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Jan. 21, 2026 - Owen Shroyer Live
01:00:32
Dr. Kelly Victory On How To Age Gracefully

The great Dr. Kelly Victory talks about the keys to health and how to age gracefully.Show more Find all The Wellness Company Products at TWC.health/OWEN Show less

Participants
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owen shroyer
winn 21:54
Appearances
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dr kelly victory
04:46
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Speaker Time Text
Maximizing Looks Within Limits 00:11:44
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Hey, welcome to another episode of Ask the Doctor.
Today's great guest is Dr. Kelly Victory.
I'm really excited for this conversation.
As always, we're brought to you by the wellness company, TWC.health slash Owen.
We're going to talk about how to age gracefully today.
And there are a lot of products that the wellness company offers that can help in that endeavor from skin to hair to recovery.
And so we've been talking about in kind of the media world, a little bit of politics, culture, but looks maxing and trying to get the most out of yourself.
Try to be the best physical, attractive person that you can be beyond maybe just exercise, weightlifting, physique, skin, hair, shining, all of this stuff.
We're going to talk about it today with Dr. Kelly Victory.
And, you know, Dr. Victory, when I have all these great guests on the show, the team of doctors at the Wellness Company, the one thing that always shocks me and it shocks the audience, you guys all look great.
You guys all look great.
You don't, you know, you don't need to age yourself here, but let me just say, I know how old you guys are and you all look great for your age.
And so I'm sure there's a lot of women tuning in today and they say, wow, if I can look as good as Dr. Victory at that age, I need to know what to do.
Was there ever, I guess I'll start like this.
Was there ever a time in your life where you kind of decided that you were going to think about this, that you decided I want to maintain skin health.
I want to maintain hair health.
I want to maintain physical health and I'm going to start making measurements.
Was it always a lifestyle thing for you?
Or was there, was there a moment in time where you said, okay, I really need to start thinking about this and focusing on this?
unidentified
Well, first, thanks very much for having me, Owen.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
I am both honored and flattered that you have me as your guest on the aging gracefully segment.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
I have to tell you, it felt like the right thing to do.
unidentified
I hope I can do it and do it justice.
Aging is not for sissies, let me tell you.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
It's tough and it really gives your ego a challenge certain days.
unidentified
For me, I have to say, health and wellness has been a lifestyle from the time, as long back as I can remember.
I was always very, very active as a child.
I was a serious athlete, participated in sports.
Over time, certainly I paid more attention to things like nutrition.
But again, relatively early on, I was not a late adopter to that, even back in college, certainly graduate school and medical school.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And through my training, I paid a lot of attention to diet.
unidentified
And I do believe fundamentally that your looks largely are a reflection of your overall health and wellness.
There are certainly people who fake it.
And I think that's, I want to talk about that a lot during this segment.
A lot of what we are seeing happening right now is people maximizing looks without paying attention to what is underneath it.
What is actually that, you know, the health or ill health that's underneath it.
If you pay attention to, I hate to say it doesn't sound very sexy, but to the basics of great nutrition, regular exercise, adequate sleep, stress mitigation, those sorts of things.
For most people, aging gracefully will happen.
You will do pretty well.
If you are constantly burning the candle at both ends, eating a lousy diet, trying to make it up with, as I say, smoke and Maybelline rather than good diet and adequate sleep, ultimately that will wear through.
Certainly people in Hollywood have access to a lot of stuff that I simply choose not to do.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
I choose, I've had so many surgeries myself that were not elective, orthopedic issues or other issues that I would never personally choose to have plastic surgery for vanity's sake.
unidentified
That's just a personal choice.
I know that as a surgeon myself, that there are no surgical procedures that are not without risks.
So I personally made the choice that I would do everything I could.
within the scope of health and wellness to keep looking as good as I could, but that I wouldn't go down the path and I won't go down the path of a quote facelift or other things of those sorts.
But I think for me, I've had a lifelong commitment to it.
As time goes on, we've learned more.
We've learned a lot more about nutrition and a lot of the things, and we'll get into this hopefully, you know, things like peptides and all of these other things that we are understanding now can play a really significant role in slowing down the aging process.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Well, we're definitely going to talk about peptides.
And it's actually a conversation that comes up with me and my friends as, you know, I'm in my mid-30s.
That's when I think, I think that's when most people start to, you know, get that humbling aging factor, probably in their 30s, let's say, maybe depending on lifestyle.
But, you know, I've got friends that talked about when they had an option for a specific surgery.
You just mentioned orthopedic surgery.
And that's one of them.
When they had an option for a surgery and instead they went with a peptide or a more natural route.
And this is really what I think the wellness company does so good with is providing the alternative, not just the alternative to, let's say, mainstream pharmaceutical products per se, or what you might get prescribed at a doctor's office, a hospital, what have you.
But yeah, there's also kind of longevity stuff that people might think, oh, I need to have a cosmetic surgery or I need to have this surgery.
And there are other options.
And so we can talk about that.
I do have to ask, because you said something that kind of caught my curiosity there.
What do you mean by fake it?
Are you talking about, is there something specific you meant when you said faking it?
unidentified
Well, what I mean is things like, for example, you can make it appear that your skin is youthful by injecting, you know, fillers.
You can, you can actually, that's what I mean by faking it.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Straight up cosmetic surgeries that are covering up what's really going on, basically.
unidentified
Correct.
Whether you're applying something on the outside in the form of a cosmetic or you're doing injections, whether it's Botox or fillers or whatever else they are doing.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Because I hear these girls and they're starting it so young now.
I don't know if you've seen this video.
There's this young girl.
She was, I think she said she was 21.
And I mean, she's a good looking, she's a good looking woman, but she's 21.
She's had all kinds of Botox and fillers.
And people go follow her on social media and they think she's 30.
They think she's 40.
And it's because she's had all this cosmetic stuff.
And you can say, oh, you look good.
You kind of have like a presentable face for camera, but it's obviously aged her.
So is this something?
