What if the reason you feel tired, overwhelmed, or older than you should has nothing to do with your age and everything to do with how you’re living? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Dr. Kavin Mistry, board-certified neuroradiologist, bestselling author of Primal Health Design, and creator of The Primal Reset Program. Drawing from over 25 years in medicine, neuroscience, and ancestral health, he breaks down how misalignment with your natural design is impacting your energy, clarity, and long-term health.

From redefining what it means to be healthy to understanding the human qualities that technology can never replace, this episode offers a grounded, practical approach to living with more intention, presence, and vitality.

What You Will Learn

How biological age can accelerate faster than chronological age and what causes that disconnect.

What it means to live in alignment with your primal design.

Why most health optimization strategies fail without foundational alignment.

How daily routines directly impact stress, energy, and long-term health outcomes.

What the seven key areas of primal health are and how they influence overall well-being.

Why relationships and connection play a critical role in health and longevity.

How to create a simple morning and evening routine that improves your entire day.

What human qualities will matter most in leadership as AI continues to grow.

How stillness and intentional downtime can transform mental clarity and performance.

FAQ:

What is biological age and how is it different from chronological age?

Biological age reflects how your body is functioning internally, while chronological age is simply how many years you have lived. Many people experience a biological age that is significantly older due to lifestyle misalignment.

Do I need expensive tools or biohacks to improve my health?

No. The foundation of better health comes from aligning with simple, natural principles rather than relying on expensive or trendy solutions.

How can I start improving my health without feeling overwhelmed?

Start with your daily routine. Focusing on how you begin and end your day creates structure that positively impacts everything in between.

Connect with Dr. Kavin Mistry

Website

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LVP 132 Dr. Kavin

Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell.

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

Drawing from 25 years in medicine, neuroscience, and ancestral health, Dr. Mistry blends primal intelligence with modern technology to unlock peak presence, resilience, and long-term vitality. And I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Kaven at BookThinkers, which happened in Boston in November, in the fall of 2025, and as soon as I laid eyes on him and heard what he was about, I knew he needed to come to Leading Visionaries.

So welcome to the show.

Dr. Kavin: Pleasure to be here, Anjel.

Have you... Was this your first big vision, or have you always been visionary?

Dr. Kavin: That's a great question. I think the critical turning point here, when I started my training, and this is going back several years, right? And, um, a- as a radiologist, I started seeing people's scans on the screen, and what the first thing I noticed was I wa- there were 30, 40-year-olds who had bodies and spines that were- fif- 40, 50-year-olds.

Just read the damn film, you know. Don't pay attention to this." But I looked at that and I said, "Shouldn't we be talking about this? Isn't this a, isn't this an issue that we should be addressing, this whole idea of our, uh, biological age running ahead of our chronological age?" And then it took me on this deep dive.

And for the past 20 years I've questioned that concept that why should not our biological age be aligned with our chronological age? Because currently when I-- what I see on my screen and what we see in society in terms of people's metabolic age and diabetes and everything, we are aging faster than the way, uh, than we should be.

Anjel: Oh, beautiful.

Well, so now can you share with us, you know, before you had that vision, were you visionary, or was that, like, the first big, like, "Oh, I need to pursue this. I'm seeing this. I need to pursue this"? Because a lot of people, like your colleagues, could get a vision, right? But they don't say yes to it. So what inspired you personally to say, "Yes, I'm going to focus on this.

I'm going to study this. I'm going to do something about this"?

And when I had this insight, I said, you know, I remember one time we had a, um, uh, I was in my ICU rotation and there was a stroke, uh, uh, there was a code alert, and I went in and, and, um, and, you know, we were-- they were trying to resuscitate this guy, and it was a 37-year-old male uh, Asian Indian, and we tried our best and we could not save him.

And, um, at the end of this, uh, this episode, uh, you know, after, after- the cardiologist said, you know, "Go talk to the family." You know, and I said, "I'm not-- I cannot face this 37-year-old's wife and two kids." And, and I sat, uh, after that episode, I sat in my room and I said, "Then what are we doing wrong here?"

