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if you care about mental health care about your weight and your energy levels you have to care about them
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because if it's not healthy you're not healthy Dr will Cole best-selling author
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one of the top 50 functional medicine practitioners and is a health expert for the world's largest Wellness brand such
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as goop there's so much medical gaslighting going on the average conventional doctor would fail a basic
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nutrition test and I find that to be problematic because you have the worst Healthcare System to get your
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criticizing people that are trying to do something different you define yourself as a functional
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medicine doctor the differences between mainstream medicine and functional medicine is they are trained to diagnose
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a disease and match up with the medication but I think the nutrition forward approach to Health Care is
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vastly important why because the vast majority of health problems are lifestyle driven Foods we eat exposure
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to toxins these lifestyle things are really what's plaguing our society 60 to 80 percent of all Western countries are
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dealing with some massive metabolic issues in part fed by chronic stress part of
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our trauma in our life has to do with the trauma that our ancestors have gone through it's sound science fiction but
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looking at how trauma is literally stored in the cells and then passed through Family Lines is very much science are you optimistic that there's
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things we can do to change it as trauma can be inherited so can healing there's three main things first thing is number
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two the third would be before we get into this episode just wanted to say thank you first and
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foremost for being part of this community um the team here at the diversio is now almost 30 people and that's literally
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because you watch and you subscribe and you um leave comments and you like the videos that this show has been able to
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grow and it's the greatest honor of my life to sit here with these incredible people and just selfishly ask them
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questions that I'm pondering over or worrying about in my life but this is just the beginning for the day of this year we've got big big plans to scale
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you watch these episodes please just hit that subscribe button means the world let's get on with it
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[Music]
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Dr will my friend thanks for having me I'm going to start this um conversation
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where I started it quite recently when I spoke to Max who I think you you're familiar with
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um which is what you do and why do you do it hmm
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I've always been a health nerd I guess you could call it and in hindsight I I
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now look back and think of how what a weird kid I was my first job was at the
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finish line but I don't know if you have those in the UK but the basically tennis shoes like sneaker stores and I you I'd
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use my paycheck at 16 years old to go to the health food store and buy the latest
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superfood that I'd see research on the latest supplement and that was always
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fascinating to me how could you optimize your health using natural things using
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things that are of the planet and food to feel great and needless to say my I
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was packing my lunch in this in the brown bags with the peppers and
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bananas and these whole grains the crunchy things in the in the 90s and my
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friends weren't doing that so that evolved in me being interested in that food and nutrition to want to be be
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formally trained and I have a family history of autoimmune conditions and I
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just have a passion to figure out these complex puzzles and it's a sacred responsibility for me to then take my
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own passion and how can I problem solve for these people and hold space for them
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because I see in the topic of autoimmunity specifically it's a vast in many ways a
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silent epidemic of people that are struggling there's so much medical gaslighting going on they're told
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they're just depressed given antidepressants they're told they are just stressed out but the research
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speaks for itself these statistics speak for itself that we have in the United States alone about 50 million Americans
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having an autoimmune condition but Millions more are somewhere on this autoimmune inflammation Spectrum where
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they're they're labeled with things like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and they they may not even
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be diagnosable but they're they're feeling that sort of anxiety and fatigue and brain fog and digestive problems and
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different iterations of inflammation so it's if you know anything I guess to
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answer your question pointedly my Enneagram if you know anything about that sort of Personality study I'm an
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Enneagram five which means I'm a researcher so I'm sort of this voracious like let's figure this out and get to
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the root cause of why you're struggling so that's why I do what I do and you define yourself in terms of your job
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title as a functional medicine doctor yes I'm a functional medicine doctor what does that mean so if I had to break
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it down the differences between conventional medicine and functional
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medicine mainstream medicine and functional medicine first thing is we interpret Labs using a thinner reference
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range if you know you get your lab and you have your number and you have this x
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to Y interval this reference range that your GP or PCP is comparing you to we
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get that reference range largely from a statistical bell curve average of people
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who go to that lab it's non-standardized for the most part people that are
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predominantly going to Labs or people sadly going through health problems so a
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lot of people know intuitively something's off here my fatigue my brain fog my digestive issue my hair loss
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whatever it is they go to the doctor and the doctor runs the basic labs and they say look the labs pretty much look
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normal you're just depressed you're just you're stressed out what the unintentionally telling the patient is
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they're a lot like the other people with health problems that they're being compared to just because something's common doesn't
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necessarily mean it's normal comparing yourself to people with health problems is no way for you to find out how you
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can feel at your best and why you feel the way that you do so in functional medicine we're looking at optimal not
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average so the Cleveland Clinic here in the United States has a functional medicine center main many mainstream
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institutions have functional medicine and Integrative Medicine Institutions and all of us in functional medicine are
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trained through what's called The Institute for functional medicine so we're looking at optimo now average we're running more comprehensive labs to
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get to the root cause because ultimately speaking we're none of us are sick from a pharmaceutical deficiency you know
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we're gonna like pharmaceutical your way into Health one day they're disease managing medications and are needed many
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times but ultimately we ask the question what is your most effective option that
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causes you the least amount of side effects and for some people medications fit that criteria and they need to be on
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it but oftentimes medications really they don't fit that criteria yet it's the only option given to them and
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there's a root Upstream causation as to why they have to be on that disease modifying medication in the first place
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so we're looking at things like underlying gut problems chronic infections nutrient deficiencies
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hormonal imbalances or things like trauma and shame the things that I'm talking about my latest book and
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ultimately it's predicated on bio individuality we're all different and
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even good things even healthy things that's relevant that's pertinent for one person may not be relevant for you and
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even healthy foods what works for one person may not work for you so it's really curated customized evidence-based
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medicine in short if you know when you think about conventional medicine and conventional I guess Health advice and
