Mike Van Thielen, PhD - Ormond Beach, Florida

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision, and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There's no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Welcome back to Meet the Doctor. I'm Eva Sheie, and my guest today is Dr. Mike Van Thielen. He is an expert biohacker, and the first that we've ever had on the podcast, so welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Van Thielen (00:39):
Thanks for having me, Eva.

Eva Sheie (00:41):
Okay. I have to ask you first, what is an expert biohacker?

Dr. Van Thielen (00:46):
Well, somebody who is well versed in biohacking. But biohacking is one of those buzzwords that are getting a little bit more attention in the medical field, especially when we're talking about functional medicine, anti-aging. In that arena, we're talking about biohacking, it is, I would say a morphous term with many different definitions, but my definition is simple. It's basically upgrading the body, the mind, and life. And from a health point of view, it's objectively reversing our biological age.

Eva Sheie (01:20):
I have a sense that this is becoming more interesting to people, but with velocity, it maybe was a fringe thing that only was talked about at the gym in the past, and now is something that's becoming very mainstream. Am I on the right track there?

Dr. Van Thielen (01:34):
It's becoming more and more mainstream, for sure. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (01:37):
Why do you suppose that is?

Dr. Van Thielen (01:39):
Well, I think number one, people are more relying on functional medicine doctors and are getting more and more interested in controlling their own health because conventional medicine has really not been doing the job to really help them. Yes, masking symptoms and prescribing prescriptions, but to really be healthy, enjoying a quality of life, being in optimal physical and mental condition, nobody teaches you that. But now with our online access, there's more and more resources for people to actually address the root cause of their conditions and not just overcome disease, but obtain optimal health. And then the next step would be reversing our biological age. So I think the resources are there, and conventional medicine is really not providing the results that we're hoping for. And I think those two really steer people in a direction of getting a help from a practitioner or a coach or a mentor that knows on how to address the causes of disease, but also knows what the foundations are for optimal health and longevity. The second thing are, the second reason I think it is, that maybe in the past a lot of this information, these technologies, these strategies were only available to the elite, but now everybody has access to it and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to live a long quality life.

Eva Sheie (02:59):
It seems to me, as I observe the industry a lot, that there's a lot of things that are driving people in this direction, but I wonder if some of it is that we have a bad experience that makes us turn around and go, this is not right. This is not how this is supposed to go.

Dr. Van Thielen (03:16):
People, especially the older generation, still trust in their doctor. And of course there's good doctors out there, but these doctors are really not educated in nutrition, they're not educated in health, they're just educated in pathology and how to mask those systems or manage those symptoms. And so most of us, or most people are in that system of more and more drugs and more and more visits to the doctors. And I see those social agendas every day. Every day there's a doctor's visit. And so I think more and more people start to realize that's not what life is about. Life is about enjoying your time, finding fulfillment in life, helping other people, and not just having a social agenda of doctor's visits. And so the information's out there. There's many mentors, coaches, practitioners out there that can help people steer in that right direction, because it's not that you need a doctor or you don't even need somebody like me, somebody to guide you in the right direction, but I teach you how to stay in control of your own health, how to listen to the warning signs of your body so you can be your own doctor and the doctor of your loved ones.

(04:19):
And then I think the next step also as we get more and more influence from AI, AI has very positive outlooks, but also many negative outlooks. So it's one of those things that could start controlling us in a negative way, but at the same time, think about you going to a doctor and having to wait two hours in a waiting room, and you get this opinion from this one person who just has a few limited tests about you and doesn't really know you as a person, just a medical file. It's all he or she got and looks it over and makes a decision based on that in a very small timeframe. Versus you have AI apps now where you can upload all your information, answer thousands of questions about your health, then have something that's like, I got my aura ring 4 on here now, something that constantly fits information into that app. And if I get sick or if something that I want an answer to, I just ask. And that AI now is not just one doctor that has limited information, it's a compilation of millions of doctors and scientific research combined with my customized personalized information over the last week, the last month, the last year, giving me the right approach and the right decision. So even from that point of view, we are becoming more and more equipped to be our own doctor and the best doctor for ourselves.

Eva Sheie (05:45):
Amazing examples. About 20 years ago, the first time I ever got my mind blown about things like this, I met a man who founded a radiology company and he had a thousand radiologists on staff. And so your film would go to the company and the company would send it to a thousand radiologists to read it all at the same time and respond together. And so he was crowdsourcing before AI. And now I imagine what would happen if you took a thousand radiologists reading your film and AI reading it and all your data going into it at the same time, and it's just gotten so much better, so much faster.

