282. Doctors Are Evolving: The Future Of Wellness!
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today I have a very special guest joining me on the show. We have Dr. Wajdi Banji. Wajdi, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, Lucas. It's like a great opportunity to have you in Dubai to discuss more about the future of wellness and longevity because this is a place where you're going to change a lot in this field. Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe, Wajdi, do you want to sort of start out by letting my audience know a little bit about, you know, your journey? I know it's been quite extensive. Yeah, actually, I started my field in internal medicine.

I'm an internal medicine consultant and I started my journey in Beirut in oncology. So I work with a lot of American University of Beirut in the infusion center of chemotherapy and all autoimmune disease and the chronic condition and everything related to stem cell infusions, bone marrow transplantation for cancer patients and all of that. This is how I started

Then when I moved to Dubai in COVID area, I think like something was going to change because you know COVID changed the mentality of people and as well the mentality of doctor. So I tried to find what's new.

Then I started to look a lot about the future of healthcare system and especially in COVID time. There's something missing in all of this. Especially when it comes to how to take care of immunity, how to take care of full well-being, long COVID syndrome. And this is like raise a lot of question about what's going on inside our body.

And this is why I started studying an A4M, metabolic anti-aging and functional medicine. Then everything will change. Even my discussion with my patients has changed a lot. And the patient love it. Why, okay, you want to go deep and to check the root of every single symptoms. This is game changer. Then I understand this is the future. And this is why we want to start educate people.

and to educate even healthcare system to start this new journey in evidence-based and with study and research. That's why we are here in Faqih University Hospital. It's like one of the biggest institution in UAE and the GCC to start educating people and to start a little bit of changing the healthcare system in the right direction.

So how would you, I mean, obviously we were sort of discussing before a bit about how you're in the middle of like, you know, the biohacking and the, you know, evidence-based treatment. Talk to my audience and let them know a little bit about like, what is your approach to healing and your approach to wellness these days?

Yes, when we started seeing a lot of biohackers and listening to a lot of podcasts, I noticed that those people have different approach. Even they put themselves in research. So this is like a research niche for the biohacker because they try what to do, what not to do, and they share their experience.

If you go to a classic way of medicine, they say, okay, this is bullshit. For us, this is not guidelines. We cannot treat like this. We have like one, two, three. This is standard of safety. And this is standard of care. And before then, we cannot like go into this field and this like case study approach, because if you are a biohacker, you study yourself.

Okay, you are not studying people. And this is a lot of bias if you want to study like the placebo effect. So they will say, okay, maybe this placebo, how you can find this? This is why the functional medicine understand this. Because he understand the classic medicine.

and understand how to go into the roots from functional to, from the classic to the functional. Let's say you have hypertension. So, okay, hypertension, you can take antihypertensive. Someone will say, no, we're going to check your methylation, your heavy metals, your gut, your cortisol. You study all of this together to treat one single episode of hypertensive disease.

So in this case, when we try to understand the biology and to check the evidence on all of this, it's not like try this and try that. It's not a trying. We cannot try as a doctor. We want to put it evidence based on you. Yeah. Not evidence like the whole people because the hypertensive, if like, if you want to see like two patient hypertensive, for example, right?

The root of this hypertension is different than the root of this hypertension. Exactly. So I can know this is when the revolution started. Yeah. By using the technology of mapping. Mapping is a key. Mapping of what? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So we want to start, this is a different school of functional medicine and I like, I summarize one of this many schools together. So...

We have like, first of all, the genetic mapping to understand the functional genomic variants. So how to use caffeine, how to exercise, how to take supplements. This is a genetic functional genomic mapping. Plus, you're going to go to check your microbiome and your gut. And this is a very important key to discuss this map. It's a key to change people's life. Number three is a metabolic mapping.

And this is not only single blood test. I use like organic acid test because I can map what's inside the cell by studying the metabolites. And this is big field right now, especially in functional medicine. So I can understand oxidative stress, methylation, oxidative damage, carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, neurotransmitters, a lot, a lot of things that can, we can map it by this map. And we have the hormonal mapping.

So how your body reacts to the hormone, for example, if you have low testosterone, but maybe you have bad aromatization, why you have bad aromatization? Maybe you have adrenal dysfunction, that's why you have low testosterone. So it's about how the body reacts to these stressors. So when we put all this map together, what are we going to study?

