speaker A: 00:11:00

That's my point. I understand not everybody can know everything. I can accept that.

But the fact that they never referred you or took you serious, that is, I find unacceptable in a field that's supposed to help and heal.

Speaker C: 00:11:14

It's one thing for a young male to go through that. That's not even the worst group that goes through that. It's young females.

Young females get ignored by the system, highly misdiagnosed, ignored and brushed off. Because if the majority of doctors are males, they can't relate. They don't understand. They definitely don't understand women's hormones.

They can begin to grasp that. And that leads you to, I don't know what to do with this, or she's making it up, or I don't believe her, and boom.

So, I mean, it's one thing that I experienced that in my position, but really, I mean, I want to highlight that the number one group of patients that usually get misdiagnosed or brushed off is the young female category in the.

Speaker A: 00:11:59

Medical system, and probably the older female who goes through perimenopause and menopause. I guess that's the second group. Anyway, sorry I've interrupted your incredibly interesting story. Please continue.

You were saying, so all these doctors and practitioners weren't giving you any answers at all. What happened then?

Speaker C: 00:12:20

So I said, you know, being me who's focused on optimizing and improving and always getting better, I said, you know what? I'm just gonna. I'm gonna learn about health. So I dove in. I started listening to podcasts, started reading books. I listened to a lot of Dave Asprey.

He was my kind of gateway into the world of biohacking. Right? They call him the father of biohacking. And a lot of his podcast he was hitting on at the time. Go check your testosterone levels.

I was like, you know what? I'll start there. So I went Googled integrative medicine. Doctor near me called him, was like, hey, I'm a young guy. I have problems.

Can you check my testosterone levels? They were like, sure. So I came in, got the results. 159 Total testosterone.

Speaker A: 00:13:05

Oh, my God. That's worse than, like, a. An old man who's about to die.

Speaker C: 00:13:10

Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it is for reference, that is clinically low at any age, and it is roughly 10% of where I should have been. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:13:21

Should be around a thousand.

Speaker C: 00:13:23

As a healthy person who lifts weights, walks, eats clean, sleeps well. And young 20s, yeah, I should have been in the thousands. So that doctor put me on hcg, which is kind of like a form of hormone replacement therapy.

It's. It's like a recombinant lh. It stimulates production of. Of testosterone in the testes.

And within about one week, the majority of my mental health symptoms were gone. Just, boop, Just like that. Years of depression, years of anxiety, the suicidal thoughts, gone.

Like, there was still a little bit there, but I'd say probably 80 to 90% of it was just gone in a week. And then that's the moment I realized, wait, the traditional medical system's missing something.

Because how did I listen to a couple podcasts and read a couple books and put something together randomly from this father of biohacking guy that I need to go check this level? How did I find something these six doctors didn't? So I was like, we're missing something. So fast forward. I graduate my master's degree.

My mental health's better, but I'm still struggling with all the other symptoms. The gut problems, the fatigue. Still drive is a little down.

I'm starting to have weight gain, like, crazy weight gain, have rashes, joint pain, all of it. And so the mental health was better, but I still had all these things, and they continued to get worse and worse and worse and worse.

And that kind of led me back to, hey, like, how can I fix that? What can I do? And so at this time, I'm working for my family's construction company. I graduated. I joined the family business. I'm helping them build.

Helping them build sustainability. I'm organizing the company, and again, on paper, I'm killing it, right? The company's doing great.

We've increased revenue, the organization's improved, efficiency's improved. I'm doing great in my job.

I stepped up, like, four separate roles, but I started at, like, the bottom rung and was, like, running the company within, like, nine months. Just a. A bunch of people ended up quitting. And I just kind of step, step, step, step, on paper, killing it.

But my health is in shambles, and I feel like trash. And so I go back to, hey, when I was struggling with the mental health problems, Dave Asprey helped me out, right?

Speaker B: 00:15:48

He.

Speaker C: 00:15:48

He was my boy. So I'm going to Dive in. So I started reading all of his books, listening to all his podcasts. I end up going to one of his conferences.

And the biohacking conference is. It's this weird place that does not like, exist in normal situations.

It's like this weird group of people who are just like, fit and tan and happy, so full of vibrant energy. You can go up and hug anyone, and they're just like, yeah, you don't need to know them. It's just like biohack. There's. It's an interesting crowd.

And here I am, fat and inflamed like brain fog. And all these just gorgeous, ripped people who are so happy. And I'm like, what? How do I get some of that right? How do I. How do I get that?