But so I hear these girls talk about it and they, and I don't know if this is something that they're kind of coming up with with their own head or if doctors are telling them this, but they're like, oh, no, this is actually healthy for me.
The Botox is healthy for me.
The fillers are healthy for me.
Is there any truth to that?
Or is that just a sales pitch?
unidentified
The answer is Owen, we don't know.
Use of Botox for cosmetics and certainly use of fillers is something that really has happened over the past 30 years.
As a result, we don't have any 80-year-old women who started doing Botox in their 20s.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
We don't know.
unidentified
We don't know what's going to happen to that girl.
That's the truth.
And if anyone tells you otherwise, they're being dishonest.
We simply don't have that data yet.
I would submit to you that I think there's far more chance that it's going to go sideways, that it's not going to do well.
You know, fillers are, they are synthetic materials.
They break down over time.
But if you, it's one thing to say you start injecting them maybe in your 50s or 60s, you know, so you do it for a couple of decades.
Maybe you start at 50 and you stop when you're 70 and you do it twice a year or three times a year.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
That's different from somebody who's starting as this girl is in her 20s and she's got maybe five decades that she's planning on doing it or more.
unidentified
We just don't have that data.
I'm not a big fan of a lot of this.
And I think it really gets back to a cultural or perhaps philosophical issue.
I take pride in looking as good as I can, working with what I've got, making the most of what I've got kind of thing, saying, you know, I maintain my weight because it's fully within my control.
I maintain a, you know, my muscle mass because it's fully within my control, what I can do.
You know, I, I eat well because it helps my skin to look good or whatever.
Once you, you know, there, but the reality is I'm almost almost 65.
I turn 65 next month.
Okay.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
I didn't have to ask, guys.
I didn't have to ask.
unidentified
No, no.
I turned 65, you know, in a week.
So, you know, to me, there's aging is a beautiful thing.
It's part of the reason I have the gravitas that I have.
The experience, I wouldn't want to get rid of the experiences I've had.
I wouldn't want to get rid of the knowledge base that I have.
All of, you know, the insight that I have is a result of 65 years.
And the wrinkles I have are also the result of 65 years.
And I take pride in that.
So I think there's almost a philosophical idea that you cannot stop aging and you shouldn't want to.
You should want to be the best version of yourself at any given time.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
You know, now, obviously, I sit here before you today.
unidentified
Obviously, I have makeup on.
I try to do what I, you know, I try to maximize my looks as much as I can within a certain area.
And everyone has to decide for him or herself what those boundaries are.
So yes, you know, I do my hair and makeup and nails.
And I, I, so I, I'm not saying that I think that doing anything to improve your looks is an abomination.
I'm simply saying that everyone has to decide, you know, really what are the limits and where does it stop being healthy and where does it start being unhealthy, both physically and psychologically.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
And, you know, some people more vain than others, obviously.
You know, I'm, I'm probably, for somebody that's on camera, I'm probably on the lower spectrum of vanity when it comes to looks for people that are actually on camera every day.
But for the average person, yeah, you know, I look in the mirror.
I want to make sure my beard looks good.
My hair looks good.
I notice if I have a blemish, but like I said, I'm probably, I'm probably one of the only people in media that has never put any makeup on when I when I go on air, even if I do have a little, you know, a little blemish on my face or something.
I'm just like, oh, there it is.
But, you know, when we talk about, there's two things I do want to talk about.
One, you brought up diet.
And I want to talk about something specifically I noticed for men.
I want to know if it's the same for women.
But when we talk about wrinkles, specifically on the face, you know, there's a bunch of different treatments.
And I know you guys have products at the wellness company.
I'll pull some of these up here in a second.
Alternating Heat and Cold 00:04:25
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
But there's things out there that you can do that I've been reading about lately.
And that's, okay, applying cold or, you know, sticking your face for a while, there was kind of viral to stick your face in a bowl of ice water.
I did start to apply that tactic in the morning.
I'll either wake up.
This is what I did this morning.
I'll either wake up and just hop right in a cold shower to just like shock myself awake if I need to get going.
Or if I've kind of got time in the morning to kind of just take things slow, I'll fill up the, I'll fill up my sink with cold water and stick my face in it for about 60 seconds or so.
And this is theoretically, this is supposed to help with aging.
Hollywood has been doing this forever, you know, before any of this stuff even existed.
This has been going on in Hollywood.
I also read, and this is where I'm a little skeptical.
I also read that heat, though, can maybe have the opposite effect.
And I'm somebody that sits in the sauna a lot.
Most people prefer a hot shower.
What do you know?
What do you know about, you know, when we're dealing with wrinkles on the face, you know, around your eyes and such?
Is there really something there?
Are we thinking about this?
You know, heat, cold, is there anything you've done over the years?
unidentified
Well, I think I have not done that, but I think that there's some good science around it, particularly the cold.
Cold, you know, a cold and for brief periods of time like that, absolutely.
Number one, it decreases inflammation.
So the quickest way to get rid of a lot of puffiness that happens overnight or from lack of sleep, whether you have bags under your eyes, is cold.
And so ice is a great way to do it.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
Ice also, you know, it constricts blood vessels, so it will get rid of a lot of that red blotchiness that people suffer from without question.
unidentified
We also have topicals.
For example, at the Wellness Company, we have a topical that includes ivermectin and azolec acid that is actually very good at doing the same thing, decreasing redness, decreasing inflammation, decreasing puffiness.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
But without question, there's, there you go, these ivermectin, by the way, has been FDA approved to treat rosacea for decades, that redness that some people yes.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Wow.
unidentified
So applied topically.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
You know, a lot of people, you know, obviously have heard about using ivermectin orally to treat everything from parasites to COVID to cancer.
But applied topically, it actually does a really good job at fighting rosacea, which is a bacterial infection, as well as decreasing inflammation and redness, you know, just from engorgement of those vessels.
But yes, I think that ice and ice baths are great.
unidentified
I was an athlete, as I said, particularly when I was younger, and I would stand in buckets of ice water after running a marathon.
Helps to really decrease that inflammation.