What we're going to study. And with organic acid, we're going to focus on that toxin load. And this is very important in longevity and wellness. And even reversing chronic disease, the toxin load, because we live in...

in society full of toxins. Everything around us is toxic. So do you see the future of medicine in particular having greater access to these functional testing, mapping these different things? Yes. Because before 2010, Lucas, there was no...

There was no Dutch test. There was no organic acid. So yeah, it's not, even if this has existed, it's not in public right now. We have like companies studying, we have a research. So everything is under research before 2010. After 2010,

Now some clinics in the U.S. and you know the functional precision medicine started to study people more and working on heavy, heavy cases. If you go back like to 1970, this medicine started for like a syndromic case. People, they don't know what they're going on.

Then we use the same technology in 2010 for wellness and longevity. And this is like because we start understanding more what's going on inside your body. And this is what's changed. So when I have access to map and study every single person, if you have disease or disturbance or nothing, and do like the right maps. This is the way we start, not we're starting what? How old are you, Lucas?

28. 28. Can you understand the load of stressors between your emotional stress and your gut stress, like all the microbiome? Or even the antibiotics that are used at a very young age. And even your dietary stress. Oh, yeah. All the inflammatory food, the junk food that we took. All the toxins load. And even your genetic, the weak gene that you have, how to interact with these stressors.

and your nutritional deficiencies. Can you imagine how all of this mixed together, all the stress are mixed together to have one simple headache? This is the game. It's not like, okay, I have disease, take this. The game is how to dissect the function of the body and to fill the gap and let the body react.

So let's, because we've sort of mentioned, you mentioned the organic acids. I know you work with the Dutch test. What are some of the other, well, first of all, when a patient comes to you, how do you know sort of which test to lean towards, which one to select? What does your process typically look like? Look, when we start, like let's start IBS. If someone has a lot of,

of symptoms, got 10 years of suffering from gut and nobody understands what the gut is because the gut is a key. So, okay, let's start with GI map.

So let's start to study the microbiome. The function of your acidity of the stomach, the pancreas, the gallbladder function, your inflammation, leaky gut, calprotectin, beta-glucuronidase, the metabolism of the hormone. Let's understand this, ma'am. Why do I want to say let's try this and we'll try that? You want to treat it.

This dysbiosis and all this. It's very specific. Yeah, you want to treat it. They targeted the pathway that you want to fix it in the gut. After like three to six months, the patient said, wow, I have a new gut. So can you imagine like a 10-year-old son? Let's see if someone don't have symptoms of the gut. Should I start with GIMAP, for example? Maybe. Maybe.

If I see like the patient has autoimmunity, maybe the autoimmunity or chronic inflammation, because all of the stress are reflected in what we can call low-grade inflammation. And there is a research that's published in Harvard and in Nature, maybe, the core of all disease on Earth is chronic inflammation. So inflammation, this is immune system. Immune system, this is a reaction based on a trigger.

What is the trigger? The stressor. Okay, if I have all the stressors from emotion, bad sleep, gluten, heavy metals, gut dysbiosis, chronic infection, chronic viruses, all of the stressors...

All of them have the same symptoms, indifferent. They've all contributed in some way. Yeah, all contributed. If you say like a lot of people has this big five, like anxiety, depression, weight gain. High blood pressure. Exactly. Weight gain, gut symptoms and fatigue. This is like five. If you find like all the people with this big five, it's not a coincidence that all of them have the same symptoms. Exactly. Okay, why? Why? This is a system.

This is the metabolic disruption that makes all of the symptoms between your brain and your body. This is definitely, I would say, something that you're very good at doing is like peeling back the layers, right? You're basically stripping it back and understanding what is the root cause for these symptoms.

In terms of, I guess, leveraging different modalities, so you've obviously got access to hormonal prescriptions, you've got supplements. How do you go about, in general, with your prescriptions and protocols? Yeah. I always start with lifestyle. Lifestyle is the key.