And so I go to all the booths. I have every single booth, talk to every single person, and I find a. Like a.

It's kind of like a health coaching service that comes with a concierge doc who does comprehensive blood work once a quarter and then reviews it with you and optimizes. So I signed up with him, and he optimized my hormones, so my testosterone. He dialed it in. But he also fixed my thyroid. He fixed my growth hormone.

I was clinically growth hormone deficient as well. Not just non optimized, clinically deficient. And so he. He dialed all of that in for me.

And again, I started to feel better, but I still had these random symptoms. The. The joint pain, the allergies, the gut problems. And he said, you know what? I have an inkling that you have some kind of underlying toxicity.

And so I said, okay, what do I do? And he's like, well, I'm a concierge duck. Like, I just. I work out of my house.

I can't do anything for you, but I want you to go see this guy in Miami. So I call this guy in Miami. I get an appointment, 425 bucks for about 12 minutes. And he goes, yep, you need to come down here. You need a test.

Okay, I'll go test. So he had me do heavy metals test, heavy metal provocation test.

I drive four, roughly four hours to Miami, do the test, drive roughly four hours, back the next day, two weeks later, have another 12 minute call for $425. And he's like, you have a lot of mercury. And there it is, clear as day. You got the pre test and the post test.

The pre test is before you get the provocation agent. So the thing that binds to the mercury. Zero, no mercury.

And then the post Test is after you get the agent that pulls the mercury out 34, the line, the bar is 10. So the bar taps out of 10, I'm at 34. I'm. I'm over there somewhere. So he goes, you have chronic mercury toxicity. Great.

I was actually happy to get the bad news because now I have an answer, right? He says, go up to Jupiter. I have a doctor that works in my practice, and he's going to treat me for this.

And so I go up, and that's where I meet Dr. K. Dr. K is my now business partner in the Longevity Centers of America. He's the one that treated me and got me back to health. So through that process, it was wild. He's really not a sales guy, I'll give you that.

Because like, I came in, he was like, hey, this is gonna suck. I was like, what? He's like, yeah, he's like this. For the first 10, you're not gonna, like, you're gonna have exacerbation of all your symptoms.

You're gonna have mental health flare ups, you're gonna have brain fog flare ups, you're gonna have fatigue flare ups. But after you get past that 10, you'll start feeling better. I go, listen, I've come this far. Might as well, let's do it. He's like, you got this.

I start going through it, and every IV I do, I lose like 2 to 3 pounds of water inflammation weight. And when I get to 10, the first 10 were brutal. All kinds of just didn't feel well. After I get to 10, I start rounding that corner.

Every one I did after that, I had a little bit more energy, lost a little bit more weight, little better gut function. Like, everything just improved. And I did about 50. And I got rid of the mercury, did a bunch of other stuff, eboo, other therapies as well.

But I got my life back. And during that process, I was like, this is what I want to do. I don't really personally care about houses. A house is a widget.

Like, to me, it doesn't speak to my soul to help build your house. It doesn't resonate with me. But this stuff that saved my life, this is what I want to do.

And so I told him, I was like, listen, you ever want to start your own practice, you give me a call. And a couple years later, he gave me that call and he was like, hey, I'm going to do it.

Let's start this thing we worked for about, I think it was like 45 days for 12, 13 hours a day. We set that clinic up in sub two months from an idea to open in about 45 days.

Speaker A: 00:20:19

Wow. If you're determined, you know, you go full steep. But hold on. And again, I love listening to. It's just so riveting, your story.

It's just unbelievable. But before we move on, let's just make something clear to the listener and everyone.

These IVs that you've had, that were pure torture by the sounds of it. So these 50 IVs you've had over what sort of timeframe did you have them? Did you have one a day or how does that work?

Speaker C: 00:20:51

You know, you have to have at least one day in the middle. So most people will do one to two a week. I, on the other hand, being the intense kind of person I am, I did three a week.

So I would actually drive down there.

So I'd work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday afternoon I would cut off and I would take calls in the truck for the three hour drive and I'd be there for the last appointment on Thursday. And then he would actually come in and treat me on Saturday and then he would treat me.

First appointment on Monday and I would drive home answering calls in the truck. So I did that probably every other week for probably about a year.

Speaker A: 00:21:31

For basically a year, you more or less, or at least sort of, let's say the first three months, you really put your life on hold.

Because as you said during these IVs and even after the days after you were feeling very, you know, unwell and all that, that's quite a steep requirement to ask of anybody who also wants to and needs to go through that. Is that how it is with everyone? Is that what usually happens?

