Brian (0s):
This week I interviewed Dr. Adriana Kekic. She's the founder of Futuro, and applies integrated genetic metabolic and molecular analysis to individuals who look healthy on paper, but feel metabolically stuck, fatigued or inflamed. We discussed the concept of Cellular Drift and how dysfunction progresses silently despite normal labs, along with the importance of understanding fasting insulin, how she leverages AI to create your roadmap to success, the benefits and downsides to Peptides and her one tip to get your body back to what it once was. Really enjoyed my interview with Dr. Adriana. I know you will too.
Brian (41s):
Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn. And I'm Dr. Adriana Han, welcome to the show.
Adrijana (50s):
Thank you for having me. Brian.
Brian (52s):
Thank you for coming on all the way from Arizona, although, where are you originally from?
Adrijana (58s):
I'm originally from a country that no longer exists called former Yugoslavia. I was born in Croatia, lived there Bosnia, Serbia, so then ended up here in the United States.
Brian (1m 7s):
Wonderful. When did you move to the States?
Adrijana (1m 10s):
We moved end of 98, so I've actually lived in this country longer than I've lived where I grew up, or was born in and I'm now here in Phoenix, Arizona and I love it here.
Brian (1m 22s):
Not a bad place to be. Right. No,
Adrijana (1m 24s):
Wonderful place actually.
Brian (1m 26s):
And you founded Fu Future Own, I was saying this correctly, you are fu own. Yeah, Fu own. And when did you find that company And what sort of led you down that path?
Adrijana (1m 37s):
I founded a company in January, 2024 while I was still working at the Mayo Clinic. What led me to that was a combination of both professional curiosities and growth, but more my personal health experience in December, 2021. I'll give you the, the short of the story because I'm sure it'll inform some of the conversation here as well as far as why health and longevity is actually important. Hmm. But in December, 2021, I nearly died from something that was preventable and it was missed just a month before I injured my knee, I tore three ligaments.
Adrijana (2m 18s):
We had a chat before we jumped into the podcast. I've done martial arts my whole life and I ended up actually tearing three ligaments in that knee, not from martial arts, just from squatting.
Brian (2m 28s):
Oh wow.
Adrijana (2m 29s):
Yeah, just squatted and they tore, but I had multiple obviously injuries on that knee prior. So tore ligaments was supposed to have a surgery the day before the surgery. I obviously had to be tested, got a clean bill of health, and the day before the surgery I passed out on my kitchen floor, nearly dying from massive blood clots that lodged in my lungs, something called saddle pulmonary embolism. They were massive actually. So I'm very lucky that I have survived and they started from my injured knee and I simply did miss my own symptoms. My physicians and I don't blame any one of them, missed my symptoms.
Adrijana (3m 10s):
And so I was laying in the ICU and thinking, how the heck did I end up here? How did a healthcare professional trained in this world of what I always call sci-fi come to life? Because at the Mayo Clinic I did genetics and many other things. How did I end up in this position? And also how did I as a person was so disconnected from myself, I was on the go high performer on the go, on the go, kind of downplaying my symptoms the entire time I, I ended up in ICU nearly dying. So that was my kind of participating, precipitating whether event to say what am I gonna do with my life? And not only that, but how am I going to serve not only myself, but folks who really want to avoid becoming patients in the first place.
Adrijana (4m 1s):
Considering that I was already very deep in AI, in healthcare, some science that's called multis and I'm happy to unpack that and all of these things. And I wanted to connect the dots that are currently not connected in healthcare system, which is very reactive, acute care based. And out of that really birthed futuro.
Brian (4m 23s):
Wow. That's, yeah, that's quite the story. So the, the knee injury sort of led you down this path pretty much and then Yes. Yeah.
Adrijana (4m 32s):
Yes. It was the knee injury and I remember taking a photo, Brian, of my entire, it was right knee, so I took a photo of my right leg because it was almost double the size, just four or five days post-injury. And I, and I had injuries on the knees before and I thought, oh my gosh, this looks a little bit off. But you know, we did an MRI, nothing really showed then, but even then, and this is after all of this happened, when I talked to my cardiologist, he's like, Adrianna, you actually had blood clots already happening in your knee, in your leg at that time. We just simply did not, we missed it, I missed it and we missed it.
Brian (5m 12s):
Hmm. Wow. Quite the story and, And you know, you talk about like Cellular Drift as like dysfunction that progressively like progresses silently while your standard labs could look normal, like what's actually happening biologically in that, you know, during that window that you know can go undetected and it can become a, you know, real clinical problem. You know, how long you know, could this take? Yeah,
Adrijana (5m 40s):
Yeah. This is actually great question. So how long, I'm gonna start from the bottom and work my way up to that question. How long can Cellular Drift, which I will explain what it is, how long can Cellular Drift drift happen before you end up with say like I did God forbid, or with certain diagnosis? The short answer is it depends, but usually this is something that takes time. So typically it's either months or years before you end up with a significant disease or disorder. A case in point would be when you go do your standard lab testing. And I assume both of us here have done numerous physical, you know, yearly physical exam.