Then I go with to arrange a plan for a targeted supplement plan. Yeah. For example, for liver, for toxins, for gut, for whatever is a main pathway affected. Right. And this is what we can call supplemented lifestyle. Supplemented lifestyle. We cannot go and rely only on lifestyle. When we say supplemented lifestyle, then I started...

to complete the pyramid yeah i can go to drips peptides other factors like stem cell if i need if someone like real indigestive changes and they want to change something why not so it's all about how to start and when the patient arrived to the doctor to start this journey if you come if you come early wow if like started a longevity program and 12 year old

So can you imagine like, wow, this is very unique way to change people's life at early age. But if someone come at the age of 50,

And you cannot blame them because this is in you. A lot of damage has accumulated. Yeah, so you want to try to fix the damage. Sometimes you can fix, save the medication. It's not about, no, I hate medication. This is not chemical. No, no, no. If you need it, take it. It's not a game to play in your... And that's what the biohackers in particular, they're very anti-medication or they're anti-medicine. But that's why, for example, myself as a naturopath,

I'm also in the middle because my father was a pharmacist and I'm the naturopath. So it's sort of in the middle of that. But I think, like you said, there's definitely a time and place for some of these medications. But, you know, it's also important to focus on lifestyle, you know, as you mentioned before. Yeah. Why the medication? Medication, it's for safety. Yeah. You cannot say like if a patient coming in MS...

or say, okay, let's put your MS in remission, you cannot try to discuss and investigate if someone is on fire. Okay? Calm it down. Use the medication. Calm down. In parallel, I can start checking the roots. Yeah.

to help if this can control or not. For example, in autoimmunity, I can give mega dose of vitamin D to control the autoimmunity. I can help in a way, in the functional way, with the medication. The medication, don't say no. They're not separate. It's not separate. They can work in unison. At the end of the day, we need the best for the patient. Exactly. And we need the safety of the patient. But the patient needs to be open-minded as well, right? Because...

Yeah, but this is the doctor coaching. Now in functional medicine, this part of my work is to coach people. You cannot blame them. Why you not educate them? It's a mindset thing, isn't it? You know, there is a lot of doctors maybe now in the worldwide, they're studying a lot about this field. So because we want to learn again and starting learning again the medicine.

This is not like internal medicine. Okay, I know all of this. So no, I'm starting the different approach of medicine. It's not only the medicine. All of this biochemistry studying when I started med school, studying all the biochemistry and the anatomy, now we're restudying to put it in clinical application in functional medicine.

And with specific testing that can give us the evidence how to work. Okay, for example, when we say methylation, methylation is like 300 billion reaction per day. And okay, how I can support my methylation?

inflammation we say like all your body is in inflammatory reactions so how we can control the inflammation this is and what let's find what the tools maybe you can take vitamin C maybe you want to control your cortisol maybe you want to take peptides maybe you want to take curcumin so what to choose it's based how much I can measure this inflammation and to

give you the wise way to work on it based on lifestyle, supplemented lifestyle, and how I can accelerate by drips and peptides. What about in terms of, I mean, a big area that I've noticed is a common complaint, particularly in the people that approach myself is they're always fatigued, right? They're suffering from low energy. Let's say, for example, a patient were to come and visit yourself and

and you obviously do an extensive analysis and screening of their lifestyle and their habits. Walk us through what that process would look like if somebody were to come to you with a low energy or fatigue.

Yeah. This is a common energy. Especially in Dubai. In Dubai, if you study where the patient comes to the clinic, it's for fatigue. More than for pain. Worldwide, it's pain. Here, it's more into fatigue. Wow. Why fatigue? Because, okay, we're living in a way that everybody has a chronic stress. Chronic stress is reflected in neuroendocrine systems.

What does it mean, neuroendocrine system? One will understand the adrenal gland. So the relationship between your brain and your hormones. It's not only when you say emotional stress, it's not only in your brain, it's in your glands. And this gland, when...

Cannot react anymore to this chronic stress because you're mentally focused. I want this I want this I want this I want to work I want to have money I want to achieve something but your body don't understand this This is you put him under stress What happened the cortisol level is started to be disrupted the curve of the cortisol It is reflected the curve of energy This is why we wake up in the morning energetic and when we sleep we

Wow, because cortisol peaks. Yeah, exactly. The wave, this wave should be like smooth. When we start disrupting it, the adrenal gland, you can call it hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis or adrenal fatigue. So if you want to study this, so how you can know that I am in adrenal fatigue?

Okay, I'm mentally strong, I'm focused, I have my work, I'm doing great. I want to study it. You cannot say maybe this, maybe that. We study the cortisol, the pro-hormone, DHA and pregnenolone, the cortisol awakening response, and we'll see how I can adjust this curve. This is a key to start because this is how the problem started. This is how the problem started in all disease. Mm-hmm.