And do people really have to take a year out of their life to detox from heavy metal poisoning?

Speaker C: 00:22:09

That was years ago. Right? We've come a long way. We've come a long way.

And the tools we have, access to, the methodology, the protocols, now the timeframe is usually drastically shortened for patients.

Speaker A: 00:22:23

Why? Because the chelation, the IVs have improved or why.

Speaker C: 00:22:27

So chelation is pretty much the same, but how we stack it with eboo, for example, is a thing that. It wasn't a thing when I was, when I was going through treatment. It was not really available then, stuff like that.

And the, the stacking of the vitamin IVs and support for the chelation to minimize the symptoms, like we've stacked on a bunch of things that make the process a lot more tolerable as well as make it Quicker. And so kind of what we, we tell patients is like, if you're coming in here for some chronic something or other and it is over a year, we failed you.

So most of our patients, we're targeting three to eight or nine months to get them in and out. And hey, their chronic thing is, is fixed. Now if you want to come back for optimization, maintenance, longevity, great, we can do that.

But like if you're dealing with something chronic that you want fixed, we always want to do it in sub one year. And we're seeing most people are rounding that corner in the first 60 days.

Speaker A: 00:23:27

How many people come in with a very heavy mercury or any other, you know, heavy metal toxic load? And why do some people get such a heavy toxic load? And also why did you have such a heavy load?

Speaker C: 00:23:48

So it's an interesting spectrum of people that we see. What we see a lot is a combination of heavy metals, mold, Epstein Barr, Lyme parasites.

Those are kind of like usually the main things that we see in some combination. I wouldn't say that a majority of our patients come in with a super high heavy metal burden.

There is a subset that, hey, heavy metals is the main driver. A lot of people don't necessarily have a lot of one thing.

They have a bunch of things like they have a little bit of four different things and that's kind of all the co infections building on each other. In my case, if someone who has like, I really didn't have much of anything else, it was just mercury. That's more a rare case.

So we might maybe see like 10% of our patient population would be like a high single metal.

Speaker A: 00:24:33

How did you get such a high toxic load? And do other people that come to see you, do they all have such a high toxic load or do some come in with mild heavy metal poisoning?

Speaker C: 00:24:48

I got my mercury, I call it death by a thousand mercury cuts. So amalgams are the number one source of mercury for people. Usually that's kind of like the kickstart.

My mom had amalgam fillings, so silver fillings that are about 50% mercury by weight, they leech mercury into the body and the brain. So and it has been shown that the mercury burden of the mother passes to the baby in utero.

So I started out with a burden of mercury compound that with I was during the vaccine period in which in America the vaccines were mixed with thimerosal, a mercury derivative.

I got all the vaccines and then I was, I was kind of a fat middle schooler and I didn't want to Be a fat high schooler, because I'd been made fun of enough. So I really got into, like, fitness and eating healthy, quote, unquote. And so I just started hammering tuna.

Like cans of tuna, Costco, bulk, put mustard on top, just boom, tons of tuna.

And that has a form of mercury called methylmercury, which is very absorbable in the body, unless you're of Japanese ancestor in which they have a genetic mutation that allows them to excrete it. So if you have Japanese ancestry, you have a hack against mercury in fish. I mean, that's kind of the main sources.

So like the, the flu vaccine still has thimerosal in it. Amalgam fillings is number one across the board. And then large predatory fish, those are kind of the main sources of mercury.

Now, it's not just mercury. There's lead, there's cadmium, there's arsenic. Arsenic is usually water supply. Lead is usually building materials.

Paint, probably not so much in the uk, but in America, if you're packing your own ammo for your guns, you know you're messing with lead.

Speaker A: 00:26:29

Yeah, not a UK problem.

Speaker C: 00:26:31

Not a. Not a UK problem. And there's a bunch of. And if you're older, gasoline.

Now it's unleaded, it used to be leaded, so that, that's where you can find a lot of those. So it depends. Each heavy metal has different sources.

And, you know, my theory to the whole thing is heavy metals accumulate from generation to generation.

strial revolution, maybe like: 1920

And here we are six, seven generations later, and we're hitting critical mass where now kids, teenagers, people in their 20s are having toxic symptoms when usually it took a whole life to get there and accumulate those. But now they're starting out with a burden that's high enough that it already leads to, hey, by the time you're 15, you might have crazy anxiety.

That's my theory on the accumulation.

Speaker A: 00:27:33

What percentage of the population would you say has a heavy metal problem?