Adrijana (6m 23s):
So typically when you do your physical exam, do you have any labs done during that time, Brian?
Brian (6m 29s):
Yes, yes. Yeah,
Adrijana (6m 30s):
Exactly.
Brian (6m 31s):
Yeah, I just got it. Yeah, big lab work done probably a few months ago. Okay. Yeah.
Adrijana (6m 36s):
Perfect. And hopefully that lab work is indeed comprehensive, which it seems like or sounds like it is, but usually for most of us, when you go do your labs or physical lab, yearly physical, you will get about, I don't know, 20 to maybe 50 biomarkers that we look at. So you know, things related to your blood sugar, your blood chemistry, lipids, maybe thyroid hormones or hormones, inflammation and so on. So when you do the standard testing, we are only skimming the surface in terms of what's really happening at the cellular level. Why? Because we're really not operating from this place of so-called multi omics approach to health.
Adrijana (7m 18s):
What does that mean? Multi omics approach to health is really system thinking applied to biology. So it's called system biology approach to health. Well let me just really quickly pause on that and kind of open that up. So what is that? You have heard of genetic testing or maybe you had your genetic testing done?
Brian (7m 41s):
Yes, I have. Yeah. Okay. Just, yeah, certain gene SNPs, you know, not like, but anyways, go ahead.
Adrijana (7m 49s):
So you had certain genes looked at, which is I think what most of us who have had genetic testing would say, oh yeah, I had a genetic test done and maybe I checked if I have M-T-H-F-R mutation methyl and tetra hydro folate enzyme gene that encodes for that enzyme mutation. Or maybe you did genetic testing related to your predisposition to cancers, for example. So I think most of us are familiar with genetic testing from that point of view. So there is something called whole, whole genome sequencing. Whole genome sequencing is when we look at your entire DNA and we say all of these 20 plus thousand genes that we humans have, we can actually look at them, we can sequence them and see what sort of mutations and also so-called genetic variants changes in those genes that, you know, depend from one person to another.
Adrijana (8m 40s):
What are those for Brian or for Adriana? And depending on what you have, that can greatly obviously influence how fast you age or what disease predispositions the two of us are going to have. Genetics is kind of like a hardware, it's at the bottom at the foundational level of this system biology approach to health. However, genetics is not your destiny or it's not end all be all. Why? Well, it's because on the top of your genes we have switches. These are so-called epigenetic switches. These are the things that will affect how your genes are expressed throughout life.
Adrijana (9m 21s):
These are the things like food movement or exercise, exposure to environmental factors and toxins, your thoughts or stress levels. All of these will affect those switches that will then affect your foundational base, which is your genetics. So we say genetics is the foundation. So one layer can think of it like an onion. This whole multi omics approach to health is like an onion. So at the bottom, I mean at the heart of the onion is your genetics. Then the next layer over would be epigenetics. These switches, now we can actually test not only for your genes but also epigenetic changes and then genes in code or give instructions to make proteins, and I don't mean dietary proteins what we eat, but these amazing molecules of life that will essentially tell us how we process things in our body.
Adrijana (10m 12s):
So there is a, there is a whole world of so-called proteomics. We can now do proteomic testing as well to see how genes epigenetic changes and so on affect the proteins. And of course there are many more layers of the audience, be it your microbiome, metabolome, mitochondrial biomarkers. All of this exist in this world of multis, which as you can imagine is thousands and thousands of biomarkers, which is obviously not something that will ch, we will right now leverage and check in standard testing. And I will give you a very specific example, something that anybody right now listening can actually ask for and do when you do your standard testing as opposed to, you know, checking just A1C to say if I have pre-diabetes or diabetes, A1C is a measurable blood sugar in the last three months.
Adrijana (11m 7s):
So it'll ll tell ya where your blood sugar were was in the past three months. And if that number is higher than 6.4, you have diabetes. If that number is higher than 5.6, 5.7, you have pre-diabetes. So you will go to have your testing done and you will be told, oh you are, you're good. You are 5.4, you're not pre-diabetic or diabetic. You're good. Continue to do what you do. Well if we only leverage that, there are thousands of us and probably that number is greater that are walking right now listening to this podcast that actually are on a certain path guaranteed path of developing diabetes, which is one of the four horsemen of debt.