There's also a lot of science about alternating heat and cold.
In other words, the cold plunge followed by a hot shower or by a sauna or sauna followed by a cold plunge.
Those what we call microstressors.
Stress we always think of as a bad thing, or people associate the idea of stress, too much stress in my life.
Stress actually on the body is a good thing.
It's part of what weightlifting does.
It's what, you know, HIIT training does, high-intensity training.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
You're talking about physical stress versus mental stress.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
Correct.
Correct.
unidentified
Physical stress on the body, microstressors that actually push your body to repair.
They push your body to heal.
It improves the functioning of the immune system.
And so much of our health and wellness comes down to your immune system.
Hopefully we'll get into that as well.
So I think there is some real science behind the hot and cold, particularly alternating them.
I should do more of that because I think I have access to a sauna and I should take advantage of it more often.
Dietary Cravings and Side Effects 00:10:40
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
I hate the cold plunge.
I've been trying to move back to.
I've been trying to do more of it because there is so much science behind it.
It's really just undeniable.
Almost try, I tried to convince myself.
What I did was I tried to convince myself that there was no science behind it.
But the more I researched it, the more I was like, no, there's definitely science behind it.
And just like anything else, you need to have discretion, obviously.
unidentified
Correct.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Anything else?
You need to know what you're doing.
By the way, when we flash some of these products from the wellness company on the screen today that we're talking about, remember to use coupon code Owen for a discount at checkout.
Coupon code Owen gets you 10% off these products.
So just remember that, folks, when we're talking about this stuff.
And so another thing that you mentioned was the diet.
And this is something that I noticed.
And maybe it might be different for women and men, but this is something that I noticed from diet.
You know, when I was in high school, and I was always a bit of a, I was always a bit of a party animal.
Okay.
But when I was in high school, the biggest difference was, you know, I'm not living with my parents anymore.
My mom isn't trying to make sure I'm eating healthy.
You're in college, you're broke, you're eating fast food, you're drinking more beer.
Yeah, a lot of beer.
And the one thing that I noticed, and it took so long, this is what's crazy is that it took so long.
So for young guys listening to this, and maybe you can talk about what happens with this with women, because I'm sure there's some differences.
I noticed that it was like once I got into college, because I was always exercising, but I was drinking this beer, and I would suggest not drinking any beer.
I don't drink beer anymore, but I was drinking beer and I was eating fast food.
And I lost my abs.
And I was never somebody that was overweight or fat, but it was like I couldn't see my abs anymore.
It was like they were gone.
And it became this struggle kind of in my 20s to do that.
And when I cut the beer out and when I cut the fast food out and maybe seed oils too, but that was a little later in life.
It was like, oh, okay, here we go.
I'm starting to get that.
I'm starting to get that shred again.
I think everybody kind of understands maybe what I'm talking about, especially if you're into these things.
I started to kind of get that cut, get that lean again.
It's crazy to think that just a few decisions that you make in your diet, maybe just a few decisions can literally make all the difference in the world when it comes to physique, maybe when it comes to weight.
So for guys listening, or if there's young guys listening, hey, look, I like playing beer pong and drinking games and everything else.
I get it.
I'm not telling you not to have fun, whatever, when you're a kid in college.
But no, it was like, it was weird to me because I was always a thin guy, always pretty lean, and my exercise routine didn't change, but that was it.
It was just, I was drinking beer, I was eating fast food, and I couldn't get that cut.
I couldn't get that lean that I was looking for.
And once I removed those two things from my diet, it was like, okay, there it is.
That's really all it took.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
Well, I think what you discovered, perhaps without knowing it, is that one of the quickest ways to drop some weight and to change your body composition is to limit carbohydrates.
unidentified
We have far, far, far been too reliant on carbohydrates as a mainstay for our diets.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And we were frankly fed a bill of goods that certain things were healthy as long as they were, you know, low fat.
unidentified
For example, we were told that you could eat an entire bag of pretzels.
You know, you probably are too young to remember the Snackwell cookie fat when they were fat free.
So people felt like they could eat an entire box of that.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
I never buy that by the way.
Fat free, I don't trust.
unidentified
Well, and you shouldn't, because if you think about it, Owen, there are really, you know, three main buckets of ingredients that are in any food: protein, fats, and carbohydrates.
If they totally eliminate one of the buckets, no fat, they're going to make it up with something else.
And generally, what they make it up with is carbohydrates in the form of sugar or sugar, some type of sugar additive, whether it's high-fructose corn syrup, regular sugar, whatever it is.
And sugar is sugar.
I don't care if it's honey or brown sugar, you know, or whatever it is, it's sugar and it's carbohydrates.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And that has added, really contributed significantly, not only to the obesity crisis that we are facing in this country, to be clear, 40% of Americans are either overweight or obese.
unidentified
40%.
And that includes tragically children.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
40% of adolescents are now pre-diabetic.
unidentified
That is not only unsustainable from a financial perspective, economic perspective, but we are relegating these children to a horrible, horrible quality of life.
And a lot of that boils down to, well, two things.
Number one, over-reliance on carbohydrates, because I want to get back to what we're talking about with regard to your own experience.
When you eliminated beer, beer is, you know, very, very high in carbs and eliminating fast food.
Fast food is high in carbs and it's high in pure sugar.
They know how to make that stuff addictive.
They've scientifically researched it.
It is engineered to be addictive.
They know how much salt to add to sweet foods and how much sugar to add to salty foods so that you never get tired of eating them, so that you have an insatiable appetite for those french fries or the Doritos or whatever it is.
So I'm not saying, I'm not sitting here suggesting carnivore.
I personally, you know, am not a proponent of that necessarily.
But I do think limiting carbohydrates is the best way to actually improve your health.
Carbohydrates and sugar in particular are pro-inflammatory.
So a lot of times when you wake up, they cause you to retain water.
So when you have that, you know, bender, that food bender, whether it's on Thanksgiving and you end up eating a bunch of pie and stuffing and all the stuff that you don't normally eat regularly, and you wake up the next morning and get on the scale and you've gained six pounds, four of it is pure water.