Speaker C: 00:27:40

This is kind of widely contested, our best guess, and this kind of changes, honestly month to month based on kind of what we see and genetic mutations and things like that. But our best guess is somewhere between like 25 and 35% of the population has some sort of heavy metal problem.

And by problem, I mean heavy metals causing some sort of negative Health effect. It doesn't need to be a massive chronic health condition, but it could be even just suboptimal energy.

So I think 25 to 35% is kind of where I would peg that currently.

Speaker A: 00:28:12

Does the toxic load affect everyone equal? I know you've mentioned Japanese, they have a special reaction in their body to deal with mercury toxicity.

But does the number of my toxic load, would that level affect me in the same way it would affect you and an 80 year old man, for example?

Speaker C: 00:28:36

Not at all. It's completely person dependent. So like some people will have crushing mercury symptoms at 12, at a mercury level of 12.

On a provocation test I had 34. Some people can have 50 with no symptoms. So it really depends on what other things they have.

If they have glyphosate, if they have parasites, if they have mold, how it's stacking. And it also depends on just the genetic and, and biological makeup of the person. So everybody can tolerate completely different levels.

Some people are very intolerant to toxins.

This is what you'll see like someone who had Epstein Barr reactivation and a little bit of Lyme disease activation and a little bit of heavy metals and some parasites and some mold and that person, just a little bit of all this stuff. But it's, it's hurting them.

Speaker A: 00:29:27

Before we talk about the testing and all that, if I then am getting tested and I find out I have a high toxic load, but I'm okay, you know, I don't really suffer from it, you know, I'm like you said, you know, a 12 or a 9 as you said is still quite high. But, but I'm okay as such, should I still need to go through a detoxifying treatment or can I just live with it till a hundred?

Speaker C: 00:29:55

My argument is if you look at what like especially heavy metals, everybody agrees there is no safe amount of them in the body. So they are toxic, they serve no benefit, they serve no purpose, they only hurt.

So even if you have no overt symptoms, most likely you do have some mitigated mitochondrial function that's reduced. You have some downstream energy production things going on. You might have little things that you don't even notice.

It might be you feel good, but you could feel great. So I recommend that people get these things out of their bodies regardless. But that's a personal decision.

If you have no negative health effects from, or perceived negative health effects, let's say it that way, from your toxic burden, that's up to you. If you want to pursue it, you can. If you Want to ignore it, you can also do that.

The risk you take by ignoring it, though, is the further accumulation. So if it further accumulates, you don't just get to a certain level and then you get symptoms.

And then as if you take one step back, the symptoms go away. It's more of a cliff theory. So once you get to a certain level, you get the symptoms, and you can't get rid of them until you get rid of it all.

So if you're proactive and you actively get rid of the toxins, then you'll never get to that cliff.

Speaker A: 00:31:14

So a lot of people listening will be wondering if they can detox at home or if they need to go to a clinic and need to have all this long procedure. There is a huge market for a detox at home industry. There's detox teas and detox supplements and all kinds of things. Patches, infrared, saunas.

Where do you stand, you know, on all of these? Do. Do they have a place? Are they overrated? Somebody cannot go to a clinic because it's too expensive for them, or they don't have one around.

What do these people do?

Speaker C: 00:31:55

Yeah, so this is something that I have a pretty strong stance on. Most of the stuff that you can do to detox via supplements and biohacking and all that stuff is absolute garbage. It's marketing hype.

And I say most so in terms of effectively and safely in an controlled environment. You cannot get rid of your heavy metals without going to a medical provider. You know, there are people who do. Cilantro is a great example.

Cilantro will bind to mercury, except it's a weak binder. It only has one of the bonds that you need. You need two bonds to bind to mercury to excrete it from the body. It only has one.

So if you do a cilantro smoothie, you're gonna stir up all your mercury, right? And that's gonna lead to more negative health effects. What a lot of companies do, like teas, juice, cleanses, supplements, they don't detox anything.

They generally don't work. And the other thing I have to say about this is, if you don't know what you have, how can you have any solution of getting rid of it?

So if you come to me with glyphosate, you come to our clinic, you see our practitioner, he's not gonna put you on chelation, right? Because chelation does not remove glyphosate. We have a different approach for that. Or if you have parasites, you're not gonna do chelation.

That doesn't make any sense. So unless you test and figure out what you have, there is no good way of attacking it.

The one caveat I will give you is infrared sauna does have some good evidence on some detox. It is a little bit superficial in terms of it only goes that far into the body.