Adrijana (11m 50s):
Diabetes will shorten your lifespan the number of years that you live, at least for a decade if not more. So you are charting that path right now If you go and and actually do a little bit more of a deeper dive with your testing and have your doctor order something called Fasting Insulin, you will be able to tell what your body is doing to compensate for the lifestyle and specifically for food given your genetic predispositions that you probably don't know If you have or you don't, to develop that diabetes. So Fasting Insulin is a number that I would recommend for virtually all of us, at least you know, teenagers and adults, you know, moving onward to check because Fasting Insulin is a number that will indicate how hard does your pancreas organ that secretes insulin, that will bring blood sugar down.
Adrijana (12m 43s):
How, how much of that insulin is being pumped by the pancreas to continue to compensate and bring that blood sugar down to keep it under that normal range of A1C.
Brian (12m 56s):
So with, with future, excuse me ome, what you guys try to apply sort of a combination of standard testing along with genetics And you know, come up with sort of this blueprint for individuals. Is that along the lines of what you guys are, are
Adrijana (13m 16s):
You nailed it? Yeah, you nailed it. We mostly work with folks who are really committed to their health and that is not to be said that all of us are not committed to our, to our health, but we mostly work with, you know, high performing individuals where what we do is we leverage multi testing. So that means yes we can account not only your standard lab, we go much deeper functional testing. So think about it like this. If you put together the conventional along with the functional medicine and then expanded it into more, that's essentially what we do. So multi testing, we typically start with looking at your metabolomics, which is essentially cellular signaling, what's happening inside of your cells, the food that you're putting in the movement that you're doing, the supplements and medications that you're taking, are your cells even able to use that and make it into something good like energy or is there a toxic burden that's basically frying your mitochondria happening?
Adrijana (14m 17s):
Mitochondria are powerhouses or If you think of a cell like a car, mitochondria is an engine of the car and so it makes essentially energy. Mitochondria does a lot more than just that. So that's what we do. We look at the omics, metabolomics, mitochondrial, you know, all of this testing that I mentioned. Then that creates big data. That big data goes onto a computer where we basically are building out your computer version of you. So that's called biological digital twins. So we leverage a technology, AI based technology called the digital twin where all of these thousands of biomarkers then go and create your digital twin.
Adrijana (14m 59s):
And the importance of that is twofold. Number one, we can see what's happening at the cellular level oftentimes years before, before you end up with a certain condition or disease or If you have a certain condition and disease, we can go a lot deeper and with more precision to kind of pinpoint where is this actually coming from? Is it your gut, is it your mitochondria, is it something else? And then second thing is, and this is really important, we can run thousand of iation to, to see based on your biology, what do you need to do to course correct that? And that means we can basically put, okay, If you ate this food at this time, at this rate, If you exercise, If you do these movements, If you did these supplements, Peptides, medications based on your biology, what is the projection and how is that going to affect you?
Adrijana (15m 53s):
And then really what we do with all of that is we put you on a path of course correction, optimization and longevity, that those are the three steps. And how we lay that out is really based on six principles of lifestyle, medicine, nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, relational health. And one of the biggest pillars for, for us based because of my expertise mostly is ticals. So we per formulate and personalize meaning make that supplement for you and we will change it over time based on your labs. You know, If you need certain Peptides, we don't blindly recommend them. This is really based on your biology medications and other interventions and so on.
Brian (16m 39s):
Yeah, wow. So pretty thorough. And what about Peptides? I mean you just mentioned them, I mean those are obviously co coming to light. I mean they've been around, I think I interviewed Jay Campbell, he's been doing them since 2003 I think like long time. But some people are just getting to know them. How do you use those to sort of help optimize individuals health
Adrijana (17m 0s):
Peptides for maybe those of us who are not familiar with what they are, they're really small molecules that are naturally occurring, meaning your body typically makes them, what are these small molecules? They're literally just little chains of amino acids stringed together. So these, they're small enough, they're not called proteins because If you put bunch of Peptides together and they grow, they actually can make a protein or really amino acids I should say. So they are smaller kind of mini cousins of, of proteins. They're really important because they signal a lot of things in our body So they can help with healing, with wound repair, with recovery, with cognitive kind of performance, with mitochondrial healing, with skin repair, lots of things.
Adrijana (17m 51s):
So I've been in a world of Peptides since 96, 97 because, and I don't know if you're familiar, you probably are considering that you had J on your podcast and I think a lot of folks may be too peptide called BPC 1 57 Body protection Compound 1 57 is very, it has been trending for the past few years and it's something that I see in a lot of our athletes who come to seek, you know, guidance from us. They are on BPC 1 57 for for one reason or the other SHO shoulder maybe fair knee repair And you know, gut issues and so on. BPC 1 57 was actually discovered and developed by my nextdoor University professor, university of Zagreb.