You just are bloated.
Carbohydrates and sugar make you retain water.
They're pro-inflammatory and they make it impossible to see things like your muscles that are underneath there because you end up with a layer of fat and a layer of water that makes your body look very bloated.
So absolutely, I saw that you put up there, and I will talk for a second about drop just because it is so much in the news right now.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
The idea that, you know, millions of Americans are on GLP-1 injectable drugs right now.
unidentified
What I mean by that is the Ozempics, Wagovis, those things that people take on a weekly basis.
They will cause you to lose weight, but they are not without significant side effects, potentially life-altering side effects.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
And we know.
I think, quite frankly, I think we can see the side effects.
And a lot of these people that lose the weight so fast, it almost ages them in kind of a shocking way.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
Yes.
unidentified
Well, it's what, you know, when they say Ozempic face or Ozempic, but it's because, oh, and you're not only losing.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
I don't want to know about that one.
unidentified
Yeah, no, you're not going to, because you lose not only fat, but you lose muscle.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And what they are not telling people, and the reality is, it's one thing to lose skeletal muscle, quadriceps or biceps, where you can go back to the gym and try to gain those back.
unidentified
You also lose cardiac muscle and you aren't regaining that.
You lose heart muscle.
Think about that.
That is terrifying and not a good thing.
You're putting yourself potentially at risk for downstream heart issues.
We also know that people have developed pancreatitis, sudden blindness, gastric emptying issues.
So it's one thing if you're that person who has 100 pounds to lose, you know, and you're on the verge of having a heart attack, a stroke, having diabetes, then the risk benefit calculation for that person might make sense.
For the average person who needs to lose 8 or 12 or 20 pounds, injectable drugs are not the answer.
The risk is too great.
We have this product drop at the wellness company.
It is an oral version of these peptides of a GLP1.
It's called retitrutide.
It's taken on a daily basis orally.
So no injection, but because it's taken daily, it allows you to control the amount of the drug that you have in your body more consistently rather than having a big spike once a week when you take the injection.
You are able to maintain that level.
We've had fundamentally zero side effects.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
If taken as directed, people have not suffered from anything serious.
unidentified
If people have developed nausea, they simply decrease their dose.
Because it's taken orally, you can titrate the dose to your, you know, to what works for you, but it provides the same effects as the injectables, namely, it decreases hunger.
It eliminates that what I call food noise, that constant chatter that for me is saying, you know, eat the cookies, eat the cookies.
You know, I happen to really love sweets.
So it is mind over matter for me.
I just don't eat them because they are not good for me and I don't like the outcome when I do, but it's tough.
And so retatrutide or drop helps to control those cravings.
And I think for most people, it gives them that little bit of liquid willpower not to give in and to stick to their goals.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
And, you know, sometimes too, and this is the psychological aspect of it.
Sometimes when you're making a decision, whether it's, you know, something like this where you're taking, whether it's, you know, like you said, drop or it's something you're doing in life.
It's like, if you commit to one thing, it kind of forces you to commit to the larger thing, if that makes sense.
It's like, okay, I've already made this decision to do this.
Fasting And Balance 00:13:59
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
So I need to stick to this plan with all the other things that I'm doing.
And, you know, weight loss is obviously a challenge for a lot of people.
And so it's like you're looking for shortcuts, but sometimes the shortcuts can also have damaging effects.
So you want to try to balance that out.
And, you know, one thing, because look, if you've got plenty of money, right?
I mean, let's say what it is.
If you've got plenty of money, then get whatever you want, right?
Just get whatever you want.
You've got the whole, the whole world is your oyster to decide how you want to handle these things.
But you know what?
Not everybody has a bunch of money.
So you look at alternatives.
You look at see what you can afford.
One thing is free.
And that's called fasting.
And I think that there's so much, there really is so much science behind fasting.
It's really incredible.
And, you know, it sounds fasting sounds really hard.
It sounds really brutal.
And you're like, I don't want to starve and all of this stuff.
And there's ways that you can do it.
I think there's ways that you can do it that aren't so challenging, that aren't so brutal on your willpower.
The one thing I say to people when I talk about fasting is my trick is just be so busy that you don't even have time.
That's kind of what happened to me yesterday.
I didn't even realize it.
I look up and my day was finished.
It was about eight o'clock at night and I was just dealing with work and busy and gym all day.
And then I wake up, I'm finished with my workday.
It's eight o'clock at night.
And I'm like, oh, I haven't even eaten today.
So I basically unintentionally did like an 18, 20 hour fast or whatever it was.
So, you know, that's just kind of a trick.
Just if you want to try a fast, find a day where you're really busy or find a day where you just schedule a bunch of stuff, have your whole plate full that day.
Nope, no pun intended because that's like a reverse pun, but fill your plate that day.
And then the next thing you know, the day is done.
You haven't eaten in 24 hours.
You just did your first 24-hour fast.
And you might even see the difference.
You might literally see the difference in 24 hours.
A lot of people do.
But what about, I mean, are there any?
Obviously, you don't want to take it to the extreme, but to me, it's like fasting.
This has been known for, dare I say, thousands of years?
unidentified
Correct?
Correct.
You know, the data on the benefits of fasting, oh, and are irrefutable.
I'm a hardcore faster.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
I live by what people refer to as intermittent fasting.
unidentified
It's really limited food window, meaning I eat only during an eight hour period of the day and I refrain from eating for 16 hours.
For most people, that means, you know, I tend to eat more.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
It's like a keto process, like ketosis.
unidentified
Well, you don't even get into ketosis in that.
It's too short a period.
What you're doing is, you know, you're trying to go for 14 to 16 hours without eating anything to, number one, give your gut a rest.
And number two, it improves insulin sensitivity.
Okay.
It's not to lose weight because I maintain my weight, you know, doing that.
But the problem is that the average American eats their last bite of popcorn, you know, at 11 o'clock at night, and then they eat breakfast at 6 or 6.30 in the morning.
So they're only going, you know, seven, eight hours without eating.