But, you know, they had done pretty good studies measuring the sweat and all kinds of garbage comes out. So I would say that's probably a pretty good one. Binders are the other thing I get questions on all the time.

My main thing with binders is usually binders are selective. They're targeting one thing or two things or a small group of things. And if you don't have that group of things, they're not gonna do anything.

Secondly, they're not systemic. They usually stay in the GI tract. They don't detox all of your organs through the bloodstream.

That's why IV applications are much more systemic and wider reaching. I'm not against binders per se. I think there's a time and place, I think there's some great applications.

But again, if you don't know what you have and you're not working with a guide, how do you know it's actually gonna do anything for you? And then in terms of like everything else, all these stacks and supplement programs, detox, all that stuff, that's hype. It's a lot of hype.

It's a lot of marketing. And I'm gonna speak to the affordability piece for a second. This is why we founded our clinics, to make this stuff more affordable.

So our initial consults and all of our testing after our overhead, we do at a loss. We lose money through the entire front end of the process until someone begins treatment.

Actually even a couple treatments in, we have to get to actually make any money. And we do this because we want to make testing affordable and we want to make this process affordable.

So if you look at go online, type in detox supplement program, right? You're going to spend a few hundred bucks.

It's probably going to get pretty close to a month or two of supplements to come in and test your heavy metals. And that's something that like, we'd like to hit on. I know you're in the UK so maybe one day we'll have Longevity Centers London.

Oh, that has a nice ring to it. It's not accessible everywhere. You know, there are places that do it.

But even if you're not by a place like us that focuses on affordability, even if it is expensive, I mean, you're still looking at it's only equal to the cost of four or five months of some supplement program. It's probably not going to work. I spent probably about $50,000 on supplements and biohacking tech that did nothing.

I spent less than that on chelation that fixed me.

Speaker A: 00:35:46

But you know, that's still a crazy amount of money for most people and you know, a big topic. Obviously, you know, when you speak about the field of longevity is always the sort of socioeconomic issue.

And I have to say this really sounds like rich versus not rich because what you're talking about is not extending life living to 200 years old. It's really about basic well being and very basic quality of life.

And even though in your clinic you are trying to sort of offer it for an as reasonable amount as possible and that's to be lauded. Absolutely. I mean that's incredible. And I think that's where the longevity market as a whole should aim to be at.

But it still leaves the vast majority of people without access to this. Be it because either they do not live next to a clinic such as yours or because simply they don't have the means to. Where's this going to go?

Where's this going to lead us? What do you see for the future? Do you see this becoming either cheaper do at home or. Yeah, where do you see the market going?

Speaker C: 00:37:08

I 100% agree with you. That's the problem we're trying to solve right now.

I don't know about in the uk but in America longevity medicine and integrative medicine is like for the 1%, it's for the rich people. Right. And I was fortunate enough to be very successful in my career and to be able to dive into this. I was blessed in that.

But most people can't afford it. And so I think like where we're going is we're trying to democratize this.

We would like to expand to get big enough to reset the pricing structure on the entire industry across the US maybe across the world. Who's, who knows? We'll see. That's our goal. Like a great example of this is chelation testing.

When I did my chelation testing for my heavy metals, it was about 8 or 900 bucks. Not cheap. Right. We've got our chelation testing down to 460 bucks now and we do it at a loss just so people can find out what they have.

Half price, still not cheap, but we're half. And as we get economies of scale, we'll continue to be able to vertically Integrate and drive down those prices.

I don't know of anybody else that's doing any of this, to be honest with you.

Because if you listen, and this is, to me, very frustrating, if you listen to the business influencers, the business coaches in integrative medicine, functional medicine, they're telling you, concierge, luxury, longevity, make it expensive, serve a few people, and charge a lot crazy margins. And that is the zeitgeist. That is how to run a longevity business. That is what everybody talks about. And so I 100% agree with you.

I think it's a problem. We're trying to solve it. We have three clinics now. We're opening our fourth pretty soon. It's going to be an uphill battle.

But the good news is that people want access to these things. So one part is the pricing. The second part really is the education.

And honestly, that's more important because with our pricing, if the education was out there and people understood it, most people could afford the testing. They could at least know what they have. And do you need to go comprehensive treatment and dive in three times? No.

You could go once a month for the cost of eating out. You could. You could skip a dinner or two out, eat at home, and you could get a treatment a month. Right. And so.

But that education piece, getting the fact that we know about these things out there and that we can help with these things is the bigger part. And that's why I do these podcasts.

Speaker B: 00:39:41

Absolutely.