By stresses, they cannot be controlled. Chronic elevations of cortisol. Exactly. So I can give you a simple formula. If you have checked your life, where the biggest health problem you live in your life. Let's say you are admitted for something related to gut or immunity issue or whatever it is. Thyroid imbalance.

Any problem, major problem, not something fluid. It's a major problem. And go back two to three years before this problem. You will find this is a major stressor in your life.

You're saying that is the kickstarter. Yeah, because this is the process, the domino effect from the stressors to the chronic disease, it took two to three years sometimes. Yeah, a delay. And you can study this. I ask all my patients like this, and I'm surprised. I can study this. Maybe you can publish why this domino effect between the chronic stress, major stressors like divorce, depression,

death of someone you love, something chronic stress like toxic work and you cannot cope with them. A lot of major stress of people how maybe traumas, childhood trauma sometimes you cannot control it in part. This chronic stress accumulate, accumulate and the domino effect. The problem is not only one problem. I want to dissect the five horses of any diseases. Cortisol imbalance,

inflammation, oxidative stress, insulin resistance and nutritional deficiencies. This is the five horses of all disease. And just I want to dissect all of them and to measure all of them and start work. It's a game. You mentioned before about the insulin resistance.

And you mentioned a statistic to me before around that. Talk to my audience about how prevalent this is in the world. Yeah. Like one...

Insulin resistance is very common because insulin resistance reflects the three main systems affected: your gut and immunity, your mitochondria and the burning system, and the cortisol imbalance. And as well the nutritional deficiency because the burning system and the liver detoxification as well has a big role.

When we start to study insulin resistance, you want to study the five horses because insulin resistance is always related to oxidative stress and oxidative stress leads to chronic inflammation.

When we start targeting insulin resistance and the obesity related to insulin resistance, and sometimes not related to obesity. There's a lot of people with insulin resistance who is normal BMR. Who are actually in a good, they're actually skinny, right? And they have insulin resistance. Because maybe they have low muscle and mitochondrial dysfunction. And nobody knows that. The burning system is affected. This is why we study the organic acid test to start mapping all of this and the adrenal and the gut.

And when we started all of this together, I can target the root of the insulin resistance. So insulin resistance is a manifestation of chronic imbalance. And the insulin resistance leads to diabetes. And diabetes leads to chronic atrocellerotic lesion. Atrocellerotic lesion leads to MI. And MI leads to death. So this is like 30 years ago.

pathophysiology. So can you imagine you start working here? This is longevity. Also with that insulin resistance is they, you could have normal blood sugar, you know, you take a blood test and your fasting blood sugar could be 5.2.

But a lot of doctors, particularly in Australia, they don't assess fasting insulin. So do you want to sort of talk upon that? Yeah. Fasting insulin is something important. So why I have high insulin? Yeah, why? Before eating. Exactly. So this is like the HOMA score. But HOMA score is not enough.

For me, if you want to study a person with insulin resistance and to map the diet and the food reaction, and it's very important to personalize the diet because of that, based on this, is to put the chronic insulin monitoring, chronic glucose monitoring. The CGM. Yeah. For example, I have a patient, he's eating fruits, the sugar not spike. When he eats gluten, the

The sugar increase. So gluten could be the root for him. Because he has severe gluten sensitivities and is silent and without gut symptoms, reflected with sugar spike. And this is a stressor. This is the main stress. So we say, why do I want to say to count calories? And this is why all the nutritional aspects

with the dietitian and everything started to change from calorie counting to what kind of diet you're gonna follow Keto, Paleo, Carnivore, you know because they want to change a strategy will your body fit to which kind of diet and this what I want to mention this is about the food reactions and the relationship between the food

the microbiome. Yeah, and the endotoxin as well. And the endotoxins. Because what happens with adrenal gland when you have first emotional stress and dietary stress affected, because when you are under stress, you will eat the wrong food. So these two stressors go together, and with alcohol as well, this is another toxin. So the cortisol disrupts

The lining of the gut. Because your gut renovates every week. And if your gut lining is not cohesive enough, the zonulin level increases. And in this way, there is a leaky gut between the toxins in your gut and the immune system. And

And it's like you're putting your body on fire. Chronic inflammation that I will discuss. And everything started to it. This is why now studying in functional medicine, the roots of hyperlipidemia and even LDL is part of a reaction of this chronic inflammation.

oxidized LDL, the oxidative stress on the LDL, the bad cholesterol, is what increases the risk of atherosclerosis. So working, studying the habits, life, the cortisol, gut, and endotoxemia, then to treat hyperlipidemia. And this is a different approach. I know this is new, and this is the future, and the future is coming.