Dr. Van Thielen (06:24):
Yeah, indeed.

Eva Sheie (06:26):
Can you think of any other good examples of how AI is being used? I think people really have a hard time visualizing it until they hear a story about something that's practical.

Dr. Van Thielen (06:37):
In health, we're using it more and more with the biometrics, like I said, all uploading it. And sometimes I don't understand, because it will say, well, Mike, you should eat an orange right now. And I can't rationalize why, but it has all my biometrics, my emotions, the way I slept, my readiness for the day, and it knows that I'm going to go swimming in an hour, and it doesn't tell me to eat a banana, it tells me to eat an orange, right? But it pulls that information for so many sources that obviously I can't make sense of it, but I'll eat an orange.

Eva Sheie (07:06):
And then you feel better because you ate the orange.

Dr. Van Thielen (07:08):
Yes, yes, yes.

Eva Sheie (07:11):
And then how far did you swim?

Dr. Van Thielen (07:14):
Usually about one and a half, two miles.

Eva Sheie (07:16):
And how long does that take you?

Dr. Van Thielen (07:19):
Well, it depends on the workout, but I'm not a distance swimmer. That's just a workout. I'm a sprinter actually, so I do a hundred meter freestyle. So we're talking about 50, 55 seconds. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (07:28):
I read that you're a world record holder. It must be in a hundred freestyle then, right?

Dr. Van Thielen (07:33):
That's correct, yeah.

Eva Sheie (07:35):
And so where is this world record held?

Dr. Van Thielen (07:37):
The 45 plus age group. Now I'm 53, so I just started training again to try to get the 55 plus record in 2016.

Eva Sheie (07:47):
Did you start swimming when you were really young?

Dr. Van Thielen (07:50):
Actually, yeah. It's a fun story. As a young kid, I was the fastest runner in the class, I'm talking elementary school. I was on a basketball team, soccer team. I was just sports guy in school, but I couldn't win in swimming because one of my best friends was part of the local swim team. So according to my mother, I don't remember, I was so angry that I couldn't win, I guess I'm a sole loser. But I found a solution, and the next morning I asked my mom to join the swim team myself. That's what I found my passion for swimming. But I always still joke about it, it's actually my worst sport.

Eva Sheie (08:24):
I think your passion might be for competing more than anything else.

Dr. Van Thielen (08:29):
Yeah, maybe, maybe. But today, see, today I compete against, these swimmers that hold these records in these age groups, they are still Olympic record holders, world record holders, six times NCAA champions. So they are swimmers. And so most of my competitors, they still swim like two hours a day. I can't do that. I don't have time for it. I don't like it that much. So the way I compensate, I only swim three times if I'm lucky, 70, 75 minutes per week and day. And they, again, two hours per day. But what I do is I biohak, I reverse my biological age, so I take care of my body, my mind, and I do all the things to compete next year in a 55 plus. But I'm trying to get my body to be a 42-year-old body, and that's where I take my unfair advantage. So chronologically, I compete in my age group of biologically, I want to have a younger body. And so that's where I spend my time creating that what I call unfair advantage.

Eva Sheie (09:27):
Brilliant. Did you see that article, I think yesterday, about how much LeBron James spends on biohacking every year?

Dr. Van Thielen (09:33):
Yeah, a lot of people do, right? I don't have that money to spend on it, but if I could, yeah, maybe. But for them it makes sense, right, Eva? Because they make millions every year. So if they only could extend their career by one or two or three years, I mean, that makes up for an investment that will be

Eva Sheie (09:53):
Yeah. It's the cost of doing business for him, right?

Dr. Van Thielen (09:54):
Yeah, exactly.

Eva Sheie (09:56):
And I'm still stuck on how you cheated yourself out of, not cheated, you cheated your coach out of being at practice, because I was a swimmer too, and I just remember wondering constantly, why do we have to be here for two and a half hours? Couldn't we do this in less time. And that's what you're doing.

Dr. Van Thielen (10:13):
Yeah, that's exactly what you do. But now I'm adult, so I don't have to listen to the coach necessarily. I go when I show up when I want to. So that's what I do. I don't show up too often, but when I do, I go high intensity, obviously. I recover in between. I do everything else I need to do, optimize my hormones, optimize my immune system, take the right supplements, do hydrogen water, do this, do that. I create power routines to really objectively reverse that biological age.