Adrijana (18m 34s):
And I remember just, you know, learning about this and then really falling in love with these small molecules that can do such extraordinary things in our human body. Where I stand on that is on two principles. Number one, I strongly recommend that you work with somebody who is actually trained in Peptides. So how do you know if somebody's trained or not? You can ask if they have had certification training, how long have been have been, have they been doing this? And also they understand the biology behind this in other words. And that brings me to my second point is you need to understand your biology, your cells. If you have a genetic predisposition for cancers, you really need to think, I clinically even need to think hard if this and a lot of Peptides can cause something called it's essentially new blood vessel formation.
Adrijana (19m 31s):
These Peptides can do that. There is signaling from them that can start to make new blood vessels. Cancers essentially survive on that mechanism creating nude blood vessels because they basically suck the food from healthy cells and they need more blood vessels. They're kind of like roads that will deliver those nutrients to them. So Peptides are powerful but with power comes a lot of responsibility and my god, I'm quo Spider-Man I think right now. But essentially that's what it is. Very powerful molecule that have healing and other properties. But in order for us to give them, we really need to work with your biology and your predispositions to ensure that we are not actually triggering these processes that are negative like you know, cancer development and more many of them have been used in animals.
Adrijana (20m 21s):
They don't have strong human data. Many of the orally, you know, promoted and marketed Peptides. I would really caution with them because overall oral Peptides have less than 2% bioavailability. And my other suggestion is work with clinicians who are getting them at least from compounding pharmacies as opposed to research sites. And that's a whole other conversation.
Brian (20m 44s):
Yeah. And you hear about the BP BPC 1 57, the TB 500, like that combination to help
Adrijana (20m 51s):
With well very pack.
Brian (20m 52s):
Yeah, yeah. It'll help with like connective tissue, you know, joint and cellular de regeneration. So is this something, obviously you wanna make sure that you're not predisposed to, like you mentioned cancer, correct. But is this something that you use with clients to help with recovery and things like that? Yes,
Adrijana (21m 11s):
Yes. How we do this is we have a team. So once you enter our world, future own world, depending on what we find, we may refer you to, you know, cancer specialists, we may refer you to hormone optimization specialist. And we also work with healthcare physicians and practitioners who have been trained on Peptides. So typically how it works, we will do the multi testing, employ the the digital twin, run different iterations in respect to Peptides to ensure no major interactions either with other Peptides or medications or supplements or lifestyle based protocol that they're currently on, number one.
Adrijana (21m 51s):
Number two, ensure that based on your multi testing, your gut can tolerate it. Your vascular system in immune system can tolerate it and you don't have those major genetic predispositions. And then we will design actual peptide recommendations that your physician can then act on.
Brian (22m 9s):
Hmm. Is there any other Peptides that you've been using? I know obviously the LPs have become pretty popular. Are those things, I know there's GLP one and two, I believe three is like
Adrijana (22m 20s):
Yeah there are many generations of GLP and I think they're gonna continue to mushroom up. Yeah, Glp you nail it. Brian GLP are also Peptides. Actually two of my favorite Peptides are insulin and oxytocin and talk about the power of Peptides. Insulin is a peptide. It was developed and discovered and then made into a medication in early part of the last century. And it has saved millions of lives. Basically helping people who have type one diabetes where they no longer can make insulin, really helping them live prolonged their life and prolong their health. Yeah, so GLP one are the biggest category that I see both on-label use and off-label use.
Adrijana (23m 5s):
On-label use. Basically they're FDA approved for diabetes and also some of them for weight loss. But I'm also seeing them, Brian, a lot used in longevity space for off-label use specifically to reduce inflammation. Something called inflammaging inflammaging is one of the 14 hallmarks of aging. So there is a whole field of so-called longevity medicine. Longevity medicine is the fastest growing field in medicine and it's a bit nebulously defined. Think of it kind of like this. We help people in longevity medicine, we help people live long and healthy using, you know what I just mentioned here with evidence-based kind of approach.
Adrijana (23m 53s):
So GLP one, If you look at humans, there are two big peaks of aging. One around the age of mid forties, another one early and mid sixties. And when we look at these studies of folks in terms of cellular, biological aging, there are only two interventions right now. I'm not talking about lifestyle like fasting or fast mimicking diet or exercise, but two interventions that have reduced the accelerated biological aging. One of them is hormone optimization therapy, which primarily is estrogen for women and the other one is GLP ones. So we are starting to see them be leveraged, especially in our practice with folks who have diabetes, pre-diabetes, something called cardiometabolic syndrome where you have blood pressure, blood lipids, maybe blood sugar, all of that is out of normal or optimal ranges.