I think what you've done there is you've created a system, right? You've created a protocol, which is like the way that you're looking at health is you're integrating these different channels, right? They're different pathways that end up leading to the same symptoms, right? So you mentioned chronic inflammation. Do you want to sort of maybe explain to my listeners, particularly for the clients that you see, what are some of the main triggers for this chronic inflammation?

chronic inflammation if you want to between food my dysbiosis including parasite candida and all of that chronic viruses like EBV CMV COVID and toxin load biotoxins and heavy metal this is the four main stressors and cortisol high cortisol can lead to this or can

on top of all of this can make everything worse. So this is how chronic inflammation is a mix of all of this. And if you try to calm down your inflammation, you want to work on all of this. Elimination diet, especially the inflammatory food, gluten, sugar, refined sugar, refined seeds oil, and

all the junk food sometimes lactose and lactose as well so and this is why because all of these are genetically modified and processed so processed food is a problem nutritional deficiency is very common because not only even if you're eating organic and

without pesticides, the land, the soil, there's no nutritional value in everything. So if you want to eat an apple...

20 years ago, the nutritional value is different than what you eat now because the agriculture industry is changing right now and how to use the fertilizers and all of that to save the nutritional value. And this is a chronic disease, nutritional deficiency with obesity as a chronic disease. So people eat a lot, but they have nutritional deficiency. And this is, I think, it's an epidemic. Yeah.

What about in terms of, I mean, you know that I specialize in testosterone and the importance of testosterone. Yeah, I do. And obviously you've studied it as well and understand the importance. But maybe do you want to remind my audience why it's so critically important? And maybe what you see is the reasons for it being low these days. Look, the testicle is a reflection of all what we discussed. It's so sensitive, even the ovaries.

Because this is a reproductive system. HPT. Yeah, this is a reproductive system. So if you want to say that testosterone is low, okay, you take testosterone. It's easy to take testosterone. But this is very wrong to start with testosterone replacement. Even if you are in andropause age, like 45 plus, why this is wrong?

Because we didn't understand the system behind this. It's like you have a lot of shit in your body and try to mask by testosterone that gives you energy. What happens? The testosterone goes in the wrong direction, into estradiol. And estradiol increases the risk of prostate cancer. Testosterone replacement doesn't increase the risk of prostate cancer. Unless you have prostate cancer and you started with CRT, this can fail.

increase the progression of the disease. But don't, it's not a relationship of causality at all. But the problem is I want the best of this testosterone. So before starting, we start to understand inflammation and insulin resistance, liver detoxification, methylation.

gut health if we can. All of this, adrenal, because you know a lot of steel effect. DHEA converted into testosterone. And DHEA is used by adrenal gland to secrete cortisol. This is a pro-hormone. So someone...

Take this food from the testicle by chronic stress. That's why, yeah, stress is why my testosterone is low. But, okay, between chronic stress and insulin resistance with your dietary stress and inflammation, this is why the world suffers from low testosterone. Because this is...

It's a reflection of all our life. Exactly, yeah. This is man suffering right now. And everything focusing on cholesterol. No. Focus on cholesterol and how to find the root of low testosterone. Because this can change the man health. This is what we can call functions man health. Well, cholesterol being a building block for all the hormones, right? So that's why it doesn't make sense to...

Yeah, for example, if you take, like, let's say in a medicine, for example, look, statin for cholesterol level. Statin depletes your body from cocutane and selenium. And this too can deplete testosterone.

If you deplete testosterone, you decrease your nitric oxide, the main gas that can protect your vessels. So you want to play it on the edge, like, okay, I want to decrease cholesterol. Whatever your strategy, take it by medication or by supplement or by lifestyle, but I want to save the hormone. Exactly. Because...

Without hormones we cannot work. Going back to that, the coenzyme Q10 deficiency then creates mitochondrial dysfunction, right? So now you've depleted your body of your powerhouse, can't even create the energy, right? Exactly, because why there is a study that showed that statin increases the risk of diabetes.