Speaker A: 00:39:41

And that's why I'm doing this podcast, too.

It's to really educate people about the things that are out there, the things that are hype, the things that, you know, make sense and things that really don't make sense. So I totally agree with you, and I think it's wonderful. And that's why I have people like you on the show, because I think the longevity market is.

Needs to move forward in a serious and honest way and really cut hype and fiction and all that from what really is realistic and sustainable and helps rather than just is an economic. Yeah. Wonder.

Speaker C: 00:40:21

Yeah. And. And one thing I want to highlight on that is that in my opinion, you will always do better economically if you don't fall into the.

Oh, it's a $50 supplement. Oh, it's only a $30 supplement. That adds up quick. And you're on 10 of them, and you're on $300 a month.

And if you run that across a year, it's $3,000, where you could have tested for everything for $2,000, had a good plan. And maybe done a thousand dollars of treatment for the same money. You could have actually known what you have and drove the needle forward.

Speaker A: 00:40:52

But how do. Who is real in this industry? I mean, look, you've been on the podcast. People hear you and appreciate that your clinics sort of are the real deal.

But the people in the UK or, you know, in Europe or the rest of the us, how do you know you are dealing with a serious provider with a, you know, a proper clinic that knows what they're doing because you can do a lot of damage to and also doesn't waste their time or money?

Speaker C: 00:41:24

You're probably not going to like my answer. You have to educate yourself. That's the only way you can know. This is why we do our podcast, Longevity Unlocked. Right?

We go through chelation, we go through eboo, we go through stem cells, we go through every single one of these topics in depth and short versions so people can educate themselves. Not for us not to come to us, but so they know what they're talking about when they go vet a provider, so they know what the things to ask for are.

Hey, I want a provocation test for heavy metals. Because I know if you don't do a provocation test, the urine test isn't going to tell me anything.

Like that is the reason that, that we do our podcast. So educate yourself, dive in, create a good list of questions based on what you think you have. You are your best advocate.

Also, another thing, if people have like no guidance or no doctor, it's probably not a good clinic. So if you go in, you have a menu up on the wall. It's like right above the front desk and it says glutathione and longevity IV and immunity iv.

And here's all the things you can choose from. What do you want to do today? It's probably not a good place, right?

Because a real clinic would never say, hey, person, that we don't know anything about. What IV do you want to do today? That's a drip bar because you got hungover and you need some hydration. That's what that is.

At real clinic, you'll come in, you'll get a consult, they'll go over your subjective your history, all your symptoms, your goals. You will do testing and then the clinic will make you a plan. Could you add other things on, like vitamin iv? Sure.

I mean, that's, that's great if you want to add in that, optimize your journey. But like, the practitioner should make a plan for you.

Speaker A: 00:43:07

People that want to do something for their health and to get better, but that do not have the time to listen to various podcasts and an ideal world. We'll do research, you know, we'll do all that.

But what are sort of the basic points that you should really tick off your list before you commit to someone?

You've mentioned proper testing, proper supervision by a doctor, anything else that's really sort of are the basic things that you should tick off before you hand over your money and your body to someone else.

Speaker C: 00:43:40

I think you should do the basics before you do any of that. You should make sure that you're drinking good purified filtered water. You should make sure you're getting movement and exercise.

You should make sure you're eating a whole foods diet. You can actually probably get your general practitioner to run comprehensive lab work for you.

Just go in and ask, hey, what can you run through my insurance? Run everything you possibly can on this next lab work, please. Hormones, vitamin D, just run it all. You could do that, really.

Cleaning out your house in terms of everyday toxins, you know, the environmental working group has an app that you can scan things and it'll tell you if it has endocrine disruptors or toxins in it. Shampoo conditioner, body wash, dish detergent stuff.

You wash your clothes with those little scent pod things you put in the clothes washer to make your clothes smell really good. Those are super toxic.

You can clean up your house, stop storing things in plastic, storing glass and all of these things you don't need to spend a lot of money on and you don't need to go revamp your whole life. Just like when you run out of deodorant, buy a healthy one. When you run out of body wash, buy a healthy one.

Like you take it one thing at a time, but drink clean water, eat good food, clean up your home environment and then work with your general practitioner and ask them to run the most comprehensive labs they possibly can for you.

Speaker A: 00:45:02

And don't eat too much tuna.

Speaker C: 00:45:04

Don't eat too much tuna.

Speaker A: 00:45:06

You came into this field as a patient who was failed by conventional answers and you now run your own clinic. What worries you most about people like you years ago being turned into customers by the longevity industry?