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then you contrast that to your perspective your view of health and Medicine what are the real stock
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differences well I think the the diagnostic aspect is that is one
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of them because they're trained in the standard model of care to diagnose a disease and match it with the medication
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so that sort of sort of medicinal matching game if you will is a major
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part of the conventional model of care and I think a nutrition forward approach
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to Health Care is another one and I mentioned a study and gut feelings how
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the this it was it's study in a medical journal and showed that in this one group that the average
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conventional doctor would fail a basic nutrition test because of the training
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that's not there and any conventional doctor will tell you and actually most of my colleagues in functional medicine
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are conventionally trained and they will tell you they have to go to post doctorate training to even learn about
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nutrition and I find that to be problematic because we're dealing with the vast majority of health problems
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that people are seeing are lifestyle driven meaning that the foods we eat or
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not eating our stress levels our sleep our exposure to toxins these epigenetic lifestyle things are really what's
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fueling what is plaguing our society and what the major like endocrinologist PCP
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GP are seeing on their day-to-day visits so I would say the approach is different
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because there's a place for medication again I mentioned that sort of litmus test of maybe a piece to your puzzle But
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ultimately it is not the totality of what's going on here and we have to look
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at it in my opinion a both and not an either or sort of reductive tribal approach and that's where I think
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functional medicine attempts to bring things together where it's not US versus them it's well what is the most
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effective tools within this person's toolbox the medications may be part of it but there are oftentimes a lot more
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effective a lot less side effects tools within than that tool block within
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that toolbox you mentioned earlier that you you had family members that had autoimmune inflammation conditions yeah
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what was that and how did that have an impact on you at all well I mean I could
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go over both sides of my family really there's there's different neurological autoimmune issues like Ms type symptoms
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if you know anything about that type 1 diabetes on both sides of the
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family with the immune system attacks the pancreas and then the body cannot produce insulins you have to take
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insulin to manage your blood sugar people have autoimmune thyroid issues Hashimoto's diseases really are one of
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our top patient based today is people that have autoimmune thyroid issues and different and other inflammatory
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problems so how it impacted me I think was just seeing how it impacted the quality of life and
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health and life on Earth I think in many ways is just so fragile I mean it's we
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take things for granted so much until it's not there and I'm reminded on an
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hourly basis from with my patients now too it's just a sacred thing that I want
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to do everything I can to help them regain it gut feelings book you've just
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finished writing I believe um why did you write a book called gut feelings what was that you know I always
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say this when I speak to authors that writing a book is an absolute labor of love I mean takes forever to do it's a
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painful process yeah so so to do that you must really have found a topic subject matter that really
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really mattered to you why gut feelings why did you call it that why did you write that book it's like any this is my fourth book and
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as with anything that I've written it's really born out of my passion for my patients and just seeing things play out
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and I think in many ways my patients are kind of like you know that's saying canaries in the
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coal mine I think they're canaries in the coal mine for the rest of the world because they tend to be you know further
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down that autoimmune inflammation Spectrum they're struggling with different inflammatory problems but then
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I look at the statistics and I realize it's just they're the tip of the iceberg of really what's going on
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um so gut feelings is really a conversation around mental health and autoimmunity and
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people's I would say diet culture as a whole and talking about the sort of Duality within Wellness both gut and
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feelings the physiological and the psychological the physical and the mental emotional spiritual and again
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this both and approach that I think is needed to have sustainable healing in
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people's lives whether they're going through anxiety and depression brain fog or fatigue or they're going through an
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autoimmune condition or a different inflammatory problem you have to deal with both this both physical and mental
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emotional spiritual and I I love the fact that I think in
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our culture in the past years we've made great strides to normalize mental health
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care and destigmatize people getting access to Mental Health Care wonderful I
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just feel like it's in many ways this is sort of the next stage in that
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conversation because I think in many ways it's an incomplete conversation around mental health care because in the west we still like to separate mental
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health from physical health you know it's a mental health problem we sort of relegate it as sort of this abstract
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sort of philosophical chemical imbalance if you will which is in now it's coming
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up it's flimsy science at best anyways that we have to realize that mental health is physical health and our brain
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is a part of our body just like anything else so it's really in in a part gut feelings it's a conversation around
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what's known in the research as the the cytokine model of cognitive function cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells
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right so it's research looking at how does inflammation impact how my brain works how does inflammation impact
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mental health so things like anxiety depression brain fog fatigue have this inflammatory component but then the
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question is what I really talk about in the book is what's driving the inflammation because inflammation is a
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normal part of the immune system but what's triggering this chronic inflammation that's sort of this this forest fire that's burning in perpetuity
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that's the problem of what's triggering people's mental health issues just like it's triggering their autoimmune issues
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so both the gut and the feelings part of it are the things that we know from the
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research and I have a lot of clinical experience to show how these things impact People's Health so the gut things
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I eat like underlying gut problems 75 of the immune system inflammation is a
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product of the immune system our gut and brain are actually formed from the same fetal tissue so when babies are growing
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in their mother's womb the gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue and they're inextricably linked for the
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rest of our life through what's known as the gut brain access or the connection between the gut and the brain and if you
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think about it the intestines kind of even resemble the brain 95 of Serotonin
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is made in the gut fifty percent of dopamine is made in the gut stored in the gut researchers call it the second
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brain for a reason because of this this is a lot of far-reaching implications to underlying gut problems
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to not only inflammatory problems I.E autoimmune issues but also to mental health issues because it is the second
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brain but then conversely the feeling stuff like I really talk about in the
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book The research around chronic stress and Trauma and even intergenerational
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trauma how these big complex things these mental emotional spiritual things
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are literally stored in ourselves just regulating our nervous system raising inflammation levels impacting how our
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hormones are expressed so it's both a gut and a feeling side of two sides of