Eva Sheie (10:42):
Do you live somewhere where you can swim outside all year long?

Dr. Van Thielen (10:44):
Yes. I fortunately do. I'm in Florida, Daytona Beach, Florida, so I do swim outside. It makes a big difference.

Eva Sheie (10:51):
So you're a sprinter, freestyler. What's your worst stroke?

Dr. Van Thielen (10:56):
Backstroke.

Eva Sheie (10:57):
Really? Yeah. I hate looking at the ceiling.

Dr. Van Thielen (11:02):
Yeah, all the clouds.

Eva Sheie (11:04):
Okay. So in terms of your medical practice, do you see patients in person? Do you just see them online? What does your day-to-day look like when you're helping people?

Dr. Van Thielen (11:15):
Since Covid, I got rid of brick and mortar. So right now I have private mentees, so I have two types of mentorships, one on one. I'm also in the midst of a six week virtual program, which we continue to repeat. So that's a small group, 10, 12 people. We got nine this time. And so what we do over six weeks, we have 12 calls, two calls per week, 90 minutes where we go through the whole, it's called limitless lab. And what it basically is, it's maximizing your performance through self-op optimization. And so it's a very affordable way to get to that next level. So whether you are an artist, a performer, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a professional, a doctor, I got a few doctors on this time, it doesn't matter. I can't really tell you how to improve your skill because I'm not a doctor, I mean, not that type of doctor, or I'm not a wrestler, or I'm not a finance guy, but what I do is I know how you can upgrade your body, your mind, and your life. So we go through seven steps and there's worksheets and workbooks, and I make people accountable. And after six weeks, the idea is that you created a power routine that gets you to the next level. And so that's what we're doing. It's very fun and people get a little bit out of their comfort zone and get to that next level. And so that's kind of what I do. I have private clients and I also do limited group consulting and coaching.

Eva Sheie (12:38):
How do people find you?

Dr. Van Thielen (12:40):
On my websites. Biohackingunlimited.com, my books are there, my mentorship programs, the Limitless Lab's there, keynote speaking page. So everything you want to know about me, my credentials too are on biohackingunlimited.com.

Eva Sheie (12:55):
So I assume at the beginning of a program like this, do you do a bunch of testing and labs? What does that look like?

Dr. Van Thielen (13:03):
Not necessarily during the virtual training, but we recommend those, right? So step four is where really from the seven steps, we start talking about upgrading the body and the mind. We're talking about health concepts. We start talking about objective measurements and what they should look like and what you should look for. And then integrating those tips and strategies and even technologies and then retesting, right? Because we want to not only see progress, we want to see the effectiveness of the strategies that we implement. So it's not just blood work that most people think, but based on what we're trying to achieve or what modalities we incorporate, there may brain testing, avi testing, that may be nitric oxide testing, telomere lightning testing, gut biome testing. So there's many, many parameters that we can include based on what we want to achieve or what the goal is.

Eva Sheie (13:53):
Do most people who come into this program with you already know a fair amount or do you find that they're just at zero and starting from scratch?

Dr. Van Thielen (14:02):
Well, we got a little bit of everything. I like to classify them in three categories. Number one is the people that are either in pain, they're overweight or they are diagnosed with some kind of condition. And so those people that're operating below ground zero, right? They're below normal. So the first step is regain control of your health, so we can back to normal. The second step is once we're back to normal, we need to optimize our health. So we need to incorporate lifestyle changes and modifications so that we can be strong and vital and at optimal health. And then only step three, only when we're in optimal health, that would be the ideal foundation to benefit from biohacking strategies and technologies. Now we want to do what's necessary to reverse that biological age. If we use those strategies in phase number one, the body's not going to respond, right? Because it's still putting out fires. It's in an emergency state, so you're not going to respond as well. So we need to guide people through those three stages in order to achieve that ultimate goal of being superhuman.

Eva Sheie (15:07):
Superhuman. What does it mean to be superhuman?

Dr. Van Thielen (15:11):
I think it's going beyond our genetic programming and not just living longer chronologically, but also quality of life. So I believe that today everybody easily can become a hundred years of age, but that's not really what it's all about. It's about being able to do the things a 40, 50-year-old can do at age a hundred. So it's the quality of life, it's the lifespan. So you want to be a hundred, but still be able to go swim or play golf or travel or enjoy or enjoy the grand, grand grandkids. So that's what it's all about. It's about the quality of life. And today that's a hundred percent possible and we can even measure it.