We eat constantly.
Other cultures that have far lower rates of certain diseases, including diabetes and cancer, typically go for 14, 16, 18 hours without eating.
And it helps your body, number one, with insulin sensitivity.
Longer fasts, of which I'm also a huge proponent, meaning two to three day or even five day fasts, which I do regularly, the data on those are overwhelming in terms of it kicks your body, number one, into ketosis, where you start actually preferentially burning fat.
There's no more sugar to burn and your body will always burn the easy thing first.
So you get into actually burning fat stores and we all have them, even if it's not on your thighs or your arms, you've got fat around your liver, around your internal organs.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
So starting to burn some of that fat.
unidentified
And more importantly, perhaps it kicks your body into autophagia where it starts eating up, gobbling up old, decrepit, useless, dysfunctional cells.
It kind of self-cleans.
It vacuums out all of the crap that you otherwise are hanging on to.
It is one of the best ways to get rid of precancerous cells because those are the cells your body is going to identify and go, well, that's abnormal.
That's not useful.
But it tends to go into that mode much more effectively during periods of fasting.
And as you said, this has been known.
They may not have understood the science behind it, but many religions have fasting, prolonged fasting, as part of their annual ritual or ceremony.
They understood on some other level the benefits of fasting, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally.
And the way I manage it, I'll be very honest, I don't like fasting, the prolonged fasting.
16, 8 is a lifestyle for me and it's easy.
I don't even think about it.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
Prolonged fasting is hard.
unidentified
Hunger is a form of pain and it's uncomfortable.
The thing is that is true, however, if you want to try, is it it goes away.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
It passes.
unidentified
It's transient.
So staying busy 100%, drinking water or tea or black coffee, getting out and walking, and just saying to yourself, it will pass.
You're not going to die, Kelly.
You are not going to starve to death.
You know, you're going to be just fine.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
She's going to be there tomorrow.
All right.
unidentified
It will be exactly.
It will be there tomorrow.
Everything in your refrigerator will be there tomorrow.
All the options will be the same at the grocery store next week.
And it is so good for you overall.
And in fact, Walter Longo, who's a PhD at USC, who won a Nobel Prize on some of the science behind fasting, has shown that doing three cycles in a row, once a month for three months in a row of a prolonged fast, meaning three to five days, once a month for three months, turns your body clock back by 2.7 years.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
If you just said, I'm going to set aside three days a month, for three months in a row to do this and drink water, you are not taking in juice, nothing with calories, but water, plain tea, black coffee.
I drink gobs of black coffee when I'm fasting and I stay active.
They keep people saying, oh my gosh, can you still work out?
I say, not only can I, I work out more than ever because I'm trying to stay busy.
So I spend extra time at the gym.
I might not work out quite as hard, but I spend a lot of time.
I get an extra yoga class, do a Pilates class, take long, long walks.
And I'm a huge, huge fan of fasting.
The science behind it is overwhelming.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Well, and you just said something that's so, it's like we like to think about how do we extend our life or, you know, we understand mortality, but how many people are actually looking at it like that and saying, okay, can I really, can I buy an extra year?
Can I buy an extra five years maybe?
Who wouldn't?
It's nothing you necessarily, you know, I can't go somewhere with a dollar and say, hey, give me more life.
No, it's decisions that you make along the way.
And I remember I had a class in high school.
It was kind of, it was kind of considered a goof off class.
It was a health class with Coach Scott, who was just an awesome guy, really fit guy, ran track, coach track, still teaches in St. Louis.
But, you know, it's kind of considered a goofy, you know, goof off class when you're a senior to go in there.
But I actually learned a lot in that class.
And I learned about some of the, some of the studies that have been around for a long time.
Like, hey, you know, you can buy potentially years on your life with just 30 minutes of exercise a day, years, potentially.
And then different diet stuff.
It's like this, this stuff has been known forever.
So it's kind of like, if you rethink, if you rethink this and it's not like, hey, I want to look like a bodybuilder or I want to look like a supermodel and start thinking, you know, I want to extend my life, right?
I want to make sure I'm around so I can spend more time with my kids, my grandkids, whatever it is, spend a year out sailing, whatever it is that you're into, hiking another mountain, that stuff.
So you kind of rethink it like that away from the vanity aspect and more into the longevity aspect.
I think that's also kind of a good motivational factor.
And you brought up this fasting stuff.
We've just RFK Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement, we've just basically flipped the food pyramid, right?
We all, we all, this, this news broke earlier this year.
We're flipping the food pyramid.
It was always a lie, whatever.
They really tried to push that in the 90s.
It was kind of not, wasn't really talked about as much in the 2000s.
But if you were around in the 90s, you kind of remember it was like everywhere.
It was in the classroom.
unidentified
in the textbooks.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
They'd run these commercials.
They'd show you the food pyramid.
Oh, it turns out it wasn't really necessarily the right thing.
What about the idea?
And I'm not, hey, look, you know, to each their own, but what about the concept even of three meals a day?
You know, it's kind of this new thing that's been adapted in the modern Western world.
Are we eventually going to learn that, hey, you know what?
Three meals a day, that's not really a staple for a healthy diet either.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
I think you're spot on.
It was absolutely artificially created to accommodate what we decided was a typical work week, you know, that you'd get up, you'd work a certain time, take a break in the middle.
So, you know, and it might have worked for our forefathers who are very, very, very active.
unidentified
They're up at five in the morning, getting ready to go out and till fields and, you know, do hard manual labor.
So they needed to.
And by the way, those same forefathers didn't get up and have a big bowl of cornflakes or, you know, Captain Crunch.
They had bacon and eggs and protein, high fat, high protein.
They'd go out and work.
They'd come in and have a similar kind of a lunch and then they'd come home dead tired and have a relatively small dinner and go to bed.
So, but the three meal a day thing worked for people who, number one, were doing tremendous amounts of physical labor on a daily basis.
If you adopt what I'm talking about, the intermittent fasting or limited food window, you can't eat three meals a day.
You almost by definition are down to two meals.