Adrijana (24m 45s):
And they have significant markers of vascular inflammation, meaning in your blood vessels, inflamed blood vessels can increase your risk of blood clots. Which is essentially what happened to me. And the injury just was the precipitating precipitating event for that. I actually had prediabetes not knowing that I had that prediabetes, I was right on the cusp. And so they're used for for that. So yeah, GLP ones I also see for, you know, these mitochondrial Peptides are gaining traction now. Things like motzi, I'm also seeing neurocognitive Peptides, EMAX and other ones also gaining traction.
Adrijana (25m 25s):
I'm starting to see more of the nasal spray. Oxytocin. Oxytocin is what we naturally produce. There are some studies that have been linked to, you know, lifted brain fog and improved cognitive health. But we need more human data. Mm,
Brian (25m 40s):
Definitely a growing field.
Adrijana (25m 42s):
Yes, definitely.
Brian (25m 43s):
I'm sure we can, is there something that perhaps, I mean you've been doing this for quite a while and in in the medical field. Is there something that you've changed your mind on over the last 10 to 15 years?
Adrijana (25m 56s):
I'll be frank with you, the biggest shift for me was GLP Once GLP once are taken not for diabetes. I knew and we had data for years, actually for decades on GLP once. I remember when we were using Victoza biota, these are just brand names for some of the early generation GLP ones. I knew that they reduce A1C blood sugar, they help with that. But where I have shifted my thinking in terms of GLP ones is seeing these newer studies where GLP ones are helping reverse or improve at least fatty liver disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Adrijana (26m 38s):
Which is really significant problem in developed world, especially here in the United States. And also in terms of this overall reduced inflammation and improved cognitive performance because of that. So here is what, what I'm really saying with that, I was a little bit unsure if GLP ones are really doing this or is this just a weight loss And now we're starting to see the data that it says essentially saying no, there is more to them in terms of this benefit. So what I mentioned than just weight loss, it's not just a weight loss, it's this whole communication system that happens at a cellular level from the GLP one signaling from those drugs.
Adrijana (27m 19s):
And why is this important? It's important because we have gr we're growing in terms of the rates of type three diabetes, which is essentially dementia in Alzheimer's disease. So there might be a meaningful pharmaceutical at least intervention here to reduce that. Especially because now we are, we are at that place in time where we know that 20 years of studies on Alzheimer's disease were based on false data. And so what, what do we do not knowing really what this Alzheimer's diseases, well it seems like it obviously lifestyle interventions, so weight management movement and all of this stress reduction plays a role.
Adrijana (28m 4s):
But now we know that GLP one drugs are starting to move the needle in a positive direction.
Brian (28m 9s):
Hmm. Yeah. So a lot of people just think of it as GLP ones is weight loss, but you're, you're obviously finding out that there's a lot more to it.
Adrijana (28m 19s):
A lot more to it. Yeah, and you don't have to be on the, I think also GLP ones, you have to be careful If you are on a high doses for prolonged time period, they have some really negative consequences. Not only on, you know, muscle because of the weight loss plus also because of the signaling that's happening within the muscle tissue. But also I am seeing obviously hair loss is a major side effect from these medications. And it's not only because I'm losing weight and I'm losing nutrients, no, there are GLP one receptors surround the hair follicles. We know that these medications, GLP one drugs can induce weight loss, especially If you have predispositions to them.
Adrijana (28m 59s):
And then the other thing of course is that what I'm seeing in my clinical practice and for a while now and I'm starting to actually see the data reported, is they will trigger events like gout and even arthritis. You would say, well hold on a second, it's reducing the inflammation. Well we don't know the mechanism truly behind this, but that's what we are starting to report clinically. So I would caution you try perhaps working with a clinician if you're thinking of using GLP one, especially more for longevity and inflammation management. Really think about microdosing for short bursts and support yourself through lifestyle interventions to ensure not negative consequences from that.
Brian (29m 41s):
Yeah, that is actually one of the things that Jay mentioned was a lot of times people are getting on these and they're taking too much too soon as opposed to doing like microdosing themselves with them. Correct. Yeah. And what would you say, like obviously Peptides are, could be a game changer for people. What? Like alongside obviously healthy habits, you know, 'cause people can, I've seen, you know, you see people get on GLP and they just sort of turn into like a raisin, you know, they, you know you yes. They're like a shell of themselves. So obviously you wanna make sure that you're maintaining muscle and obviously eating enough and then getting in protein and things like that.
Brian (30m 22s):
Is that obviously things that you stress as well?