Eva Sheie (15:47):
How would you measure that?

Dr. Van Thielen (15:49):
Well, again, we got our chronological age, which is date of birth, and we need to start realizing that it's totally useless information, our date of birth, because it doesn't mean anything. Because we all know that person that is in their sixties and they're like walking zombies, they're almost dead because they got these two list of medications, they're in and out of the hospital, they look 85 and they're not going to live too long anymore. We all know that person. But then we also know the 90 year-old that is still very witty, that's independent living by him or herself, and is still playing golf. So 60, 90, the chronological age doesn't really say much about how we should feel or what we should be looking like. So it's about biological age, the age of our tissues and of our physiology and our biology, and we can measure that.

(16:34):
Like I said, telomeres has always been kind of the key words. Telomeres are the end caps of our chromosomes that protect our DNA in each and every cell. And so as the cell divides and as we age, these telomeres become shorter and shorter because the cell divides, until those telomeres are so short, the cell can no longer divide, and then the cell becomes useless. It becomes a senescent cell or a zombie cell. So the shorter that telomere, the older we are biologically. So what if we measured the telomere the length and then we implement three or six months or a year of biohacking technologies, we measure again, and we were able to not maybe only stop it and have the same length. That would be a good result already, but what if they were longer? That means biologically, we are reversing our age. We are making our tissues, our cells, our mitochondria, we're making everything younger and functioning better than it was a few years ago. So that's reversing our biological age.

Eva Sheie (17:30):
I think it starts to show up, I just went to my 30 year high school reunion and you could definitely see who was, on the outside, you can see who's taking care of themselves and who is not really. And you can kind of go a long time through your twenties and probably most of your thirties and some people in their forties not taking care of yourself. I think alcohol maybe is a great example of something that will make you age far faster than you should. I definitely want to stay younger than my biological age. And I think as we get older, that becomes more and more important too because we start to realize what we're losing.

Dr. Van Thielen (18:10):
Yeah. Well, most people think that we think that aging is linear and it's not. Aging is exponential, and so if you want to counteract aging, we got to do that exponentially also, not linear because we're going to fall short. Because like I just mentioned, between 20 and 30, we don't age that much, between 30 and 40, a little bit more, now between 60 and 70. So we got to see aging not as linear as we would look at years, but we got to look at it as exponentially. And so in order to counteract that, we got to do that exponentially also.

Eva Sheie (18:40):
I had never thought of that. What do you think the impact of GLP-1s is having on aging in particular?

Dr. Van Thielen (18:48):
When I teach also during the Limitless Lab or any client I have, yes, there are technologies and tools, and then there's biohacking, but again, like I said, if the foundations, if you're going to have the foundations in place when I'm not going to give you those strategies and technologies. We are going to incorporate foundations of health. It's about obviously what you eat, nutrient intake, but also about avoiding toxins. It's about clean and healthy water and plenty of water. It's about movements, it's about sunlight, it's about mindset. And so everybody heard about things, but hearing about it, it's not going to make you better. You actually got to implement those things in order to see the results. And so I help people creating those power routines, which are daily routines, five, 10, maybe 15 minutes that incorporate all those foundations, so that we have a foundation. And so many times it's about putting the body in a balanced state or homeostasis.

(19:42):
They're realizing that drugs don't cure, surgeries don't cure, injections don't cure. But also supplements don't cure, a healthy diet doesn't cure, only the body can heal itself. Because we got these 1.8 quadrillion chemical reactions going on in our body, and our body produces between 300, produces and recycles, otherwise, we would gain a lot of weight, produces between 300 and 400 atp per day, pounds of atp per day. So we can't phantom those numbers. And so to think that we can just intervene and have a positive outcome is actually laughable. And so what we need to do is realize that the body can heal itself, that intervening is just going to disrupt something, but it's not going to have any long-term positive effects. So what we need to do is just put the body in the correct or in the right condition so that it can heal itself. So we need to try to help it balance itself or give it the right tools to do so. And that's all I do. And whether you are a top athlete, or I'm working with a cancer patient, those foundations are the same.

Eva Sheie (20:43):
Are your power routines like habit stacking where you combine several things at the same time so that you're become more efficient.