And that's part of why I think it works.
It is a healthier way to go.
Americans eat constantly.
Remember, we were also fed this idea that you need to snack constantly to keep your blood sugar level, to keep your blood sugar from crashing.
That simply isn't the case.
Your body maintains homeostasis.
Your blood sugar should not vary significantly throughout a period of time.
And it won't if you eat the right things.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
The thing that makes your blood sugar very spike and then drop is eating what?
unidentified
Sugar.
If you eat a Snickers bar, your blood sugar will peak and then drop off and then you feel hungry again.
So it's this perpetuate, this self-perpetuating cycle of wanting to eat more.
If we eat less, eliminate those refined, highly processed foods, and eliminate largely any added sugar, you won't have those spikes and valleys.
Remarkably, you end up feeling less hungry.
And I think there are many people, myself included, who've gone to a two meal a day or even what we call OMAD, one meal a day.
There are many people who do better just eating one meal a day.
It by definition puts them into an intermittent fasting.
They have a limited food window.
So their overall insulin sensitivity improves.
Their body composition improves.
By that, I mean you lose body fat.
It makes it easier to maintain lean muscle.
You sleep better.
Cortisol levels, your stress hormone drops.
There are all of these benefits to it.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And I think the people who pushed, for example, the importance of, you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day was largely the cereal lobby.
unidentified
It was the people.
It's big food.
That's who's honestly is pushing this.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
They want you to eat another bowl of Captain Crunch, have another Pop-Tart, you know, this idea that, and truly, Americans are the only culture, even if you eat breakfast, look at what other countries eat for breakfast.
unidentified
You know, in Japan, in China, it's, you know, rice and fish.
It's, you know, in other countries, in Germany, it's, you know, sausages and cheese.
Even in England, you know, they again are eating baked beans, you know, fried tomatoes, sausages, salmon.
This idea of getting up and eating a big sugar bomb, you know, a croissant or a donut or a Pop-Tart, you've set your day off on the wrong foot.
Debate Over SNAP Benefits 00:03:32
unidentified
You're going to get a massive insulin surge with a subsequent drop.
and your day is going to tumble on and you end up fighting hunger and fighting, you know, making bad choices for the rest of the day.
And much of it, Owen, was driven by big ag and big food.
It certainly was back in the 60s, the sugar lobby paid researchers at Harvard to say that what was causing obesity and heart disease was fat, saturated fat, butter, meat.
They knew darn well it was sugar.
But the scientists at Harvard either out and out falsified the studies or turned a blind eye to certain of the data and didn't publish it.
But we know now that that was bought and paid for by the sugar lobby who didn't want people to know the problem people is sugar.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Well, and I could go down so many different examples of that just from the coverage that I do in the political world, the news world.
There's so many different stories like that.
It actually ends up blowing your mind.
The one that we saw recently when there was this debate over SNAP benefits, you talk about big food.
There was this big debate over SNAP benefits.
And what people came to find out was why are all these junk food products in the SNAP benefits, right?
It's like, why, why, you don't need to eat this stuff.
It's not healthy.
But then you find out, oh, yes, you know, big food, these big companies were lobbying in DC, lobbying in Congress to extend the SNAP benefits so they could get their Coca-Colas or Soda Pop, whatever, so they could get their favorite bag of chips, all this other candy junk food.
And so when RFK Jr. was kind of attacking that head on, the same thing happened.
And the big food lobby came in and started throwing money into the political world, now into the social media world.
And we saw these people kind of promoting, oh, we need to extend SNAP benefits and stuff.
Those were paid campaigns.
Those were literally paid lobby campaigns.
You know, I have a little intimate information with that, but everybody kind of saw it, especially if you're on social media.
It's like, no, this has been going on for a long time.
And so, of course, when you've got whatever the number is of dollars that go out for these SNAP benefits, well, when 50% of that is going right back into these big food companies, well, of course, of course they don't want to see their numbers drop.
I mean, that's just, that's just, that's just raw numbers and economics right there.
So they figure, hey, let's lobby to keep the SNAP benefits, you know, feeding people their favorite chips and sodas where RFK Jr. was trying to stop it.
I don't know.
I don't know where that ended up.
I think that that fight is still ongoing right now in DC.
But it's like, yeah, that's how this stuff works.
unidentified
Well, a couple of things.
Number one, I absolutely support the idea that we have limited or eliminated that food allowance allowance with SNAP benefits.
To be clear, people who are on food subsidies, who are on the dole, who require taxpayer dollars to subsidize the food for themselves and their family are largely also on the dole when it comes to health care.
In other words, we are not only paying for their food, we are paying for those same people's health care.
Raw Milk vs. Pasteurized 00:05:56
unidentified
So it behooves us as a tax base to say, look, I don't want, I'm not going to buy your Doritos and your donuts and your Coca-Cola because I don't want to pay for your diabetes and your heart disease and your osteoarthritis.
And we're going to do both.
So it's not meant to be punitive.
simply saying look we have a vested interest in maintaining your health as well as you know because we're on the hook for all of this and we can't sustain this but to be clear i am very very supportive in general of what bobby kennedy is doing at hhs i believe that the food pyramid absolutely needed to be revamped i think it's significantly better than it was before that said don't think for a minute that these same outside sources Owen,
and meaning these outside influences, whether it's big ag, you know, the dairy farmers, whoever else, aren't still at play.
Something I'm not in support of with regard to the new guidelines is this idea that whole milk, returning whole milk, this big bug about Buzz about returning whole milk.
To be honest, the data are pretty clear that large amounts of milk intake increased your risk of certain cancers, particularly prostate cancer in men.
Human beings are the only animal on the planet that continues to drink milk after it's weaned.
Other mammals stop drinking milk once they are weaned from their mothers.
Milk is intended as a fast growth way to give immunity from the mother to the infant, but it's a rapid growth product.
And all rapid growth products fundamentally can end up causing cancer down the road in addition to obesity.
I suspect, I was not in the room, but Kelly Victory's suspicion is that this new, you know, elevating milk and whole milk and all this talk about it was a concession from Brooke Rollins, secretary of the AG, to the dairy farmers in exchange for the idea that we were removing cereal from the bottom of the food pyramid.
I guarantee that the dairy farmers were freaking out saying, wait a minute, cereal is the number one reason why children drink milk.
And if we all of a sudden are telling parents, don't give your children cereal and we're removing it from SNAP and we're removing it from the school breakfast programs, people are going to stop drinking milk.
We can't have this.
And I'm guessing that because it isn't based on science, there's no great science that says whole milk is awesome for your child.
Water is awesome for your child.
Okay.
That's what's great for your child.
Unnon-sugared drinks.
So I guess, and this is what bothers me, is I still think that there's a lot of dealing behind, you know, back alley deals that get made that determine what ends up on the pyramid and what doesn't.
And that bothers me, particularly because Bobby Kennedy and HHS have claimed, and I think largely they've stuck to it, but that they are going to go based on the science, not based on these outside forces.
So somebody needs to show me the data, show me that study that says whole milk is really great for kids.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
You know, that's interesting.
I hadn't heard that before, and it makes sense to me.
And I do want to get to what I think is going to be the heaviest topic of discussion today, but I will say the one thing I'm curious if there's a difference between what you're talking about and pasteurized milk versus raw milk.
Because I probably was barely drinking really any milk at all in my 20s and 30s.
And I kind of got into the, I kind of got into the raw milk thing.
And the only research, the only really studies I looked into that made that decision was because for somebody like me that likes to lift heavy weights, it was a good way to grow muscle mass, like you're saying.
So I was kind of really into it because it was it was good for growing muscle mass and recovery, but I was drinking the raw milk.
Is there a difference between the raw milk and pasteurized milk that we see on the shelves?
Or do you think it all kind of has the same realities to it?
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
No, I do think there's a big difference.
Pasteurized milk, you know, it's heated, you know, it's at high heat to kill off any potential pathogens that can be in the raw milk.
And I understand their concern about raw milk, just like with, you know, raw and pasteurized cheeses that you can buy everywhere else in the world, but you can't buy largely in the United States.
And I do think that raw milk is likely significantly healthier for you because it has some of the nutrients that are not killed off during the heating and the pasteurization process.
unidentified
There's a reason why people can go to France and Italy and eat their body weight, not only in bread and pasta and not gain weight, but also cheese, because the pasteurization process turns these otherwise natural foods into, you know, some version of themselves, not far from plastic.
You know, so I do think that raw milk is healthier.
Whether or not we can make that sustainable nationally, I don't know.
But again, I would maintain there are other forms of dairy, places to get calcium and places to get protein that don't include just drinking gallons of milk for the reasons that I said.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
All right, this is going to be the last topic for today.
ACL Tears on the Rise 00:10:04
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
And I think it's the heaviest topic too.
And I'll kind of tell you, you know, the things I'm seeing, the things I'm hearing, and then I want to get your take as the doctor here with the expert opinion.
And, you know, we're seeing this all the time, especially if you follow sports.
There was another big injury last night in the NBA, these ACL tears, ACL tears, all kinds of soft muscle tears, you know, MCL, Achilles.
These things are, they seem to be happening more than normal.
Now, I'm not asking for you to get into why you think athletes might be suffering from these injuries more than they otherwise might have been in the past.
Probably has to do with their muscle mass and other issues.
They're not stretching enough.
But here's what I'm hearing now.
And I know that the wellness company that you guys are addressing this too.
I have a friend who had a torn ACL and he basically opted out of the surgery.
This has all happened in the last year.
He opted out of the surgery and instead he went the route of peptides.
And I actually played basketball with him just last week.
So we're talking about a year away after an ACL tear and he was back on the basketball floor.
Now, granted, he wasn't competing at a high level.
He didn't want to run with us, but he was out there shooting around.
He was out there back on the floor taking it slow.
And I'm like, my mind is blown.
I'm hearing this.
He's like, yeah, I tore my ACL and I just took peptides and things are great here.
I'm recovering.
And I'm like, what?
unidentified
What?
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
My sister is, she was a phenomenal athlete.
She tore the ACL.
She had to get surgery.
I think that was because she was running on a fake astro turf field.
But again, separate topic.
My mind is blown here.
I'm like, really?
Now, obviously, there's a difference between your, you know, your Achilles completely snapping at your leg and you're going to have to have a surgery versus what might be a small tear.
But I mean, like, how can this be?
My mind was blown when he said this to me.
I never heard that before.
I'm like, oh, ACL, you're having surgery.
Like, there's no, you've got to have surgery.
He's like, no, didn't opt it out of the surgery, just started using peptides.
And now I'm on my way to recovery.
I'm back out here on the basketball court.
I know you guys have a product we'll talk about here in a second.
But my mind was blown.
Is this like, bring me back down to earth here?
Seriously?
You can recover from an ACL without surgery?
unidentified
Well, it depends.
I suspect that he didn't have a total tear.
He didn't have a rupture.
Correct.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
So, right, he didn't have a rupture.
unidentified
He had a tear that was a partial tear.
And not all tears require surgical intervention.
Some of them will heal.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
The problem with tendon injuries is that they don't have a great blood supply.
unidentified
So, unlike a muscle belly tear or a laceration of your skin, there's not great blood flow to a tendon.
So, we tend to do more surgeries than we otherwise would.
But small tears can heal on their own.
Certainly, peptides are now one of the things that we are using to enhance cellular repair and tissue recovery.
Other things that have been used, people have been injecting stem cells into that area, again, to enhance the healing process.
PRP, you know, plasma-rich cells that you pull from yourself spin down and re-inject blood into that area to help surround and bathe those tissues in the elements that they would normally get if they had a better blood supply themselves.
So, there are things that people have been doing for a long time.
Why, by the way, we're seeing more of these, I think, is related to this over focus on the size on muscle mass.
People are getting a quadricept that is, you know, a leg-thigh muscle that is way bigger than the tendon that is connecting it, for example, you know, to the patella, to the kneecap.