Anjel: Mm. Beautiful. So what ends up often happening for a leading visionary like yourself is you get this calling, right? And, and then you say yes to it, which obviously you did, and then you start to see some of the initial steps that you can take, which, you know, in your case led to the Primal Reset program.

So talk a little bit about where that evolved, you know, how that evolved.

I've changed 22 houses in my lifetime, which I've lived all over the place. My childhood was in Africa. From age five to 10, I lived in Africa. And the reason I'm saying all this is that as I star- started questioning this process of aging and this biological age and why we're aging faster, and I'm looking at all these parameters you know, uh, of, uh, of our biological age, you know, in terms of physicality, in terms of our metabolic age.

One of the things, um, the research that I came across was they were saying that there are these tribes in Africa where they have very low incidence of chronic disease. They don't get diabetes. They don't get high blood pressure. They don't have any mental health disease. And I go, "Interesting." I said, "Who are these people in Africa?"

So it was full circle for me, and I thought, "Wow, I was there. I-- this is-- I lived it." And, and, and so it was just a natural transition. And so now it wasn't about- Really talking about this primal culture. I lived it, and I said, "Okay, I can now speak from a point of lived experience rather than just theory." Mm.

Uh, it was another physician asking me. He goes "What do you see in terms of aging?" And then he goes, "We're, we're, we're focusing on all this health optimization, biohacking, and all that." And my answer was this, that we can focus all we want on health optimization and biohacking, and I'm not against that.

But if you're working against your primal design to begin with, it's gonna be a tough road.

Ad: Mm.

Dr. Kavin: You know? You can do... You can work against your design, and then you can try to do all the red light saunas and everything like that. It's not gonna work. So my main premise is that let's figure out what our primal design is, and let's stick with that and, and we'll naturally you know, heal faster.

So as you progressed on this journey, can you share, like, your experience as a founder, as a leader, as a visionary with enrolling people into your vision, helping them to see that you have a solution for them?

Dr. Kavin: So that journey became initially with a lot of education lot of, um, wellness talks that, uh, you know, I didn't charge anything for, and I still don't charge, uh, for most of the wellness talks I do.

And, and so I think once people realize that this whole idea of wellness is more about alignment rather than seeking this miracle supplement or this miracle workout or this, this, this celebrity workout or, or, or... And I'm not against any of that. I think there's, you know, a lot of those programs do have some validity and some science to it.[00:12:00]

But to say that that one thing is the solution, you know, people like to stamp their names on things, you know, like this method or this program. And for me, I, I never wanted to stamp my name on anything because I think that your primal design is so perfect that you're, you, you are designed to heal, you're designed to operate at a optimal level.

It's just that you're out of alignment with your primal self. Mm. And if I can teach you to just get in line or just align your routine and your lifestyle to what you were created to be in the first place, everything will fall into place and you'll heal naturally.

Anjel: Oh, I love it. All right. We're gonna take a quick break.

If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.

Discover more about this opportunity at leadingvisionariespodcast.com/creativeageleaderlab or click the Connect with Anjel button on the website to apply and qualify for a consultation for more personalized access and support. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content.

Well, we might as well go primal here. Let's see if we can find listeners in Mozambique and Botswana and in Morocco. And we will be right back with Dr. Kavan Mistry.

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The book is yours by visiting gift.leadingvisionariespodcast.com.

And he also has a book, Primal Health Design, and a reset program. And so if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about the Primal Alignment Index first, let's hear about that first, and why somebody would want to use that resource.

Dr. Kavin: Great, Anjel. So when I... when people hear me talk, they always say, "Well, you know, how do I figure out my biological age?"

So this is a, it's a, it, it's an extensive it only takes like several minutes, but it will give you a very good idea of where you can improve in your life. And a segue from that, it will also tell you the sections in my book that you can read to fix those areas. And if you want a deeper dive I've created a primal reset program, which is a, a 21 serie- 21 session program.

You do 10 minutes a day. It's just 10 minutes of me giving you a master class on how to fix those areas in your life so you can live more primal and be more alive.