Why? Because of this mitochondrial dysfunction, because acetyl-coenzyme A reductase inhibitor is where the carbohydrate metabolism...

work and if you check how the mitochondria work, if you have block at this level, the sugar spike because we are not going into the grab cycle and burning the sugar and this is why okay, I'm decreasing cholesterol but I'm increasing the risk of diabetes but the end point to protecting of the vessel is very low.

There's one particular area my audience, they love listening and learning about strategies to boost their mitochondrial function. I know you've mentioned different interventions and therapies. What's your thoughts here on this particular area? Look, mitochondria, when you start mapping the mitochondria by organic acid, you cannot work on mitochondria just to say, I have mitochondrial dysfunction.

because mitochondria is the engine of the ATPs, the energy. So when we start giving the raw material of the mitochondria, the amino acids, free-form amino acids, the CoQ10, L-carnitine, magnesium-loaded, and if there is no heavy metals, it will be way better to work on this. Biogenesis of mitochondria, sometimes the number of the mitochondria is low,

Sometimes the mitochondria is disrupted by oxidative stress. And a lot of oxidative stress, you know that the mitochondria distract themselves. So this is why, because as a protection of the body. But when there's a population of mitochondria decrease...

So we want to work on the mitochondrial biogenesis. There's a lot of supplements like PQQ and freeform amino acids to stimulate the mTOR pathway with certain dosage. So this is number one. Number two, we try to activate this mitochondria. Sometimes we use peptide like MOZI. This is an activator of that, like NAD+. This is a mitochondrial enhancer.

CoQ10, ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen. All of this is oxygen enhancers or mitochondrial enhancers by oxygen or by raw material of this mitochondria. And when you mix it together, wow, the magic happens. Even things like sauna usage, exercise. Yeah, sauna because decreasing the toxin load. Okay, so the mitochondria...

I want to give more energy because there is no toxins on my shoulder. What about in terms of, I mean, a big area that a lot of people complain about is sleep. I'm sure you get a lot of patients asking Dr. Wajdi, how can I improve my sleep? Look, this is like back to two combination is neurotransmitter mapping. Yes.

And this part, it could be part of this could be an organic acid test and with the adrenal. So if your cortisol is like this, a cortisol before sleep at 10 a.m. is higher than the normal value. So in this case, I can use phosphatidylserine to decrease cortisol. If your serotonin is disrupted,

I can mix phosphatidylserine with 5-HTP, can reach high dose, 300 milligrams. But I cannot give all of this without mapping. So I can give to boost GABA in a different way because sleep is related to three things. GABA, cortisol, melatonin, and you can add the serotonin pathway, like four pathways that can affect it. So working on cortisol, GABA by...

L-theanine, GABA itself, a lot of adaptogens related to GABA as well. So plus we're working on the cortisol decreasing level. And the adrenaline as well? Yeah. High adrenaline? High adrenaline, it's like, because cortisol, the adrenal glands are related to cortisol. When you calm down the cortisol, you calm down the adrenaline as a reflection. This is why when we sleep,

What will happen? Our HRV... Heart rate drops. No, the bad sleep decrease HRV and good sleep increase HRV. Why? Because the balance between sympathetic pathway and parasympathetic pathway is more dominated by the parasympathetic pathway because you are relaxed. But if you are tense, you are not sleeping well,

your HRV decrease a lot because your heart is under stress and this is what we can call chronic adrenaline or sympathetic pathway. - Or hyperactivation, yeah. - Exactly, hyperactivation of the adrenaline. And so once we work the game between neurotransmitters and your adrenal gland, in this case we start

building the habits of good sleep because sleep is a habit as well and definitely the lighting, the melatonin activation and in the future the future peptides for anxiety like slank and there is another peptide spinaeolone that increase REM sleep and

and double the REM sleep. Is this pineal gland? Pineal gland. We work on the pineal gland. This one's oral? Yes, it could be oral. There's an injection as well. But I think the oral form studied in some people, like you can check it by any way, to double or increasing the REM sleep. That's incredible. Yeah, and this is a protection of Alzheimer. Is this the same one developed by Professor Kavinson, the Russian...

From Russia? I don't know if this is run by... But this is a new... Yeah. And it's difficult to get it here in Dubai. But why I'm saying the peptide? Because don't start with peptide. Don't start there. If you've got all the other... Yeah. If I'm like...