Adrijana (30m 25s):
I absolutely do. Even though I exist in this world of, you know, pharmacology for the past three decades and I actually don't think of pharmacology as a pill popping. It's really my framework. I think of pharmacology as cellular intelligence in action. Everything is information that information does something to your body and vice versa. So like you mentioned, the food, the supplement, the movement, all of that is information. In respect to your question, yes, I'm a huge believer in lifestyle interventions and support, especially If you are on something like Peptides. What does that look like? Well, yes, weight-bearing exercises are likely going to be a must for you.
Adrijana (31m 5s):
Supporting with enough protein, supporting with enough collagen and collagen building materials like, you know, vitamin Cs needed for, for proper collagen synthesis. I'm a huge believer in getting this mostly through your food If you can, for example, bone broth is an amazing strategy to bring that collagen into your body. You can do this yourself. You don't have to go buy the bone broth, you know, from the shelf. Although you could, you know, they're very convenient ways. Sure. You know that. And then of course one other, I I'm gonna go back to, to what I said about protein. I'm not only a pharmacist, my other degree is actually in nutrition and nutrigenomics.
Adrijana (31m 48s):
So I think about nutrition as a medicine. So when it comes to protein, one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, what should I eat? Should it be only, you know, keto diet, Mediterranean diet, you know, plant only eating like no animal products. Here's what I'm gonna say, eat real food because it's very obvious that we humans have adopted for a variety of different styles of eating. Your biology obviously, and your genetics, your ancestry and so on can dictate. And your microbiome obviously is going to dictate are those food that you're putting in really benefiting your gut and therefore can they be absorbed in your body?
Adrijana (32m 29s):
Protein is really important, But it, i, I look at this from my lens of, you know, longevity, even if you're an athlete, you need to perform at this season of your life. But once you're done with that, what are you going to do to ensure longevity that you live long and healthy? What we know real food. Second, what we know is that protein is a must mostly when you're younger. And as a matter of fact, If you are active, If you are not active and you are eating a lot of protein, especially protein that has meine predominant as a predominant amino acid, which is what you get from a lot of supplements actually, and even muscle meats as opposed to organ meats and so on.
Adrijana (33m 15s):
This we know will send a signal typically to cancer growing cells. So we know that eating less protein and more plant-based tends to be linked to longevity. If you have short bursts where you need a lot of energy and you are using that energy through your muscle building and so on activity, then yes, protein is great and you should probably increase that and support that demand. But If you are not, you're sitting, you're sedentary and you're eating the protein bars and bringing protein water, I don't think this is really serving you a good, good purpose.
Brian (33m 51s):
Hmm. Yeah. 'cause a lot of times people just say, oh, the, the more the the better for protein. But you know, I think they're finding, you know, the, if If you wanna say like an ideal amount, I mean you can probably get away with 0.6 to 0.8, you know, per gram per pound of body weight. Yep. I think that's like a decent recommendation. You know, again, that's sort of a blanket statement but Yep. Depending on the person and the, and and how much activity level they have.
Adrijana (34m 19s):
Yeah, I am, I am with you there. I am very cautious when we go over one or 1.2, there are certain cases protein can be used in medicinal ways. Like keto diet has been used in medicinal ways as a medical interventions for folks who need to work on so-called metabolic flexibility. They, their body has lost the ability of this metabolic flexibility, meaning they have insulin resistance. So maybe for a short time period, three, six months or something like that, you are on medical intervention, which means predominantly keto where you're eating mostly protein and fats to kind of rev up your metabolism to gain back that metabolic flexibility.
Adrijana (35m 1s):
But for prolonged, I think the data, especially If you look at the blue zones around the world and there are many blue zones other than the five or six that we all talk about like Okinawa, California, Mediterranean belt and so on. There are many more than just that. I think what's really clear is social connection is the, the, the pillar of longevity and the number two is movement, ongoing daily movement, living in circadian rhythm, meaning getting your sun exposure, not at the peak of the sun, but you know, living with nature essentially. And the third thing would be moderation. So yes, eat your protein but make sure that you're putting these in for communicators for your body and that's going to be your cooked vegetables as opposed to maybe even raw vegetables because we know If you eat a lot of raw kale or spinach, you could end up with a gout because there are a lot of oxalates in these foods.
Adrijana (35m 56s):
So even like the healthy foods are not always healthy because we need to prepare them in the way that the human body has evolved to use. And that's why I'm a huge believer in actually putting your medicine through your mouth in terms of food, but knowing how to prepare them as well.
Brian (36m 11s):
Yeah, yeah. I have had some individuals on from like the pro metabolic angle, which is Dr. Ray Pete sort of coined that, but yeah, and they talk about like, you know, as far as carbohydrates, easy to, you know, especially right off the bat if you're not used to it, but easy to digest carbohydrates, like you said, raw vegetables can be tough on, on the system and a lot of times you're better off lightly cooking them, like you mentioned.