The tendon, as your muscle gets bigger, the tendon doesn't.
So, you see people with these massive biceps, this Popeye bicep, but their biceps tendon is the same size as it ever was.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
The tendon didn't get bigger.
unidentified
So, you end up with a muscle that when it contracts is capable of rupturing that tendon or pulling the tendon right off of the bone.
So, I think there's an over focus right now on the size of muscle versus speed and overall health, lung capacity, and the other things that really make you a great athlete.
You know, the best runners in the world, the fastest runners in the world, are stick-thin Nigerians.
You know, they don't have big quadriceps and big hamstrings in it.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
They are thin, thin, thin.
unidentified
They have remarkable lung capacity.
Okay, their ability to exchange oxygen and manage lactic acid is huge.
So, I think we're focusing too much on that muscle, and we're going to continue to see these ruptures.
But the wonderful thing is, if we can avoid a lot of these surgeries, because let's face it, the surgeries, and you know from your sister, they're debilitated.
It's six months to 12 months at a minimum to get back to doing the sport that you love.
I ruptured my Achilles, it was a disaster, it ended my running career tragically.
It will never be the same.
I had surgery because that's the only really your only option with that if you want it to repair, but it was never the same.
So, the idea is if we now have things like peptides that can improve the overall health and elasticity and tensile strength of the tendon, that that would be terrific.
And so, this new product that we have from the wellness company Regenerate is a first of its kind triple peptide.
It's an oral product that works at the cellular level to improve cellular repair, improve circulation, decrease inflammation.
So, it allows not only your ability to repair, but ideally to keep the tendon itself healthier in the first place.
So, it's less prone to rupture or to injury.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
So, this is good for proactive as well.
unidentified
Yes, yes.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
There's no reason to think it's not.
That it should be very good.
unidentified
We need to do more things.
People have been focusing on collagen.
Collagen is a key component, not only of skin and skin elasticity, but also all the other soft tissues in your body, including cartilage and tendons.
Tendons and ligaments have collagen in them.
So anything we can do to improve the health of those soft tissues should not only enhance healing, but also prevent injury.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Well, and there's been so much because I'm a big supplement guy.
And, you know, when I'm kind of looking around at new supplements or what, you know, what's kind of the latest trend, what people are really looking into, peptides is kind of the hot thing right now.
unidentified
Yes.
Yes.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
And there really is so much research behind it right now.
And if people like to listen to other podcasters that are maybe kind of into the health fitness world, I don't know if Rogan talks too much about this, but he kind of gets into the health fitness stuff too.
You know, peptides is kind of like the big thing right now that wow, there's all this emerging research.
There's all these new things that we're learning that the peptides can benefit when it comes to physical health.
So I know that the wellness company is right on key with that here with Regenerate.
I was just stunned because I hear about, you know, again, I'm kind of into like, yeah, I like to exercise, play sports, weightlifting.
And in that community, I'm starting hearing more about peptides.
There's this buzz about peptides.
And then when I heard my buddy say, yeah, I avoided surgery with peptides, that's when it kind of blew my mind.
I was like, moks.
I was like, that's a crazy thing to hear, especially with an injury where you only hear about surgery, right?
You never hear about anything else.
You only hear about surgery.
So when you said that to me, I was like, for me, it was like, okay, I've now heard everything about peptides.
And this stuff seems to be really working good for people.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
And just to demystify it for people, peptides are simply short chains of amino acids.
unidentified
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
So these are naturally occurring building.
They are not synthetic per se.
They're naturally occurring, but it's combining them in certain combinations of them together.
And interestingly, peptides have been used both intravenously and orally, and now also topically.
We have a product that includes topical peptides.
The oral ones are in a proprietary sort of a liposome, a little sort of fat capsule that protects it from stomach acid.
Same thing as the drop product, which is a peptide.
dr kelly victory ▲ ● ▼
If you simply take the peptide, you drop a protein, an amino acid chain into your stomach, it will get degraded immediately by stomach acid.
So it needs to be encapsulated in something that will help to protect it from the stomach acid until it gets into the intestine where it can be absorbed.
unidentified
And that's what both of the drop product and the regenerate product do that.
So I think it's pretty exciting.
And as you said, if some portion of people who don't end up having a horrific tendon injury or ligament injury and can avoid surgery entirely by using this, that would be great.
And if it ends up helping people to maintain overall soft tissue, tendon and ligament health, that's even better.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
And the one thing I have to say this before we sign off because nobody said it yet, remember to stretch.
Loss Of Flexibility 00:01:53
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Remember to stretch, guys.
We never said that one time in the show today.
So I want to make sure we tell people, hey, remember to stretch.
Very important to stretch.
I like to stretch before and after, but definitely after if you don't want that soreness and tightness.
unidentified
The other thing I'll say to bring it full circle, since this is really about aging gracefully, loss of flexibility is one of the biggest issues with aging.
And one of the things that will end up people in assisted living or a nursing home, one of the biggest predictors of whether or not you will be able to remain independent, Owen, is how flexible you are.
Because it sounds silly, but the thing that will take you from living independently alone to needing a nursing home is the inability to put on your underwear, the inability to put on your socks, the inability to get a can of soup off of the shelf without falling.
Falls are a huge problem and maintaining flexibility through stretching is one of the easiest things you can do to maintain your independence.
It also makes you look better, stand taller, hold your, you know, your posture is better.
But stretching is critically important, not only because it helps you avoid injuries, but because it helps you maintain your independence as you age.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Well said.
Great way to finish today's show.
Remember, folks, if any of these products are you're curious about them, go to TWC.health slash Owen.
And there is the store there is huge, folks.
We talked about a couple of products today, but the store there is huge.
It seems to be growing every day.
And remember, coupon code Owen at checkout can get you 10% off.
Coupon code Owen at checkout.
TWC.health slash Owen, 10% off.
Dr. Victory, great conversation today.
Always great to hear from you.
unidentified
Thank you.
owen shroyer ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
Thank you from our audience for all the great health tips today.
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