The Cellular Reset: Rethinking How We Heal, Age, and Thrive

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What if the key to feeling younger, healing faster, and reclaiming your energy isn’t simply about treating symptoms—but about restoring the health of the body at its most fundamental level?

That question is at the heart of Heal Your Cells: Reversing the Irreversible—A Proven Plan to Heal Faster, Reclaim Energy, and Unlock Longevity, the new book from Dr. Josh Axe and Dr. Will Cole. Drawing on emerging research and a growing understanding of cellular health, the authors explore how the condition of our cells can influence everything from energy and recovery to the aging process itself.

I recently sat down with Dr. Axe and Dr. Cole to discuss the science and philosophy behind their approach, and to take a closer look at how restoring health from the cellular level could change the way we think about healing, vitality, and longevity.

I understand your new book Heal Your Cells holds a very personal significance for you both that goes beyond the clinical research you conducted in your role as a healthcare professional. Why is this topic so important to you?

Dr. Josh Axe: This book was born out of helping ourselves and our family overcome what some people would call irreversible conditions. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and being told she had less than a 40% chance to live. She was able to heal completely and reverse cancer naturally, using a lot of the principles in the book. I was diagnosed with a spinal infection, and was unable to walk. I was able to be healed, and then, Dr. Cole and I together have helped thousands of people reverse autoimmune disease, Type 2 diabetes, chronic issues, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and hormone issues, by using the power of natural medicine. So, we really walk through how people can both reverse chronic illness, but then we go through how to promote longevity and be in your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and still having excellent health, not just adding years to your life, but life to your years.

What brought the two of you together to collaborate on a book like this?

Dr. Will Cole: Josh and I have been friends for a long time, and on a professional level, he's just a dynamite clinician, a brilliant mind in our space. And personally, he's a great human being too. So, it was divine timing. There were multiple things that happened. It was just a matter of wanting to do something together and this made sense. We are both passionate about this topic specifically. Professionally, we want to help people, and personally as friends, it was just God's timing in putting this message out in the world. We are kind of like wellness avengers coming together.

Millions of people are eating clean, sleeping more, tracking macros, and still feel exhausted, foggy, and off. Why isn't any of it working?

Dr. Will Cole: I think that you are right. We see so many people kept back from living the life that God called them to do, the talents that they have, the life that they have, the years that they have here on Earth, to make a difference, because they are fatigued, foggy, wired, and tired. The basic advice of eating healthy foods and working out isn't cutting it. So, that's what this book is for. It's for the person that is maybe not eating or living the best life. But most of the book is more about taking somebody that is doing all the things and taking it to the next level, because those are the type of telehealth patients that we help. There's a chasm between our DNA, our microbiome, all the trillions of bacteria in our gut, and the world around us. Then, our genetics haven't changed. For thousands and thousands of years, genetics basically have stayed the same, but what has changed in a relatively short period of time is epigenetics. It's the foods we're eating or the foods we're not eating. It's the soil in which the food is grown. It's environmental toxins, it's toxins that we can't even see from electronics. It's chronic stress, unresolved trauma, it's spiritual disconnection from a person’s relationship with God. Something's got to give. There is this mismatch between ourselves and the world around us. We're out of alignment. So what we're trying to teach people is to bring your biochemistry back into alignment the way that God created it. We're going to thrive when we do that. And when mankind pretends to be God, there's unintended and sometimes intended consequences, and we're paying the price for that.

You say the future of medicine is personalized, preventative, and regenerative. Please explain why the current system is built to fail at all three.

Dr. Josh Axe: I think the big challenge is we've taken an emergency care system, and we've tried to move that over into true healthcare. So, there's a big difference between you breaking a bone (today versus 20 years ago). A lot of modern medicine today was born out of the age of antibiotics and penicillin. That meant saving lives when somebody had a serious, deadly infection that was going to take their life. But we've taken that same model, for instance, and now when a child has an ear infection, which is viral in 98% of cases, we still prescribe an antibiotic. And the reality is, it's also just become a large money-making industry to where the amount of money that's made by pharmaceutical companies and the patents and all those things that are out there creates this bias for not what's best for the patient, but what's best for investors. And so, I think that's a major challenge as well, but what we've found is that everybody is very unique. When you look at the oldest forms of medicine that are still around today such as traditional Chinese medicine, and Ayurvedic medicine in particular; those two are both over 3,000 years old. They're still the most widely used styles of medical care today throughout the Middle East and Asia.