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the same coin that impact so many people and I don't you know I just I had these
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conversations with my patients all the time it just was a matter of when I had the conversation in book form
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inflammation I don't really know what that word means how would you summarize or um simplify
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that word for anybody that also doesn't really understand the term inflammation yeah it is abstract I think to your
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point it's I use it so flippantly that I realize I'm in this weird Health bubble but it is a nebulous term it's not
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inherently bad it's a product of the immune system the immune system makes different proteins different amino acids
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different chemical Messengers if you will that fights viruses
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fights bacteria heals wounds so when you think of inflammation in this sort of
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normal acute State it's if somebody it's a sporting injury and their knee swells
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up right that's acute inflammation rushing nutrients and healing and oxygen and white blood cells to the area to
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repair it to rejuvenate it that's normal measured human inflammation we would be
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goners as a species without normal in a normal inflammatory response
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it's when inflammation goes chronic that there's a problem chronic inflammation
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It's associated with just about every health problem under the sun when you're looking at what researchers are looking
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at these inflammatory components you're looking at autoimmune issues metabolic issues like type 2 diabetes when you
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look at uh cancer heart disease to
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mental health issues as I mentioned this sort of cytokine looking at the neuroinflammatory component to things
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like anxiety and depression so that's what inflammation is when it when it goes chronic it really sets off a lot of
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cascade of dysregulation in the body because it's it's a lack of homeostasis
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it's the Goldilocks principle you know it's not too high not too low but just right that's where you want inflammation
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just like many things in the body just like the gut bacteria in our microbiome you don't want bacterial overgrowth we
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don't want a deficit of beneficial bacteria like hormones we don't want too much hormones like a dominance of
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hormones we don't want a deficiency of hormones either inflammation is the same thing we don't want excess inflammation
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that's what's associated with all of these chronic health problems and we don't want a deficiency that's
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immunosuppressed people that people have immunodeficiencies that's not good either so it's about modulating and
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supporting healthy inflammatory Pathways is really the clinical objective for my
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patients and for the average person out there that's looking to optimize how they want to feel that should be their
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goal as well so I've got two questions that what is a symptom that one might notice in
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themselves of chronic inflammation and what are in your practice what are the leading sort of causes of that chronic inflammation sure so there's three the
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way that we see it in functional medicine there's three main stages if you will on this Continuum this
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inflammation Spectrum on one end the silent inflammation silent autoimmunity
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meaning if you ran Labs you'd see some some markers off like a high sensitivity
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C-reactive protein which is a quite a conventional marker you'd see that spiked you see maybe a homocysteine
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level elevated another inflammatory protein but the person feels all right they say everything's cool
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stage two is the inflammation reactivity that's the vast majority of people
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living on our planet today are in stage two or three stage two a lot of people are there they have things like brain
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fog they have things like fatigue they have some sort of dysregulated
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nervous system response a way that people typically will say it they'll say I'm anxious but I'm exhausted or wired
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and tired is the other way of putting it they have different digestive problems I mean the amount of people that have
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chronic constipation or IBS or some sort of digestive issue that again it's
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they're every day so they normalize it but these things are anything but normal they're just ubiquitous
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and I would put under that category mental health issues like anxiety
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depression autoimmune reactivity issues and people that have hormonal problems
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and then stage three is a full-blown diagnosable issue like they're going to their doctor and they're given an ICD-10
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code in the States they're given some diagnostic code and they're given a medication or recommended some
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conventional treatment but researchers estimate it's about four to ten years prior to
00:21:01
that diagnosis when things were Brewing on the Spectrum meaning by the time somebody gets diagnosed officially it
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didn't happen overnight for most people so it's no matter where you're at how
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can you be supporting your gut and your feelings how can you be supporting your physical health and your mental emotional spiritual health so Nancy the
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second part of your question is like what are the most common causes of it it really stems like the broad umbrella
00:21:27
of it has to do with what researchers refer to as an evolutionary mismatch or an epigenetic genetic mismatch our
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genetics that's estimated hasn't changed haven't changed in about ten thousand years
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but yet our world has changed dramatically and it really finite period
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of time when you're putting that into context with the totality of human history so the foods we're eating or the
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foods we're not eating our stress levels our Collective and personal traumas environmental toxins our soil microbiome
00:21:59
disruption and depletion and in turn impacting our gut microbiome so all of these epigenetic modulators if
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you will are DNA is living in this Brave New World and it's Awakening genetic predispositions that have been lying
00:22:14
dormant there for 10 000 years but they're being triggered like never before in human history because of this onslaught of this Chasm between our DNA
00:22:23
and the world around us so on that point then the world the world we live in is
00:22:28
um may be misaligned to our genetics which is kind of what I heard there let's start with the the emotional stuff
00:22:34
one of the topics you introduce in chapter one of your book is this idea of Shame inflation I've never had that term
00:22:41
before yeah same formation shame okay shame inflammation um what does that mean and what's what
00:22:49
science have you got to support that that's a real thing yeah well it's it's really a commentary on inflammation it's
00:22:56
not that shame formation's a literal real thing it's a commentary on how does what's shown in the research as far as
00:23:03
in things like chronic stress which is so well researched and Trauma and I talk
00:23:10
about in the book something called intergenerational or transgenerational trauma how do these things impact our
00:23:16
body our physical health so shame is sort of a term that a lot of my patients
00:23:21
feel varying degrees of Shame they feel shame that they're not perfect enough with their body or around food or around
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life itself not you know being the best parent or the best whatever in their
00:23:35
life there's a lot of health related shame in our world and just shame in general when it comes to life so shame
00:23:42
is sort of the term that I used in the book of how to explain the sort of mental emotional spiritual feeling that
00:23:49
people have how does impacting their health in the book I talk about this study around self-compassion
00:23:56
and which is really right the antithesis of someone that's shaming themselves is
00:24:01
someone that has sort of Grace and a lightness and a self-compassion around it and study the study had people do
00:24:08
they had them speak in public or do math which apparently that's what we hate the most is humans but that they measured
00:24:16
their inflammation levels when they were doing these stressful things right and their inflammation levels were high
00:24:23
interleukin-6 it's il-6 inflammatory protein but the people that practice self-compassion during this time had the
00:24:30
lowest levels of inflammation and on day two you'd expect okay the person would sort of adapt and the people that were
00:24:36
doing the math or the public speaking maybe the inflammation would come down actually the inflammation levels were higher on day two than day one sort of
00:24:42
this cumulative effect but again the people with that practice self-compassion which I talked about the
00:24:48
different practices in the book that I've seen effective for my patients it attenuates calms that inflammatory
00:24:54
response and that's just one of money but we well most health problems of why
00:24:59
people are visiting their doctor are stress related that are either exacerbated by stress that are flared up
00:25:06
by stress or literally caused by stress when you're looking up at things like autoimmune issues we have patients fill
00:25:12
out what's called an adverse childhood experience score every Telehealth patient that we have and research has
00:25:19
shown that people have these higher Ace scores these cumulative childhood and
00:25:24
Beyond childhood lifestyle like life stressors whether physical abuse sexual
00:25:31
abuse mental emotional abuse alcohol abuse in the home growing up people that have gone through these things in life
00:25:38
have an increased likelihood of an autoimmune issue later on in Life or a mental health issue later on life or a
00:25:44
metabolic like type 2 diabetes issue later on in life so again there's a lot of Shame around that stuff too as far as
00:25:51
what people have gone through so shameflammation is really just my term to explain this phenomenon that's in the
00:25:58
scientific literature that I see out I see play out in people's lives on a daily basis he talks about how how
00:26:04
vicious stresses as a cause I guess for inflammation
00:26:09
you know people tend to think of stress as being a really really bad thing I hear often that some kind of stress is a
00:26:15
good stress what is in particular the type of stress you're talking about that is leading to
00:26:20
um this this shame inflammation I'm assuming it's chronic stress yeah a
00:26:27
human species the human species wouldn't be here without some grit and resilience
00:26:32
and I think in some ways you could argue that were really lacking the resilience and grit and that's something that I'm
00:26:38
teaching my patients and in the book for people to sort of gain a resilience to handle stress there's nothing wrong
00:26:45
inherently with stress and even if you look at the research around hormetic
00:26:50
effects or hormesis like people are doing the cold plunges you see all around the wellness space or sauna
00:26:56
therapy or high intensity interval training or even things like fasting these are all hormetic effects that
00:27:01
humans would have spent times in like difficult times periodic times of stress
00:27:07
that actually makes ourselves more resilient and and our souls more resilient in many ways but it's the
00:27:14
chronic stress where it's out of alignment with that ancestral Health perspective it's
00:27:20
it's it's there's a that evolutionary mismatch that I mentioned earlier that
00:27:25
is something that we haven't aligned with we have these these different stress adaptation responses in the body
00:27:32
and the body's releasing things like cortisol and adrenaline and we never
00:27:38
allow this sympathetic fight-or-flight stressed aspect of our autonomic nervous
00:27:44
system to calm down so we're always in this fight-or-flight stressed state to varying degrees that
00:27:50
people never are able to regulate themselves and never able to support that parasympathetic that resting
00:27:57
digesting that hormone balance state of their their nervous system so yeah it could look different for different
00:28:03
people but the things that I hear the most with from people it's their jobs it's it's like a lack of I would say
00:28:09
healthy boundaries with their jobs and their family can be a source of stressor
00:28:15
finances can be a sort of stress and their health I think when you don't feel well that's stressful as well those are
00:28:22
the most common things that I hear from people this fight or flight response this sort of prolonged state of feeling
00:28:28
like you're kind of in fight or flight which is sort of characterized by being short of breath or feeling a bit on edge
00:28:33
or nervous what is the consequence of being in that state for too long because
00:28:39
a lot of people can probably relate to that yeah well it's that is
00:28:44
impart what's driving these these vast epidemic of health problems in our world
00:28:51
today when you're talking about 50 million Americans habiting autoimmune condition hundreds of millions worldwide
00:28:58
are having autoimmune condition type 2 diabetes I mean it's the vast majority of people in the west are somewhere on
00:29:05
this insulin resistant Spectrum meaning they have things like PCOS or weight loss resistance or insatiable Cravings
00:29:12
or pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes all of these health problems that we are
00:29:18
plagued with as a world are in part fed by chronic stress it's just a matter of
00:29:27
how much your body can handle and that's sort of the conversation in the book
00:29:32
about bio individuality right some people have the buck analogies sort of that bucket analogy some people have
00:29:38
massive buckets and they can handle a lot of things in their life before it's going to hit that Tipping Point what is
00:29:45
the Tipping Point The Tipping Point is health problems well something's got to give and they realize they're diagnosed
00:29:51
with a health problem and it's stressors the foods we eat trauma all of these
00:29:56
things accumulate you can't change your bucket size but you can change what you put in it you can't change your genetic
00:30:02
tolerance for stressors but you can change what you put in it so it's really a message of agency right it's a message
00:30:07
of what can I do we all have different abilities or thresholds to handle things
00:30:12
in our life but we all have the ability to clear these things out and to heal ultimately
00:30:18
you know have hearing all of this it makes me feel so deeply that the way we've chosen to live our lives is really
00:30:24
unhuman hmm and when I think about what we can do to change that from like a real systemic
00:30:30
level it seems like it might just be too big of a job because of the direction of travel of
00:30:36
everything technology the way we're we're organizing our lives in terms of like cities and work and profession
00:30:43
professionalism and social media etc etc are you optimistic that there's things
00:30:48
we can do to change it and what are those like real systemic things we have to do within our own lives as individuals but also as a society
00:30:55
yeah I mean it's something I think often about and I think that there's a growing
00:31:01
amount of pockets of people if you will that are that know intuitively they have
00:31:07
to do something different to see something different and being in functional medicine for the past 13 plus years at this point
00:31:14
I had to say what was once considered radical or Fringe so 10 years ago the
00:31:20
idea that stress and Trauma could trigger autoimmune issues is now very much talked about in
00:31:27
conventional settings and that things that may have seen woo-woo and strange
00:31:33
13 years ago now is being researched by reputable institutions I I talk about
00:31:40
the research of the book around shinran Yoku which is the Japanese term that translates as Forest bathing which
00:31:47
sounds weird when you think of it in English but it's actually a beautiful description I believe of the Japanese
00:31:52
art of using nature as a meditation using nature as a medicine and how
00:31:59
researchers show like just spending few minutes in nature and taking in with all of your senses like a sensorial effect
00:32:07
of nature lowers inflammation levels lower stress hormones balances the human
00:32:12
immune system actually improves the human microbiome because of the the
00:32:17
things you're smelling in and taking in with all of your senses so I I think the fact that researchers are looking at the
00:32:24
ancient Arts is a good sign that we as a culture are
00:32:30
looking for something different because I think in many ways if you remember that Pixar film Wally I think Wally's
00:32:38
prophetic in many ways of like the path we could go down where people are just sitting looking at a screen and we've
00:32:45
lost all sense of reality that I don't I think whoever wrote Wally the people at
00:32:50
Pixar we can go a different direction you know this is such a a an interesting strange question to US based on what
00:32:56
you've said but I was just just as you finished speaking then I was thinking about how we know this stuff like you
00:33:02
know this stuff I know this stuff it's not the in terms of like getting back to being a little bit more human in the way that we organize our lives but we I was
00:33:09
going to ask you the question like do you do it yeah I mean to me I don't think you have to pick between modernity and
00:33:17
decreasing that Chasm between genetics and epigenetics so I live in a modern world I run a Telehealth clinic so I use
00:33:24
technology to speak to people around the world at for the past 13 years and we
00:33:29
ship labs to them and so I very much am a fan of technology and people are listening to us right now around the
00:33:36
world I love the decentralization the democratization of health information because of Technology it's wonderful but
00:33:44
I think these sort of unfettered lack of healthy boundaries with this phenomenon
00:33:50
that we only have relatively a few years of experience with us as a world I think
00:33:56
that that's something we just have to learn how to check ourselves and we are all trying to figure it out right now so
00:34:03
do I live it yes I live it but I I live it in a balanced way where I have
00:34:09
boundaries with technology like my son's here in the studio with us right now he's 16 years old he just got a phone at
00:34:17
16 and so as a parent I'm making these decisions of there's kids that are like eight nine years old having social media
00:34:23
and we have the U.S Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy
00:34:28
say recently that he says this is the US government saying children under the age
00:34:34
of 14 shouldn't have social media if the US government's saying it who takes well-measured conservative advice for
00:34:40
these type of things when it comes to Wellness historically if they're recommending it I could only assume that
00:34:46
we have an issue at hand so yes I I think it's just a matter of all of us to make these decisions for ourselves out
00:34:53
of self-respect not out of shame but out of self-respect what do I need what
00:34:59
healthy margins what healthy boundaries do I need to live a more sane life to live a more joyous to live a little a
00:35:05
more meaningful life some people can handle probably more technology than me some people could
00:35:11
probably we all have again this bio individuality when it comes to these things but I think we just need to
00:35:17
out of self-respect check ourselves it's I'm thinking even Beyond technology into things like you know we're becoming more
00:35:23
lonely than ever before but we all know that's not good for our health or our happiness we know that being in a community is great for our health and
00:35:29
happiness we're eating things that we all know are not great for our health and happiness as well and and so like
00:35:34
the really and many of the things you've said I was like you know I know that to be true but like why don't I do all of those things and my my conclusion in my
00:35:41
head was that I think I optimize for something else I think a lot of us actually optimize Our Lives not for like
00:35:46
health or really even for what we know at our deepest level would
00:35:52
make us happiest we optimize for other things like status and success and we're
00:35:58
all reproductive reproductive um Pursuits and I was just thinking I'm just trying to mull it over there why
00:36:03
that is why like everything you've said in terms of being healthy and being happy
00:36:09
um we all understand and even I think about myself here I think I could go do all of those things but what I'd have to
00:36:15
do is probably log off the internet you know probably wind things down a little
00:36:21
bit be a little bit less ambitious um would I be happier probably
00:36:27
but I'm not doing it I want to be healthier yeah probably but I'm not doing it and that's really what I'm
00:36:33
trying to get at it's like why people don't do what they know they should do and why they seem to be optimizing for like success and happiness yeah I think
00:36:40
it's it's our culture's priorities right it's like burnout is this badge of honor and like status and how many followers
00:36:48
you have in social media how many downloads you have is seen as it's deified it's glorified in many ways and
00:36:55
I think this unsexy stuff like you know getting
00:37:01
it whatever fascinating or eating well isn't as alluring because it's people don't see it all the time so I think
00:37:08
it's human nature I think our culture is really um sells us a lot of things as far as
00:37:13
what's important and how we look and things that are materialistic tend to be
00:37:22
top of the list so I don't think it's about it's not just you it's me it's all of us
00:37:28
we all are in this culture that tells us this is what's important but ultimately my experiences to be the best you like
00:37:36
to be the best CEO to be the best successful human being to be the best partner
00:37:42
we have to have our health and I see a lot of high performing successful people
00:37:47
that don't want to choose either or they want to be successful but they
00:37:52
realize they cannot be the highest performing person if they don't have their health and I see people start
00:37:59
their health eroding because it is unsustainable to always be in that sympathetic fight or flight stress State
00:38:05
and they know intuitively something's off here I got away with it in my 20s I'm getting away with it mostly in my
00:38:11
30s but they start to erode and then when you have your health look not as sustainable and impenetrable
00:38:20
as you thought it was then at that point oftentimes it's that motivation that you just said that
00:38:25
actually motivates them to get healthy one of the things that orientates us and
00:38:31
changes our priorities is trauma and that's something you talk about in the book as well um the really fascinating thing that
00:38:37
I've always been Keen to ask somebody is about this idea of intergenerational trauma which you've referenced a second ago because I wasn't sure if
00:38:44
intergenerational trauma was just like woo-woo spiritual stuff or whether it was real science I.E that the idea that
00:38:51
your parents trauma can be passed on to you somehow is that true yeah well and that's yes it
00:38:59
is true it is true it's what research is really exploring of How It's expressed in our descendants and then we all have
00:39:07
trauma just in our own life right and we all these are things that we can accumulate and through things like therapy and
00:39:15
somatic experiences and things like EMDR that I talk about you can work on your trauma in your life but for some of us
00:39:21
part of our trauma in our life today has to do with the trauma that our ancestors
00:39:29
have gone through so two geopolitical historical things that were
00:39:35
big things in our world are really were explored in the scientific literature to
00:39:40
see how this plays out one was a Ukrainian genocide man-made famine
00:39:48
in the early 20th century Joseph Stalin the Ukrainian people wanted to have
00:39:53
freedom really nothing new is Under the Sun every time the Ukrainian people wanted to have freedom there was some sort of authoritarian squash on their
00:40:01
efforts but this famine in the early 1900s was done in the Ukrainian people
00:40:08
millions of people died and what researchers have found is not just the
00:40:14
people that went through this atrocity their their children and their great grandchildren had the same methylation
00:40:22
gene variants methylation is something that we quantify on Labs it's a
00:40:27
interconnected different biochemical Pathways that impact inflammation levels
00:40:32
impact neurotransmitters and how our brain works different detoxification Pathways that literally this trauma that
00:40:41
the people went through during this Ukrainian genocide was passed on like an epigenetic
00:40:46
heirloom of how genes were expressed by their experience similar research was
00:40:52
done in the Holocaust and the descendants of people that went through the Holocaust in Germany and Poland so
00:40:59
yes it's sound science fiction but intergenerational trauma or transgenerational trauma looking at how
00:41:04
trauma is literally stored in the cells and then passed on through Family Lines is very much science and it's shown that
00:41:13
these people have increased likelihood of mental health issues autoimmune issues type 2 diabetes different
00:41:19
hormonal problems and I you know this is what's being explored in science but I could only imagine that it exists on a
00:41:26
spectrum that maybe all of our descendants haven't gone through the same things but I think intuitively
00:41:31
again we can know that there's certain behaviors in certain ways that people live in part because of what our
00:41:38
ancestors have gone through so yeah that's what's being explored it feels a
00:41:43
bit like a it feels a lot to deal with like having to deal with my own trauma let alone my great-grandparents trauma
00:41:49
as well having a role in my my life and and then in that way I think that can make a lot of people can think
00:41:55
about this it's like wow I'm screwed like I If it wasn't I have my own junk let alone
00:42:01
my ancestors though and I'm gonna pass my junk on to my kids right but I think
00:42:07
so for the average person you don't necessarily to even have to think about it because it's just where you're at
00:42:13
today and but I would say this if you shift your perspective
00:42:18
and almost give yourself a little bit more grace a little bit more forgiveness and
00:42:24
compassion to say wow there are some big things at play here and I see people
00:42:30
up against seemingly insurmountable things that have gone through a lot of personal trauma trauma as well as
00:42:37
ancestral trauma break the chains of dysfunction break the change of disease
00:42:42
and disorder in their life and heal not only themselves but heal their families heal their
00:42:48
children's children heal Generations they'll never get to see so I think it's how you look at it yes it's heavy but as
00:42:56
trauma can be inherited so can healing interesting
00:43:02
the the in that chapter where you talk about intergenerational trauma you also talk about um polyvaginal Theory big
00:43:08
word yeah phrase yeah what is what is polyvaginal theory poly vagalog of
00:43:14
course I've got vaginal Jesus Christ we'll keep that in is there anything called poly vaginal probably I have to
00:43:21
we have to learn about that together I don't know let's talk about polyvagal Theory instead then if you don't know anything about polyvaginal
00:43:27
that'll be the next episode The after dark episode
00:43:32
uh poly Bagel theory is well it gets its name in part because of the vagus nerve
00:43:38
it's the largest cranial nerve in the body right and it's it translates from the word wandering or
00:43:46
Wanderer and it sort of wanders from the brain down into the gut and it's the
00:43:52
main nerve that's responsible for a parasympathetic uh arresting digesting
00:43:57
or Zend out hormone balanced state of which that aspect of our autonomic
00:44:02
nervous system is weakened or what researchers call a we many of us have a
00:44:07
poor vagal tone our vagus nerve is weak our parasympathetic is weak because our sympathetic that fight or flight
00:44:13
stressed super productive always on the go type A is very strong it's really
00:44:20
overactive so the sympathetic nervous system is is where the the fight or flight the stress responses happen and then the the parasympathetic nervous
00:44:27
system is ultimately what calms us down yes exactly and both are important okay both are important it's about but many
00:44:33
of us have a disregulated nervous system response because of this sort of imbalance within the autonomic nervous
00:44:39
system and then the enteric nervous system is sort of the third aspect of our autonomic nervous system but
00:44:47
polyvagal theory is a way to understand
00:44:52
how trauma can be stored in our body so there's three main
00:44:57
in this sort of study of the human nervous system there's the dorsal vagal sympathetic the ventral vagal it's
00:45:04
understanding how upon this Continuum can the human nervous system reside so
00:45:10
can we be in this sort of I am in the state of calm and protected and I'm grounded and and I'm in Balance all the
00:45:16
way to sympathetic fight or flight all the way to I am under threat I am shutting down I'm in
00:45:23
hyper vigilance and the end stage of that is something called dysautonomy or dysautonomia it is when the nervous
00:45:30
system is perpetually stuck in that fight or flight state which is that's a diagnosable disorder but again polyvagol
00:45:36
attempts to describe how these things exist on a spectrum to understand how things like thoughts
00:45:42
and emotions trauma shame our bodies are like
00:45:48
cellular libraries where we're storing all of these things and the thoughts we speak the thoughts we're thinking the
00:45:55
words we speak are literally stored in ourselves and we have trillions of cells
00:46:01
that are listening intently to how we speak and how we how we live our life so that's what polyvagal theory is talking
00:46:08
about so in essence those these three states where you're relaxed in state one state two you have sort of acute stress
00:46:15
small amounts of stress and then in state three you have severe things like burnout and you know
00:46:21
physiological collapse I guess yeah um and what what sort of proportion of the
00:46:27
population do you think are living in each state there yeah I mean I would assume when you look
00:46:33
at the statistics of chronic disease and the fact that you're talking depending on the study that you look at 60 to 80
00:46:39
percent of the West U.S UK all Western countries are somewhere are dealing with
00:46:44
some massive metabolic issues which is very much stress related food plays a
00:46:50
part of it because unhealthy foods that don't love us back is also stressful but also the mental emotional spiritual
00:46:56
stress of it when you look at the ins the phenomenon of insulin resistance of what is which is the leading cause of
00:47:03
heart disease in the world and doubles the risk of many cancers as well that
00:47:08
phenomenon of metabolic issues and hyperinsulinemia or excess insulin and
00:47:14
glucose issues it's the vast majority of people so the vast you really can't have a regulated
00:47:20
nervous system when you're looking at that so I would venture to say that between stage two
00:47:26
and three between the sympathetic to all that that system hyper vigilance it's
00:47:33
the vast majority of the human race right now I always think about you know there's I have stress in my life and um
00:47:40
I worry that at some point ongoing stress will put me into that state of
00:47:45
hyper vigilance in my understanding of hyper vigilance is basically where we're really regardless of stimuli or
00:47:50
environment you just can't shake the feeling of stress some people like you know they're just kind of stressed on
00:47:56
edge anxious at all times I've always thought that that state is reached after a prolonged period maybe in state two
00:48:05
um is that accurate is that kind of how how it works where you're it you're in sort of chronic stress for too long that
00:48:10
you fall into this category of hyper vigilance where you're basically just anxious forever yeah I think in most of
00:48:16
the cases it's cumulative like that it takes time I mentioned that that sort of
00:48:22
General statistic of most people that have metabolic issues most people that
00:48:28
have an autoimmune issue these sort of end like more diagnosable things right
00:48:33
it's about four to ten years prior that things are Brewing so yes I think for
00:48:38
most people like it's it's like that but then you have the sort of the outlier that I think that goes to just such
00:48:44
intense trauma that's such intense lost in the life that things could
00:48:51
happen speed up if you will speed up that degradation of how the nervous
00:48:56
system and immune system is regulating itself and you mentioned food a second ago in the role that plays the foods that don't
00:49:03
love us back what are the foods that don't love us back I'm gonna lose some friends right now on
00:49:09
this podcast but it's that what I would call the inflammatory core four
00:49:15
plus one if I can but the would be gluten containing grains would be on the
00:49:20
list that's things like wheat and rye and barley and spelled and it's a
00:49:25
nuanced conversation about this is it is it really the grain or is it what we've done to the grain I think it's more of
00:49:31
what we've done to it we're not properly preparing it plus we're hybridizing it we're spraying it with tons of stuff and
00:49:37
then we're over consuming it right we're over consuming a famine food we're feasting on a famine food that
00:49:42
historically was stored well and now we're always consuming it let alone what we've done to the crop and the soil in
00:49:50
which it's grown but for the sake of Simplicity I think the average sort of wheat that people are consuming is
00:49:55
triggering a lot of inflammation levels definitely doesn't love the human species back very much and number two
00:50:02
would be industrial seed oils things like Cardinal canola oil vegetable oil soybean oil these things
00:50:10
that are not I mean this is kind of controversial for me to say in the health space I don't think that they are
00:50:16
inherently bad I think they are just over consumed because the we need
00:50:22
healthy ratios of omegas three six and nine when you think of Omega-3s it's like the healthy fish right people or
00:50:29
like the the mega the healthy long chain Omega fats you get predominantly from fish people are not having enough of
00:50:36
those healthy Omega-3s having a lot of these seed oils that are in a lot of packaged Foods so I think it's just the
00:50:43
over consumption of one and not eating enough of the other the third would be conventional Dairy
00:50:49
by conventional I mean there's the average Dairy that you're getting the milk that you're getting at the grocery store there are better versions of it
00:50:56
when you're looking at grass-fed organic a tube milk you'll see popping up because beta A2 casein is the
00:51:03
subtype of casein that would have been consumed by humans for thousands of years now because of the cross-breeding
00:51:10
of cows most casein is beta A1 casein which has been shown to be more inflammatory because again of this
00:51:17
evolutionary mismatch our ancestors wouldn't have consumed all of this the fermentation of dairy can make it more
00:51:23
digestible because it's breaking down the casein the dairy protein and those Dairy sugars so things like kefirs or
00:51:30
cheeses and yogurts can be avoided more digestible and the fourth would be sugar
00:51:37
and the over consumption of that but most people know that but I would be more mindful of even the nice sounding
00:51:44
euphemisms for sugar you know where it's like oh it sounds like a agave nectar I
00:51:49
think of that right Agave just sounds so natural like they're squeezing the agave in the cup and just consuming it it's
00:51:55
mostly marketing because it's still sugar and it's still high in fructose so I would be just mindful for The Listener
00:52:03
out there to look at the grams of added sugar you're consuming in a day no matter where it comes from and then the
00:52:10
plus one would be alcohol which is really a saboteur to our gut feeling
00:52:16
connection it will impact our gut microbiome it's been shown to increase leaky gut syndrome really raise systemic
00:52:22
inflammation and it's a neurotoxin researchers have shown that even drinking a small amount a few times a
00:52:28
week is associated with lower brain volume lower hippocampus size which we
00:52:33
which we need for focus and energy and and having optimal
00:52:38
cognition this time gut microbiome is one that I've only come across in the last couple
00:52:44
of months maybe the last three to four three to four months roughly and the importance of the gut microbiome for
00:52:51
anybody who is new to this this term got microbiome why does it matter and what is it yeah it's
00:52:58
vastly important and as I mentioned earlier the gut and brain are formed
00:53:04
from the same fetal tissue right that's our gastrointestinal system within it we have upwards depending on
00:53:12
the study that you look at upwards of 100 trillion bacteria in our gut and it's sort of this gut Garden that
00:53:19
influences a lot of things in our body as I mentioned about 95 of Serotonin is made in the gut fifty percent of
00:53:25
dopamine so our happy pleasure joyous chemicals neurotransmitters are
00:53:33
made in the gut stored in the gut almost exclusively when you're talking about serotonin and dopamine and these
00:53:40
bacteria also regulate the immune system so we're talking about the way that
00:53:46
two-thirds of the immune system is living in the gut or an inflammation they mentioned so ubiquitous most of
00:53:53
it's derivative it's originating in the gut so there's a lot of gut-centric components both from a gastrointestinal
00:53:59
system and nervous system standpoint but part of that crosstalk between the gut and the brain and the nervous system
00:54:07
and the immune system has to do with the microbiome which is the collective term for all the bacteria and yeast and
00:54:14
parasites living in the human gut which we co-evolved with and in some ways
00:54:22
it kind of made us it kind of we would not be here without the microbiome if
00:54:28
the microbiome all of a sudden left we would not be able to produce neurotransmitters we would not be able
00:54:34
to have an immune system we would not be able to digest food we would not be able to convert hormones 20 of the thyroid
00:54:41
hormone is converted in the gut in the presence of healthy bacteria so the point is we are it is regulating these
00:54:49
bacteria which are not us is regulating how we think how we feel how we operate
00:54:55
What We crave I mentioned a study in the book where there's bacterial imbalances in many people's guts actually causing
00:55:02
them to Crave certain foods because it wants to eat it eats what we eat so again this message of really I think
00:55:08
Grace in many ways where it's not your lack of willpower sometimes it's just these gut bacteria that need to be
00:55:14
tended to impruned so we can actually have proper signaling as far as our blood sugar control and craving control
00:55:20
so if you care about Mental Health if you care about your overall health as
00:55:26
far as inflammation is concerned if you care about your weight and your energy levels you have to care about the
00:55:31
microbiome because if it's not healthy you're not healthy how do I go about caring about my gut microbiome
00:55:37
so it starts with the foods you eat yeah so I would say that there's that
00:55:43
inflammatory four plus one decreasing those and then focusing on foods that
00:55:49
love us back I one of the action items that I talk about in the book is those
00:55:54
soups and stews that I mentioned it's it comes from a gap what's called a gaps protocol it's an acronym it stands for
00:56:00
gut in Psychology syndrome or gut and Physiology syndrome so it's a food tool that we use within functional
00:56:07
medicine or at least I do that's really helpful for calming a lot of gut-centric inflammation and it's sort of a
00:56:13
proverbial Siesta for your gut because it's almost pre-digesting the foods when
00:56:19
you're cooking things again our ancestors would have known all of this because they would have if you talk
00:56:25
about just ancestrally soups and stews were a thing that people did especially when you're going through a health problem when you think of chicken soup
00:56:32
and someone's sick it wasn't the noodles that were the health benefits of of the soup it was these broths and these
00:56:39
cooked vegetables and cooked meats that were easy to digest and break down so somebody that's going through a
00:56:46
digestive problem gut health problem or has inflammation levels and suspects this gut-centric components to that
00:56:52
inflammation or they're going through things like anxiety and depression or fatigue I really would Implement I mean
00:56:58
put a lot of recipes in the book so people can really learn how to cook this way that's really quite easy and it's an
00:57:04
affordable way to do it and you can batch cook it and really have it throughout the week as well so that's one thing
00:57:10
um and then like these feeling action items breath work huge for bagel Tony huge for microbiome
00:57:16
health is it's simple meditation simple breath work all the way just like holotropic and more of the advanced
00:57:22
tools that I talk about is a really way to support vehicle tone the more you're supporting your vagal tone the more
00:57:29
you're supporting your gut brain access the connection between the two which is innervating the gut there's something
00:57:34
called the migrating Motor complex or the MMC which is your gut kind of keeping the bacteria in this large
00:57:42
intestine in the colon but your brain has to be the one that's regulating this bi-directional relationship between your
00:57:49
gut and the brain and the brain in the gut so breath work and meditation I mentioned the forest bathing hyuga
00:57:56
like thing acts of Stillness is what I call it in the book pick which one you want but stay consistent with it because
00:58:02
these supporters of the parasympathetic these acts of Stillness are hugely restorative to your vagus nerve and in
00:58:11
turn your microbiome if someone's in a supermarket or on their way to a supermarket today and they've heard your
00:58:17
your first comment there about the importance of food and the foods we pick about the broths and the the stews Etc as they're walking through those
00:58:24
Supermarket aisles what things should they be picking up if they are trying to be good to their gut well I would start with fiber rich
00:58:32
vegetables because you're going to be cooking those in the soups so you really could pick any of your
00:58:38
favorite vegetables that you would want to be having and then your favorite protein that you'd be having you could
00:58:43
do chicken grass-fed beef you could do fish really or a plant-based protein and
00:58:49
you could do the what stock you want to be having you could do the bone broth you could do a plant-based broth like a
00:58:56
glengle or Ginger broth or seaweed broth and just of your choice really curating
00:59:02
these soups and stews and think of it again as sort of this nourishing grounding healing time for you and your
00:59:09
gut that's what I would do so wherever that's at in the supermarket go find those things and then I would say
00:59:15
fermented foods can be something that people could consider starting off low and slow because they can't they are kind of potent things but things like
00:59:22
sauerkraut and kimchi's and kefirs those can be good too for many people
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01:00:28
you were vegan for 10 years weren't you mm-hmm why are you not vegan anymore you did your research on me yeah I was a vegan
01:00:36
for for a while um it didn't love me back it worked for a while and I think that's that's
01:00:42
and my first book was called keto Terry and it really was that exploration of being that Health nerd
01:00:50
and trying something new and feeling great and doing it in a whole food based
01:00:55
way and then evolving from it and realizing it didn't love me back and
01:01:00
just because something's better meaning just because something's better than the standard Western diet which it
01:01:06
certainly was doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal and it's okay to Pivot it's
01:01:12
okay to evolve so for me I talk about it in ketotarian but it's I wasn't getting
01:01:19
the complete protein that I needed and a lot of the proteins that I was getting really wasn't working for me on a
01:01:26
digestive standpoint it just was like a lot to digest it was kind of irritating my system and there were some nutrient
01:01:33
deficiencies from a bioavailable iron standpoint bioavailable B vitamins like folate and b12 standpoint and true
01:01:41
vitamin A retinol which you cannot get in plant-based form now in theory I could have supplemented with all of
01:01:47
those things I could have supplemented with iron I could have supplemented with B12 which I was and I could have
01:01:52
supplemented with vitamin A which I was but this they're synthetic mainly the the retinol that you're getting from
01:01:58
supplement form is synthetic it's not in its Whole Food form so the question that I posed to myself self was
01:02:04
if I have to supplement is it really the most ideal diet for me
01:02:10
so I have many patients that are vegan for various reasons like religious and
01:02:15
ethical reasons and we want to make them the best vegan or vegetarian if they're
01:02:21
vegetarian food protocol for them but for me I was able to Pivot out of that where it could
01:02:28
still be predominantly plant-based but still be omnivore and feel amazing
01:02:33
so that's that was my journey what were the physical sort of symptoms that you experienced that made you awaken to the
01:02:39
idea of pivoting out of being vegan it was fatigue more than anything it was fatigue brain fog and digestive problems
01:02:46
more than anything and I thought you know it was just me and you know I evolved from it I have a not to get
01:02:53
super sciency on you but I have a double MTHFR Gene variant which just we all
01:02:59
have different Gene variants right but this is one of those Gene Snips or single nucleotide polymorphisms that we
01:03:05
can measure we quantify on Labs we get raw Gene data from something like in the different
01:03:10
um genetic tests that people get like ancestry or 23andMe we can look at their own genetic bio-individuality my body is
01:03:18
not as good in that way at methylating meaning that specific MTHFR Gene has a
01:03:24
lot of science behind it basically I'm not as good at converting folic acid
01:03:29
into folate I'm not that good at bringing this inflammatory protein down called homocysteine many people have
01:03:35
this and higher homocysteine levels even slightly elevated is linked in the research to increasing the blood-brain
01:03:43
barrier permeability basically contributing to impart neural inflammation so people that are going
01:03:48
through things like brain fog or different inflammatory problems or fatigue oftentimes homocysteine is
01:03:54
implicated in that so for me to get those levels optimal bringing in things
01:03:59
like wild caught fish and grass-fed beef and more soups and stews with like bone
01:04:04
broth based soups and stews like collagen based things love my body back tremendously did it fix the physical
01:04:11
symptoms 100 so it and that's the thing is like it's science and art like not
01:04:16
for all of my patients that are vegan and vegetarian maybe they're not willing to Pivot so I want to come let's be pragmatic and be the best option for you
01:04:23
but for someone that is willing to test these things out still be predominantly plant-based but still bring these things
01:04:30
in I think and do wonders if you're willing to do it a lot of people when they're thinking about being good to
01:04:36
their body or or good to their gut they'll have like a detox
01:04:41
you know like detox juice week or something yeah what's your thoughts on on that you know
01:04:48
I think it's a lot of probably well first of all it's such an ambiguous
01:04:54
term right it's like you don't know what they're actually talking about when people say that or it's mentioned on a
01:05:00
bottle or a protocol that you saw online seven day juice detox yeah yeah so I
01:05:08
I get why people want to do it because we live in quite a toxic world and eat a
01:05:13
lot of foods that don't love us back so people are looking for some reprieve but I find in many ways it's sort of like
01:05:21
Diet culture has knocked its way into Wellness in that way where it's like it's this yo-yo dieting of the 90s is
01:05:28
now in the form of like juice detoxes where you sort of drink and eat like crap and you go and do a juice detox to
01:05:35
me it's not what Wellness is really about I want people to have tools whenever they do fall off the wagon so
01:05:44
to speak I don't even like that term but you know what I mean when they're up against maybe a stressful time in their life or kind of have been busy and
01:05:51
haven't been eating the best and they want to kind of find their Center again I think that's great I think the juice
01:05:57
cleanses juice detoxes probably aren't the way to go I would say again better
01:06:03
than the standard American diet maybe but not necessarily optimal and my point
01:06:08
would be in thinking about this is the lack of fiber I think if somebody wants to eat Whole Foods and maybe get
01:06:15
smoothies because the fiber has been Blended up in sort of this fruit based vegetable based smoothie I think that
01:06:21
has its place because the fiber will buffer all the fructose that's in there the fruit sugars if somebody's having
01:06:27
copious amounts of fructose for seven days with no fiber
01:06:33
I don't feel like that's setting them up for Success where do you go from there I
01:06:38
think after the seven days would be my mind and if they have a game plan long term because look a lot of people have
01:06:44
unhealthy guts we know that so sometimes giving your a break from all the junk in
01:06:49
any form can be good so it's not necessarily the juice that's the most healthy thing in the world it's that
01:06:54
you're not feeding it junk for seven days so your gut's like I'll take it I'll take the juice over whatever the
01:07:00
beer your son your son is sat in the studio as you said um he sat over in the corner over there
01:07:06
16 years old based on everything you know about the gut about food about our emotions
01:07:12
about stress and the sort of causal relationship all of these things have with each other um if you could design your son's life
01:07:20
to be optimal as it relates to health can you talk me through the the
01:07:26
I was going to say adjustments but how you would design that life for him to have an optimal life in 2023 and Beyond
01:07:33
yeah so for me like if we're talking specifically my son it
01:07:39
I look at him now at 16 years old and I think all of us as parents like whoever the parents listening to this right now
01:07:45
it's plant seeds by first living it out yourself right and
01:07:53
living your life out of as an example instead of sort of preaching and being
01:07:58
dogmatic and being making it about sort of diet diet culture I don't think that that's healthy at all but it really
01:08:04
shifts your perspective away from all the things you quote unquote can't
01:08:10
have but really focus yourself back to all the things you get to have
01:08:15
and avoiding things that don't love you back isn't restrictive it's self-respect
01:08:22
for your body and really that's something that I've tried to do with my son and his sister
01:08:28
is really focusing on foods that love and back so if you want a day in the life of what it would look like
01:08:35
um he it's funny to see at 16 years old he starts to own it for himself it's not
01:08:40
this thing that I'm just talking about or a thing that that Dad does now I see him he actually said to me this the
01:08:47
other day he said that like it he said that very thing he he's now taking it
01:08:53
for himself I took it he said I took it for granted for all these years of just it was just in the house and this is what his dad was doing but now this is
01:08:59
like now he can own it for himself so I think there's hope for us because he be the first one to tell you he's a picky
01:09:06
eater and that's okay and it's really just meeting your kid where where they're at and planting seeds and then
01:09:14
at some point the goal is for them to own it for themselves so in the morning I mean he typically does some
01:09:20
intermittent fasting in the morning which isn't for everybody but 16 years old he's working out he's eating clean he does sometimes compressed feeding in
01:09:27
the morning so that's something that's not for everybody but it works for him and I we both do it why
01:09:33
why is it good because it's a goal to support metabolic flexibility humans
01:09:40
would have done this they just would have called it life because of food availability food wasn't always
01:09:46
available for our ancestors and again most of our genes haven't changed in 10 000 years so to having some intentional
01:09:52
time where you're not eating and you're breaking your fast a little bit later in the day or you're ending your eating
01:09:59
window in mid-afternoon those are two ways that you can do it be sensible
01:10:04
about it be moderate about it if you have you know an eating disorder I wouldn't recommend it but
01:10:11
for the average person that's looking to optimize their health most of us are in the west stuck in the sugar burning
01:10:17
metabolically inflexible state where we're we're on this blood sugar roller coaster we have these insatiable
01:10:23
Cravings even if it's for the healthier sugars and intermittent fasting is a way to sort of train your metabolism to be
01:10:31
more resilient to be more flexible so then you break the faster on lunch
01:10:36
time is how we typically would do it but we have lots of vegetables and clean
01:10:41
protein and healthy fats like avocados and extra virgin olive oil and you can have that whole food smoothie with
01:10:48
fruits and greens and you know some sort of protein powder if you want to do that
01:10:53
and it's similar for dinner and then there's lots of things people can have but also cultivating these feeling
01:10:58
practices to be supportive of the parasympathetic for speaking about my son I'm so proud of him because he I'll
01:11:05
walk in his room sometimes and he'll just be in on the floor meditating and that's
01:11:11
we also be doing that it's completely free it's accessible none of us are good at it that's why it's called a practice
01:11:18
and the people that say their that meditation isn't for them they're probably the ones that should be doing
01:11:24
it the most because and I'm one of those people that our brain is always going
01:11:29
that's why we should be flexing that mindfulness muscle because it's freaking weak so I don't know those are some
01:11:35
things that I that's impressive I mean you will continue your son's room and he sat there meditating yeah more than once
01:11:41
more than one at least that's what you think he was doing we're very good at hearing Our Father coming in quickly
01:11:47
getting the loaded is that your trick so
01:11:55
he's a man Lotus position he's a down pat and what do you struggle with you know
01:12:01
because I always ask this question to to people that know a lot about about subject matter because
01:12:07
I always think it's quite disarming to understand that they're imperfect too yeah so what do you struggle with as it