Anjel: Mm. Well, tell us, if you wouldn't mind, what it means to you. Like, what is this definition of primal? Like, what do you mean by that?

Our posture. What does primal posture look like? So that is one aspect of it. The third connection is connection with food. You know, what does food mean to our body in terms of a primal connection? Like, what is it... Yes, we wanna eat food that tastes good, but what is it our body need in terms of vitality, in terms of our gut microbiome?

Okay. And moving beyond that the other connections are connection with our mind. What does it need to function properly? What is a primal mind in terms of having its... the stillness, the joy? Like, what do, what does that look like? So that is that connection with the mind. And the last three connection is, one is, uh, purpose.

What is your ikigai that you can connect with? And the last two areas are the-- what we talk about is a primal tribe. Mm. That, you know, we found that, you know, the longest ru- running study in Harvard, right? This, this 80, 80... It's been running for 80 years. They said the k- the biggest determinant of health and happiness for people, it wasn't just about exercise or smoking or not smoking and anything like that.

They took out all factors. The number one factor was the quality of your relationships.

Ad: Mm-hmm.

Anjel: Mm.

Dr. Kavin: And that's when you focus on leaving a legacy. That's what you focus on doing things like you're doing, Anjel, uh, and, uh, your work here. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, just very impressed with what you've done and the platform you've created because it is definitely contributing to this aspect of l- living a legacy and making impact.

Anjel: Yeah. Well, I have been trained in the Peruvian tradition of, uh, shamanic medicine work, and my teacher, uh, also had some Toltec training, and she taught me init- my initial teacher, she said, "Make death your informer." And that, uh, actually came out of Carlos Castaneda's teachings, to make death your informer.

Secondly, grab the book, Primal Health Design, because once you get the data, let's do something about it, right? And then you have the Primal Reset Program, which is, uh, 21 lessons in master class format for people to be able to begin to take the steps and learn the lessons that they need to live a more primal life.

Dr. Kavin: And Anjel, this is, this is, uh, a, a great question. In this day and age, you know, I think that as we engage with technology more, as AI is taking root and, and, and going, um... I just, uh, I was just recently invited over to Pennovation, which is a collaborative under UPenn. Uh, uh, and, um, they are dealing with all this technology advancements and uh, and they said, "You know, we want you to come and talk about the human side of things as it relates to how we approach corporate leadership and everything like that."

We talked about the other, one of them is the i- uh, the ability to create a tribe and a culture of trust, which only humans can do. AI is not gonna be able to c- create a culture of trust. And the last thing you mentioned already is the idea of living a legacy, right? Mm-hmm. Because AI is not thinking about legacy.

But if you can combine AI and strengthen these human qualities, then you have an augmented humanity which is gonna be so much more powerful.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. Well, showing up present is one of the things that we talk about here at Leading Visionaries as well as part of our, of what I call our evolving leadership formula.

I'd love to hear a little success story.

Dr. Kavin: Sure. So one of the first things I do with people and everybody's busy these days, and I tell people that really what, what do you have control over in your day? And, you know, because everybody's busy, everybody's got a, a, a, you know, Extensive amount of workload, you have emails and everything like that.

You know? And so I prep people and say that, "Let's, let's not get overwhelmed with a whole bunch of stuff, because I don't want to... But let's just dial in the way you start your day and the way you end your day, and if we do that right, everything in between will improve."

Anjel: Mm.

Dr. Kavin: And so the first thing I work on people is that I tell them that you have to start your day with a moment of stillness, because it tells your body that everything's gonna be okay- Mm

Even if you can do it for five minutes, you know? I think a- anybody can find five minutes, but eventually you want to work towards 10 and get to 15 to 20. The research shows that 20 minutes of just a, just some downtime, some white space, changes the 23 hours and 40 minutes of the rest of your day. Your cortisol levels drop for those 23 hours and 40 minutes just by giving that 20 minutes of quiet time.

Anjel: Beautiful. I love it. All right. Well, we are at the end, so I wanna say thank you for joining me today.

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