Speaker C: 00:45:26

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is honestly, it's the angle how people charge the margin, right? Because there are a lot of excellent doctors in the longevity industry, truly excellent.

And their science and their treatments are amazing, but their margin is insane. And it really, there is no need, there is no need to charge that much. So falling into That I was blessed.

That clinic I went to, that got treated at all of its prices are more expensive than ours, drastically. And so, like, I was blessed with being very successful in my career that I could afford that type of treatment.

But the flip side is people falling into this. I. I don't want them to be locked in with a concierge longevity clinic that is doing things to keep people making money off them.

The other thing is memberships. So this is one thing that we've gone back and forth with so many times, because memberships are an economic driver. They are not a health driver.

Now, my argument is if you're doing a longevity and optimization membership, you don't have any chronic health problems. You're just trying to live to 200. Great. That's amazing. That, like, get on a program, get your stem cells, get your ebook, like, just optimized.

That's amazing.

But if you're doing a membership that's 2, 3, 4, 500 bucks a month somewhere in there, and you're trying to treat something chronic and fix a health problem, that is a trap. That's a trap. They want to keep your money, they want to keep you paying, and they want to keep you there.

Like, we don't have memberships or people who have chronic health problems because we don't want to keep them there. We want to fix them and we want them to go away because they're happy. Do you want to come back and do longevity with us? And optimism, great.

But, like, the moral of the story is we want you to come in on a personalized plan, no membership. This is built for you. This is what you need to do, and this is how you improve your health.

Speaker A: 00:47:25

There's a big difference, I guess, between healing someone who has a real issue and treating someone who wants to have the luxury to live longer, to feel a little bit more energetic, to look better, all these things.

Speaker C: 00:47:44

And the thing is too, it's like, there's.

The things that really move the needle in people's health are usually the things that are on the less expensive side, the things that you're doing for longevity optimization or really complex things, those are the more expensive things. So, like, it kind of works. Like, chelation is not terribly expensive. It's like 2, 300 bucks.

It's not cheap, but still, most people can skip a few dinners.

Speaker A: 00:48:09

Sorry, two, three hundred dollars for the.

Speaker C: 00:48:11

Whole treatment or for the session?

Speaker A: 00:48:13

For the session. We have to be very clear about that. Yes. And often you need 10, 20 sessions. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:48:20

We see on average, it's somewhere between 10, 20.

Speaker A: 00:48:22

Yeah, no, no, look, if you need it, you need it. And if that's what you know, helps your suicidal thoughts and you won't jump off a balcony, it's worth every penny.

I just want to be clear about, you know, these are still quite substantial amounts.

Speaker C: 00:48:36

Yeah. Again, that's the reason why we don't do the memberships.

Like, hey, we're only going to give you the things that are going to move the needle for you. And honestly, if you haven't thought about the basics, don't go to a clinic.

If you eat McDonald's every day and you sit on the couch and watch tv, definitely don't come see us because we're going to tell you to stop eating McDonald's and get off the couch and then come back.

Speaker A: 00:49:00

And their heavy metal toxicity is not what's going to kill you, that's for sure.

Speaker C: 00:49:04

Yeah, it's just like you got to start with the basics. You clean up your life, you clean up your food, and that is anywhere from free to very inexpensive. You can make switches intelligently.

You clean up the water. I mean you can get great water purifiers now for like 50, 60 bucks. They last for months. You can get the filters themselves for 20 or 30.

All these things are very inexpensive. You should do those before you dive into deep health things because it's also going to make all of the treatments.

Speaker A: 00:49:33

Work better and you know, things that do cost a little bit of money, say around, I don't know, $20, $50 a month. What are those sort of supplements or interventions that people can do themselves to help make themselves better without having to go to a clinic.

Because as I said, either there isn't one around or they can't afford one. Other than the things you mentioned that are absolutely free, like moving, you know, not eating junk food, good water.

Speaker C: 00:50:06

So I would give you kind of a supplement stack that probably 95% of people should be on. Omega threes, creatine, fat soluble vitamin complex, A, D, K, E, trace minerals, magnesium.

So those five right there, probably 95% of people are deficient in some combination of those five. And those are like a trace mineral complex you can get for like, I don't know, $14 a month.

You know, you can get a fat soluble vitamin complex for somewhere around 30 bucks a month. Omega threes you can find fairly inexpensively. These are all things, if you get all of them, it's probably about 150 bucks a month.

And that would be like the supplement stack that could actually drive measurable and tangible benefits in your health.