Adrijana (36m 37s):
Yes, yes. Can I ask you about pro metabolic? I've never heard of that. Oh, can you tell me more?
Brian (36m 44s):
Yeah, I mean pro metabolic, you, you, you'd be interested in it because it's all based around trying to like get the most out of your like metabolic rate and like your cellular activity. So like what would be the best way to explain it is essentially eating based off like trying to minimize stress and maximize like your, your cellular energy, I would say. And So they are, I would say they are geared towards more of like a balanced approach as opposed to like their viewpoint is if you're only eating, like let's just say you're, you're anti carb and you're not eating carbs for long periods of time, a lot of times that can cause stress on the system and you know, perhaps, you know, just end up becoming like a metabolic slowdown for the body.
Brian (37m 36s):
So, you know, granted, you know, some people have thrived in certain ways and others haven't, but that, you know, that's sort of the, the quick summary of like sort of that pro metabolic approach. But you'd be, yeah, I think you'd have some interest in that because it is based all around like, like a big thing that individuals from that sort of viewpoint like to look at is like your body temperature, your pulse. Okay, yeah. Things like that. You know, people who are cold all the time and maybe, you know, maybe cold all the time, not sleeping well, maybe you know, hair loss, things like that. And they've been on like this very restrictive diet for a long period of time. They find that, you know, the thyroid slow down has slowed down and they need to sort of find ways to rev it up and doing that through diet and things like that.
Brian (38m 27s):
So
Adrijana (38m 28s):
I thank you for so much for introducing me to this. You may need to connect me with, yeah, I forget who the person is. Sure. What I, I love about this Brian, in terms of that approach is this is exactly what I have seen in my clinical practice as well, especially with us ladies. So oftentimes I will have a woman in perimenopause or menopause And now she's going through these, you know, changes, hormonal changes. Perimenopause is especially tough for us ladies because it's not like your estrogen is going down or progesterone is going down. No. What is happening is this peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys and that is so tough on the body, on the psyche, on emotions, on everything to handle.
Adrijana (39m 13s):
During this time I often will have ladies who will come in and they're basically either fat free, carb free, right? They're just loading on protein and supplements and water and electrolytes and then they feel really crappy. And when we start introducing fat, fat is important because your brain cannot function without it. Right? Carbs are important because glucose is the main energy for your brain, right? So when we start introducing these complex carbs, they feel multi-fold better. And what I wanna say there also is it makes sense, I mean cellularly, it makes sense because women make almost or have almost less the half of the amount of serotonin than men do.
Adrijana (40m 4s):
Serotonin is mostly made by your gut. There is a bacteria there that needs to be fed with the right kind of food, especially carbs for us ladies that will enhance that serotonin production. Why serotonin important? Well it's a neurotransmitter that essentially is linked to contentment feeling not of happiness but feeling content. And If you don't have enough, these two brains, the one here and the one in your gut, they don't communicate well and you don't feel well.
Brian (40m 32s):
Yeah, I mean I can totally see that. Yeah, you would totally, this is right up your alley because you talk about like eating nutrient dense foods, whole foods, a big thing with them is avoiding like polyunsaturated fatty acids. Yes. You know, and gearing more towards the saturated fats just 'cause they're, they're more stable, especially under heat. And so yeah, this is, this would probably align with a lot with what you're saying. So
Adrijana (40m 60s):
Yeah, would, yeah, would love the connection. I, we could have a whole chat on pfa pfas, polyunsaturated fatty acids and the effect that I see on the microbiome because we do a research based microbiome testing where it looks at relationships and changes over time and everything. And one of the significant changes that we see when we adopt different, you know, lifestyle, healthy lifestyle including nutrition as your medicine is we immediately see beneficial changes to the microbiome when we take out or minimize pops because they are so corrosive, they're so toxic actually to that environment.
Adrijana (41m 40s):
And microbiome is where majority of our immune system is at microbiome is also greatly linked to increase of autoimmune diseases that we see. I talked about one of the four horsemen of that we have right Now. I mean they're terrible names, but that's what they are. They're called four horsemen of that because most of us are going to be affected and unfortunately die from one or more of these cancer, cardiovascular disease being the biggest one, diabetes and dementia. And I would say the fifth one that's really emerging is autoimmune diseases. So folks that have, God forbid, but like Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and even like irritable bowel disease and even irritable bowel syndrome, which is a little bit different obviously than IBD.
Brian (42m 25s):
Yeah. I actually had another individual on the podcast, Dr. Nathan Brown, and he's done a lot of research into nitric oxide levels and interesting guy, he's been studying it for like 25 years. One of the things that he mentioned, you know, you talk about gut health is they find that people that avoid mouthwash the listerine's with the alcohol because that's the first, you know, sort of start of the, of the digestive system. Yeah. Digestive system that they have actually like better blood pressure, like all these different things. And I thought it was quite interesting when, when he talked about like trying to avoid, you know, these listerine's and things like that.
Adrijana (43m 10s):
I am probably, and I'm probably, I'm very much aligned on that camp and my, you know, I have a lot of really close family friends who are dentists And you know, we have these discussions. So really briefly I understand his position on that mine is aligned for the following reason. Your microbiome lives everywhere on you within you and your gut really, microbiome starts in your mouth, right? This is your defense for even your brain. We had theories and I think those still actually stand that certain microbes can travel, they're not supposed to, but they can travel and affect your brain.
Adrijana (43m 53s):
Maybe this is linked to Alzheimer's disease. We know that, you know, having tonsillitis or these infections can affect your heart many years and decades after you have had those because of the bacteria that lived there. But we can get rid of that bacteria, not just through the mouthwash, alcohol-based antibacterial mouthwash. There are some more gentle holistic practices that enable you to get rid of the bad bacteria, including, you know, the oil pull pulling and whatnot. And I think that's really important because we also have lost this art of chewing our food properly and then cleaning our mouths after we eat.
Adrijana (44m 35s):
We need 40 to 60 chews to enable that food to really reach the gut and start to be properly digested there. This also helps proper chewing helps with bacteria there and also gum help. You need to have healthy gums And you know, I'm gonna pause myself here, but I agree with what he's, he's, you know, thinking about.
Brian (44m 57s):
Yeah, no, it's, it, it's interesting and it's like If you just, it's like a simplistic way you, you talk about mouthwash, but like I always, I have for some reason I never really try, I tried to avoid mouthwash and use like tongue scrapers and things like that to help, you know, with just having a healthy mouth and breath. But yeah, it's, you know, gut health starts with your mouth so it's, it was, yeah, it's
Adrijana (45m 20s):
Important. A hundred percent.
Brian (45m 23s):
Well this was great. I mean, we could probably talk a while on all these topics maybe we'll have you back on and Mike Fave was one of the guys, I can send you a few of the episodes that we talk about, the pro metabolic diet and things like that. I think you'd find interest in them in, in a lot of the things they talk about. So
Adrijana (45m 39s):
Yeah, I would love to,
Brian (45m 41s):
Where's the best place for people to learn about, you know, what you're doing?
Adrijana (45m 46s):
The best way would be you can find us on our website www.futurum.com. F-U-T-U-R-O-M e.com. I'm starting to put content out on YouTube, you know, through podcast. And also I have a substack that I started If you really wanted to deep dive into multis, the best way really to follow me and kind of engage with the content I'm putting out is going to be on Instagram or LinkedIn and Instagram. The handle is dr dot A-D-R-I-J-A-N-A-K-E-K-I-C, Dr. Adrian, Dr. Adriana Kekic. And yes, I'm answer all of my messages personally. So I live and love this world of cellular intelligence in action, multis and longevity.
Adrijana (46m 29s):
So if this is your jam, reach out.
Brian (46m 32s):
Yeah, and I'll put links in the show notes for all this and thank you. Yeah, I love what you're doing and I think this is the future. And you know, I think people have to just become proactive with their health. I mean, we have these standard systems that have been around for so long And you know, there's a time and a place, but you know, it can miss a lot, right? And yeah, like we saw with your case, you know, so
Adrijana (46m 55s):
Yes, it absolutely can. And I love what you said. I'm a firm believer in being at the driver's seat of your health. One of our taglines is really know yourselves to know yourself. And that means, yes, bring the best of all of the worlds. So conventional, functional, preventative health to really put you, as I said, I love Formula One. So the analogy I think is appropriate, but you are jiv your vehicle and we are the team around you who is making sure that your tires are in good shape, that your chassis is intact, that you have enough engine and the fuel to kind of keep going so you can be the true best version of you.
Adrijana (47m 36s):
So you can go and do amazing things in this world because we need this world to be even a better place.
Brian (47m 43s):
Love it. Well, Dr. Adriana, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and thanks for so much all you're doing. And yeah, we'll put links in the show notes so people can learn all about you.
Adrijana (47m 54s):
Thank you so much for having me, Brian. What a fun chat.
Brian (47m 57s):
Thanks for listening to the show. I know there's thousands of podcasts out there and you chose to listen to mine. I will put a link in the show notes If you want to connect with my guest. And If you are looking for one-on-one consulting with me, I will put a free 15 minute link so you can set up a call to see if you're fit for my six month health breakthrough program. So thanks again, feel free to rate and subscribe. I would love that to help support the podcast. And till next time, have a great rest of the day and I will see you on my next podcast. Thanks so much.