Dr. Van Thielen (20:51):
So that's what I help to do with my clients. And during the Limitless Labs, we go through all the elements that are important. For each person, we use the same elements to construct their power routine, but it's going to be a little bit different for everybody. For example, if I want to get into the present moment or into a meditative state, there's many different tools to do that, and you may respond to meditation, but I tried it many times and I can't clear my mind. So that doesn't work for me. It works for you. What works for me is breathwork, because I can be so focused on one single thing that suddenly everything else disappears out of my mind and I'm in a meditative state by doing breathwork. And then other people like gratitude journaling or sit in a quiet place and stare at the ocean, whatever it is. So the power routine is the same elements, but it's going to be customized to what works for you. So that person can count on that power routine each and every day.

Eva Sheie (21:42):
So is this an example of a mini power routine? Every night I make my daughter do five square breaths in a row and it knocks her out. She goes to sleep within two minutes every time.

Dr. Van Thielen (21:53):
Whatever works for her.

Eva Sheie (21:53):
It's like the greatest trick in the world.

Dr. Van Thielen (21:56):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (21:59):
Yeah, totally settles her down almost instantly.

Dr. Van Thielen (22:03):
Perfect. That's great.

Eva Sheie (22:04):
Breathing is amazing.

Dr. Van Thielen (22:05):
Yes.

Eva Sheie (22:06):
Actually, about maybe 20 years ago, I had a psychiatrist who was really, really old school, he was not like a here's a prescription guy, and one day he actually said, hold on, and he started scribbling on the prescription pad and he handed it to me and it said, take 10 deep breaths.

Dr. Van Thielen (22:29):
That's funny.

Eva Sheie (22:31):
You are a keeper. I forgot his name, but he was from Alaska. He was like, he could deliver baby animals and then

Dr. Van Thielen (22:40):
Oh wow.

Eva Sheie (22:41):
Yeah, he was amazing.

Dr. Van Thielen (22:44):
Well, but the nature is all the answers, believe it or not.

Eva Sheie (22:47):
I know. We got to get back to that. I love what you're doing and it's really interesting, and I am glad that you came to talk to me today because I've heard a lot of things, I spend a lot of time in kind of the same spaces, and it's amazing to hear what's happening in other spaces and how you're really out in front. You probably are around a lot of people who think you, I'm guessing, I'm making assumptions here.

Dr. Van Thielen (23:13):
I'm trying to conventions, and I do talk on stages. I just did was just a faculty member of the A4M, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. So in Vegas I talked about molecular hydrogen, which is kind of unique because it's still a conventional type of medicine organization, even though they talk about longevity and anti-aging. So yeah, there was kind of revolutionary to be able to talk about molecular hydrogen on that stage.

Eva Sheie (23:39):
Aesthetics does crossover, I mean, most of my career has been on the aesthetic side of medicine, and it is the A4M where it crosses over into the stuff that you do and work on and think about. People who care about aesthetics also care about what's happening inside their body pretty often too. So there's a lot in common in there.

Dr. Van Thielen (24:00):
We can try to patch it the skin up from the outside, but the health comes from the inside. The glow comes from the inside.

Eva Sheie (24:06):
When you get close to 50, you know right away when you didn't drink enough water, you can see it on your face.

Dr. Van Thielen (24:11):
Yeah, that's right.

Eva Sheie (24:14):
It's very simple. Well, if someone's interested in learning more about what you're doing or doing a coaching program with you coaching, where should they look for more information?

Dr. Van Thielen (24:24):
Yes. I'm not a big social media guy that would give me a dopamine overload, but just my website, biohackingunlimited.com or MVT, that's my initials. Mike Van Thielen, MVT online.com, it's the same website, but that's where you find all my programs. If you have questions, you can schedule a 20 minute free Zoom call with me to see what's best for you or how it can help you. It doesn't cost anything, and all the resources are right there.

Eva Sheie (24:48):
What if we want to come race against you in the pool?

Dr. Van Thielen (24:51):
No, you can do that too. Just set it up.

Eva Sheie (24:54):
Okay. Go to Florida and ask for MVT.

Dr. Van Thielen (24:58):
That's right.

Eva Sheie (24:59):
Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Mike.

Dr. Van Thielen (25:01):
You're welcome, Eva. Thanks for having me.

Eva Sheie (25:05):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at MeettheDoctorpodcast.com. Meet the Doctor is made with love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.