They are all about personalized medicine. Looking at the individual's history, looking at their symptoms, sometimes looking at their face, looking at their tongue, feeling their pulse, and saying, okay, we are going to customize something specific to you. We're going to create every meal as medicine, as is done in Ayurveda. We're going to prescribe and recommend certain herbs. We're going to recommend lifestyle changes all based on that individual person. That takes more time. Today, the average doctor visit is seven minutes. That's how much time you get with your doctor when you go to see them. Seven minutes. When you look at how much time it might take to personalize a plan, that might take an hour. It takes time to personalize something for an individual, versus when a doctor comes in, they can spend seven minutes with the patient because we have a cookie-cutter solution here. Here's a drug. Here's a drug, here's a drug, here's a drug, that's the only solution. And so, that's the problem with the healthcare system. I think this is the reason why Dr. Will and I, in our clinical practices, we both still work with patients and helping them heal,

This is why we see people reversing autoimmune disease, Type 2 diabetes, and all of these other issues because when you can fine-tune a person’s care it is truly to their benefit.

A Stanford study found that one in five adults over 50 years old has an organ aging faster than the rest of their body. What does that actually mean for the person sitting at home right now feeling "fine"? Should we be alarmed?

Dr. Josh Axe: I don't know that you should be alarmed, but I think you should be aware. Should you take action? Let me say this. Maybe it is good to be alarmed. In the study, it looked at the areas of the body where if the organ was aging more quickly, the most deadly was the immune system, the brain, and the heart. If you had markers in your blood, and your numbers of having accelerated brain aging were high, your risk of dementia was something like 250% more likely. That's significant. Heart disease was something like 150 to 180% higher. So, your risk of a heart attack increasing by180%, that's significant. My father-in-law was 60 years old. We thought we had another 30 years with him. I wish that we would have had an alarm that was sounding, because we would have taken action if there was an alarm.

I do think that this is one reason why Will and I are also so adamant about encouraging people to discover what their organ age is. What is that organ? What is that susceptibility you have? And then taking action against that, because, as Will talked about, around 50% of the time, the first warning sign is the heart attack. It doesn't have to be like that. If you would go and get tested, you would be in a far better place in the future.

After people have had a chance to read Heal Your Cells, what would you like them to take away from their experience? What is your greatest hope for the book?

Dr. Josh Axe: I think one of the things I found with my own mom and her battle with cancer and beating it, was the more she became about how to heal, what to eat, what to do with her own body, the healthier she became. For her, the other amazing thing was that my mom started teaching other women to make superfood smoothies and how to eat to prevent or fight cancer. There was such a sort of outpouring into her education and then her helping other people. But our hope is that people are able to reverse the trajectory they are seemingly on with their health.

People will come in and see us, and they'll say, “Hey, my doctor ran blood work, and they said my numbers are normal. I'm fine, but I don't feel fine. You know, my hormones feel off, I can tell something's not right. We'll do advanced testing and look deeper. We analyze blood work differently. We'll find out what's going on, and we'll help people start to heal and reverse what they've dealt with. But I think to start, we hope that people feel heard. We hope that people discover and believe they'll find the root cause of why they don't feel well, and then they'll be equipped with an exact protocol. We hope that people can both reverse disease and promote longevity after they read the book.

TO PURCHASE HEAL YOUR CELLS: REVERSING THE IRREVERSIBLE - A PROVEN PLAN TO HEAL FASTER, RECLAIM ENERGY AND UNLOCK LONGEVITY:

WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT HOW DR. JOSH AXE NEARLY DIED AND THE PROTOCOL THAT BROUGHT HIM BACK: