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if you care about mental health care about your weight and your energy levels you have to care about them because if it's not healthy you're not healthy Dr will Cole best-selling author one of the top 50 functional medicine practitioners and is a health expert for the world's largest Wellness brand such as goop there's so much medical gaslighting going on the average conventional doctor would fail a basic nutrition test and I find that to be problematic because you have the worst Healthcare System to get your criticizing people that are trying to do something different you define yourself as a functional medicine doctor the differences between mainstream medicine and functional medicine is they are trained to diagnose a disease and match up with the medication but I think the nutrition forward approach to Health Care is vastly important why because the vast majority of health problems are lifestyle driven Foods we eat exposure to toxins these lifestyle things are really what's plaguing our society 60 to 80 percent of all Western countries are dealing with some massive metabolic issues in part fed by chronic stress part of our trauma in our life has to do with the trauma that our ancestors have gone through it's sound science fiction but 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 things we can do to change it as trauma can be inherited so can healing there's three main things first thing is number two the third would be before we get into this episode just wanted to say thank you first and foremost for being part of this community um the team here at the diversio is now almost 30 people and that's literally because you watch and you subscribe and you um leave comments and you like the videos that this show has been able to grow and it's the greatest honor of my life to sit here with these incredible people and just selfishly ask them 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 this show and to every corner of the
world and to to diversify Our Guest selection and that's enabled by you by simple thing that you guys do which is to watch so if there's one thing you could do to help this show and to help us continue to do what we do it's just to hit the Subscribe button if you like this show if you like what we do here if you watch these episodes please just hit that subscribe button means the world let's get on with it [Music] Dr will my friend thanks for having me I'm going to start this um conversation where I started it quite recently when I spoke to Max who I think you you're familiar with um which is what you do and why do you do it hmm I've always been a health nerd I guess you could call it and in hindsight I I now look back and think of how what a weird kid I was my first job was at the 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 use my paycheck at 16 years old to go to the health food store and buy the latest superfood that I'd see research on the latest supplement and that was always fascinating to me how could you optimize your health using natural things using things that are of the planet and food to feel great and needless to say my I was packing my lunch in this in the brown bags with the peppers and bananas and these whole grains the crunchy things in the in the 90s and my friends weren't doing that so that evolved in me being interested in that food and nutrition to want to be be formally trained and I have a family history of autoimmune conditions and I just have a passion to figure out these complex puzzles and it's a sacred responsibility for me to then take my own passion and how can I problem solve for these people and hold space for them because I see in the topic of autoimmunity specifically it's a vast in many ways a silent epidemic of people that are struggling there's so much medical gaslighting going on they're told they're just depressed given antidepressants they're told they are just stressed out but the research speaks for itself these statistics speak for itself that we have in the United
States alone about 50 million Americans having an autoimmune condition but Millions more are somewhere on this autoimmune inflammation Spectrum where they're they're labeled with things like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and they they may not even be diagnosable but they're they're feeling that sort of anxiety and fatigue and brain fog and digestive problems and different iterations of inflammation so it's if you know anything I guess to answer your question pointedly my Enneagram if you know anything about that sort of Personality study I'm an Enneagram five which means I'm a researcher so I'm sort of this voracious like let's figure this out and get to 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 title as a functional medicine doctor yes I'm a functional medicine doctor what does that mean so if I had to break it down the differences between conventional medicine and functional medicine mainstream medicine and functional medicine first thing is we interpret Labs using a thinner reference range if you know you get your lab and you have your number and you have this x to Y interval this reference range that your GP or PCP is comparing you to we get that reference range largely from a statistical bell curve average of people who go to that lab it's non-standardized for the most part people that are predominantly going to Labs or people sadly going through health problems so a lot of people know intuitively something's off here my fatigue my brain fog my digestive issue my hair loss whatever it is they go to the doctor and the doctor runs the basic labs and they say look the labs pretty much look normal you're just depressed you're just you're stressed out what the unintentionally telling the patient is they're a lot like the other people with health problems that they're being compared to just because something's common doesn't necessarily mean it's normal comparing yourself to people with health problems is no way for you to find out how you can feel at your best and why you feel the way that you do so in functional medicine we're looking at optimal not average so the Cleveland Clinic here in the United States has a functional
medicine center main many mainstream institutions have functional medicine and Integrative Medicine Institutions and all of us in functional medicine are 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 get to the root cause because ultimately speaking we're none of us are sick from a pharmaceutical deficiency you know we're gonna like pharmaceutical your way into Health one day they're disease managing medications and are needed many times but ultimately we ask the question what is your most effective option that causes you the least amount of side effects and for some people medications fit that criteria and they need to be on it but oftentimes medications really they don't fit that criteria yet it's the only option given to them and there's a root Upstream causation as to why they have to be on that disease modifying medication in the first place so we're looking at things like underlying gut problems chronic infections nutrient deficiencies hormonal imbalances or things like trauma and shame the things that I'm talking about my latest book and ultimately it's predicated on bio individuality we're all different and even good things even healthy things that's relevant that's pertinent for one person may not be relevant for you and even healthy foods what works for one person may not work for you so it's really curated customized evidence-based medicine in short if you know when you think about conventional medicine and conventional I guess Health advice and then you contrast that to your perspective your view of health and Medicine what are the real stock differences well I think the the diagnostic aspect is that is one of them because they're trained in the standard model of care to diagnose a disease and match it with the medication so that sort of sort of medicinal matching game if you will is a major part of the conventional model of care and I think a nutrition forward approach to Health Care is another one and I mentioned a study and gut feelings how the this it was it's study in a medical journal and showed
that in this one group that the average conventional doctor would fail a basic nutrition test because of the training that's not there and any conventional doctor will tell you and actually most of my colleagues in functional medicine are conventionally trained and they will tell you they have to go to post doctorate training to even learn about nutrition and I find that to be problematic because we're dealing with the vast majority of health problems that people are seeing are lifestyle driven meaning that the foods we eat or not eating our stress levels our sleep our exposure to toxins these epigenetic lifestyle things are really what's fueling what is plaguing our society and what the major like endocrinologist PCP GP are seeing on their day-to-day visits so I would say the approach is different because there's a place for medication again I mentioned that sort of litmus test of maybe a piece to your puzzle But ultimately it is not the totality of what's going on here and we have to look at it in my opinion a both and not an either or sort of reductive tribal approach and that's where I think functional medicine attempts to bring things together where it's not US versus them it's well what is the most effective tools within this person's toolbox the medications may be part of it but there are oftentimes a lot more effective a lot less side effects tools within than that tool block within that toolbox you mentioned earlier that you you had family members that had autoimmune inflammation conditions yeah what was that and how did that have an impact on you at all well I mean I could go over both sides of my family really there's there's different neurological autoimmune issues like Ms type symptoms if you know anything about that type 1 diabetes on both sides of the family with the immune system attacks the pancreas and then the body cannot produce insulins you have to take insulin to manage your blood sugar people have autoimmune thyroid issues Hashimoto's diseases really are one of our top patient based today is people that have autoimmune thyroid issues and different and other inflammatory problems so how it impacted me I think was just seeing how it impacted the quality of life and health and life on Earth I think in many
ways is just so fragile I mean it's we take things for granted so much until it's not there and I'm reminded on an hourly basis from with my patients now too it's just a sacred thing that I want to do everything I can to help them regain it gut feelings book you've just finished writing I believe um why did you write a book called gut feelings what was that you know I always 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 painful process yeah so so to do that you must really have found a topic subject matter that really 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 as with anything that I've written it's really born out of my passion for my patients and just seeing things play out and I think in many ways my patients are kind of like you know that's saying canaries in the 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 down that autoimmune inflammation Spectrum they're struggling with different inflammatory problems but then I look at the statistics and I realize it's just they're the tip of the iceberg of really what's going on um so gut feelings is really a conversation around mental health and autoimmunity and people's I would say diet culture as a whole and talking about the sort of Duality within Wellness both gut and feelings the physiological and the psychological the physical and the mental emotional spiritual and again this both and approach that I think is needed to have sustainable healing in people's lives whether they're going through anxiety and depression brain fog or fatigue or they're going through an autoimmune condition or a different inflammatory problem you have to deal with both this both physical and mental emotional spiritual and I I love the fact that I think in our culture in the past years we've made great strides to normalize mental health care and destigmatize people getting
access to Mental Health Care wonderful I just feel like it's in many ways this is sort of the next stage in that 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 health from physical health you know it's a mental health problem we sort of relegate it as sort of this abstract sort of philosophical chemical imbalance if you will which is in now it's coming up it's flimsy science at best anyways that we have to realize that mental health is physical health and our brain 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 what's known in the research as the the cytokine model of cognitive function cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells right so it's research looking at how does inflammation impact how my brain works how does inflammation impact mental health so things like anxiety depression brain fog fatigue have this inflammatory component but then the question is what I really talk about in the book is what's driving the inflammation because inflammation is a 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 that's the problem of what's triggering people's mental health issues just like it's triggering their autoimmune issues so both the gut and the feelings part of it are the things that we know from the research and I have a lot of clinical experience to show how these things impact People's Health so the gut things I eat like underlying gut problems 75 of the immune system inflammation is a product of the immune system our gut and brain are actually formed from the same fetal tissue so when babies are growing in their mother's womb the gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue and they're inextricably linked for the 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 think about it the intestines kind of even resemble the brain 95 of Serotonin is made in the gut fifty percent of dopamine is made in the gut stored in the gut researchers call it the second brain for a reason because of this this is a lot of far-reaching
implications to underlying gut problems to not only inflammatory problems I.E autoimmune issues but also to mental health issues because it is the second brain but then conversely the feeling stuff like I really talk about in the book The research around chronic stress and Trauma and even intergenerational trauma how these big complex things these mental emotional spiritual things are literally stored in ourselves just regulating our nervous system raising inflammation levels impacting how our hormones are expressed so it's both a gut and a feeling side of two sides of the same coin that impact so many people and I don't you know I just I had these conversations with my patients all the time it just was a matter of when I had the conversation in book form inflammation I don't really know what that word means how would you summarize or um simplify that word for anybody that also doesn't really understand the term inflammation yeah it is abstract I think to your 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 inherently bad it's a product of the immune system the immune system makes different proteins different amino acids different chemical Messengers if you will that fights viruses fights bacteria heals wounds so when you think of inflammation in this sort of normal acute State it's if somebody it's a sporting injury and their knee swells up right that's acute inflammation rushing nutrients and healing and oxygen and white blood cells to the area to repair it to rejuvenate it that's normal measured human inflammation we would be goners as a species without normal in a normal inflammatory response it's when inflammation goes chronic that there's a problem chronic inflammation It's associated with just about every health problem under the sun when you're looking at what researchers are looking at these inflammatory components you're looking at autoimmune issues metabolic issues like type 2 diabetes when you look at uh cancer heart disease to mental health issues as I mentioned this sort of cytokine looking at the neuroinflammatory component to things like anxiety and depression so that's what inflammation is when it when it
goes chronic it really sets off a lot of cascade of dysregulation in the body because it's it's a lack of homeostasis it's the Goldilocks principle you know it's not too high not too low but just right that's where you want inflammation just like many things in the body just like the gut bacteria in our microbiome you don't want bacterial overgrowth we don't want a deficit of beneficial bacteria like hormones we don't want too much hormones like a dominance of hormones we don't want a deficiency of hormones either inflammation is the same thing we don't want excess inflammation that's what's associated with all of these chronic health problems and we don't want a deficiency that's immunosuppressed people that people have immunodeficiencies that's not good either so it's about modulating and supporting healthy inflammatory Pathways is really the clinical objective for my patients and for the average person out there that's looking to optimize how they want to feel that should be their goal as well so I've got two questions that what is a symptom that one might notice in 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 way that we see it in functional medicine there's three main stages if you will on this Continuum this inflammation Spectrum on one end the silent inflammation silent autoimmunity meaning if you ran Labs you'd see some some markers off like a high sensitivity C-reactive protein which is a quite a conventional marker you'd see that spiked you see maybe a homocysteine level elevated another inflammatory protein but the person feels all right they say everything's cool stage two is the inflammation reactivity that's the vast majority of people living on our planet today are in stage two or three stage two a lot of people are there they have things like brain fog they have things like fatigue they have some sort of dysregulated nervous system response a way that people typically will say it they'll say I'm anxious but I'm exhausted or wired and tired is the other way of putting it they have different digestive problems I mean the amount of people that have chronic constipation or IBS or some sort
of digestive issue that again it's they're every day so they normalize it but these things are anything but normal they're just ubiquitous and I would put under that category mental health issues like anxiety depression autoimmune reactivity issues and people that have hormonal problems and then stage three is a full-blown diagnosable issue like they're going to their doctor and they're given an ICD-10 code in the States they're given some diagnostic code and they're given a medication or recommended some conventional treatment but researchers estimate it's about four to ten years prior to that diagnosis when things were Brewing on the Spectrum meaning by the time somebody gets diagnosed officially it didn't happen overnight for most people so it's no matter where you're at how 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 second part of your question is like what are the most common causes of it it really stems like the broad umbrella of it has to do with what researchers refer to as an evolutionary mismatch or an epigenetic genetic mismatch our genetics that's estimated hasn't changed haven't changed in about ten thousand years but yet our world has changed dramatically and it really finite period of time when you're putting that into context with the totality of human history so the foods we're eating or the foods we're not eating our stress levels our Collective and personal traumas environmental toxins our soil microbiome disruption and depletion and in turn impacting our gut microbiome so all of these epigenetic modulators if you will are DNA is living in this Brave New World and it's Awakening genetic predispositions that have been lying 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 and the world around us so on that point then the world the world we live in is um may be misaligned to our genetics which is kind of what I heard there let's start with the the emotional stuff one of the topics you introduce in
chapter one of your book is this idea of Shame inflation I've never had that term before yeah same formation shame okay shame inflammation um what does that mean and what's what 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 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 in things like chronic stress which is so well researched and Trauma and I talk about in the book something called intergenerational or transgenerational trauma how do these things impact our body our physical health so shame is sort of a term that a lot of my patients feel varying degrees of Shame they feel shame that they're not perfect enough with their body or around food or around life itself not you know being the best parent or the best whatever in their life there's a lot of health related shame in our world and just shame in general when it comes to life so shame is sort of the term that I used in the book of how to explain the sort of mental emotional spiritual feeling that people have how does impacting their health in the book I talk about this study around self-compassion and which is really right the antithesis of someone that's shaming themselves is someone that has sort of Grace and a lightness and a self-compassion around it and study the study had people do they had them speak in public or do math which apparently that's what we hate the most is humans but that they measured their inflammation levels when they were doing these stressful things right and their inflammation levels were high interleukin-6 it's il-6 inflammatory protein but the people that practice self-compassion during this time had the lowest levels of inflammation and on day two you'd expect okay the person would sort of adapt and the people that were 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 this cumulative effect but again the people with that practice self-compassion which I talked about the different practices in the book that I've seen effective for my patients it attenuates calms that inflammatory response and that's just one of money
but we well most health problems of why people are visiting their doctor are stress related that are either exacerbated by stress that are flared up by stress or literally caused by stress when you're looking up at things like autoimmune issues we have patients fill out what's called an adverse childhood experience score every Telehealth patient that we have and research has shown that people have these higher Ace scores these cumulative childhood and Beyond childhood lifestyle like life stressors whether physical abuse sexual abuse mental emotional abuse alcohol abuse in the home growing up people that have gone through these things in life have an increased likelihood of an autoimmune issue later on in Life or a mental health issue later on life or a 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 what people have gone through so shameflammation is really just my term to explain this phenomenon that's in the scientific literature that I see out I see play out in people's lives on a daily basis he talks about how how vicious stresses as a cause I guess for inflammation 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 good stress what is in particular the type of stress you're talking about that is leading to um this this shame inflammation I'm assuming it's chronic stress yeah a human species the human species wouldn't be here without some grit and resilience and I think in some ways you could argue that were really lacking the resilience and grit and that's something that I'm teaching my patients and in the book for people to sort of gain a resilience to handle stress there's nothing wrong inherently with stress and even if you look at the research around hormetic effects or hormesis like people are doing the cold plunges you see all around the wellness space or sauna therapy or high intensity interval training or even things like fasting these are all hormetic effects that humans would have spent times in like difficult times periodic times of stress that actually makes ourselves more resilient and and our souls more
resilient in many ways but it's the chronic stress where it's out of alignment with that ancestral Health perspective it's it's it's there's a that evolutionary mismatch that I mentioned earlier that is something that we haven't aligned with we have these these different stress adaptation responses in the body and the body's releasing things like cortisol and adrenaline and we never allow this sympathetic fight-or-flight stressed aspect of our autonomic nervous system to calm down so we're always in this fight-or-flight stressed state to varying degrees that people never are able to regulate themselves and never able to support that parasympathetic that resting digesting that hormone balance state of their their nervous system so yeah it could look different for different 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 healthy boundaries with their jobs and their family can be a source of stressor 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 the most common things that I hear from people this fight or flight response this sort of prolonged state of feeling 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 or nervous what is the consequence of being in that state for too long because a lot of people can probably relate to that yeah well it's that is impart what's driving these these vast epidemic of health problems in our world today when you're talking about 50 million Americans habiting autoimmune condition hundreds of millions worldwide are having autoimmune condition type 2 diabetes I mean it's the vast majority of people in the west are somewhere on this insulin resistant Spectrum meaning they have things like PCOS or weight loss resistance or insatiable Cravings or pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes all of these health problems that we are plagued with as a world are in part fed by chronic stress it's just a matter of how much your body can handle and that's sort of the conversation in the book about bio individuality right some people have the buck analogies sort of
that bucket analogy some people have massive buckets and they can handle a lot of things in their life before it's going to hit that Tipping Point what is the Tipping Point The Tipping Point is health problems well something's got to give and they realize they're diagnosed with a health problem and it's stressors the foods we eat trauma all of these things accumulate you can't change your bucket size but you can change what you put in it you can't change your genetic 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 of what can I do we all have different abilities or thresholds to handle things in our life but we all have the ability to clear these things out and to heal ultimately 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 unhuman hmm and when I think about what we can do to change that from like a real systemic level it seems like it might just be too big of a job because of the direction of travel of everything technology the way we're we're organizing our lives in terms of like cities and work and profession professionalism and social media etc etc are you optimistic that there's things 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 yeah I mean it's something I think often about and I think that there's a growing amount of pockets of people if you will that are that know intuitively they have to do something different to see something different and being in functional medicine for the past 13 plus years at this point I had to say what was once considered radical or Fringe so 10 years ago the idea that stress and Trauma could trigger autoimmune issues is now very much talked about in conventional settings and that things that may have seen woo-woo and strange 13 years ago now is being researched by reputable institutions I I talk about the research of the book around shinran Yoku which is the Japanese term that translates as Forest bathing which sounds weird when you think of it in English but it's actually a beautiful
description I believe of the Japanese art of using nature as a meditation using nature as a medicine and how researchers show like just spending few minutes in nature and taking in with all of your senses like a sensorial effect of nature lowers inflammation levels lower stress hormones balances the human immune system actually improves the human microbiome because of the the 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 ancient Arts is a good sign that we as a culture are looking for something different because I think in many ways if you remember that Pixar film Wally I think Wally's prophetic in many ways of like the path we could go down where people are just sitting looking at a screen and we've lost all sense of reality that I don't I think whoever wrote Wally the people at Pixar we can go a different direction you know this is such a a an interesting strange question to US based on what you've said but I was just just as you finished speaking then I was thinking about how we know this stuff like you 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 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 decreasing that Chasm between genetics and epigenetics so I live in a modern world I run a Telehealth clinic so I use technology to speak to people around the world at for the past 13 years and we ship labs to them and so I very much am a fan of technology and people are listening to us right now around the world I love the decentralization the democratization of health information because of Technology it's wonderful but I think these sort of unfettered lack of healthy boundaries with this phenomenon that we only have relatively a few years of experience with us as a world I think 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 do I live it yes I live it but I I live it in a balanced way where I have 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
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 and we have the U.S Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy say recently that he says this is the US government saying children under the age of 14 shouldn't have social media if the US government's saying it who takes well-measured conservative advice for these type of things when it comes to Wellness historically if they're recommending it I could only assume that 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 of self-respect not out of shame but out of self-respect what do I need what healthy margins what healthy boundaries do I need to live a more sane life to live a more joyous to live a little a more meaningful life some people can handle probably more technology than me some people could probably we all have again this bio individuality when it comes to these things but I think we just need to out of self-respect check ourselves it's I'm thinking even Beyond technology into things like you know we're becoming more 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 happiness we're eating things that we all know are not great for our health and happiness as well and and so like 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 head was that I think I optimize for something else I think a lot of us actually optimize Our Lives not for like health or really even for what we know at our deepest level would make us happiest we optimize for other things like status and success and we're all reproductive reproductive um Pursuits and I was just thinking I'm just trying to mull it over there why that is why like everything you've said in terms of being healthy and being happy 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 do is probably log off the internet you know probably wind things down a little
bit be a little bit less ambitious um would I be happier probably 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 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 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 you have in social media how many downloads you have is seen as it's deified it's glorified in many ways and I think this unsexy stuff like you know getting it whatever fascinating or eating well isn't as alluring because it's people don't see it all the time so I think it's human nature I think our culture is really um sells us a lot of things as far as what's important and how we look and things that are materialistic tend to be 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 we all are in this culture that tells us this is what's important but ultimately my experiences to be the best you like to be the best CEO to be the best successful human being to be the best partner we have to have our health and I see a lot of high performing successful people that don't want to choose either or they want to be successful but they realize they cannot be the highest performing person if they don't have their health and I see people start their health eroding because it is unsustainable to always be in that sympathetic fight or flight stress State 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 30s but they start to erode and then when you have your health look not as sustainable and impenetrable as you thought it was then at that point oftentimes it's that motivation that you just said that actually motivates them to get healthy one of the things that orientates us and changes our priorities is trauma and that's something you talk about in the book as well um the really fascinating thing that
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 intergenerational trauma was just like woo-woo spiritual stuff or whether it was real science I.E that the idea that your parents trauma can be passed on to you somehow is that true yeah well and that's yes it 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 trauma just in our own life right and we all these are things that we can accumulate and through things like therapy and somatic experiences and things like EMDR that I talk about you can work on your trauma in your life but for some of us part of our trauma in our life today has to do with the trauma that our ancestors have gone through so two geopolitical historical things that were big things in our world are really were explored in the scientific literature to see how this plays out one was a Ukrainian genocide man-made famine in the early 20th century Joseph Stalin the Ukrainian people wanted to have 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 efforts but this famine in the early 1900s was done in the Ukrainian people millions of people died and what researchers have found is not just the people that went through this atrocity their their children and their great grandchildren had the same methylation gene variants methylation is something that we quantify on Labs it's a interconnected different biochemical Pathways that impact inflammation levels impact neurotransmitters and how our brain works different detoxification Pathways that literally this trauma that the people went through during this Ukrainian genocide was passed on like an epigenetic heirloom of how genes were expressed by their experience similar research was done in the Holocaust and the descendants of people that went through the Holocaust in Germany and Poland so yes it's sound science fiction but intergenerational trauma or transgenerational trauma looking at how trauma is literally stored in the cells
and then passed on through Family Lines is very much science and it's shown that these people have increased likelihood of mental health issues autoimmune issues type 2 diabetes different hormonal problems and I you know this is what's being explored in science but I could only imagine that it exists on a spectrum that maybe all of our descendants haven't gone through the same things but I think intuitively again we can know that there's certain behaviors in certain ways that people live in part because of what our ancestors have gone through so yeah that's what's being explored it feels a bit like a it feels a lot to deal with like having to deal with my own trauma let alone my great-grandparents trauma 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 about this it's like wow I'm screwed like I If it wasn't I have my own junk let alone my ancestors though and I'm gonna pass my junk on to my kids right but I think so for the average person you don't necessarily to even have to think about it because it's just where you're at today and but I would say this if you shift your perspective and almost give yourself a little bit more grace a little bit more forgiveness and compassion to say wow there are some big things at play here and I see people up against seemingly insurmountable things that have gone through a lot of personal trauma trauma as well as ancestral trauma break the chains of dysfunction break the change of disease and disorder in their life and heal not only themselves but heal their families heal their 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 trauma can be inherited so can healing interesting the the in that chapter where you talk about intergenerational trauma you also talk about um polyvaginal Theory big word yeah phrase yeah what is what is polyvaginal theory poly vagalog of course I've got vaginal Jesus Christ we'll keep that in is there anything called poly vaginal probably I have to 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 that'll be the next episode The after dark episode uh poly Bagel theory is well it gets its name in part because of the vagus nerve it's the largest cranial nerve in the body right and it's it translates from the word wandering or Wanderer and it sort of wanders from the brain down into the gut and it's the main nerve that's responsible for a parasympathetic uh arresting digesting or Zend out hormone balanced state of which that aspect of our autonomic nervous system is weakened or what researchers call a we many of us have a poor vagal tone our vagus nerve is weak our parasympathetic is weak because our sympathetic that fight or flight stressed super productive always on the go type A is very strong it's really overactive so the sympathetic nervous system is is where the the fight or flight the stress responses happen and then the the parasympathetic nervous system is ultimately what calms us down yes exactly and both are important okay both are important it's about but many of us have a disregulated nervous system response because of this sort of imbalance within the autonomic nervous system and then the enteric nervous system is sort of the third aspect of our autonomic nervous system but polyvagal theory is a way to understand how trauma can be stored in our body so there's three main in this sort of study of the human nervous system there's the dorsal vagal sympathetic the ventral vagal it's understanding how upon this Continuum can the human nervous system reside so 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 way to sympathetic fight or flight all the way to I am under threat I am shutting down I'm in hyper vigilance and the end stage of that is something called dysautonomy or dysautonomia it is when the nervous system is perpetually stuck in that fight or flight state which is that's a diagnosable disorder but again polyvagol attempts to describe how these things exist on a spectrum to understand how things like thoughts
and emotions trauma shame our bodies are like cellular libraries where we're storing all of these things and the thoughts we speak the thoughts we're thinking the words we speak are literally stored in ourselves and we have trillions of cells that are listening intently to how we speak and how we how we live our life so that's what polyvagal theory is talking about so in essence those these three states where you're relaxed in state one state two you have sort of acute stress small amounts of stress and then in state three you have severe things like burnout and you know physiological collapse I guess yeah um and what what sort of proportion of the population do you think are living in each state there yeah I mean I would assume when you look at the statistics of chronic disease and the fact that you're talking depending on the study that you look at 60 to 80 percent of the West U.S UK all Western countries are somewhere are dealing with some massive metabolic issues which is very much stress related food plays a part of it because unhealthy foods that don't love us back is also stressful but also the mental emotional spiritual stress of it when you look at the ins the phenomenon of insulin resistance of what is which is the leading cause of heart disease in the world and doubles the risk of many cancers as well that phenomenon of metabolic issues and hyperinsulinemia or excess insulin and glucose issues it's the vast majority of people so the vast you really can't have a regulated nervous system when you're looking at that so I would venture to say that between stage two and three between the sympathetic to all that that system hyper vigilance it's 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 I worry that at some point ongoing stress will put me into that state of hyper vigilance in my understanding of hyper vigilance is basically where we're really regardless of stimuli or environment you just can't shake the feeling of stress some people like you know they're just kind of stressed on edge anxious at all times I've always thought that that state is reached after
a prolonged period maybe in state two 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 you fall into this category of hyper vigilance where you're basically just anxious forever yeah I think in most of the cases it's cumulative like that it takes time I mentioned that that sort of General statistic of most people that have metabolic issues most people that have an autoimmune issue these sort of end like more diagnosable things right it's about four to ten years prior that things are Brewing so yes I think for 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 intense trauma that's such intense lost in the life that things could happen speed up if you will speed up that degradation of how the nervous system and immune system is regulating itself and you mentioned food a second ago in the role that plays the foods that don't love us back what are the foods that don't love us back I'm gonna lose some friends right now on this podcast but it's that what I would call the inflammatory core four plus one if I can but the would be gluten containing grains would be on the list that's things like wheat and rye and barley and spelled and it's a 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 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 then we're over consuming it right we're over consuming a famine food we're feasting on a famine food that historically was stored well and now we're always consuming it let alone what we've done to the crop and the soil in which it's grown but for the sake of Simplicity I think the average sort of wheat that people are consuming is triggering a lot of inflammation levels definitely doesn't love the human species back very much and number two would be industrial seed oils things like Cardinal canola oil vegetable oil soybean oil these things 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 inherently bad I think they are just
over consumed because the we need healthy ratios of omegas three six and nine when you think of Omega-3s it's like the healthy fish right people or like the the mega the healthy long chain Omega fats you get predominantly from fish people are not having enough of 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 over consumption of one and not eating enough of the other the third would be conventional Dairy 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 when you're looking at grass-fed organic a tube milk you'll see popping up because beta A2 casein is the subtype of casein that would have been consumed by humans for thousands of years now because of the cross-breeding of cows most casein is beta A1 casein which has been shown to be more inflammatory because again of this evolutionary mismatch our ancestors wouldn't have consumed all of this the fermentation of dairy can make it more digestible because it's breaking down the casein the dairy protein and those Dairy sugars so things like kefirs or cheeses and yogurts can be avoided more digestible and the fourth would be sugar and the over consumption of that but most people know that but I would be more mindful of even the nice sounding euphemisms for sugar you know where it's like oh it sounds like a agave nectar I think of that right Agave just sounds so natural like they're squeezing the agave in the cup and just consuming it it's mostly marketing because it's still sugar and it's still high in fructose so I would be just mindful for The Listener 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 plus one would be alcohol which is really a saboteur to our gut feeling connection it will impact our gut microbiome it's been shown to increase leaky gut syndrome really raise systemic inflammation and it's a neurotoxin researchers have shown that even drinking a small amount a few times a week is associated with lower brain volume lower hippocampus size which we which we need for focus and energy and and having optimal
cognition this time gut microbiome is one that I've only come across in the last couple of months maybe the last three to four three to four months roughly and the importance of the gut microbiome for anybody who is new to this this term got microbiome why does it matter and what is it yeah it's vastly important and as I mentioned earlier the gut and brain are formed from the same fetal tissue right that's our gastrointestinal system within it we have upwards depending on the study that you look at upwards of 100 trillion bacteria in our gut and it's sort of this gut Garden that influences a lot of things in our body as I mentioned about 95 of Serotonin is made in the gut fifty percent of dopamine so our happy pleasure joyous chemicals neurotransmitters are made in the gut stored in the gut almost exclusively when you're talking about serotonin and dopamine and these bacteria also regulate the immune system so we're talking about the way that two-thirds of the immune system is living in the gut or an inflammation they mentioned so ubiquitous most of it's derivative it's originating in the gut so there's a lot of gut-centric components both from a gastrointestinal system and nervous system standpoint but part of that crosstalk between the gut and the brain and the nervous system and the immune system has to do with the microbiome which is the collective term for all the bacteria and yeast and parasites living in the human gut which we co-evolved with and in some ways it kind of made us it kind of we would not be here without the microbiome if the microbiome all of a sudden left we would not be able to produce neurotransmitters we would not be able 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 hormone is converted in the gut in the presence of healthy bacteria so the point is we are it is regulating these bacteria which are not us is regulating how we think how we feel how we operate What We crave I mentioned a study in the book where there's bacterial imbalances in many people's guts actually causing them to Crave certain foods because it wants to eat it eats what we eat so again this message of really I think
Grace in many ways where it's not your lack of willpower sometimes it's just these gut bacteria that need to be tended to impruned so we can actually have proper signaling as far as our blood sugar control and craving control so if you care about Mental Health if you care about your overall health as far as inflammation is concerned if you care about your weight and your energy levels you have to care about the microbiome because if it's not healthy you're not healthy how do I go about caring about my gut microbiome so it starts with the foods you eat yeah so I would say that there's that inflammatory four plus one decreasing those and then focusing on foods that love us back I one of the action items that I talk about in the book is those 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 gut in Psychology syndrome or gut and Physiology syndrome so it's a food tool that we use within functional medicine or at least I do that's really helpful for calming a lot of gut-centric inflammation and it's sort of a proverbial Siesta for your gut because it's almost pre-digesting the foods when you're cooking things again our ancestors would have known all of this because they would have if you talk 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 and someone's sick it wasn't the noodles that were the health benefits of of the soup it was these broths and these cooked vegetables and cooked meats that were easy to digest and break down so somebody that's going through a digestive problem gut health problem or has inflammation levels and suspects this gut-centric components to that inflammation or they're going through things like anxiety and depression or fatigue I really would Implement I mean 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 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 um and then like these feeling action items breath work huge for bagel Tony huge for microbiome
health is it's simple meditation simple breath work all the way just like holotropic and more of the advanced tools that I talk about is a really way to support vehicle tone the more you're supporting your vagal tone the more you're supporting your gut brain access the connection between the two which is innervating the gut there's something called the migrating Motor complex or the MMC which is your gut kind of keeping the bacteria in this large intestine in the colon but your brain has to be the one that's regulating this bi-directional relationship between your gut and the brain and the brain in the gut so breath work and meditation I mentioned the forest bathing hyuga like thing acts of Stillness is what I call it in the book pick which one you want but stay consistent with it because these supporters of the parasympathetic these acts of Stillness are hugely restorative to your vagus nerve and in turn your microbiome if someone's in a supermarket or on their way to a supermarket today and they've heard your 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 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 vegetables because you're going to be cooking those in the soups so you really could pick any of your favorite vegetables that you would want to be having and then your favorite protein that you'd be having you could do chicken grass-fed beef you could do fish really or a plant-based protein and 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 glengle or Ginger broth or seaweed broth and just of your choice really curating these soups and stews and think of it again as sort of this nourishing grounding healing time for you and your gut that's what I would do so wherever that's at in the supermarket go find those things and then I would say 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 sauerkraut and kimchi's and kefirs those can be good too for many people
as you might know the show's now sponsored by Airbnb I can't count how many times airbnbs have saved me when I'm traveling around the world whether it's you know recently when I went to the Jungle in Bali or whether it's when I'm staying here in the UK or going to business in America but I can also think of so many times where I've stayed in a host's place on Airbnb and I've been sat there wondering could my place be an Airbnb as well and if it could be how much could I earn it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing about it maybe you have a spare room in your house that friends stay from time to time you could Airbnb that space and make a significant amount of money instead of letting it stay empty that in-law that guest house that Annex where your parents sometimes stay you could Airbnb that and make some extra income for yourself whether you could just use some extra money to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun your home might be worth a little bit more than you think and you can find out the answer to that question by going to airbnb.co.uk host 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 for for a while um it didn't love me back it worked for a while and I think that's that's and my first book was called keto Terry and it really was that exploration of being that Health nerd and trying something new and feeling great and doing it in a whole food based way and then evolving from it and realizing it didn't love me back and just because something's better meaning just because something's better than the standard Western diet which it certainly was doesn't necessarily mean it's optimal and it's okay to Pivot it's okay to evolve so for me I talk about it in ketotarian but it's I wasn't getting the complete protein that I needed and a lot of the proteins that I was getting really wasn't working for me on a digestive standpoint it just was like a lot to digest it was kind of irritating my system and there were some nutrient deficiencies from a bioavailable iron standpoint bioavailable B vitamins like folate and b12 standpoint and true vitamin A retinol which you cannot get
in plant-based form now in theory I could have supplemented with all of those things I could have supplemented with iron I could have supplemented with B12 which I was and I could have supplemented with vitamin A which I was but this they're synthetic mainly the the retinol that you're getting from supplement form is synthetic it's not in its Whole Food form so the question that I posed to myself self was if I have to supplement is it really the most ideal diet for me so I have many patients that are vegan for various reasons like religious and ethical reasons and we want to make them the best vegan or vegetarian if they're vegetarian food protocol for them but for me I was able to Pivot out of that where it could still be predominantly plant-based but still be omnivore and feel amazing so that's that was my journey what were the physical sort of symptoms that you experienced that made you awaken to the idea of pivoting out of being vegan it was fatigue more than anything it was fatigue brain fog and digestive problems 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 super sciency on you but I have a double MTHFR Gene variant which just we all have different Gene variants right but this is one of those Gene Snips or single nucleotide polymorphisms that we can measure we quantify on Labs we get raw Gene data from something like in the different um genetic tests that people get like ancestry or 23andMe we can look at their own genetic bio-individuality my body is not as good in that way at methylating meaning that specific MTHFR Gene has a lot of science behind it basically I'm not as good at converting folic acid into folate I'm not that good at bringing this inflammatory protein down called homocysteine many people have this and higher homocysteine levels even slightly elevated is linked in the research to increasing the blood-brain barrier permeability basically contributing to impart neural inflammation so people that are going through things like brain fog or different inflammatory problems or fatigue oftentimes homocysteine is implicated in that so for me to get those levels optimal bringing in things
like wild caught fish and grass-fed beef and more soups and stews with like bone broth based soups and stews like collagen based things love my body back tremendously did it fix the physical symptoms 100 so it and that's the thing is like it's science and art like not 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 but for someone that is willing to test these things out still be predominantly plant-based but still bring these things 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 their body or or good to their gut they'll have like a detox you know like detox juice week or something yeah what's your thoughts on on that you know I think it's a lot of probably well first of all it's such an ambiguous 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 bottle or a protocol that you saw online seven day juice detox yeah yeah so I I get why people want to do it because we live in quite a toxic world and eat a 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 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 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 me it's not what Wellness is really about I want people to have tools whenever they do fall off the wagon so 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 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 cleanses juice detoxes probably aren't the way to go I would say again better than the standard American diet maybe but not necessarily optimal and my point would be in thinking about this is the lack of fiber I think if somebody wants to eat Whole Foods and maybe get smoothies because the fiber has been
Blended up in sort of this fruit based vegetable based smoothie I think that has its place because the fiber will buffer all the fructose that's in there the fruit sugars if somebody's having copious amounts of fructose for seven days with no fiber I don't feel like that's setting them up for Success where do you go from there I 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 unhealthy guts we know that so sometimes giving your a break from all the junk in any form can be good so it's not necessarily the juice that's the most healthy thing in the world it's that 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 beer your son your son is sat in the studio as you said um he sat over in the corner over there 16 years old based on everything you know about the gut about food about our emotions 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 to be optimal as it relates to health can you talk me through the the I was going to say adjustments but how you would design that life for him to have an optimal life in 2023 and Beyond yeah so for me like if we're talking specifically my son it 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 it's plant seeds by first living it out yourself right and living your life out of as an example instead of sort of preaching and being dogmatic and being making it about sort of diet diet culture I don't think that that's healthy at all but it really shifts your perspective away from all the things you quote unquote can't have but really focus yourself back to all the things you get to have and avoiding things that don't love you back isn't restrictive it's self-respect for your body and really that's something that I've tried to do with my son and his sister is really focusing on foods that love and back so if you want a day in the life of what it would look like
um he it's funny to see at 16 years old he starts to own it for himself it's not 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 other day he said that like it he said that very thing he he's now taking it 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 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 eater and that's okay and it's really just meeting your kid where where they're at and planting seeds and then at some point the goal is for them to own it for themselves so in the morning I mean he typically does some 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 the morning so that's something that's not for everybody but it works for him and I we both do it why why is it good because it's a goal to support metabolic flexibility humans would have done this they just would have called it life because of food availability food wasn't always available for our ancestors and again most of our genes haven't changed in 10 000 years so to having some intentional 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 window in mid-afternoon those are two ways that you can do it be sensible about it be moderate about it if you have you know an eating disorder I wouldn't recommend it but for the average person that's looking to optimize their health most of us are in the west stuck in the sugar burning metabolically inflexible state where we're we're on this blood sugar roller coaster we have these insatiable Cravings even if it's for the healthier sugars and intermittent fasting is a way to sort of train your metabolism to be more resilient to be more flexible so then you break the faster on lunch time is how we typically would do it but we have lots of vegetables and clean protein and healthy fats like avocados and extra virgin olive oil and you can have that whole food smoothie with
fruits and greens and you know some sort of protein powder if you want to do that and it's similar for dinner and then there's lots of things people can have but also cultivating these feeling practices to be supportive of the parasympathetic for speaking about my son I'm so proud of him because he I'll walk in his room sometimes and he'll just be in on the floor meditating and that's 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 and the people that say their that meditation isn't for them they're probably the ones that should be doing it the most because and I'm one of those people that our brain is always going that's why we should be flexing that mindfulness muscle because it's freaking weak so I don't know those are some things that I that's impressive I mean you will continue your son's room and he sat there meditating yeah more than once more than one at least that's what you think he was doing we're very good at hearing Our Father coming in quickly getting the loaded is that your trick so he's a man Lotus position he's a down pat and what do you struggle with you know because I always ask this question to to people that know a lot about about subject matter because I always think it's quite disarming to understand that they're imperfect too yeah so what do you struggle with as it relates to these oh man I am I am so imperfect so I I am and I'm prone to anxiety I'm prone to thinking sort of frenetically of just like all the things I have to do and um not spending enough really not that much time at all focusing in the present moment back to why I suck at meditation and that's okay like I'm okay with that because that's why I need to do it 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 being grounded in the present moment my mind is thinking about all the things I have to do my team my patients my whatever the next thing I have to do for the book or the podcast so that's my
my goal is to be better in that area has your work ever moved you to tears yeah on a regular basis actually when you look at things that people go through it makes you appreciative of life so much when you see people that are doing all the things that are really trying with all their heart to be healthy and to get out of a dark place in their health lose it all um and having trouble to find their way out of it it is just the sacred responsibility for me to be there for them but it's also hugely humbling I think of just the brevity of Life the fragility the between in the line between health and health problems it doesn't is not lost on me at all so I tear up pretty quick consistently in a consult it's normal for me to to do that because you're holding space for people that are going through heavy things and you're talking to them for hour hour and a half at a time yeah it's uh if you aren't you're pretty apathetic I think to this 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 like a pretty stressful position to be in yeah it is I think the first thing that comes to mind is a great support 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 professionally it's my team so I can I can really almost metabolize that heaviness with my team I can go and talk with them about what happened we can Rift ideas we can kind of get it out week by somatically like talking about it and these sort of mutual experience I think that we both we all have on the patient team specifically so that's it and then these practices the the practices that I talk about and got feelings of just grounding practices meditation breath work getting out in nature these things are non-negotiables for me because of again I talk about my my lack of presence sometimes am I focused on all the stuff instead of being but also my line of work and the heaviness that comes along with it