50 year old and high risk of Alzheimer and have the severe problem like in sleep, I want to work on the four pathway that we discussed. On top of this, I want to get more benefit because I want to recover fast. I want to accelerate the benefit of the sleep. I can use peptide. So when you start using peptide with high cortisol, this is not good. So the problem is how to prepare the land before putting any seeds.

And this is how our body reacts. I'm curious to know...

I know you're very busy with many different projects and tasks at the moment. Is there a particular area of research that you're very focused on right now? Is there a particular topic? Yeah, today the biggest part is mental health. Because without mental health, we cannot coach people to change people's lives. Because without mental health, we cannot work.

on building new habits, educate this field. Because if people came late with mental health issue, in this case, we don't have a way

We need a lot of coaching program, using a lot of natural way, lifestyle changes to start over a month to put any patient on track of mentally to be healthy. And they think mental health is the key and number two is obesity. And I think two are so connected. Heavily, heavily. And this is like 70% of the population on earth suffering from this between mental health and obesity.

This is a big problem. The other part is autoimmunity, degenerative changes, cancer is also a huge field. And even from my background in oncology, integrative oncology is something the way we're going to

in the coming future, it's going to change a lot of the cancer care together with the classic research center in cancer and the classic target pathway, targeted therapy of cancer therapy. So how to mix the game, how to mix the same example of hypertension that we discussed, put the medication, support

support the pathway, then start to see if I can remove the medication and put the patient on track and decrease a little bit to put it on the function that he live and he born for that. This is how the journey, this is why the patient want to be educated about the journey first. And they see like, and seeing the end point, I want to be 100% normal. Normal. Yeah, this is why we say functional medicine because we resume the function.

This is functional medicine. Back to baseline, right? Exactly. Back to your base state. After that, the longevity started. Then you can add the... All of this is not longevity. After that, the longevity started. Yeah. So because in this case, we optimize the function. So reverse, then optimize the function. Yeah.

How to optimize? Well, it's a different approach. Where the main pathway that is still weak, support, support, support. Your methylation needs support, we'll do it. Your gut needs support, we'll do it. Your hormone needs support, we'll do it. Mitochondria needs support, we'll do it. And your stem cell exhausted, we'll do it. We can support all of this. So we have the remapping. Yeah.

and longevity. So this is why now from chronic disease to longevity, this is the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge. I think in the coming five years, everything will be clear on this roadmap. And the doctors now, they want to know about this. We are, the healthcare system is reborn now by this precision function, precision medicine. Mm-hmm.

we don't want to fight with anybody. We want to help people. We want everyone to come together, right? Exactly. It's not us versus them. It's not like that. It's a... We're working together to achieve. Yeah, at the end of the day, we're the end point. Exactly. The patient. The patient is the end goal. The patient is the problem. The patient is... I want my patient happy. Yeah.

But there is a big responsibility on him to educate himself. Why people take care of money more than taking care of health? This is a big cultural issue as well. This is our mission as a doctor to educate. That's why we are here, to educate, at least to share this information with the whole world to say, wake up, we are with you. Exactly.

Well, Wajdi, in terms of your future direction and you've shared some incredible insights into different aspects of healing and your modalities, if my audience wants to either connect with you or find you online, where can they do that? Yes, soon I will launch my website for worldwide consultations and I will share it with you.

My social media page, you can check it. Dr. Wajdi Al-Bunji. I have like a business number. My team will can connect and definitely hear this field of Fakih University Hospital. In Dubai, I'm available. And definitely we can discuss teleconsultation all over the world for a specific field. And the new projects is ongoing as well in Dubai. I hope that we starting...

Already started the health care system, even the investors, even the investors starting to put the money now in this field because they know this is the future. The future of the world today is based on three things. The longevity in health care, and this is the function precision medicine and regenerative medicine that we discussed earlier.

Second, cryptocurrency and economy, and technology and artificial intelligence. And I think in my future direction, the three will be integrated together for the best of the people. Incredible. Yeah.

Well, for those listening in, if you want to check out Dr. Wajdi's Instagram and hopefully when his website is released, I'll leave that linked in the podcast show notes. But otherwise, Wajdi, thank you for coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure chatting. Thank you so much, Lukas. It's a nice discussion. We repeat it for more and more. Absolutely.

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