Speaker A: 00:50:54

So let me just ask you if somebody wanted to get your professional advice and all that, but they're not, they don't live close to a clinic like yours or yours. Can they do this also via zoom, telehealth, anything like that, or is that not an option?

Speaker C: 00:51:14

We do some telehealth usually. I mean in the U.S. i mean we don't have any credentials outside of the us we have certain states, we're licensed and stuff like that.

You know, it's one of those things that we actually have people fly in to see us all the time.

Unfortunately, because of our pricing, they can actually leave where they live, fly across an ocean, stay for a week, do their treatments and fly back. And it's actually cheaper. They're doing it at home.

So we see this a lot too inside the US with California and New York and New Jersey, the Northeast, like people fly down all the time. They get a free vacation to West Palm.

They get all their treatments because there are multiple treatments and the vacation was less than doing one or two treatments. A palm.

Speaker A: 00:51:56

It's a crazy world we live in, I have to say. If that's sort of how things are.

Speaker C: 00:52:03

Yeah, I mean we have fly ins every single week.

Speaker A: 00:52:06

No, the fly ins, I get it. You know, you have the upper whatever 1% who can fly and do all these treatments.

But the fact that doing that is cheaper than doing it at your doorstep because of the overinflated prices, that's insane. Anyway, this has been like so mind opening all this.

I could talk to you for sort of much longer about all the other things you even just do at your clinic. But yeah, I think you just need to come back again for part two.

Speaker C: 00:52:35

We can go into specifics for treatments and we can go into technology and all that.

Speaker A: 00:52:40

Amazing.

And we will because you know, I myself have more questions and I'm sure the listeners too, because it's just, you know, it is such a fascinating field and it is such a, a growing field and I think a lot of people have an idea about vitamins or some other sort of longevity interventions, but this whole heavy metal toxicity and everything else, I don't think many people really know about it and certainly not to what an extent it can impact you. So yes, you definitely have to come back and we definitely have to talk about more things.

But in the end, I always ask everyone my rapid fire questions. What's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Speaker C: 00:53:24

Don't give up hope. Keep searching for Answers.

If you keep looking for what the root is, you will find it and look hard and do not stop chasing because you'll get there faster.

Speaker A: 00:53:37

Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.

Speaker C: 00:53:41

One habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life is getting movement. So you should be getting steps, hopefully weight training, resistance training as well.

This is one of those things that doesn't cost much if any money and it will dramatically improve your health and lifespan.

Speaker A: 00:54:00

If you weren't in longevity science, what career would you have chosen?

Speaker C: 00:54:04

If it wasn't in longevity, I would probably choose a career building a business that helps people. I don't know exactly how I would do that, but from my standpoint, I love building things that help other people.

Speaker A: 00:54:20

And now it's a bit tricky. You have to give me a different answer because it's.

You'll see what microdose habits, sort of five minute routine or small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits.

Speaker C: 00:54:33

Microdose habits so the microdose habit that will lead the outsize longevity benefit, clear as day, is gratitude. So you only have to do a few minutes of practicing gratitude, gratitude, journaling or just ruminating on how grateful you are.

The way it changes the brain for long term brain states it is massively impactful.

Speaker A: 00:54:57

What's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?

Speaker C: 00:55:02

I'd say the craziest longevity myth that I've encountered is that if you look at maybe it's not a myth, maybe it's a structure thing, but if you look at how longevity is sold in the industry, you actually get comprehensive like executive physical which looks at like lab work and some other stuff, but actually does not even dive into deep infections, toxicities and stuff like that. So even the the quote unquote longevity experts are not actually diving into true, truly removing the blockers to longevity.

Speaker A: 00:55:40

Thank you for that. Super insightful. Yeah, like I said, we have to do a part two.

Speaker C: 00:55:46

So yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker B: 00:55:50

This conversation with Karl Halbert is a reminder of how difficult it can be when someone looks healthy on the outside but knows something is wrong on the inside. Kyle's story also raises a bigger challenge for longevity and preventative health.

How do we distinguish between genuine root cause medicine and expensive interventions that promise more than they can deliver? How do we stay open minded without becoming uncritical? And how do we make effective care accessible to more than just a small group of people?

Whether you agree with Karl's perspective or remain sceptical, I hope this episode encourages you to ask better questions, look more closely at your own health, and think carefully about where evidence, experience and personal responsibility intersect. If you enjoyed this episode of Beyond Long Journey Longevity, please follow the show. Thank you. Sa.