what does your future look like in your 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 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 many ways it's like a TBD sort of thing it's I I've spent my career thus far really my nose to the ground doing what I love staying in my Lane if that makes sense or just a relentlessly pursuing a passion that I've had that's really just been an outpouring so I think of all the things that I'm doing now talking with you right now or writing a book or having a podcast or all this stuff is really just Ripple effects of that main focus of just figuring out complex problems to people's health issues so I don't know where that would take me but I I haven't really and I probably not the norm when it comes to people that are professional and doing all the things because I didn't really think that much about it other than just being of service to the person in front of me 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 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 pretty young and they're getting of age now teenagers now so I'm thinking of like being able to spend these years of my life and like newlyweds you know so on a personal level I'm kind of excited for that I'm excited to like being a parent's heart running a business is hard so I'm excited to see them grow up and do the things that they're passionate about and then I know there's a lot more books in me and conversations to be had in the podcast 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 more successful so you know the book sells really well the next book sells really well you do podcasts it gets 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 called stress potentially chronic stress so how I'm trying to figure out how when you're successful at something and the opportunity comes knocking over and over again you're thinking about you use the word earlier on boundaries creating a boundary so you can balance both the I guess the pursuit of purpose and the like health and well-being of yourself yeah well let me know if you figured this out because I haven't really I'm asking you yeah so for me it's I'm a work in progress trying to figure it out but I'll tell you one thing that I'm getting better at it's saying no to things because my mind earlier in 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 be asked why would I say no to that and if I say no they won't ask me again right all the things and it's like no at certain point there's only so many hours in the day and my team is checking me on that too like you need to quit saying yes to everything so for me I think like letting like know it's not not personal it's just no for me right now that goes a long way to like decreasing my stress levels so I 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 are the successful maybe say yes to a lot of things and we need to get better at saying no we we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest hmm and your question is here what is the most controversial idea you believe within your industry that most people disagree with I have a pretty Middle Ground approach sort of inclusive approach and I can normally find I could normally find um a pragmatic understanding of okay that's that's the art of Bio individuality right it's it's yeah but context matters who are we talking about and how are they doing it so I could 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 not a hardliner I guess is what you would say I really seen and that's really because all I do is talk to 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 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 don't know what I would say that's so controversial I think that what we in functional medicine talk about is still controversial in some pockets of medicine so we can put that aside I think most people within health and wellness would agree with most things I'd say I say I'm not super dogmatic one 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 the race when it comes to specific ideologies um but I do feel like functional medicine gets a lot of blowback from conventional medicine I talk about it and gut feelings actually the sort of um God complex that I think sometimes happens with uh the conventional medicine against functional medicine and the idea that you know food is influential to somebody's health I don't think it's controversial but I still hear it from time to time not super common these days and it's increasing it's over the past 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 saying how dare you say that you could reverse type 2 diabetes with food how dare you say that food plays a role in many people's autoimmune conditions now I don't get those phone calls anymore and we have a bigger platform than ever so I have a feeling that it's just more normalized now but it's still I think it's interesting to me the pushback that some of us get within functional medicine with with conventional medicine it's that they will say there were quacks or woo-woo but look I bring it back to this point it's ultimately the United States spends more on health care then the next 10 top spending countries combined yet we have
the worst we have the most disease and the shortest lifespan of all industrialized nations so I think that when you look at those statistics we have to realize we have to do something different to see something different and when you look at the statistics what we do in functional medicine it speaks for itself we're getting people healthy we're able to reduce and eliminate their need for medications when it's possible and we're improving the quality of life and I think it speaks loudly when you talk about mainstream institutions like the Cleveland Clinic opening up functional medicine centers they're not opening it up millions of dollars of work they're putting it into these clinics off of quackery and woo-woo they're doing it because the statistics in the data speak for itself so I think you're on the wrong side of History if you still think functional medicine is controversial it's not we're getting people healthy healthy shouldn't be controversial and I think it says more about the system that's calling us controversial than it does about us getting people healthy so that's the first thing that comes to mind is that still we have this sort of archaic dinosaurs critiquing people that are getting people healthy but it'd be it's almost like the analogy that I use in the book it's like the the the the I I use the analogy of school it's like you have the failing student judging the grade a student and I feel like in many ways that's sort of the the poopooing of functional medicine from conventional world it's like oh how dare you but yet look at the statistics you have the worst healthcare system in the industrialized Nation but yet you're criticizing people that are trying to do something different to see something different Dr Wilco thank you so much thank you my 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 [Music] quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans as a sponsor and supporter of this podcast for anyone that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that
allows you to have slick fast good quality online meetings without any of those glitches that you'd normally find with other meeting online providers you know the ones I'm talking about and they have a new feature called Blue Jeans basic which I wanted to tell you about blue jeans basic is essentially a free version of their top quality video conferencing and that means that you get immersive video experiences you get that super high quality super easy and zero fuss experience and apart from zero time limits on meetings and calls it also comes with High Fidelity audio and video including Dolby voice they also have expertise grade security so you can collaborate with confidence it's so smooth that it's quite literally changed the game for myself and my team without compromising quality at all so if you'd like to check them out search bluejeans.com and let me know how you get on over the last couple of how long maybe four months I've been changing my diet shall I say many of you have really been paying attention to this podcast will know why I've sat here with some incredible Health experts and one of the things that's really come through for me which has caused a big change in my life is the need for us to have these superfoods these green Foods these vegetables and then a company I love so much and the company I'm an investor in and then a company that sponsors this podcast and I'm on the board of recently announced a new product which absolutely spoke to exactly where I was in my life and that is huel and they announced Daily Greens Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods nutrients and plant-based ingredients which helps me meet that dietary requirement with the convenience that hewell always offers unfortunately it's only currently available in the US but I hope I pray that it'll be with you guys in the UK too so if you're in the US check it out it's an incredible product I've been having it here in La for the last couple of weeks and it's a game changer [Music] foreign [Music]