01:12:12
relates to these oh man I am I am so imperfect so I I am and I'm prone to anxiety I'm prone
01:12:20
to thinking sort of frenetically of just like all the things I have to do and
01:12:26
um not spending enough really not that much time at all focusing in the present moment back to
01:12:33
why I suck at meditation and that's okay like I'm okay with that because that's why I need to do it
01:12:40
um and why I need to do it even more than the average person probably so that's what I struggle with it's really
01:12:46
being grounded in the present moment my mind is thinking about all the things I have to do my team my patients my
01:12:53
whatever the next thing I have to do for the book or the podcast so that's my
01:12:59
my goal is to be better in that area has your work ever moved you to tears
01:13:05
yeah on a regular basis actually when you look at
01:13:12
things that people go through it makes you appreciative of life so much when
01:13:19
you see people that are doing all the things that are really
01:13:25
trying with all their heart to be healthy and to get out of a dark place in their health
01:13:30
lose it all um and having trouble to find their way
01:13:36
out of it it is just the sacred responsibility for me to be there for
01:13:41
them but it's also hugely humbling I think of just the brevity of Life the fragility the
01:13:49
between in the line between health and health problems it doesn't is not lost on me at
01:13:55
all so I tear up pretty quick consistently in a consult it's normal for me to to do that because
01:14:03
you're holding space for people that are going through heavy things and you're talking to them for hour hour and a half
01:14:09
at a time yeah it's uh if you aren't you're pretty apathetic I think to this
01:14:17
line of work that I do how do you manage that yourself and stop that from getting you down we talked about stress it seems
01:14:23
like a pretty stressful position to be in yeah it is I think the first thing that comes to mind is a great support
01:14:30
system right I think we all need that no matter what line of work that we're in or no matter who you are so for me
01:14:36
professionally it's my team so I can I can really almost metabolize that heaviness with my team I can go and
01:14:45
talk with them about what happened we can Rift ideas we can kind of get it out week by
01:14:52
somatically like talking about it and these sort of mutual experience I think that we both we all have on the patient
01:14:59
team specifically so that's it and then these practices the the practices that I
01:15:05
talk about and got feelings of just grounding practices meditation breath work getting out in nature these things
01:15:12
are non-negotiables for me because of again I talk about my my lack of presence
01:15:19
sometimes am I focused on all the stuff instead of being but also my line of work and the
01:15:25
heaviness that comes along with it what does your future look like in your
01:15:31
own view like what does when you think about your life and I often think of my life in terms of like chapters what is
01:15:36
the next chapter in your in your point of view if you know it at all yeah I I don't know I think it's just like in
01:15:42
many ways it's like a TBD sort of thing it's I I've spent my career thus far
01:15:51
really my nose to the ground doing what I love staying in my Lane if that makes sense
01:15:58
or just a relentlessly pursuing a passion that I've had that's really just been an outpouring so I think of all the
01:16:05
things that I'm doing now talking with you right now or writing a book or having a podcast or all this stuff is
01:16:12
really just Ripple effects of that main focus of just
01:16:17
figuring out complex problems to people's health issues so I don't know where that would take me
01:16:22
but I I haven't really and I probably not the norm when it comes to people
01:16:29
that are professional and doing all the things because I didn't really think
01:16:34
that much about it other than just being of service to the person in front of me
01:16:40
or just I mean when I'm in a consult that's all that's there it's the consult that's there and I'm focused on it so it
01:16:47
again it's heavy to hold but that's basically that all that I'm doing um so I don't know I mean I had kids
01:16:54
pretty young and they're getting of age now teenagers now so I'm thinking of
01:16:59
like being able to spend these years of my life
01:17:05
and like newlyweds you know so on a personal level I'm kind of excited for that I'm
01:17:11
excited to like being a parent's heart running a business is hard so I'm
01:17:16
excited to see them grow up and do the things that they're passionate about and
01:17:22
then I know there's a lot more books in me and conversations to be had in the podcast
01:17:27
so I'm thinking of just continue to do what I love to do how do you manage that when you become increasingly more and
01:17:33
more successful so you know the book sells really well the next book sells really well you do podcasts it gets
01:17:39
bigger and bigger everybody wants your time and attention you've got all these opportunities flying at you and with that comes this Insidious uh thing
01:17:48
called stress potentially chronic stress so how I'm trying to figure out how when
01:17:53
you're successful at something and the opportunity comes knocking over and over again you're thinking about you use the
01:17:59
word earlier on boundaries creating a boundary so you can balance both the I guess the pursuit of
01:18:05
purpose and the like health and well-being of yourself yeah well let me know if you figured
01:18:13
this out because I haven't really I'm asking you yeah so for me it's
01:18:20
I'm a work in progress trying to figure it out but I'll tell you one thing
01:18:26
that I'm getting better at it's saying no to things because my mind earlier in
01:18:32
my career I would say yes to everything because I think oh like it's an opportunity right or I I'm so blessed to
01:18:40
be asked why would I say no to that and if I say no they won't ask me again
01:18:46
right all the things and it's like no at certain point there's only so many hours in the day
01:18:53
and my team is checking me on that too like you need to quit saying yes to everything so for me I think like
01:19:00
letting like know it's not not personal it's just no for
01:19:05
me right now that goes a long way to like decreasing my stress levels so I
01:19:12
I'm just getting started on this path of no but so I'll let you know how it goes but uh I think that maybe people that
01:19:22
are the successful maybe say yes to a lot of things and we need to get better at saying no
01:19:27
we we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest
01:19:33
hmm and your question is here what is the most
01:19:39
controversial idea you believe within your industry that most people disagree with
01:19:46
I have a pretty Middle Ground approach sort of inclusive approach and I can
01:19:52
normally find I could normally find
01:19:57
um a pragmatic understanding of okay that's that's the art of Bio individuality right it's it's yeah but
01:20:05
context matters who are we talking about and how are they doing it so I could
01:20:11
think of just about anything in Wellness where it doesn't work for one person but it does work for another person so I'm
01:20:18
not a hardliner I guess is what you would say I really seen and that's really because all I do is talk to
01:20:25
people about their health 10 hours a day and just seeing a lot of variables out there and it's really hard to be super
01:20:31
dogmatic when you see a lot of nuance a lot of variables a lot of gray areas when it comes to somebody's health so I
01:20:38
don't know what I would say that's so controversial I think that what we in
01:20:44
functional medicine talk about is still
01:20:50
controversial in some pockets of medicine so we can put that aside I
01:20:56
think most people within health and wellness would agree with most things I'd say I say I'm not super dogmatic one
01:21:03
way or the other my job is to find out what your body loves and what your body hates and I don't really have a horse in
01:21:10
the race when it comes to specific ideologies um but I do feel like functional
01:21:16
medicine gets a lot of blowback from conventional medicine I
01:21:22
talk about it and gut feelings actually the sort of um God complex that I think sometimes
01:21:27
happens with uh the conventional medicine against functional medicine and the idea that
01:21:34
you know food is influential to somebody's health I don't think it's
01:21:40
controversial but I still hear it from time to time not super common these days and it's increasing it's over the past
01:21:48
13 years it's happening less and less is that 13 years ago it was so radical I would get phone calls at the clinic
01:21:55
saying how dare you say that you could reverse type 2 diabetes with food how dare you say that food plays a role in
01:22:02
many people's autoimmune conditions now I don't get those phone calls anymore and we have a bigger platform than ever
01:22:07
so I have a feeling that it's just more normalized now but it's still I think
01:22:15
it's interesting to me the pushback that some of us get within functional
01:22:20
medicine with with conventional medicine it's that they will say there were quacks or woo-woo but look I bring it
01:22:27
back to this point it's ultimately the United States spends more on health care then the next 10 top
01:22:35
spending countries combined yet we have the worst we have the most disease
01:22:41
and the shortest lifespan of all industrialized nations so I think that when you look at those
01:22:46
statistics we have to realize we have to do something different to see something different and when you look at the
01:22:52
statistics what we do in functional medicine it speaks for itself we're getting people healthy we're able to
01:22:58
reduce and eliminate their need for medications when it's possible and we're improving the quality of life and I
01:23:03
think it speaks loudly when you talk about mainstream institutions like the Cleveland Clinic opening up functional
01:23:09
medicine centers they're not opening it up millions of dollars of work they're putting it into these clinics off of
01:23:16
quackery and woo-woo they're doing it because the statistics in the data speak for itself so I think you're on the
01:23:22
wrong side of History if you still think functional medicine is controversial it's not we're getting people healthy
01:23:27
healthy shouldn't be controversial and I think it says more about the system that's calling us controversial
01:23:34
than it does about us getting people healthy so that's the first thing that comes to mind is that still we have this
01:23:40
sort of archaic dinosaurs critiquing people that are getting
01:23:45
people healthy but it'd be it's almost like the analogy that I use in the book it's like the
01:23:51
the the the I I use the analogy of school it's like you have the failing student judging the
01:23:59
grade a student and I feel like in many ways that's sort of the the poopooing of functional medicine from conventional
01:24:05
world it's like oh how dare you but yet look at the statistics you have
01:24:11
the worst healthcare system in the industrialized Nation but yet you're criticizing people that are trying to do
01:24:17
something different to see something different Dr Wilco thank you so much thank you my
01:24:23
friend been a pleasure speaking to you likewise and everybody should go and get your book because it's incredible got feelings I don't know
01:24:31
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foreign
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[Music]